She would have enjoyed hanging out with a good-looking, funny, vibrant man in any case. But it was Quentin’s gentle control that reached inside her and pushed her buttons. He’d tried to hide it from her, but she’d understood the group dynamic by the end of the night. Owen, Erin, and Martin looked to Quentin before making a move. He didn’t return their looks, but everything pointed to him as the group’s leader.
Which must have made the betrayal hurt that much more when Erin cheated on him with Owen.
He was accustomed to controlling them. And he controlled himself. Sarah thought back to the near fight, when he turned over the table. He’d clearly gotten drunker than he was used to—he’d told her later it was “his turn.” He’d been in a rage, understandably jealous as Erin and Owen flaunted their new love in front of him. And he still had the wherewithal and the courtesy to say to her, “Move, please,” before he threw the table into the pool.
Move, please. Maybe he was worried about more than her physical safety. Maybe he could tell how far gone she already was. In his direction.
Or toward the Alabama coastal town where she’d grown up. He reminded her of the high school boys who wore cheap cologne and long bangs and ironed jeans with their shirts tucked in when they dressed up special for dates. Not that Quentin had long bangs. His haircut was such an unstudied mess of brown waves that it couldn’t technically be considered a haircut.
It was more the Southern drawl that was familiar, and the insolence with which he eyed her. She’d seen that look many times, but it had never been directed at her, and she’d wanted it. She’d wanted one of those cheap cologne dates and had never had one. She’d smelled the boys when they played basketball with her, smelled their hot sweat. Then, on Saturday night, she would go to the movies with her friends. The boys would be there with their dates, wearing their cologne, eyeing those other, luckier girls lustfully. The scent would stab through her.
No, she told herself. Sex with Quentin would be a disaster. She was trying to stabilize him, not wreck the band. The Erin situation was precarious. And Sarah was beginning to believe the band’s problems ran even deeper than she’d been told. The only reason she could think of that Martin would hold on to a long-sleeved shirt from hot night to strip poker to pool was that he needed to hide his track marks. Tomorrow morning she would have a talk with Quentin about Martin’s drug use. And Erin. And every lie he’d told her.
But for now . . . Now that she’d lain asleep with Quentin, she was afraid she’d fallen even further for him. She’d lived with Harold for so many lonely nights. Even their most romantic evenings together had ended with them parting ways perfunctorily and leaving the middle of the bed empty. Harold claimed Sarah had the metabolism of a racehorse and made him hot—in a bad way—if he held her while they slept. A man had never held her in the dark, embracing her like he treasured her, sliding his fingers closer to her sex as the night grew older.
The placement of Quentin’s hand gave her an idea for how to shock him into telling her the truth in the morning. But here in the dark, disoriented without her phone and lost in time, she might as well enjoy it. She slid her own hand on top of her fly until it covered his hand beneath the material.
Her blood heated as his fingers curled against her.
She wondered if she could stir the passion in him that he’d felt for her at first. Carefully she pressed her ass against his groin—and then tried not to gasp as he nuzzled her neck in his sleep and dragged a rough kiss along her jaw.
He grew still again, holding her more tightly than before. She didn’t dare make another move lest she get more of what she wanted than she was bargaining for. She simply enjoyed the sensation of being caught in his heat, because she would never get so lucky again.
“Q! Where’s breakfast?”
This time, Sarah knew she was awake. The sound booth was brightly lit. She recognized the acoustic tile on the walls. She’d grown familiar with the feel of Quentin’s hand in her intimate area.
And, looking up toward the voice that had woken her—looking way, way up—she saw a very irate Erin standing over them, fists on her hips, her eyes on Quentin’s wrist disappearing into Sarah’s pants.
An emotion passed across Erin’s pretty face. Sarah knew fear when she saw it.
And then Erin was padding across the sound booth in her bare feet. A music stand scraped across the floor. Erin dragged it into the doorway to prop the door open. She jogged up the stairs, calling, “They’re both down here. I told you.”
