Playing Dirty (Stargazer 2)

She kissed his neck, his chin, his mouth, and looked into his eyes with her big, dark eyes. “Did I do it right?” she asked, disappointed.

He nodded slowly.

“I guess I’ve never seen you speechless before. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?”

He shook his head, because that’s all he could manage.

She sat back on her heels. Her shirt—that is, his shirt—fell open to expose tempting white lace panties, flat belly, beautiful breasts. “This is not the response I was expecting,” she said, annoyed now. “I expected unmitigated jubilance.”

He began, “What does that mean, unmit—”

Clearly disgusted, she disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the water running briefly, and she returned na**d. “Is there a gym somewhere in this house?” she asked without looking at him as she rummaged in the dresser drawer he’d cleared out for her.

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s a bowling alley, too.”

She turned around to look at him as she pulled a sports bra over her breasts. “Really? Where?”

“Not sure.”

She stamped her bare foot impatiently. “Well, where’s the gym?”

“On the main floor, down the hall, to the right.”

She put on her tank top and shorts before she left, but she took her socks and running shoes with her, bundled together with her music player and earbuds, as if she couldn’t stand to stay in the room with him any longer.

The door clicked shut behind her. He stared at it, feeling numb, thinking, Oh no, oh no.

Finally he stumbled downstairs. He cooked breakfast for the Timberlanes and called their butler to come get it. He cooked breakfast for Martin and Owen and left it on the counter because they were already in the studio. The band should have plenty of time to finish the album by the afternoon, hours ahead of the midnight deadline that would cause them to break the contract with the record company. But Martin was paranoid and Owen was a dumbass, so they were getting an early start. Because of the time of day, Martin must be profoundly high right now. Quentin was glad Owen was down there rather than him.

Except that he had to do his best to pretend that everything was okay when Erin came in and sat at the bar for breakfast. And when Sarah eventually appeared from her run, wet tank top hugging her breasts, and sat beside Erin.

Munching bacon, Erin laughed uneasily. “Sarah, what did you do to Q this morning? He acts like a zombie.”

“I know,” Sarah said. “I’ve never seen a man act so grumpy after a hand job.”

His grip slipped. Before he could catch it, an entire carton of eggs dashed onto the floor.

“I wouldn’t press it, Sarah,” Erin said evenly. “He’s about to crack.”

As he wiped up the puddle of yolk, Quentin stared at Sarah, because it was better than staring at Erin. But Sarah, ignoring him now, inhaled pancakes like it was her last meal. He had to keep cooking for her. Some exertion had made her ravenous. Running five miles on the treadmill. Or jerking him off. Or making him fall in love with her.

Finally she dabbed at her pink mouth with her napkin and slid off the stool. “Thanks for breakfast, Quentin. I want to make sure you know I appreciate what you do for me.” She galloped up the stairs to his room.

Erin was giving him a long, long, long look.

He cleaned up the kitchen automatically, then sat on the sectional. Erin lay on the opposite side with her eyes closed, practicing fingerings on her fiddle. It was a matter of time before she asked him a pointed question, and he wasn’t sure he could bluff her into believing that nothing serious had happened between him and Sarah. She knew him a little too well.

If only his Leia hadn’t clopped onto the patio ten days ago with the intimidating presence of a seven-foot-tall Wookiee. If only he hadn’t brought her down here to spy on them with all his public relations engineering.

What she’d said to him the day she convinced him to drive was dead-on. He played his friends like chess pieces, and he knew it. The solution, she’d said, was to develop relationships outside the band. Well, she was his solution. But he’d put his own solution out of reach by writing Rule Three.

Suppressing the insistent Oh no, oh no in his head, he tried to work out a logical plan of action. The others would know when he left the tour to make a booty call in New York. He had to tell them. And leave the band.

He couldn’t ask Sarah to quit her job, because her job was part of what made her alive. He suspected that his job did the same for him. He knew the band made him happy, kept him buoyant, got him through the day.

It did the same for Martin, and he couldn’t abandon Martin. In his current state, without the band, Martin would do himself in.

