Inside Out - Lauren Dane [48]
“Christ, Ella, when you look at my mouth like that, it’s all I can do not to snatch you up and get us both out of here and behind a locked door.” His voice was low. Intimate. Tense with desire, and she felt it to her toes.
She made a man like Cope feel that way? Just by looking at his mouth? Power unfurled in her belly, warm and pleasant. Who knew?
“I kind of like that, Andrew. I must say.” She knew she blushed, but it felt too good to hold back.
Startled, he laughed and kissed her again, keeping an arm around her waist as he broke from their embrace and they turned to talk to their friends.
“You guys are all so awesome. Thank you. Really.” It had been a few years since anyone had thrown her a party of any kind. The last one had been a subdued one when she’d been released from physical therapy. This was way better.
Elise hugged her again. “Did you think we’d let your last day go by without cake? Hello, we’re an any celebration is good enough for cake crowd, after all.”
“I figured we’d have cake tonight.”
“Um, duh. But that’s pineapple upside-down cake.” Erin shrugged and then handed Ella a giant slice of double chocolate mocha cake. “This is chocolate death. Two very different, albeit necessary, flavors when it’s a party for Ella.”
Ella had been notorious for her love of cake, and over the years, it had become their little social thing. Her way of being part of the group, even when she didn’t do much socially with them. They’d celebrate things large and small over cake and have an excuse to just hang out and enjoy each other.
She took a bite and had to close her eyes to have a private moment with her taste buds. “This is a whole lot of yum on one fork, I gotta say.”
“You like? Karen said to let her know what you thought. She was thinking of calling it the Ella.” Adrian put a second slice on his plate.
“Karen, huh? You still seeing her?” Karen was the owner of a bakery in West Seattle. Adrian had met her when they were planning Elise and Brody’s wedding, and they’d gone out here and there.
As he’d spoken, Cope had moved so that he rested behind her, her body leaning against his, his arm wrapped around her waist.
“I like her. She likes me. She’s not looking for more than dinner now and again, and I’m too busy to be looking for anything else right now.” Adrian shrugged.
“She makes a mean chocolate cake.” Elise refilled Rennie’s milk as she spoke, and Ella found herself charmed by the routine of mother and daughter.
“She totally does.” Adrian agreed quite cheerfully and went back to his.
Ella snorted a laugh and absently began to straighten things up until the café’s new manager sent her the stink eye. “Nope. Not your job anymore. Sit and eat cake. I can wipe a counter down.”
So she sat eating cake, drinking coffee and just hanging out, feeling freer than she had in a very long time.
“So I have a question.”
Ella looked back to Cope and wanted to sigh wistfully at how pretty he was. “What’s that?”
“Clearly you’re Irish. If the red hair and freckles hadn’t been a clue, you having a brother named Mick would do it. But Tipton?”
She laughed and turned up her Irish. “Ah, ’tis a complicated tale, that. Mick’s given name is Michael, but everyone calls him Mick. For my uncle on my dad’s side and my great-grandfather on my mother’s side. His father came from Ireland. He was a laborer when he arrived and eventually settled in New York. Then my grandfather was out here when he was in the navy, and he came back after the war and got a job at Boeing. His daughter, my mom, Moira, met James Tipton while they were juniors in high school. James comes from a family where his grandmother came from Ireland to work at her uncle’s clothing shop in Rhode Island. Now, here’s the great shame.” Ella shook her head mock-sadly. “The man who won the lovely Rose Byrne’s heart and who became James’s grandfather was himself