Sarah was surprised that even with all the noise and the lights flicked on overhead, Quentin hadn’t moved. His fingertips burned her mound, setting her body on fire. She felt guilty that she was enjoying his touch so much—especially after seeing Erin’s horrified look. Erin did not want to lose Quentin. Not for good.
But Sarah’s guilt quickly turned into defiance. Erin had chosen Owen over Quentin, at least for the time being. Sarah was almost divorced. She and Quentin were both single, practically speaking, and they could sleep together if they wanted, even if it was only on the sound booth floor.
She sat up carefully so his hand stayed in place but she could look over at him.
He breathed evenly through his nose, one muscled arm flung above his head. He looked boylike, innocent. And there wasn’t a tattoo on him. If he were who he seemed, there would have been barbed wire around his biceps.
She reached down and moved her fingers gently across his hot skin, tucking a stray curl behind his ear and feeling a flash of protectiveness for him. She hoped she could help him with his drug problem. Although the thought wrenched her aching heart, she sincerely hoped she could help him get back together with Erin. His repeated breakups with Erin over the past few months must have torn him up inside and fed his desire to escape into drugs—which, ironically, might have led Erin to choose Owen instead. Sarah stroked Quentin’s handsome face, his features at peace for a few moments more, as she plotted exactly what she would say to him.
He woke. His stubble scraped her palm, and his lashes fluttered open against her fingers. He gazed at her sleepily, smiling a slow, beautiful smile.
All at once he pulled his hand out of her pants and gaped up at her in shock. “I’m in big trouble,” he muttered.
“I hope not,” Sarah said. “We didn’t use a condom.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending. “That’s crazy,” he mumbled. “I always . . . ” He closed one eye, squinting at her. Then switched eyes, with no better luck. Then pressed his fingertips to his brow. Finally he said, “Hold that thought,” and rolled to his feet. He held out one hand to her and pulled her up from the floor.
He let her go to navigate her own way across the tiny room packed with equipment, and up the stairs. Someone had brought in her leather bag from outside and hung it on the back of a barstool in the kitchen. She snagged it as they passed, despite the fact that Erin and Owen glared at them from a few stools down.
“What were you thinking, Q?” Owen demanded. “What if you’d needed your inhaler while you were stuck down there with no way out?”
Halfway through the den that adjoined the kitchen, Quentin turned to shout at Owen in outrage, “What if you hadn’t broken my door?” He held out one arm to Sarah, almost protectively, and waited for her to pass him. “Here,” he said quietly behind her.
Obediently she turned and mounted another staircase to a hallway and kept walking past bedrooms and bathrooms.
“This is me,” he said, stopping in a bedroom doorway behind her. “Just let me take my contacts out and we’ll talk.”
She pointed to a bathroom across the hall. “I’ll slip in here for a second and meet you there.”
He gave her the smallest nod. A troubled look crossed his face, as if he were angry with himself for not extending her that courtesy first. But now her imagination was running wild. Of all the unexpected things she thought he was and wasn’t, it was too outlandish to think he was a gentleman.
She ducked into the bathroom and c
hecked her phone. Wendy was worried about her. Sarah texted back, “I’m okay. More soon,” then brushed her teeth and removed her makeup—the bare minimum of maintenance, because she was afraid of what Quentin might be snorting while she left him alone.
In his bedroom, she locked the door behind her, kicked off her sexy shoes, and settled in the middle of his luxuriously soft bed. Morning sunlight bathed her, and happy birds sang in the crepe myrtle outside the window. Over their chirps, from down a short corridor to the master bath, she could hear pills rattle in a bottle. Water ran. She heard no prolonged sniffs.
And then Quentin caught her off guard. He walked into the room with his shorts off, wearing only boxers printed with dog bones, plus wire-framed glasses that made him look studious. Ha. And strangely vulnerable, despite his muscular body.