Quentin wouldn’t. If he didn’t have the band, he could beg the medical school to let him in two years after he’d been admitted. In fact, since Thailand, the need to return to his medical career had been gnawing at him.

But he knew that without the band to distract him, he let the sick kids he treated at work and his own health problems and the specter of death get him down. He brooded, and as Owen and Martin had pointed out to him countless times in college, before they started the band, he was difficult to be around. Like now. If he got stuck like this, Sarah wouldn’t want him anyway, and he would have given up the band for nothing.

So even if he found a solution to Martin’s problem, there was no solution to his own.

He was thirty years old. If he lived to be a hundred—which he rather doubted, after Thailand—he would pine every day for the beautiful pink-haired girl. He was a character in a sad country song. Oh no.

With an exasperated sigh at himself, he looked up for the first time and noticed that the TV was tuned to the World Poker Tournament. He told Erin, “Sarah’s here. Turn it to NASCAR.”

“I’m watching this.” Erin sat up with her fiddle in her lap. “Hell’s Belle is racking up. She claims this is her first time playing poker, and she just wandered into the tournament. But she’s putting all the men to shame. Except that she has a Southern accent, this chick could be Sarah’s mother, right down to raising one eyebrow.”

Quentin said, “That is Sarah’s mother.”

12

I honestly can’t say. It’s been so long since I had a sexual encounter of ANY KIND WHATSOEVER. Theoretically, no, Daniel wouldn’t be silent afterward, because he’s sweet-talking me, angling for a victory lap. He’s all, “Don’t think I’m done with you, dirty girl.” Ah, to hear those sweet words again. But I digress. Maybe Quentin wanted to horse around with you, then go back to Erin. He warned you not to push him over the edge. You pushed him anyway. He’s acting funny because now he wants you instead of Erin, and he doesn’t know what to do.

Wendy Mann

Senior Consultant

Stargazer Public Relations

Sarah was on step ninety-nine of her hundred-step beauty routine when Quentin called to her. If it had been anyone else, she would have applied her red lipstick before responding. But Quentin had never yelled her name before.

Alarmed, she descended the stairs in a controlled fall. Quentin and Erin lounged on the sofas, eyes glued to the TV.

“Where’s my album?” Sarah exclaimed. “The courier will be here at noon.”

Quentin gestured to the television. Sarah walked around the sectional so she could see the World Poker Tournament. Her mother sat at the poker table, looking very pretty in her gray suit, wearing earrings Sarah had given her, gazing at her cards. The announcer explained that Tennessee Frank was currently the chip leader, with the amateur Ethel Seville, a.k.a. Hell’s Belle, now a close second. Hell’s Belle shook her head at this hand and threw away her cards. Rising, she excused herself to the men, who all half stood politely as she left the table.

Sarah pulled out her cell phone. Punching her mother’s number, she rolled over the back of the sofa and plopped down beside Quentin, who didn’t take his eyes from the TV.

Her mother had been making her way through the crowd behind the poker table, but now she stopped and felt in her bag for her phone. “Sweetie, what a delightful surprise!”

“How’s Branson, Missouri?” Sarah asked.

Her mother looked around the casino. “An absolute circus.”

“Mom,” Sarah said, “I’m watching you on TV.”

“Oh.” Sarah’s mother touched her hair, then gave a small wave to the wrong camera. “Sweetie, I was headed to Branson. I was standing in the Birmingham airport with my ticket. But Branson is such small potatoes. I had been there and done that, as you say. I’m a Diamond Life Master, I need forty-four hundred more points to make Grand Life Master, and I may never make it in my lifetime if I keep drawing partners like that—What was that unfortunate woman’s name?”

“Beulah.”

“Yes, Beulah,” her mother repeated, the name dripping with derision. “So, as I was standing in the airport a few mornings ago, I decided I’d trade in my ticket and try my hand at Vegas.”

“You seem to be doing okay,” Sarah said. “Did you know they call you Hell’s Belle?”

