Playing Dirty (Stargazer 2)

“I know,” Quentin said at the same time Martin said, “He knows.”

Owen paused, then said, “And Erin and I broke Rule Two.”

“I thought you did,” Quentin said. “And then I thought you didn’t.”

“After you and Owen had that fight in the driveway,” Erin said, “I told him not to look at me anymore when we were around you. And to be nice to Sarah, because he thought Sarah knew what was going on. That seemed to work.”

“It did,” Quentin acceded, turning to Owen. “Dumbass. You were supposed to fake doing her.”

Owen shot Quentin the bird.

“And I’m pregnant,” Erin said.

“Are you taking folic acid?” Quentin asked automatically.

Then his brain caught up. He had Owen down on the hot flagstones, vaguely aware of Owen’s chair still skidding, metal across stone, into the pool. He gripped Owen’s throat with one hand and swung the other fist back. Martin was shouting at him.

“I’m in love with her!” Owen choked out.

Quentin hesitated and eased his grip on Owen’s neck.

“You don’t understand,” Owen went on breathlessly. “All those love songs I’ve written with Erin, I’ve written them for Erin.”

“Even ‘Only a Flesh Wound’?” Quentin asked.

“I mean it,” Owen said. “I’m in love with her. I’ve been in love with her for so long. And I just can’t stand it anymore that you’re with her—”

“For God’s sake, Owen,” Erin broke in, “that ended two years ago. I keep saying this.”

“But you’ve been making out with him ever since,” Owen called to her.

“That was the act!” she protested. “How was I supposed to know that it made you jealous? I didn’t even know you liked me! You acted like I was about as attractive as Martin!”

Martin murmured to the sky, “Please don’t drag me into this.”

“And you had sex with that girl from the record company in Nashville!” Erin wailed.

“Only to make you jealous,” Owen said. “I know that’s terrible. Except I did enjoy the bl*w j*b.”

Quentin gave him a warning look. Dumbass.

Owen got the message. “Completely terrible,” he repeated. “Erin, I would have done anything. I’ll still do anything.” He looked up at Quentin with pleading eyes. “I love her, man.”

Quentin stood and helped Owen up with one hand. Then he pointed Owen’s shoulders in Erin’s direction. “Say it to her.”

“I’m in love with you,” Owen said softly. He crossed the patio to kneel in front of her chair. “I love you,” he said, looking up at her. He laid his head in her lap. “I love you so much.”

After five years of Owen and Erin acting in private like no more than friends, this was so strange. Quentin turned to Martin to see what he thought. Martin rolled his eyes and let his head loll back on the chair again.

“Baby, I love you, too,” Erin cooed, stroking Owen’s hair. “I wouldn’t have done it with you if I didn’t. There was too much to lose.” She glared at Quentin.

Quentin clapped his hands. “Enough of this touchy-feely shit. I’ve got my own woman to grovel to. Where did Sarah go?”

“I think . . . the airport,” Erin said uneasily.

“The airport !” Quentin said. “Y’all sold me down the road ! What is she doing at the airport ? What did you tell her?”

Owen turned around to sit on the flagstones with his back against Erin’s legs. He gave a man-sized sniff. “We asked her to be our manager,” he said hoarsely.

“What’d she say?” Quentin asked in horror.

“She said no.”

“That’s not a good sign.”

“And in the process of asking her,” Owen explained, “we told her everything.”

“What do you mean, everything?”

“Q, you’re wheezing,” Martin said without moving his head from the back of his chair.

“We told her we’ve known all along that the two of you weren’t really doing it,” Erin said helpfully, winking.

“Did you tell her I got into med school?”

“Yes, but she didn’t act surprised,” Erin said confusedly.

“She pulled the Obi-Wan Kenobi on you and made you think she wasn’t,” Quentin said.

“I didn’t get that at all,” Erin said slowly. She looked to Martin. “What about you?”

