“Your girl’s good,” Jason says from where he sits next to me, nursing a whiskey.

I tense for a half second at Jason’s reference to Parker as my girl, but have to remind myself that he said it a million times before Parker and I started hooking up, and he just means it in the way that she’s, well…my girl. But not my girl.

Anyway.

Parker’s good. Really good. She and Lori have chosen some Destiny’s Child song from way back when—one of those ones where I find I seem to know all the words although I couldn’t tell you the name of the song if you held a gun to my head.

The bar’s freaking loving them.

Rare is the karaoke singer who’s got the looks and the voice, but Parker does.

Lori’s voice isn’t quite as good, and she’s mostly sticking to backup, but she’s far from tone-deaf. Plus she’s more than making up for mediocre vocal talent with sexy dance moves.

The girls wrap up their song to a standing ovation before making their way back toward our table, laughing.

Parker grabs my drink and takes a long sip. “God, that’s good.”

“The beer or the stage?” I ask.

“Both.” She slumps back against the booth with a smile. “I think we need more champagne.”

“You always think we need more champagne,” Lori says. “But this time I’m in agreement.”

Jason flags down a frazzled-looking server and we order another round, as Lori and Parker start plotting their next song.

“Let’s just go put our name in,” Lori says. “Although someone else is bound to let us cut in after we killed it up there with that last song.”

“Uh-uh. I need another drink first,” Parker says. “Liquid courage.”

“ ’Kay,” Lori says agreeably. Then she transfers her blue gaze to me. “Sing a duet with me, Olsen.”

I pause in drinking the last of my beer, and I see Parker give Lori a surprised look before she, too, looks at me.

I shake my head. “No way. Make Jason go up there.”

“Hell, no,” Jason says. “I don’t sing.”

“I thought karaoke was your idea,” Parker says, tilting her head.

“Because I like watching other people make fools of themselves,” he says, pointing to the stage, where, sure enough, a group of drunken women are slurring their way through “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

“Come on,” Lori pleads, kicking me softly under the table. “It’ll be fun.”

I shift my gaze to Parker, who shrugs. “Go for it. Your voice is better than most of the people getting up there.”

What she doesn’t say is that it’s usually the two of us doing the duets. We used to do karaoke most weekends in college, and we covered everything from old country ballads to Top 40 stuff. It’s kind of our thing. Or at least, it used to be.

Still, she doesn’t look even remotely put out by the thought that my first song of the night will be with Lori instead of her, and why would she be?

Parker gives me a little wink, and I shrug at Lori. “All right. Cool. Let’s do it.”

Lori’s smile is just a bit more excited than it should be, and the way she grabs my hand the second I stand is completely unnecessary, but oh well.

Her confidence that she’ll be able to cut in line was well-founded, and a few moments later, a microphone’s in my hand and Lori and I are singing “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease, and the crowd seems to like us nearly as much as they liked Parker and Lori.

I’m definitely getting more than a few interested looks from the ladies in the crowd as I play up the strutting John Travolta thing.

I wink at a particularly interesting prospect at a table in the back. A black-haired woman in a killer red dress. At least until my eye catches our nearly empty table.

Jason is still there.

Parker is not.

Luckily I know this annoying song by heart, thanks to our college karaoke career, so I can sing on autopilot without having to look at the lyric board. My eyes scan the room for my best friend.

There she is, talking to a guy.

And she actually looks interested.

Huh.

Lori grabs my hand and pulls me into some dorky fifties dance move that fits the song before we end with a rather spectacular finish, if I do say so myself.

Everyone is whooping and cheering.

Everyone except Parker, who barely looks away from the blond guy she’s chatting up at the bar.

I’m happy for her.

Maybe she’s finally getting the hang of this whole flirting/pickup scene.

Hell, maybe all she needed was some rather excellent sex—not bragging, just stating facts—to loosen her up.

And sex with Parker truly is excellent. It was excellent last Monday when we first broke each other in, so to speak. It was even better on Tuesday. And Wednesday, and Thursday. And it was excellent earlier tonight when we did it in the kitchen, just minutes before we headed out to meet Lori and Jason.

Not that I’ll be getting any gratitude from the blond guy in the white button-down. He has no idea who he has to thank for Parker’s newfound sexual confidence.

Me.

I’ve been so preoccupied with trying to assess the Parker situation that I don’t immediately realize that Lori didn’t let go of my hand after we got off the stage.

It’s not until we get back to our table that I manage to maneuver my fingers from hers under the guise of reaching for my beer as we sit down.