Playing Dirty (38 page)

He was very glad when they finished the rehearsal and she climbed the stairs to the stage. The TV people were trying to tell the band something about where the cameras would be. Quentin turned his back on all of them and held out a hand to Sarah.

Ignoring him, she called, “Remember, the FCC will be watching the broadcast, Erin, so no nipple.”

Erin started to holler some very creative girl-obscenities at Sarah, but Owen covered her mouth and Martin tugged her away by the hand. Placidly, with the poker face, Sarah watched the scene she’d caused. Quentin’s three bandmates piled into Owen’s truck and roared out of the parking lot, honking the horn three times, a message:
Rule Three.

After they’d driven off, Sarah turned to Quentin. “Did you know I’ve never heard the whole band sing in person before?”

“You listened to us finish the album that night after you got stung.”

“I’ve never heard you sing in person while I was awake,” she clarified. “And Quentin, you are
terrific
. You
all
sound
terrific
together. I thought so from hearing your albums, but there’s no comparison to hearing you live. I’ve never worked with an act this talented. I feel privileged to have helped the Cheatin’ Hearts stay together. It would be an absolute shame if something happened to break you up.”

He put a hand on her soft elbow.

“Don’t.” She pulled away. “I don’t want any. That’s not what I meant. I honestly just wanted to let you know how talented I think you are. Musically.”

“Sarah,” he said reproachfully. “You’re at my rehearsal. Dressed like that. Don’t tell me you don’t want some.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” she said. Then her poker face broke into a wistful grin. “Well, maybe I do. I may want you to eat your heart out.”

“You want some,” he insisted. “I happen to have some that I can give you.”

“Or loan to me,” she snapped.

He sighed and ran his hands back through his hair. “Look, I really do have something in the big-ass truck that I need to give you.
Besides
that,” he added at her expression. “Come on.”

They walked across the parking lot to his truck. He closed the door behind her, rounded the truck, and slid into the driver’s seat. It had been a good ploy to get her into the truck, but he didn’t want to give her the bag just yet. That would definitely ruin any chance he had of getting her clothes off.

Apparently she had the same goal in mind, because she’d forgotten all about the ploy. “We really shouldn’t,” she said. “There are stagehands around.”

He looked past her out the windows of the truck. “They’re all gone for the night.”

“There’s a security guard around somewhere,” she said. “One would hope.”

“Down by the entrance,” Quentin assured her.
“Anyway, isn’t the chance of being caught part of the thrill of doing it in a pickup?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Me, neither. So let’s go back and get something we both missed out on in high school.”

He wasn’t going to reach out and grab her. He was afraid she’d bail out of the truck and drive away in her BMW, and he’d never see her again. Instead, he waited.

“Do you happen to have any cheap cologne in the glove compartment, like boys wore in high school?” she asked. “Left from the former owner of the truck? Or planted for effect?”

“Cologne triggers my asthma,” he told her.

“Pity.” She rushed into him, kissing the corner of his mouth hungrily.

He turned his head to give her better access to his neck while he fumbled with one hand in the glove compartment for a condom. Then he laid her down on the seat, and quickly found that this was inconvenient. “Where the hell do you put your right elbow?” he complained.

“I don’t know.” She laughed.

“I reckon kids in high school are a lot skinnier.” He pushed off her and fished for the lever to let down the seat back. In the process, he leaned on the horn and startled both of them.

“Sit up,” she suggested. “Let me ride you.”

Quentin didn’t need any convincing. He sat up in the middle of the long seat and unfastened his shorts.
Then he pushed her panties aside and pulled her onto his cock.
Oh
, he’d been afraid he wouldn’t get any more from her, ever. This was too good to be true.

She slid up and down him for a few moments, but he wasn’t getting everything he needed. He put his hands on her back and pressed her tightness down onto him. She gasped and worked herself up and down, like she enjoyed this as much as he did.

He pulled the sleeves of her green dress off her shoulders and nipped at her breasts, then suckled her as he pulsed into her.

“Que’n,” she gasped in that half-gone Fairhope accent. Her fingernails dug into his forearm.

He was going to have to do this again. Somehow he was going to figure out a way to do this with her again. And again.

She shuddered on his cock. He gave it to her harder and faster. Her hands, her lips, were everywhere on him, frenzied. With a final groan, he emptied himself into her.

He held her tight and still for a few minutes, with his cock inside her. The mountain breeze was cool on his skin, and the frogs were loud in the trees outside the open truck windows. He traced his fingers through the baby blond strands that had come loose from her ponytail and framed her face. He set his forehead against hers.

Finally he joked quietly against her cheek, “Now is when you cry and say you wish we hadn’t done it.”

“Wrong.” She kissed his jaw and made the hair
on his arms stand up. “Now is when I say that felt fantastic, and I thank my lucky stars I’m such a loose woman.”

She sounded like she was done for the night. He was not. He slipped a hand under the hiked-up skirt of her dress, onto her flat belly.

She jerked out from under him and moved away, across the seat, pulling up the sleeves and neckline of her dress to cover her breasts. “Don’t do that,” she said.

“But that’s one of my favorite parts,” he complained, fastening his shorts. “You made me think the first morning you were here that I might have gotten you pregnant. Seems like I could touch you there if I wanted.” He blurted it out more angrily than he’d intended, and he wondered where all this emotion was coming from. He was logical, and he still had everything under control.

Then it occurred to him that he might not have everything under control after all. “Did you lie to me that first morning? Did we do it?” It came out hoarse: “Are you pregnant?”

“No,” she said quietly, gazing down at her manicured hands in her lap.

He reached over and took her chin in his hand, so she had to look at him. He asked again, “Sarah, are you pregnant?”

“No,” she said, glaring at him with dark-fringed eyes. She jerked her chin away.

