Playing Dirty (41 page)

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.

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.”

“Okay,” Sarah relented.

“Thank you so much,” Erin gushed. They embraced each other warmly, all awkwardness gone.

Sarah allowed herself a deep sigh with her arms around her friend. After a few moments, she sat back. “Did he really act with Karen like he acts with me?”

Erin stared at Sarah for a second, then remembered what she’d said that day at her guesthouse. “No.” She smiled. “I’ve never seen him act this way. Definitely not with me. That’s why Martin and Owen and I tried to collar him. Guess what? You can’t collar Q.”

They grinned at each other as they stood. But Erin’s smile faded as Sarah headed for the reception desk rather than the exit. The receptionists stood at the ready.

“Where are you going?” Erin wailed.

“I’m not leaving until I see him,” Sarah said.

Erin ran to insert herself between Sarah and the emergency room. “
Girlfriend,
” she said pointedly, “this is still
my
band. This is
my
Nationally Televised Whatever Whatever. At least for five more hours, until nine o’clock, when the show’s over and the fireworks start, this is
my
band, and Q is
mine
.” Her expression softened. “And then you can have him.”

Sarah escaped the paparazzi without making a statement except to say that the Nationally Televised Holiday Concert Event would go on as planned. With a sigh of relief, she slipped into the BMW, exited the parking deck, and accelerated onto Eighth Avenue
South, the usually bustling thoroughfare all but deserted for the holiday. After five minutes, she pulled into Quentin’s driveway.

The door into the kitchen was ajar, with air-conditioning seeping out and hot humidity flooding the dark room. The usually maid-clean marble floor was littered with the leavings from the paramedics, plastic bags marked
STERILE
and ripped open. There were also a few small white sheets of paper.

She picked up one sheet. On it was scrawled,
Sarah has it.

Sarah went cold, even with warmth from outside swirling around her. Quentin must have written this, and he meant the inhaler. Surely this wasn’t what Erin had wanted Sarah to see. If she was trying to make Sarah feel guilty, she’d succeeded.

Frantically Sarah grabbed up the other notes.
911,
one said, and the next,
Help, dumbass,
which didn’t make her feel any better.

Her high-heeled sandal kicked something solid under the plastic bags. She stooped to find a jewelry store ring box.

Poised to open it, she saw that her hands shook, and Natsuko slapped Sarah around. There was no telling whether it was meant for her.

Inside was a
freaking enormous
diamond flanked by hefty emeralds.

It was for her.

She slipped its cool weight onto her finger.

That’s when she saw the last note, which had drifted under the cabinets.

SARAH

I love you

Don’t leave

Sarah sat down on the floor with the note. She read the six words over and over, ran her fingertip over the messy handwriting, touched
I love you.

“Found something?” Nine Lives asked behind her.

Tonight would be a first for the Cheatin’ Hearts since they became famous. They would tell the truth.

In the emergency room, they’d all agreed—the rest of them talking, Quentin writing on a pad—that they would mention Erin’s pregnancy in the act.

Then Owen had suggested they nix the cowboy hats. Everyone heartily seconded this idea. Erin had always complained that the hats messed up her hair, and Quentin found them bothersome and sweaty at an outdoor concert.

Martin had told them that he would check himself into rehab as soon as the concert was over tonight. And when they’d arrived at Vulcan Park, he’d taken his long-sleeved shirt off in the heat, revealing the purplish track marks snaking up both arms. Quentin wondered whether he would keep the shirt off for
the concert. He thought Martin might have gone off the deep end. But he hoped this was step one toward recovery: admitting to the world that he had a problem.

It was Martin’s turn to get drunk. He didn’t bring it up, and the rest of them were reluctant to push him, considering. Quentin didn’t volunteer because he planned to have a lot going on with Sarah after the concert. He figured Owen felt the same way about Erin. This would be their first completely sober concert in two years.

Quentin looked forward to the concert. He looked forward to playing it naked, so to speak, revealing their real strengths and flaws. It was nice to be himself again after two years of deceit. Even if, at the moment, being himself meant lying in the payload of Owen’s truck, flattened by asthma, staring up at Vulcan’s butt, pining for Sarah.