Playing Dirty

by Jennifer Echols

  And no, you should not have hinted to that nice coke addict that you might be pregnant. I don’t care what he did to deserve it or how it advanced your position in your battle of wits with him. You’re going to hell.

  Wendy Mann

  Senior Consultant

  Stargazer Public Relations

  It was difficult to close the e-mail on a cell phone really hard, but Sarah tried her best, giving the screen a jab with one long fingernail. Wendy was always funny and supportive right up until she wasn’t anymore. And somewhere under the sarcasm, she was almost always right.

  What irked Sarah most, besides the haunting tingle when Quentin took her in his strong arms and comforted his supposed one-night stand, was the idea that she’d turned him off to her. He’d been content enough to toy with her on the bed. But by the time they’d finished with each other, he was more agreeable with the plan not to have sex than she would have liked.

  There was no way she would get involved with a coke addict. It was for the best. But she didn’t want him to think so.

  That was her job, though. She’d suspected before that he’d been the one who made the call for help to Manhattan Music. Her suspicion was stronger now. He’d been right to do it, too. She could definitely keep the players in this band playing. She might get herself heartbroken in the process, but not if she had no heart left.

  To distract herself from her desire for Quentin and from Wendy’s opinion of her destination in the afterlife—with which she heartily agreed—she checked Quentin’s story by googling banjo and Cox on her phone. Several articles popped up on Ernest and Velma Cox, honky-tonk musicians during the 1950s who later became studio artists and joined the regular band at the Grand Ole Opry. From the black-and-white photos posted of the couple, playing their instruments with their mouths wide open, singing their hearts out, it was clear to Sarah that part of their “showmanship,” as Quentin called it, was dressing Velma up in a sequined leotard and fishnet stockings.

  “Grandma!” she exclaimed.

  There was also a story, with sketchy details because all the eyewitnesses remembered it differently, about Ernest and Velma shooting off a Civil War cannon to draw a crowd to their opening night at a bar in Eclectic, Alabama, and accidentally burning down the church next door.

  Some of what Quentin had told her was true, then. The only question was, which part? In her eight years working for Stargazer Public Relations, she’d never had a celebrity tell her the truth when he promised her, “I’m not on cocaine.” If the subject of cocaine came up, the star was on it.

  She studied Quentin’s bedroom in the daylight. What she was looking for besides dope, she wasn’t sure. She would know it when she saw it. She’d felt last night that something was off about the band. She’d persuaded Quentin to tell her some secrets, but there were more. He’d told her what he’d told her very carefully. This was disconcerting. She’d been able to read Nine Lives like a book. Right up until the last few weeks in Rio, which she hadn’t seen coming.

  But there wasn’t much to find in Quentin’s room. As with the rest of the house, it looked like a rich bachelor had called an interior designer and said, “Furnish my house,” with no further instructions. Each piece of furniture was expensive and elegant and modern and black or brown or tan.

  Feeling guilty, and assuring herself that she was just gathering information as part of her job, she opened every drawer in his room. Most of them were empty. A few contained clothes. She slid a hand down the sides and into the corners, searching for small vials or plastic bags of coke. Nothing.

  The last drawer she opened was full of boxer shorts. She’d figured Quentin had worn his dog bone boxers because he was playing strip poker, but no. Here was an entire collection of joke boxers. Halloween boxers with ghosts and bats, football boxers, a pair covered in bottles of hot sauce. If he’d bought all these himself, it would be extremely odd. She wondered whether he had sisters who gave him funny underwear every birthday. She and Wendy had given quite a few joke neckties to Tom, their protégé at work.

  It did make sense, Sarah decided. Quentin was fun-loving. Liked to wear funny boxers. Liked to do a little cocaine at parties, thought he could handle it, until one day it turned sinister on him.

  Straightening, she noticed six chessboards with games in play were positioned on top of the dresser and armoire. Odd. She knew Quentin liked games, but he didn’t strike her as a chess man. He was talented, yes, but no intellectual. He was more of a checkers man, Chinese checkers at best. She was afraid that in chess, he’d forget which way the horse went. Otherwise, the room was empty of his signature.

  She peeked into his closet. One suit and two shirts hung there, but the space was mostly filled with large, stacked boxes marked Q, likely because he was always on tour and hadn’t stayed home long enough to unpack in the two years since he’d bought the mansion.

  The bathroom was tan marble, with nothing on the clean countertop. Nine Lives had kept his flask of vodka in the water-filled back of the toilet and his meth in a manicure kit in a bathroom drawer. So, again, Sarah forced herself to be nosy. She found nothing but Quentin’s bottles of pills that were not on her list of prescriptions stars used to sneak a high. She puzzled over the bottles . . . but of course he would have these on hand to bolster his cover story about asthma and allergies. This was how rich and famous addicts worked.

  Though, if he was using, it was strange he hadn’t suggested to her last night that he pull out his secret stash for them to share.

  No. She was making excuses for him now. That’s what she got for falling for a star. She put the bottles back.

  Luckily she’d packed her bag with fresh clothes and toiletries in case her luggage had been lost on the flight. After her shower, she clopped downstairs in her high heels and ballsy-bitch uniform.

  Erin and Owen sat close together on the U-shaped sectional sofa. They watched a NASCAR race. Erin beamed at Sarah, a one-eighty from her look of alarm earlier. She said brightly, “Good morning,” and then glanced at Quentin lying on the opposite side of the U. “For some of us.”