“Then why do you act like you just saw a ghost?”

She huffed out a sigh. “What did you want to give me?” she asked coldly.

Reluctantly, he pulled the shopping bag from behind the seat. “I’m in a band. I have to get along with them. And sometimes that means doing things I don’t want to do.” He passed the bag to her.

She peered inside at her clothes from Quentin’s dresser drawer, which Erin had packed up for her.

“But, Sarah,” he began, taking her hand.

“ ‘But, Sarah,’ ” she repeated woodenly, pulling her hand away.

“I want to be with you,” he said in a rush. “Only you. But it will get me in big trouble. And I need to know how you feel about me.”

“I feel more than I should,” she said, meeting his gaze head-on.

“You think I’m in love with Erin,” he said. “I’m not. There was a time when I was, but that was a long time ago, and way before you.”

“You
told
me you were in love with her. In the emergency room.”

“I never told you I was
in love
with her,” he objected. “I told you I
love
her.” He laughed shortly. “I love Owen, too, on a good day.”

Sarah stared at him with the poker face.

“My God, Sarah,” he said, feeling the anger rise again. “You don’t still believe I’m on coke, do you?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t believe you’re stupid, either.”

Oh no
.

She said through her teeth, “Why all this subterfuge? And if you pretend again that you don’t know what
subterfuge
means—”

He opened his hands. “To keep you away.”

She nodded. “Anything to protect yourself. You’re used to doing what makes you feel good at the moment. That’s fine when you’re twenty-one. Or, at least, it’s to be expected. But when you’re thirty, it’s irresponsible.”

He folded his arms. “And you think that before the Cheatin’ Hearts took off, I just worked at some shit job at the hospital, and never saved any money or did anything so I could support a family. The fact that I have money now doesn’t count for anything.”

“Of course it counts,” she said. “Of course your success with the band counts. But you live the band lifestyle. You tour, and you start fights, and you have a girl in every port—”

“I don’t have a girl in every port. We travel by bus or airplane.”

“—and that’s not what I want,” she said more loudly. “You see, even now, you’re not taking this seriously.”

“I am!” he exclaimed. “I’m taking this
very
seriously! But the person you’re describing is not me.”

“How the hell would I know that?” Sarah asked.

Quentin didn’t have an answer.

“This has been fun,” she said. “I mean,
fun
. This has been the most fun I’ve ever had. But, long-term . . . ”

“You’re not really a pink-haired girl,” he finished for her.

“I guess not.” She reached behind her neck to unclasp the emerald necklace.

“
Don’t do that,
” he said in alarm.

She paused with her hands behind her head, watching him.

“Just give me until tomorrow,” he said. “There’s something I need to do.”

Sarah shook her head. “It’s not what you can do. It’s what you
are
.” She put her graceful hand on his knee. “You need to go back to Erin.” Dragging the shopping bag after her, she jumped out of the big-ass truck and slammed the door.

He got out and followed her at a distance as the sharp crack of her shoes echoed across the parking lot. His crazy comic book villainess in high heels, abbreviated green dress, and brown ponytail striped with pink. Leaving him.

Think, Q. Think, Quentin
. His mind was a blank. Just when he needed it most.

As she started the engine, he reached the BMW. He knocked once on the window and she lowered it.

He knelt on the asphalt so he was on her level. He asked her, “Are you bluffing?”

Her poker face remained motionless, but her dark brown eyes filled with tears.

“You’re not bluffing,” he breathed.

As she raised the window, her face was replaced with a reflection of Vulcan’s ass. Quentin stepped back and she sped away.

He stood alone on the black asphalt in the black night for some moments, willing the black mood to lift so he could think again.

Finally he spun around and looked up to the spotlit iron man for inspiration. Vulcan mooned him, mocking him.

“Come on, big guy!” Quentin shouted. “Turn around and look at me when I’m talking to you!”

The cool mountain breeze swayed the trees, and the frogs chirped in answer.

With a dejected sigh, Quentin turned for his truck. And that’s when it hit him. He had a big-ass truck! He was mobile. He could drive home to talk to his dad, the expert on falling headlong in love with the world’s most inconvenient woman.

Yes, you’re going to hell for knowingly having sex with the father of a pregnant woman’s baby. No, you can’t assign a numerical value to the great sex and insert it into an algorithm to figure out exactly how damned you are. It’s no use. You’re toast. If you get there first, save me a good seat.

Wendy Mann

Senior Consultant

Stargazer Public Relations

Sarah drove to the Galleria and packed her bags, because Nine Lives might be after her and she had no protector now. She moved to the hotel downtown where she’d played bridge with her mother and Quentin,
but of course she couldn’t sleep. She found the gym and went for a long run.

In the morning, she returned to the office at the Galleria and tied up loose ends. Hugged Amber and Beige and the men in the office good-bye. Gave Rachel some last-minute advice about life as a PR diva. Called the holiday skeleton crew at the Manhattan Music office to arrange for a replacement drummer to be put on standby in case Owen found out about Quentin and Erin’s baby, freaked, and quit the band right before the Nationally Televised Holiday Concert Event. Then Sarah booked her own late afternoon flight back to New York.

Now she needed only to swing by the mansion and drop off Quentin’s asthma inhaler and adrenaline shot, which he’d transferred from his truck to her bag before they left for New York.
And the necklace
, she thought to herself, fingering the heavy emeralds.

His truck wasn’t in the driveway. The other two trucks and Erin’s Corvette were home. Sarah balked at the idea of bursting in on them when Quentin wasn’t there. But they were
all
her responsibility, not just Quentin. And if she didn’t return his things now, what would she do? Sit around in lovelorn agony, awaiting his return?
Mail
the emerald necklace back to him? She compromised by knocking twice on the door from the garage before walking in.