Playing Dirty (22 page)

Would she?

He wondered how Rio fit into this.

Now he studied the third bouquet warily. If the messages got worse as he went down the dresser, he wasn’t sure he wanted to open the last one. The bouquet
itself didn’t instill confidence. There were flowers, but they all seemed to have thorns, and some green stalks thrown in couldn’t have been anything but briars. And—was that a Venus flytrap? He reached for the card and withdrew his hand carefully, half expecting to be bitten.

Happy b-day

See you soon

Nine Lives

He detected movement out the corner of his eye and whirled around just in time to see Sarah, a terrified expression on her face, start toward him.

He backed away from her, toward the door. “Sarah,” he began in explanation.

He’d almost reached the door when she slapped his cheek with enough force to turn him around sideways. While he was still off balance and stunned, she pulled open the door and shoved him into the hall.

The door slammed. The dead bolt clicked.

He rubbed his stinging cheek, staring dumbfounded at her door. Then he crossed the hall and knocked.

There was a pause. She was breathing hard. “Who is it?” she called sarcastically.

“It’s your friendly neighborhood country music legend, Quentin Cox.” When she didn’t respond, he went on, “You may know me for hit songs like ‘Slap My Face and Slam the Door.’ ” Still there was no response but her breathing.

He backed a few paces away and sang a medium-tempo ballad at full volume:

Slap my face and slam the door.

You never done that way before.

I feel bad I scared you so

But now I don’t want to go.

I’m just standing in the hall

Singing to you through the wall.

You done shook me to the core.

Slap my face and slam the door.

As he sang, several hotel patrons down the hall peeked out of their rooms. When he finished, there was a smattering of applause. He tipped an imaginary hat. “Thank you very much,” he said in his Elvis impression.

The lock clicked open, and Sarah threw herself into his arms and buried her face against his chest. She said into his T-shirt, “I don’t recall hearing that song.”

“There’s always room for one more on
your
album.”

Without loosening her hold around him, she looked up into his eyes. “That was really good. I can’t
believe
you made that up standing here.”

He shrugged. “It ain’t brain surgery.” He stroked his hand through her wet locks. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Oh.” She seemed to realize only now that she was standing in the hotel hallway in her bathrobe with, he thought with pleasure, nothing on underneath. She pulled him into the room and closed the door.

“Why don’t you lock this from now on?” he asked as he turned the dead bolt. “In case the Grand Ole Opry comes calling unannounced.”

“Usually I’m careful,” she said. “I must have forgotten the last time. People kept knocking on the door this morning, bringing me ominous flowers.” She put a hand up to his cheek. “It’s really red. I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay. I’m used to it.” He laughed. “I have that effect on women. Though I have to say, Erin’s slap is more like a love pat next to yours. Yours will make a man think twice.”

She smiled guiltily. “How did you get a key?”

“You’re not the only one with connections,” he said mysteriously. “You’re always busting into my house unannounced, so I thought I’d return the favor. I didn’t mean to scare you that bad.” In turn, he put a hand to her chin, not quite touching her scar. “What happened to you in Rio?”

Predictably, she pulled away from him and closed herself in the bathroom. When she came back out, she wore a tank top and running shorts. And she’d regained her composure. Damn. He wondered what it would take for her to tell him what had spooked her in Rio.

He tried once more to throw her off. Sitting casually on her bed, he said, “So. You’re turning thirty, your divorce came through, and Nine Lives wants to see you.”

Her smile vanished. “You read the cards.”

“I did,” he admitted, “but I wouldn’t have done it
if I’d known our relationship was this antagonistic.” Oops. He added, “Antagon—Is that a word?” Still she frowned at him, so he held out his arms for her. “Come here. You’ve had a bad enough morning.”

She collapsed onto the bed, put her head against his chest again, and allowed him to rub her back and to finger her damp hair. She wailed, “It’s not just that. Did they tell you what I said to Erin yesterday?”

He chuckled. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Do they all hate me?”

“No, but they think you went to a rough New York high school.” He didn’t believe she’d been to high school in New York at all, but he wanted to test her reaction.

“Rough track team,” she qualified.

He traced patterns on her smooth shoulder. “Erin gets mad, and sooner or later she gets over it. I’ve got a lot of experience with this. Anyway, right after you left, Martin told Erin that she’d met her match, and Erin got mad at Martin. Then Owen tried to jump between them, and Erin got mad at Owen. Then they all came downstairs to the studio and yelled at
me
. So you probably weren’t out of the driveway before we’d forgotten about you and were mad at each other, just like normal.”

Immediately he wanted to correct this statement.
He
certainly hadn’t forgotten about her. He’d hardly thought of anything else in the five days he’d known her. But he didn’t point this out, since he couldn’t do her. It was bad enough that he was sitting on her
bed, marveling at how beautiful she looked with no makeup and wet hair.

Trying to appear unconcerned, he wove a blond section of her hair into a pink section as he asked her, “Is Nine Lives out of jail?”

Sounding utterly exhausted, she said into his chest, “Would you
please
go with me to buy a gun?”

“Sarah—” he started.

“I don’t want another of your lectures on gun safety. I won’t shoot it. Just go with me to pick one.”

“Sarah, hear me out, now. You are the poorest shot I’ve ever seen.
Owen
is a better shot than you, and Owen once shot his own hound dog.”

“Oh no! Was he okay?”

“Well, he was upset—”

“I meant the
dog
.”

“Oh. Sure. It just grazed him. But since you’re this poor a shot, and you want a gun this badly, I’d say you need to go to the police. Or tell me what happened in Rio, at the very least.”