“I don’t know,” Martin said, lifting his head. “My perception may be a little off because I’m a heroin addict.”

Both Erin and Owen stared at Martin like he’d grown a second head. Erin backed away from Martin, over the arm of her chair, across to Owen’s other side.

“It’s heroin, Erin,” Martin grumbled, “not cooties.”

Quentin smacked his fist into his hand. “Y’all focus! Did you screw me over or didn’t you?”

Owen had both his arms around Erin now. From the depths of the bear hug, Erin said, “She knew everything, Q. She knew I was pregnant. In fact, the bitch told Owen I was pregnant.”

Quentin struggled to stay upright as a wave of dizziness swept over him. “Oh no!” he said. “No wonder she was so pissed at me last night! She thought it was my baby!”

“Well, now she knows it isn’t,” Erin said simply. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that she went to the airport anyway!”

“What are you so stoked about, Q?” Owen protested. “Don’t you think she’d rather date—”

“Marry,” Quentin said. “Don’t you get it? I want to keep this one!”

“Don’t you think she’d rather marry a college graduate than a hospital orderly?” Owen asked. “You’d have been able to hide that from her for about two more days. Too many people know.”

“I realize that,” Quentin said. “Things weren’t going well last night, and I didn’t want to piss her off any more than I already had. But I wanted to be the one to tell her. Otherwise, she’ll think I’ve been trying to fool her the whole time.”

“But you have been trying to fool her,” Erin pointed out.

“I realize that!” Quentin said again before yielding to a fit of coughing, having traveled the full circle of emotion and returned to desperation.

“Outsmarted yourself,” Owen muttered.

“Q, you’re wheezing,” Martin said again. “Go get your inhaler.”

It really was becoming hard to breathe. Quentin stomped across the patio and up the steps. The cigarette smoke had aired out of the kitchen, but he’d let the attack go on too long. He tripped and almost fell on the step on the way in, then fumbled in the drawer for the inhaler.

No inhaler. He’d used it up the day they’d used the adrenaline shot on Sarah.

He had another inhaler in the big-ass truck.

No, he didn’t have another inhaler in the truck. He’d put it in Sarah’s bag at the airport before they flew to New York. Sarah had it.

The kitchen began to close in with his throat. He could get breaths in, but he couldn’t get them back out, so he couldn’t take more in. He felt in his pocket again, took out the ring box, and held it like a talisman.

A phone would be more helpful. His phone was in the truck. He looked around the kitchen for Martin’s, and then somehow he was lying on the cold marble tile.

Owen’s silhouette filled the doorway to the patio. He called back over his shoulder, “Q’s on the floor.”

“The inhaler’s in the drawer,” Martin yelled from outside.

Quentin heard Owen rummage in the drawer. By now, Erin and Martin were in the doorway. Martin said, “No, he used the last of it the day Sarah went to the hospital.”

“Where’s another?” Erin asked Quentin over the wheezing.

Quentin made a scribbling motion with one hand. When someone handed him a pad and pen, he wrote Sarah has it and tore off the sheet for them.

“Why does Sarah have it?” Erin shrieked. “You mean to tell me you’re a respiratory therapist with asthma and you only have one rescue inhaler to your name and, duh, your girlfriend has it?”

Quentin scribbled Help, dumbass, and tore the paper off for Owen.

Owen read it and said, “No shit, Sherlock.”

Quentin wrote 911, handed it to Martin, and waited until he actually saw Martin punching buttons on the phone before he started scribbling a message to Sarah. He noticed with passing interest that his fingernails were turning blue.

16

Liar, schmiar! Who cares? He’s a hot med student country star! And he goes down on you! And he can’t breathe and he needs you! I don’t see a problem.

Wendy Mann

Senior Consultant

Stargazer Public Relations

The agony Sarah endured while stuck in traffic and e-mailing with a horny and irate Wendy was a complete waste, because when she finally arrived at the emergency room, the large receptionists wouldn’t let her back to see Quentin. “We know who you are,” they said, eyeing her hair. “Martin said no.”

