Josie's Killer Karaoke -- more excerpts

More excerpts from Her Two Billionaires and a Baby:

Each booth had an old-fashioned jukebox attached to it. “You have a quarter?” Josie begged.

Laura fished one out of a pocket. Josie slipped it in as Laura wondered how they got away with still just charging a quarter. She remembered long car trips to visit her relatives in Ohio and stopping at the L&K Diners, the jukeboxes identical, a burgundy red she only saw in ancient Italian restaurants and rest stops in the Midwest.

Back then a quarter got two songs. Now, one. Josie punched some buttons, fingers more accustomed to glass phone screens than analog squares, and soon Gloria Gaynor crooned.

Laura groaned.

“First I was afraid! I was petrified,” Josie sang, using her rolled silverware as a microphone. Seriously? The song was bad enough. Josie's tone-deaf performance would be worse.

“Kept thinking I could never live without them by my side...”

Them?

“Stop it,” she hissed, whacking Josie's forearm. The fork slid out and shot across the room, hitting a table leg. Madge strode by without missing a beat, picked it up, and threw a clean one on the table in front of Josie, her stride completely fluid.

“And then Thor and Superman, they came to me in the same bed, and now I'm half dead, ooooooh now I am half dead!” Josie wriggled and thrust her neck out as if singing, her voice a cross between an eight-year-old's earnest choir attempts and something out of Killer Karaoke.

“You have the music ability of William Hung.” And the stage presence.

“I will menage! I will menage!” As Josie parodied the familiar chorus, Laura lunged across the table and clamped her hand over Josie's mouth. That was quite enough.