“Good God,” Martin grumbled. “I have to be more drunk than this before I like to watch.” He poured himself a margarita out of the pitcher.
Sarah came back down to earth. “Excuse me,” she said, recovering her dignity. She clopped across the flagstones in her heels and passed Erin and Owen tickling each other on their way out of the mansion.
In the bathroom, Sarah clung to the marble counter and stared into the mirror at her pink highlights. She needed to concentrate, remember why she was here, and develop a plan. Without calling Wendy. She didn’t want to drag Wendy any further into the mess she’d made for herself at Stargazer.
So. She wasn’t getting the feeling she’d expected from the group. She’d thought at first that the drunken party would quickly devolve into a three-way fight among Quentin, Erin, and Owen, with seemingly levelheaded Martin refereeing.
Tension definitely filled the air. But some of it was a result of Sarah’s presence and the fact that Quentin was coming on to her. It made sense that the others in the group would want to stop Quentin from hooking up with a PR expert sent by the record company, which would create even more tension. They were about to be in hot water for missing their album deadline, whether they broke up or not.
What was absent, other than the one time Erin had slapped Quentin on the shoulder for no apparent reason, was tension directly between Quentin and Erin. Likely there was sexual tension between them, and Sarah wasn’t detecting it, despite her honed senses. She’d gone through this with bands before. The members spent so much time together, knew each other so well, and were such good friends or archenemies, that they conveyed messages to each other without saying a word.
Or Quentin could be just as close to leaving the group as the mysterious caller had warned Manhattan Music, but the band was covering up their troubles to get rid of her.
At any rate, she would get to the bottom of it. She could use Quentin’s passing attraction to her to edge closer to him and find out what was going on.
The problem with this plan was that she liked Quentin a little too much. Enjoyed his cheesy pickup lines. Thrilled each time he touched her hand. She couldn’t be sure at this point, but she didn’t think it was all because of the tequila.
She convinced herself that she was doing a great job for Stargazer. Natsuko would act aloof from the likes of Nine Lives, but upon encountering someone handsome and friendly like Quentin, she would flirt. Seduce. Make a pretense of following through.
Sarah would never actually sleep with a drug addict. Or anyone she’d just met, for that matter. Natsuko might not, either, but she would at least respond to Quentin and lead him on. Otherwise, the whole band might sense that Sarah wasn’t a scary bitch after all, but a marathon runner who’d just learned to apply makeup at age twenty-nine.
She knew how she could make this work. Quentin hadn’t been drunk when she got there. But she’d taken note of every sip he’d consumed since she’d arrived, and by now he was more inebriated than such a big man should have been. He couldn’t hold his liquor at all—which was the opposite of what she usually saw in hard-partying musicians. Whatever the reason, she intended to take advantage. After a few shots of tequila, it would be lights out for him. Just before that happened, she intended to be very much in his way.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, watching her badass and not entirely familiar reflection in the mirror. A year ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of cooking up a scheme like this or placing herself so dangerously close to a star. Even nine months ago, after her makeover, she wouldn’t have done it. But her experience with Nine Lives in Rio had changed her. She had no husband, no social life—and if she didn’t make a bold move to save her job, nothing left to lose.
She headed back out to the game, pausing in the kitchen. Through the glass-paned door, she glimpsed Erin walking along the pool’s edge. Erin watched the men to make sure they weren’t paying her any attention. She held her margarita glass low and behind her, then dumped its entire contents into the water.
What the hell was going on here? Too much to figure out in one night. Best to file it away for later: Erin hides sobriety from men. Sarah let Erin think she’d gotten away with it. She waited until Erin sat back down with the men before she exited the kitchen and returned to the poker game herself.
As Sarah took her seat, Quentin touched her hand. “I was about to come in there after you.”
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “And ready to get you undressed.”
He smiled at her as he dealt. In fact, he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her for long. Cards fluttered onto the flagstones and into Erin’s lap amid shouts of, “Q! Earth to Q!”
The others folded. Sarah squared off against Quentin again. He stared at her long and hard, considering whether to call her bluff.