“But Martin called me!” Sarah exclaimed.

“He told you Quentin had an asthma attack,” one of the receptionists said. “He asked you not to get on your plane, because Quentin insisted. But did Martin tell you to come down here?”

“He was getting in the ambulance,” Sarah said. “He hung up on me.”

As if that should serve as the answer, the receptionists turned back to their computer screens.

Sarah paced close to them in her high heels and shot them dirty looks. They were unfazed. She thought she heard Quentin’s voice, hoarse, down the hallway. Then Owen’s voice, angry. A series of crashes and women’s screams.

“You let me back there,” Sarah told the receptionists, beating the flat of her hand on the counter.

“Martin said no,” one of them repeated.

“I’m going!” Sarah yelled at the woman, who was about a hundred pounds heavier than her. She moved toward the hallway.

The schlop, schlop, schlop of flip-flops sounded double-time ahead of her, and Erin appeared in the waiting room with an armload of crumpled plastic bags.

“Do you realize they won’t let me back there?” Sarah asked as she passed Erin.

“Stop her,” Erin said to a receptionist, who stepped into Sarah’s path. When Sarah turned to give Erin a piece of her mind, Erin lasered her with blue eyes. “Shut up for just a minute,” she said, dumping her armload on the counter.

She picked up Sarah’s bag from a nearby chair, slid it onto the counter, unzipped it, and began stuffing it with the plastic bags: inhalers, adrenaline shots. It was full to bursting and still she was poking in more shots. Finally satisfied, she zipped it, pressing the edges together so it would close. She took the handle in one hand, grabbed Sarah with the other, and led her to a bank of chairs on the far side of the waiting room.

She leaned close to Sarah and said, “Don’t ever, ever, ever let him be without an adrenaline shot and an inhaler. He’s usually pretty good, but you have to be better.” She told the empty air in front of her, “Q, you are the stupidest genius I know!”

Sarah must have been looking at Erin like she’d lost it, because Erin turned back to her and explained, “It’s easier to argue with him when he’s not here. He’s so pissed with us for telling you everything this afternoon. A few minutes ago, he tried to punch Owen and knocked over a crash cart and passed out again.”

Sarah winced. “I heard.” She stood up. “Call off your dogs and let me see him.”

Erin shook her head and pulled Sarah back down to sit. “Look, Sarah, he breathed a lot of Martin’s cigarette smoke, and then he got upset about you, and then he tried to kill Owen. He’s getting meds, but his lungs are very twitchy. We need to keep him calm. We can’t give him a tranquilizer because those drugs suppress the respiration. We just want you to stay out of there right now. It would be better if y’all worked this out after the concert, so he doesn’t have a relapse. He’s doing a lot better.”

“You mean he’s allergic to me?”

“No, it’s just—”

Another realization hit Sarah. “You mean you’re going to go on?”

“Hell,” Erin said, looking at her watch, “it’s only four. The show doesn’t start until seven. We had him on in three hours after he had an attack in St. Louis. We’re professionals.”

They eyed each other uneasily as a shout from Martin and another crash echoed up the hallway.

“I need you to do me a favor,” Erin said. “And if you do this for me, you and I can call it even.”

Sarah’s heart leaped, because she wanted Erin to be her friend. Skeptical Natsuko calculated who had actually committed more offense against whom.

“Q wrote you a note as he was passing out at the house,” Erin said, “and he gave it to me for safekeeping. He thinks I’m out here giving it to you now. Truth is, I lost it somewhere on the kitchen floor in the confusion.” A note of pleading entered her high voice. “I need to you to go back and find it for me. Q is so mad at me already.”

“You’re just trying to get rid of me,” Sarah said.

“That, too.” Erin nodded. “But you do want to read this note. And I thought I saw something else on the kitchen floor that might interest you.”