Quentin’s eyes met Sarah’s, then slid rudely down to her br**sts and back up. He meant to intimidate her. But he wasn’t doing a very good job. His wide green eyes gave him the look of a small boy at the circus for the first time. She felt her envy of Erin melting away, replaced by power.
All at once, the three men were scraping back their chairs and standing.
“Take mine,” a voice said in her ear—the strong melody from the albums, Quentin. A chill coursed from her ear down to her toes. “I’ll get you a drink,” the melody added.
By the time she’d turned to him, he was walking toward the house, ethereal in the strange light of sunset. All she could see were the ancient deck shoes that looked like he might have bought them the last time they were in style—middle school—and a pair of cargo shorts, and a loose green T-shirt. But she knew from the album cover that an incredible body was hidden underneath the ratty clothes.
“Play with us?” the big blond, Owen, asked in his baritone voice. His shirt was off, baring his muscled chest and the gunshot scar on his shoulder—his souvenir from Crete. He nodded to the table. In addition to margarita glasses in various stages of emptiness, poker chips were piled at each place. The center of the table was crowded with a stack of hundred-dollar bills and Erin’s jewelry—everything but the diamond cross.
“How much?” Sarah asked.
“Thousand,” Owen said.
Quickly Sarah considered her options. She needed to ensure Quentin’s stability and extract an album from the band, pronto. She couldn’t afford to waste time drinking with these reprobates. But partying with the stars was often the best way to get to know them and earn their trust. As long as she didn’t let things get out of control. And she wouldn’t.
Not this time.
Careful not to bat an eye, she sat in Quentin’s chair and pulled her checkbook from her bag. She had plenty of money in her account, but it would be nice if she could expense this. Making a mental note to ask Wendy about company policy on expensing bets, she poked her check into the pile of money.
“And when you’ve lost all your money, stripping,” Martin added. His thick-framed glasses were iconically crooked. Oddly, he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt in the sticky humidity, and had opted to take off his shoes instead. Sarah glanced in the other direction and noticed the clothes floating in the pool.
Great. The Cheatin’ Hearts were trying to distract her, shock her, do anything with her but discuss their infighting and their missing album. That was okay. She would beat them at their game tonight, which would put her in a better position to threaten them tomorrow.
“All right, but my shoes aren’t going in the water,” Sarah said. “You don’t know what I go through to find comfortable heels.”
“Amen.” Erin half stood to high-five Sarah across the table.
A sharp crack sounded on the flagstones. Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. But she managed not to look around wildly for Nine Lives. He was in prison in Rio. He wasn’t following her around Birmingham, making loud noises.
Calmly, she turned with the rest of them to see Quentin closing the door to the house with one hand, carrying an empty margarita glass and a full pitcher in the other. He stooped to pick up the folding chair he’d tossed out the door.
“Where are you staying, Sarah?” Martin asked conversationally.
“The hotel at the Galleria,” she said. “Closest place to your public relations office.”
“I wish I could live at the Galleria,” Erin said dreamily.
“One more album,” Owen said, “and I’ll buy you the Galleria.”
Quentin scowled, but he didn’t say a word. He placed the glass on the table in front of Sarah, poured her a margarita from the pitcher, and unfolded his chair beside hers.
After looking uneasily from Owen to Quentin, Erin told Sarah, “I didn’t mean before that we don’t want you here. It’s just that we solve our own problems, as a band. We like Rachel handling our publicity because she knows us. You’re an outsider. We’re afraid you’ll learn some personal stuff about us that we wouldn’t want to get out.”
“Like what?” Sarah asked.
“If we told you,” Quentin said, shuffling the cards and beginning to deal, “it would be got out.”
Cards slid one by one into the wet ring on the table in front of Sarah as she sipped her margarita. God, it was good, sweet and sour and cold. After negotiating two airports, driving through traffic, and extracting information from Rachel about this troubled band, the margarita hit the spot. She could already feel the alcohol relaxing her tense muscles. She said casually, “Your employer’s contract with my employer stipulates that if I reveal private information about you during or after our time together, you can sue my ass off. I do hope you had your employees in the PR office sign the same sort of waiver.”
The Cheatin’ Hearts blinked at her.
She leaned forward. “Who’s the brains of this outfit?” she pressed them. “Did you have your employees sign a waiver—”
“Yes, we did,” Owen said.
With one carefully manicured fingernail, Sarah thunked a firefly off her bare shoulder. “Of course, Rachel cares too much about you to cross you, with or without a waiver. I’m surprised the two of you aren’t tighter, Martin. I know you’re not dating anymore, but she wouldn’t tell me why, almost like it’s a big secret.”
“There’s no secret,” Erin said, patting Martin’s hand protectively. “They just don’t want to talk about it with a stranger.”
Maybe Erin didn’t know the secret, either. But Sarah saw the panicked look Martin shot Quentin. Quentin didn’t return the look. He was either too smart to react and give away whatever the secret was, or too stupid to know there was a problem.