“You’ve been awfully quiet tonight, Q,” Erin remarked. Perhaps she was jealous of Quentin’s attentions to Sarah.
“Strategery,” Quentin said with a straight face. Sarah couldn’t tell whether he’d seen the Saturday Night Live imitation of George W. Bush or he really thought it was a word.
He looked at his cards, then looked at Sarah. His dark green eyes pierced her eyes, caressed her cheek, paused over her lips, stroked her neck, lingered at her cleavage. He had the audacity to tilt his head to make sure she knew he was contemplating her ass again. This was good for her bluff, though. The longer he stared at her, the closer she came to forgetting she held only a pair of threes.
“ ‘Let the Wookiee win,’ ” Owen quoted Star Wars in a bad British accent.
“I fold,” Quentin said finally, throwing two eights on the table.
Sarah turned her cards over.
“Oh!” the others moaned, and Quentin laughed. And laughed, and laughed, and started everyone else laughing because he was laughing so long. Sarah recognized that infectious laugh. A full thirty seconds of his laugh ended the album In Poor Taste.
“Damn, woman,” he said finally, brushing away the tears at the corners of his eyes. “That’s some poker face. I got lucky the first time, and no luck since.”
“Story of your life,” Owen said. Erin giggled more loudly. Quentin’s eyes flickered toward them.
“You bluff well, too,” Sarah told Quentin, although she suspected it was easy for a blissful ignoramus to look noncommittal.
“Course, you ain’t as inebriated as we are,” he said, pouring her another margarita. He paused. “Inebri—Is that a word?” Now he faced her full-on, knee to knee with her. He stroked his fingers from her scalp all the way down to the ends of her locks.
She shuddered under his touch but didn’t dodge it. Flirting with this intense man was exciting and frightening and something Old Sarah never would have done. The tequila helped, too.
“I really like your hair,” he growled. “Did you know that?”
She shook her head, but not hard enough to shake her hair out of his hand.
“It changes when you move.” He slid his fingers down a blond strand and held it next to her cheek. “You’re a blonde.” He did the same with a brown strand. “You’re a brunette.” She suppressed shivers of anticipation as he touched her scalp one more time and selected a pink strand. “I don’t know what you call this.” He smiled at her. “I ain’t never seen nothing like it.”
“It’s pretty normal in New York,” she assured him.
“Let me clue you in on something,” Owen said. “Pink hair isn’t normal anywhere.”
Erin hit Owen’s chest and said, “Rude,” at the same time Quentin said, “Do you mind, dumbass? I’ve got something going on over here.”
“That’s what worries us,” Martin said.
Ignoring Martin, Quentin stroked Sarah’s hair again. “It’s like that ice cream with all the flavors. Napoleon.”
“Neapolitan,” laughed Erin, Owen, and Martin. Now Quentin was laughing, too, and Sarah laughed along. She wasn’t really Natsuko, and never would be. She had no real designs on Quentin. But wouldn
’t Wendy just die if Sarah ended her yearlong celibacy by having a fling with this handsome idiot, bringing the grand total of her sexual partners to two in her lifetime? If only everything were different. If only he wasn’t a coke addict, he wasn’t a stupid hick, she wasn’t trying to keep him together with his band, and she wasn’t contracted to his record company, she would have had the most delightful decision to make: to ho or not to ho.
Martin’s mouth was moving. Quentin switched off the blender so he could hear what Martin was saying.
“—the matter with you?” Martin asked, leaning against the kitchen counter. “Drunk?”
“It’s hard to play dumb this long at a stretch,” Quentin said. “I may go cross-eyed.” Of course, he was also drunk, and he knew it when, pouring margaritas from the blender into the pitcher, he asked Martin casually, “Would you do her?”
“I knew it,” Martin scolded him. “You can’t do her. Rule Three.”
“I’m not going to do her,” Quentin said, putting down the pitcher and holding up his hands. He shouldn’t be pursuing this at all, but he was so full of this girl, this beautiful pink-haired manga she-villain. “I’m just asking, hypothetically, would you?”