“I do declare,” her mother said innocently. Then, with a not-so-innocent smile, she asked, “What do you think of Frank?”

Sarah eyed the white-haired gentleman who seemed to own the poker table. “As an adversary or a date?”

Her mother cupped her hand over the phone and whispered, “The next stop for the World Poker Tournament is San Juan. He wants me to fly to the coast and sail to San Juan with him on his yacht.” She looked toward the table as Tennessee Frank motioned to her that the hand was over. In her normal voice she said, “Sweetie, I have to go. I have another few days here. I’ll call you from the boat. Give my regards to your Quentin.” She put the phone back in her bag and walked toward the poker table. Tennessee Frank jumped up to pull out her chair for her.

Erin giggled. “That was an awfully short explanation of how your mother got to the featured table in the World Poker Tournament.”

“My mother doesn’t have time for me,” Sarah said. “But in a good way.” She turned to Quentin, who still refused to look at her. “Quentin, thank you!”

“What’d he do?” Erin asked, cheerful and suspicious.

“We played bridge with my mother,” Sarah gushed before she thought. This date sounded decidedly unromantic. But maybe it would seem serious to Erin that Quentin had met her mom. “My mother’s been unhappy, and Quentin goaded her into making a big change in her life, a switch from bridge to poker. At least, she thinks Quentin goaded her.”

She scooted across the couch until her knee touched Quentin’s. Despite his uneasy look at her, she said, “Whether you did it on purpose or not, thank you for resuscitating my mother.” Tenderly she kissed the corner of his mouth.

She still didn’t understand what the problem was, but she expected him to thaw at the good news about her mother. But he didn’t respond to her kiss. As she drew away, he put one hand to his temple like he had a headache, green eyes flat. Then, without a word, he vaulted over the back of the sofa and went outside to the patio.

If he was falling for Sarah instead of Erin, as Wendy had suggested in her e-mail, he had a funny way of showing it.

Erin watched her sympathetically. Yet again, Sarah felt that she and Erin could be good friends. If. If only.

“He’s really mad,” Erin said. “You’d better go after him.”

Sarah didn’t particularly want to take relationship advice from Erin about Quentin. “He’ll get over it. I don’t even know what he’s mad about.”

“Have you been toying with him?” Erin asked. “Q doesn’t like to be toyed with.”

“Yes he does,” Sarah protested. “He likes games.”

“To a point,” Erin said. “Listen. Lord knows I don’t want to help you with Q. But he sings sharp when he’s distracted. I want to keep the peace and finish this album today. So I’m going to give you a hint.”

Sarah was stuck on the fact that Erin didn’t want to help her with Quentin, and had admitted this, as if throwing down the gauntlet. Erin was jealous. Soon Erin would take Quentin back. This was just what Sarah had wanted all along. So why had her heart stopped beating?

The door down to the studio opened and Martin walked into the room. He said to Erin, “Tag. Your turn.”

Erin gave Sarah one more quiet warning. “Q puts on, but he only gets really mad once a year or so. Well, I take that back. This year he was mad after he got out of the ICU in Thailand, and he was mad after you convinced him to drive. And now. Hmmm, you’ve caused two out of three. You’d better go after him.”

Sarah was tempted to stay and argue with Erin about who exactly had made Quentin mad after she convinced him to drive. But if Erin wanted Sarah to appease Quentin, there must be a genuine problem. Uneasy, Sarah stepped outside into the bright, hot morning.

Quentin stood in the shade of a crepe myrtle tree, bees buzzing wildly in the white flowers. Strong arms folded across his chest, protecting himself, he looked out over the panorama of Birmingham.

After Sarah approached him, he stood silently for several more minutes. She began to wonder whether he would acknowledge her at all. Finally he said slowly, “I don’t want to play this game with you anymore.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. Wendy had thought, and Sarah had wanted to believe, that Quentin had picked Sarah over Erin. Now Sarah realized that it was the other way around. He felt that he was cheating on Erin, and he wanted Erin back after all. That’s what he’d said: it wasn’t a good idea for Quentin and Sarah to have sex, because of Erin.