He sat beside her on the bed and pulled her into his lap, with her legs straddling his waist. She was very aware that only his boxers and her pants and a wisp of panties separated her center from his naked groin. She tamped down her mixture of excitement and alarm. It made sense for him to touch her this way if he believed they’d had sex last night—which was exactly what she wanted.
He kissed the top of her hair and said soothingly, “I’m sorry. I have a headache. Let’s start over. Tell me how you feel about the morning-after pill. I can call my car service for us, and we can go to the pharmacy right now. Actually, no, the paparazzi will follow us. We’ll figure it out, though. You tell me what you want to do.” He hugged her hard. “I’m so sorry. I’m a really bad drunk.”
She felt horribly guilty for lying to him. It was the only way she knew to shove him off balance. And she needed him off balance for the talk they were about to have. But oh, it was even worse to deceive a playboy who turned out to be a decent guy, or at least talked the talk. She didn’t like this side of Natsuko.
She looked him in the eye. “Quentin.”
He gazed back at her, green eyes sorrowful now through his glasses.
She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“I know this is an important moment and all,” he whispered finally, “but if we’re just going to stare at each other, do you mind if I lie down?” He flopped back onto the bed and pressed the palm of his hand to his temple.
“Quentin,” she started again.
“Ma’am.”
“We didn’t do it. You were asleep in five seconds.”
After a few moments of silence, he said calmly, “That’s a cold game of gotcha you’ve got going.” He sat up and said, “Excuse me while I go scrape my heart off the bathroom floor!” His hand was still pressed to his temple, shielding one eye. His other green eye pierced her.
Then he started to laugh, because he felt relieved, or because he could laugh at just about anything, it seemed. “What is the matter with you?” he asked.
“I was just trying to wake you up—”
“It worked!”
“—and give you back some of what you’ve been dishing out. You served me a big margarita glass full of bullshit last night.” She tried not to cringe at her own metaphor. Her mother would be horrified at the imagery.
Now he put down his hand and watched her with both green eyes wary. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you’re a regular heavy drinker, I’m a horse’s ass. And I’m not a horse’s ass.”
“So you drank me under the table,” he said defensively. “But like you said, you’ve been drinking with Nine Lives, who eats brimstone for lunch and brushes his teeth with Drano.”
She raised one eyebrow at him. “I’m going to give you thirty seconds to come clean with me. And then I’m going to call Manhattan Music and tell them there’s no way you can have this album completed by July first. I’m going to tell them that they should look around for a more dependable country act that can deliver as per contract.”
“Okay,” he said quickly. He grabbed her hand and stroked his thumb across her palm as he spoke. This was strange. Usually when she had the inevitable adversarial conversation with a rogue musician, the musician backed away from her emotionally, even physically. Quentin came after her, drawing her closer.
It was also strange because she usually felt revulsion at these spoiled stars and their chemical dependencies. This one definitely wasn’t revolting. She tingled at the touch of his callused thumb.
“Normally we drink some,” he said. “Not a lot. We take turns drinking at big events.”
“I’m flattered that I qualify as a big event.” She considered grilling him about Erin not drinking at all. But she was reasonably sure he didn’t know this. She asked, “Why all the subterfuge?”
He looked confused. “Subter—”
“Why the big production of pretending to be an alcoholic and acting like a dumb hick who can’t tie his own shoes? You may not be a rocket scientist, Quentin, but that song you wrote in two minutes last night while you were plastered is going to earn you several million dollars. Why put on this elaborate show for me?”
Now, finally, he drew away from her, dropping her hand and folding his big arms across his pecs. “Because the record company sent you.”
“You want Manhattan Music to think you’re redneck drunks?”
“Of course.” He lay slowly back down on the bed with the muscle control gained from a million sit-ups. Then he patted the bed. Obediently she lay on her side. Now that her surprise attack was over, she ought to move to the leather chair across the room while they had this discussion. But if he felt comfortable with her this close, she supposed she could stand it.