“Yeah,” Martin said quickly as Owen stumbled in from the bathroom.
“Yeah, what?” Owen asked.
Quentin turned to Owen. “Would you do her?”
Owen looked shocked. “Who?”
“The Wookiee, dumbass,” Martin said. “Who did you think? Erin?”
“I can’t do Erin,” Owen said self-righteously. “Rule Two.”
“So,” Quentin pressed, “hypothetically, would you do her?”
Owen asked, “Who?”
Quentin and Martin looked at each other.
Owen clarified, “The Wookiee?”
“Yes!” Quentin and Martin said.
“Oh. Yeah, I’d do the Wookiee.” Owen picked up the pitcher and walked toward the door to the patio. “But she’s frightening.”
As Owen passed through the doorway, Erin came in. The two of them rubbed against each other and laughed in a way that made Quentin uncomfortable. If he asked, they would say they were touching because Sarah could see them from the table outside. But Quentin wasn’t so sure. He and Erin had played lovers and yet resisted each other for two years. Surely Erin and Owen had been able to resist each other for a week of pretending? Of course, when Quentin had faked a relationship with Erin, he’d also had the band manager on the side. Owen hadn’t been in a steady relationship in a couple of years.
Erin snapped Quentin out of his thoughts by asking sharply, “What have you boys been talking about in here?” Then, in a complete failure at an imitation of a man’s deep voice, she asked, “Would you do her?”
Martin laughed and went outside, leaving them alone, as Quentin told Erin, “No, that’s not what we were talking about, and I’m offended that you would assume such a thing. We’re not shallow. We were talking about the potential impact of current unemployment figures on US Treasury note prices.”
Erin grinned. “If you’re not interested in Sarah, then you won’t want to hear what she said about you.”
Quentin’s gaze darted outside to Sarah at the table. She and Erin must have had a girl talk. Oh God. “What’d she say?”
“It looks good for you,” Erin teased him. “It’s a shame you’re not allowed to have sex with her.”
“What’d she say?”
“She said you’re cute. You remind her of Ernie from Sesame Street.”
“Ernie,” Quentin said, nodding. “Good guy. Jolly prankster.” He paused. “Not the sexiest fellow.”
Erin smiled smugly. “Better than Bert.”
“Speaking of Bert,” Quentin said, searching her innocent blue eyes, “you’re not breaking Rule Two with Owen, are you?”
She grimaced and stuck her finger in her mouth, as if to say Gag me. Then she asked brightly, “Did we fool you? We’ve been working hard on it.” She tilted her head and considered him. “You’re drunk.”
He gave up. “I guess.”
“Come on.” She took him by the hand and led him back outside to Sarah.
Sarah. Sexy white high-heeled sandals. White pants that flared at the bottom and tapered up to hug her perfect ass. A black blouse that pooled in the front to reveal her cleavage, and in the back—well, there was no back, just some thin strings keeping the front on. He could have reached behind her and bared her with a few tugs. Clearly no bra. Red lips. Crazy hair.
With a twist. She gave the first impression of being tall, unattainable, hardened. But he’d studied her while calling her bluff. She was average height or smaller. The longer he gazed at her, the smaller and softer she got. Her eyes were brown and gentle. And her name: Sarah, like a sigh.
And the way she said his name. Not Quentin, enunciating every consonant. Soft and lazy and half-gone, Que’n. He detected the slightest Southern drag on her voice, from somewhere far south. Maybe Mobile, with old money.
And a nasty scar following the line just under her chin, as if the soft girl playing hard had gotten in over her head at least once.
He was sure the punk Amazon attitude was an act. Despite the fact that most of her was showing, he didn’t see a tattoo on her anywhere. If she were who she’d seemed at first, there would have been a heart in flames on her lower back. He didn’t feel annoyed or threatened by her deception. He was thrilled that she’d attempted to play a player.