“You’re right.” She sat up with a forced smile. “It’s not that bad. He’s probably still in jail. He could have had one of his employees send the flowers.”

This made sense to Quentin. But whether or not Nine Lives was out of jail, he wasn’t going away. He’d remembered Sarah’s birthday, and he’d bothered to send her flowers. Sooner or later, Sarah would be forced to deal with him again.

Quentin knew he’d tried too hard to get her to confess,
and that she’d drawn way back, when she asked, “Why aren’t you working on my album?”

“We’re taking the day off,” he told her. “We’re going down to the lake, and you’re going with us.”

“The hell you’re taking the day off!” she said. “My album is due in two days. I’ve got a courier coming!”

“We’re almost done with it.” He reached out to play with her hair again, lacing a brown section into a pink section, despite the look she gave him. “You don’t want the last two cuts to stink, do you? We need to take a break and blow off steam today. We’ll work late tomorrow and be done with it in the afternoon of July first, easy, in plenty of time.” He shrugged. “The others have already left. Nothing we can do about it now. And it’s your birthday.”

She said grudgingly, “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

He gazed at her skeptically. “You just spent nine months in Rio and you don’t have a bathing suit?”

“Nine Lives got up when the sun went down.” She licked her lips as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. Then she brightened. “I know where I can get a bathing suit on our way out. Erin shops there for all her evening wear.”

“Great.” He rubbed his hands together. “Now I just need a place where I can get you a birthday present. You messed up this time, because if you were my girlfriend, you would’ve told me it was your birthday.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

He gave her a look.

“Okay, maybe I would.”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” he said knowingly. “Get your stuff together.” He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and headed into the hallway, dialing Mr. Timberlane, who would know the right jewelry store.

She followed him to the doorway. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”

“I’m ordering you a birthday present,” he said patiently. “What do you like? Diamonds? You seem like an emerald kind of girl.”

She blinked at him, taken aback. It almost made him sick to think that this Harold Fawn jackass never bought her anything.

She said, “Quentin, seriously, I can’t let you do that.”

“You would if you were my girlfriend.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

He gave her the look again.

“Okay, maybe I would.” She grinned.

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t fasten the dead bolt. I’ll let myself back in.”

En route to hospital. So far this is not the magical experience promised by all the books we read on childbirth, but I’m sure any second now I will have sunshine and rainbows streaming out of my vagina.

Wendy Mann

Senior Consultant

Stargazer Public Relations

“No working today,” Quentin demanded, reaching for Sarah’s phone.

“Keep your eyes on the road.” She exited her e-mail. “I’m not working. Just checking on my pregnant friend. Hey . . . ” She squinted at the truck pulling onto
the highway in front of them. “Is that Owen? They must have been in Target, too.”

“They were. I wasn’t really interested in the Taylor Swift posters. I distracted you while they bought you some birthday presents.”

“Aren’t you busy.” This was one of her mother’s favorite derogatory phrases. She patted the big bench seat of his truck cab. “Looks like you were busy yesterday, too.”

“I was. We finished the big bad recording session in two takes, after all that hullabaloo, because I am so freaking good. And then I went to get my driver’s license. Do you want to see it?”

“I’d love to.” He handed her his wallet, and she examined his laughing photo. “This is the happiest driver’s license I’ve ever seen.” She handed it back to him. “And then you bought this . . . truck.”

“You don’t like my big-ass truck?” he asked in mock disappointment.

She turned to the rear window. “Why does it have a gun rack? You don’t carry rifles around.”

“It’s for effect.”

“And why’d you buy a used truck? Surely you can afford a new one.”

“Effect,” he said again, and started laughing, and laughed and laughed. “If you plan to show reporters my big-ass truck for an article, let me know so I can spill some beer in it.”

Sarah looked in the glove compartment. “I notice you have an economy pack of condoms.”

“Came with the big-ass truck.”

“I’ve seen condoms in your bathroom. These are your brand.”

“They’re for
effect
!”

She laughed along with him. She had decided to cut him a break, and cut herself a break, and make this her best birthday ever. It wouldn’t be difficult. Her mother had a habit of giving her frilly dresses for her birthday, as if rubbing in what Sarah wasn’t. And Harold had always managed to turn the day around and make it about
him
.

Earlier that morning, before the parade of bouquets, she’d thought it was damned depressing to be divorced at age thirty. After the note from Nine Lives and the visit from Quentin, she’d changed her mind. How delightful to spend one last day on earth at a sunny lake with her fake boyfriend.

She asked gleefully, “Do you think Erin’s going to be jealous when she sees my birthday present?”

Quentin chuckled. “She’ll be nice in front of you, but I guarantee she’ll let me have it later.”

“Really? That’s great! What did you get her for her birthday last year?”

“Rosin. We were on tour up north, and she was out of this special German rosin that had changed her life. She couldn’t remember the name of it. She’d know it if she saw it, but the music store in St. Paul didn’t have it, and the store in Madison didn’t have it, and the store in Lansing didn’t have it. I finally got online and
figured out what it was, and had it delivered to our gig in Indianapolis.”

“That was thoughtful. Costly?”

“About thirty dollars.”

“I see. What did you get your manager for her birthday?”

Quentin looked at Sarah blankly, then snapped his fingers. “No
wonder
she was so pissed at me in Austin! Oh well. Too late now. Watch this.”

He pulled into the passing lane and blew past Owen’s truck. Sarah waved, and Erin in the passenger seat waved back cheerfully enough. Maybe they could skip the catfight after all.

“Where’s Martin?” Sarah asked.