Finding her hand again, he used his thumb to rub and gently tug the sensitive skin between her thumb and forefinger as he explained, “The band got together about five years ago. We worked at our day jobs all week and played gigs on the weekends. We scored festivals where we knew the record company scouts would be, and we sent in demo tapes, and it wasn’t enough. We had this terrific, sexy fiddle player—”
Sarah’s stomach turned over with jealousy. But this is what she wanted: for Quentin to be in love with Erin. This was good. It was part of the plan. Let go, said Natsuko.
“—and good songs,” he continued, “and a great sound, and we still couldn’t break down the door.
“Now, let me back up and say that my granddad was a banjo player, and my grandma played guitar. They toured all the honky-tonks in the South in the 1950s. Granddad always told me playing music wasn’t enough to bring people in. He and Grandma did some grandstanding. They might never have made it big, but because of their showmanship, they got on as studio musicians in Nashville.
“Course, that still wasn’t much of a living, and my dad resented getting dragged around the country and growing up poor. He always told me since my mom died from allergic asthma and I have the same problem, I didn’t have any business trying to make it with a band. I needed to hold down a steady job, get health insurance, and take care of myself. A little over two years ago, I was so frustrated with trying to get a recording contract I was about ready to agree with what my dad had always told me and quit the band. Then somebody in the front row at a show smoked a cigarette, and I had an asthma attack.”
“Oh no,” Sarah said gamely. She wasn’t for a second buying this asthma story the band had been feeding the press. Downstairs, Owen had mentioned Quentin’s inhaler. Probably more preplanned subterfuge. But she didn’t stop Quentin from telling her this tale. To protect the one lie, he might just reveal everything else.
“I had to go to the hospital,” he said. “A rumor started that I was on coke. All of a sudden, we got attention. More people came out to see us play. The newspaper wanted to interview us. I kept telling the truth, but of course the louder I said I have asthma and allergies, the surer everybody was that I was on coke.”
“Bastards,” she said sympathetically.
“Well, that’s what I would have thought if I was still listening to my dad,” he admitted. “But my granddad had just died a few months before. I could see his whole career, this lon
g span where he almost made it big. I could hear him in my head, talking me into it, telling me a little showmanship never hurt nobody.”
“Uh-oh,” Sarah said.
Quentin nodded. “We decided if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. If people wanted a hot mess with their country music, that’s what we’d be. We started getting drunk and staging a fight at every concert.”
“Staging a fight?” she repeated. “You mean the table in the pool?”
He took a deep breath, watching her, realizing he’d given something else away, and calculating how to back out of the admission.
She raised one eyebrow.
He sighed, giving in. “Have you ever heard of Mad ‘Red’ Mud?”
“The professional wrestler?”
“Yeah. He used to work at the steel mill over in Fairfield with Martin’s uncle. He taught us some moves. We just try to keep Erin from getting hurt.” Quentin shrugged. “Usually it goes more smoothly than last night. I told them I shouldn’t get drunk while you were here. I tend to start laughing and lose my threatening scowl. Watch.”
He showed her such a ridiculous scowl that she laughed herself.
“When we started setting up fights,” he said, “our local fan base increased, because we weren’t just getting the country music fans anymore. We were getting the monster truck fans, too, the kind of folks who pay cash money to watch shit crash. That’s when the local paper started a column called the Cheatin’ Hearts Death Watch. Have you seen it?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it. You act like you’re proud of it.”
“I am,” he insisted. “That was a big break, because it got Nashville’s attention, and then Manhattan Music came calling. Don’t look at me like that. Put your eyebrow down.” He reached out to touch her brow.
His other hand already held her hand captive in a tingling dance. But something happened when he reached toward her face and touched her gently. His own expression changed. His green eyes turned serious and dark.