Sarah suspected the latter. As Quentin picked up his cards, he asked her, “How d’you like the big ol’ salty ’Ham?” He spoke in a thick Southern drawl similar to her mother’s, but without the class.
“You mean your lovely little town?” Sarah sipped her delicious margarita. Mmmmm. “I can stand the heat.” She looked at her cards. Nothing. She threw away three and asked Quentin to deal her three more. Still nothing. Erin, Owen, and Martin folded. Sarah raised.
Now Quentin stared her down, trying to decide whether she was bluffing. She met his gaze and got the chance to study him in person for the first time. His T-shirt was printed with a fire-breathing dragon, the mascot for the local university. Some people were fans of a college’s athletic teams without ever attending school, she supposed. The shirt was so well loved that a layer of faded white fuzz showed on top of the green material. His eyes had looked intense on the album cover, but against this shirt, in only the weak floodlights from the mansion now that the sun had set, she could have sworn his eyes were dark green, like a Southern pine forest. With the alcohol massaging her skin and this handsome hick speeding up her heartbeat, she liked her job a lot more than she had for the past nine months.
“Call,” he said, throwing in his chips. “Let me see them.” This must have been an inside joke because, inexplicably, Erin slapped his shoulder.
Sarah turned up her cards, and he turned up his. Drat, he’d won. She wished she’d won the first hand, setting the tone for her relationship with the band. No matter, though. She’d be winning before they were through.
Quentin raked the chips toward himself and winked at her. “Good start. I wonder how many clothes I’ll get off you by the end of the night.”
She smiled. She knew he was a co**ine addict from the country. The stars who’d never had money were the ones who got into the most trouble when they suddenly made it big. And he was flirting with her to get even with Erin. Erin took him back again and again, and would again, as soon as she tired of Owen. If the band didn’t break up first.
But Quentin had an infectious pleasantness about him. Even now, as he half propositioned Sarah, he didn’t gaze at her in narrow-eyed lechery. His face was open and friendly and focused, and he looked absolutely delighted to be sitting next to her. She almost wouldn’t mind losing this game to him.
Almost. Soon it was her turn to deal, and she enjoyed the Cheatin’ Hearts’ stares again as she flipped the cards expertly. She’d played quite a bit of poker in her career as babysitter to the stars, and she was the daughter of bridge players. Before long, Martin’s socks, Owen’s shoes, and Erin’s ponytail holder were bobbing in the pool, and Sarah hadn’t lost so much as an earring. Quentin hadn’t lost any clothes, either, but now Sarah had most of the chips.
They were an easy take. Erin kept asking Owen what to do. She was either a novice or a coquette. She also pretended to be more drunk than she was. In fact, Sarah wasn’t sure Erin was drinking at all. She put her margarita to her lips occasionally, but the level in the glass never changed. Owen was constantly distracted by Erin. His eyes slid to her after every play.
Martin did seem to make an effort at winning hands, and his face fell every time he lost. Sarah wondered again about the long-sleeved shirt he still wore in the oppressively hot night. He was awfully thin, too. She’d seen every bit of his well-formed posterior on the cover of Ass Backwards, and he’d probably lost twenty pounds since that photo shoot.
And then there was Quentin, who seemed considerably more drunk than the other three. As the night went on, he paused longer and longer before making decisions, as if his already slow brain was slowing more.
Finally, Erin called for a bathroom break. Owen followed her inside the mansion. After the door closed, Quentin said smoothly, “So, Susan,” grabbing both Sarah’s wrists in his big hands.
“Sarah,” she corrected him, trying to conceal her disappointment that he’d forgotten her name. Of course he was just another drugged-up singing star, but she was crushing hard on him by now. She twisted her wrists in his grasp gently to extricate herself without causing a fuss.
He let her go and settled for holding her hand loosely on her knee, his fingers always moving, rubbing up and down her fingers and circling on her palm. Electricity shot up her arm. “What’s your favorite Cheatin’ Hearts song?” he asked her.
“You want me to name one you wrote,” she said coyly.
He kept drilling his dark green eyes into her and electrifying the palm of her hand.
She was enjoying him a bit too much. She could hold her liquor, but that margarita was clouding her judgment, if flirting with this out-of-control celebrity seemed like a good idea. The time had arrived to back him off. She said, “?‘Come to Find Out’ is pretty amusing. It’s unusual to hear a country song about backdoor action.” When he gave her a confused look, she prompted him, “?‘Come to find out I got screwed in the end’?”
He let her go in surprise. “I never thought about it that way,” he said slowly.
Now Sarah missed the constant tease of his hand on her hand. She knew she was feeling the margarita, but she couldn’t stop herself. She hadn’t had this much fun in a long while. She baited him, “Do you come up with your album titles and covers? Are you an ass man? Because that seems to be a recurring theme.”
“I am now.” His gaze flicked down to the region of her thigh. He cocked his head to let her know he was considering her bottom. Then his gaze returned to her face.
“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.