And he was eternally thankful that he had the good luck to be single. He was the logical one to pair off with Sarah, whereas two weeks ago, when he was still pretending to be with Erin, it would have been Owen who was unengaged. As he thought this, Quentin balled his fists—then realized what he was doing and tried to relax. He needed to stand down. Neither he nor Owen could be with Sarah, ever, because that was against Rule Three. But still.
He’d had the idea to hand Erin off to Owen last year, reasoning that a love triangle among the band members would be terrific tabloid fodder. But he hadn’t insisted on it until he’d decided to fire their manager, Karen, so she wouldn’t find out about Martin’s drug use and spill the beans. They’d never let her in on the band rules. She’d believed Quentin and Erin were (mostly) together. This had kept her at arm’s length, expecting nothing but a good time with him.
Karen had been beautiful. Karen had been smart. Karen had even been a pretty good manager. She’d been able to steer the band through all the crises they’d made up, and some they hadn’t. Karen had been an excellent lay. But Karen didn’t have that—
As he sat down beside Sarah at the table, she looked up at him with those dark-fringed brown eyes and smiled.
—spark. “I swear you’re just as sober as you were when you got here,” he told her, making sure she could hear his disappointment.
“Tequila doesn’t make me stupid, I’ll give you that.” She touched his knee. “It does make me loose. How about a shot?”
Quentin raked back his chair again and ran inside. He brought out one of the bottles of tequila and two shot glasses and poured for each of them, ignoring the looks he was getting from Erin and, you know, whomever. Who cared?
“To loose,” he toasted Sarah.
She clinked his glass with hers and said, “Lautrec.”
Toulouse-Lautrec, 1864 to 1901, he remembered from a college art history class twelve years before as he downed the shot. He had to be careful or something like that would come out, and then they’d be forced to build an even more elaborate facade to explain to Sarah that he was some kind of idiot savant.
She picked up the bottle of tequila and examined the label curiously, but she didn’t seem drunk. She was beating everyone at poker. Of course, he was drunk, and during the next hand he lost to her again and had to throw his shirt into the pool, yet he was still coming in second. But that was because Martin sucked at poker, try as he might to keep his long-sleeved shirt on. Erin was pretending to suck at poker. And Owen, on top of sucking at poker, was pretending�
�at least he’d better be just pretending—to give all his attention to Erin.
After a few more hands, Quentin told Sarah, “I hope you’re still getting loose, because you ain’t getting stupid, far as I can tell.”
She winked at him over her cards. “Tolerance. I spent the past nine months in Rio with Nine Lives.”
“Oh boy,” Quentin said. He wished she’d mentioned this when he first brought out the shot glasses.
“The rock star?” Martin asked. “I thought I read in the paper that he’s in jail down there.”
Owen gave Sarah a thumbs-up. “Good job.” Erin hit him.
“He went to jail on day two hundred seventy-five.” Sarah sounded irritated. “I kept him out of jail for the first two hundred seventy-four. You try it.”
“I feel better,” Quentin said.
Sarah poured two more shots, downed hers, and pointed at Quentin’s. “Are you going to drink that?”
“What do you call him?” he asked her. “Nine, or Mr. Lives?” He knocked back his shot.
“Either, if you’re having sex with him.”
Quentin spit out his shot, just managing to hit the patio rather than Erin’s bare leg.
Erin squealed, “Gross!”
Unfazed, Sarah refilled Quentin’s glass. “If you’re not, Bill.”
Quentin knocked back the shot again and said, “You ain’t answered the question. What do you call him?”
She grinned at Quentin. “Bill.”
He let his eyes travel lazily from her crazy hair down her curves to her high heels. “That’s a little hard to swallow.”
Erin stood up. “Q, I’m on empty. Come help me make more margaritas.”
Quentin sighed. Usually he didn’t mind cooking, but these people acted like they couldn’t even make themselves a ham sandwich. And he was busy getting in Sarah’s pants. “Step one,” he said, “take lime juice from freezer—Ow!” Erin was pulling his hair. “Don’t move,” he called to Sarah as he followed his hair into the kitchen.
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