Sophie pretended to look surprised. “Didn’t you say the entire group? She’s part of it, right?”
Mal was wide-eyed and small at her end of the table. “I don’t think–”
“And I know what she can sing,” Sophie interrupted, looking at the music list, though her eyes didn’t move across the page. “‘Alone’ by Heart.”
The entire table went silent, no one stupid enough to mistake her real meaning, not even Bethany. Hunter fought the urge to look at Mal and the following urge to punch the table.
Caroline, sitting two seats down from him, snatched the paper back from Sophie. “Here’s an idea, Sophie. How about you go next and sing ‘Don’t Speak’ by No Doubt?”
Uneasy laughter broke out, and Mal quietly excused herself from the table, camera in hand, and moved to one side of the room, taking pictures of the Journey cover band currently on stage.
Hunter watched Mal like a hawk, looking for the barest hint of hurt or distress from her. He never saw it. She was as calm and cool as a cucumber, and he was proud of that.
You okay?he texted quickly.
She glanced down at her phone, then looked over at him in surprise. She smiled, rolled her eyes, and made a small gesture with her arms and shoulders as if to say, “Of course.”
He gave her a warning look. He didn’t want her to pretend, not with him.
She huffed and looked down at her phone.
I don’t care about Sophie. And I could totally rock ‘Alone’ if I wanted to.
He smiled and looked up at her again, sending her a wink, which she returned.
Someone at the microphone cleared his throat, and Hunter looked to the stage to find Lucas there. “I would like to dedicate this song to my cousin Mallory,” he said with a hand on his chest, looking at Mal. “I love you, and you’re hot. If we weren’t related, this would be my song for you.”
That earned him three whistles from their table, and Hunter sat back with a smile. Mal was going to kill Lucas no matter what song he sang after this. What followed was a dramatic, heartfelt, and surprisingly decent rendition of Survivor’s “The Search Is Over,” and Hunter suspected, looking around the room, that Lucas would have quite a fan club before the night was out.
Mal was taking pictures of the whole thing and smiling, shaking her head. According to multiple sources, there was just no explaining Lucas.
When the applause died down, Lucas spoke again. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, for an encore, I present to you a Hudson cousin special. So, if my lovely sisters and cousin would join me up here…”
There were gasps and squeals and mutterings of murder as Jenna and Caroline went up. Mal stayed rooted in her place.
Lucas was staring at her with a lifted brow. “Mallory, if you don’t get your butt up here, I will tell this entire room about that family trip to Charleston when you were seven.”
Mal’s eyes went wide. She swallowed, and her brow snapped down. She handed her camera off to Dan, who was grinning gleefully, and he and Taryn stood together in the back, plotting their angles.
Mal made her way up and stood by Caroline, smiling in spite of her glower at Lucas. Then Mal met Hunter’s eyes, and her shoulders dropped in a sigh of defeat that made him smile.
“This is a real treat, ladies and gents,” Lucas was saying now. “This is something that has not been done in fifteen years. All our lives, we worked tirelessly on one song together, and one song only.”
All three of the girls went wide-eyed and looked at each other.
“The Hudson cousins present… ‘Dancing on the Ceiling.’”
The room broke into applause, and it looked like Lucas wasn’t going to live very long after this, but something he said to the girls made them smile. The music started, and they were off.
And they were good.
More than that, they were having fun, and soon everyone in the room was—except Sophie, who was not impressed. But nobody cared. They were up on their feet, dancing and singing along, clapping to the beat.
The cousins danced, harmonized, and seemed to know exactly what the others would do. Clearly, there had been much rehearsal of this song in their younger years, and they remembered every bit of it.
Mal was alive on stage, and he could see the years of distance melting away between her and her cousins. She moved to the beat in her place, though she was clearly not a dancer. She didn’t care, and neither did anyone else. This was a side of her he’d never seen before, and layers of Mal’s inhibitions were falling away one by one before his eyes.
He liked what he saw. He liked it a lot.