  Quentin had an IV stuck in his arm. The tubes were attached to the almost empty IV bag, which hung on a metal stand next to the sofa.

  Sarah nearly sprinted from the room. She’d been sliced across the chin and treated in a Brazilian hospital recently. She wasn’t too keen on needles. She managed to remark calmly, “After Rio, I never thought I’d say it, but this is a new one on me.”

  “It’s just saline,” Quentin said, lifting his head to gaze at her sleepily. “Rich man’s hangover cure.”

  She gazed doubtfully at the contraption. “It’s all very Michael Jackson.”

  Erin rounded the coffee table to Quentin and pulled the IV needle from his arm as if she knew what she was doing. “Do you want one, Sarah? I know Q’s a lightweight.”

  “I’m not a hundred percent,” Sarah admitted. “But that will just make it easier to do my job, which this morning is to lecture that publicist of yours some more.”

  “Rachel,” Quentin said firmly.

  “Rachel,” Sarah agreed, eyeing him. She felt herself flush under his intense gaze. The green camo T-shirt he wore, a marker of supreme hickdom for the boys in her high school, also highlighted his green eyes behind his glasses.

  It was so unfair for him to give her that sexy, piercing gaze when he wasn’t acting remotely like they’d slept together. This would never do. He was going to give them away to Erin.

  Sarah leaned over the back of the sofa to ask him, “What’s with the attitude? Was it no good for you?”

  Feeling Erin’s and Owen’s eyes on her, she tried to ignore them and focus on Quentin. Slowly Owen went back to watching TV, Erin to taking down the IV bag.

  Pressing his fingers to the wound on his arm, Quentin sat up to face Sarah. “Rachel is a friend of ours,” he explained gently. “She’s put up with a lot.” He grinned as he stood. “It was okay for me.”

  Still unsatisfied, Sarah followed t
he three of them across the open room to the kitchen and slid onto a stool on the opposite end of the bar from Owen. They watched Erin cook breakfast, with Quentin helping. Sarah was even more deeply disappointed at this. Erin was a floozy, and a fantastic musician, and was able to hold her own around all the testosterone in the band. She had watched as her naked bandmates paraded in front of her on the cover of Ass Backwards. She had thrown back everything the men dished out last night. Sarah had thought Erin had more fire in her than to serve the men bacon for breakfast in addition to the wet T-shirt at night.

  Then Quentin appeared from inside the pantry, supporting a tall stack of ingredients with his hands and balancing it with his chin. By stages Sarah realized that Erin was just handing utensils, assisting the surgeon. Quentin was the one cooking. Cooking like a chef, chopping onion quickly and evenly, cracking eggs with one hand. He’d obviously worked in a kitchen before he was able to make a living with the Cheatin’ Hearts.

  “May I help?” Sarah asked, because she wanted to keep up the facade that she and Quentin were lovers. Not because Quentin watched Erin’s ass as she bent to retrieve a bowl under the counter.

  Quentin made a shooing motion to Erin, who rounded the counter to sit beside Owen at the bar. Sarah took Erin’s place in the kitchen and suppressed the urge to stick out her tongue at Erin.

  Quentin snapped his fingers as if he’d forgotten something. “More flour,” he said, taking Sarah by the shoulders and pointing her back toward the pantry without so much as a surreptitious pat on the bottom.

  Sarah stood inside the pantry and stared at the boxes and bottles. This was the pantry of a cook, with all the basics, plus jars and boxes with colorful labels in foreign languages. It was a far cry from her own pantry: granola bars and ramen noodles. She found the flour and turned.

  Inside the pantry door, a handwritten note was taped:

  Gate code

  7712

  Use the force

  DUMBASS

  Now she could come and go from the mansion as she pleased, and if they misbehaved, she could catch them in the act.

  Keeping her poker face would be difficult after a scoop like that. To hide the expression in her eyes, she obediently slid the flour onto the counter next to Quentin, then searched for some kind of cooking activity to busy herself with. Quentin tended the sizzling pans on the stove. It seemed he’d forgotten to close the lid on the waffle iron with four circles of dough—batter?—in the center, so she made herself useful.

  Quentin turned at the deafening hiss and gave her a look through his glinting glasses. “You close the lid on waffles,” he told her. “With the little squares. These are pancakes.”

  “Oh.”

  He patted her head as if she were a misguided child rather than a sexy diva who couldn’t cook. “Go sit down,” he ordered her. Opening the smoking griddle, he muttered, “Crêpes.”

  She took her place at the bar beside Erin, who was trying and failing to suppress a self-righteous smile.

  Quentin slid a mug of coffee across the bar to Sarah. He asked her dryly, “Black?”

  Sarah preferred lots of cream and sugar. He was right, though: Natsuko would take hers black. She sipped the rich, expensive coffee he handed her, which without sweetener tasted like rich, expensive nail polish remover.

  Quentin transferred omelets and bacon onto several plates and wrapped them in foil. He said to Owen, “Call the Timberlanes’ butler, would you?”

  As Owen fished his phone from his pocket, Sarah asked, “Who are the Timberlanes?”

  “Q’s next-door neighbors.” Erin smiled. “Q has a thing for old people.”

  Quentin said without looking up again from the stove, “I just hope I’m that wily when I’m a codger. If I live long enough to be a codger.”

  Owen rolled his eyes and said disgustedly, “Oh God.” Erin took the fiddle from her lap and played a low dirge.

  Quentin glared at both of them. “Are you making fun of me for Thailand ? I’m going to make fun of you when you have a near-death experience.”

  He might have been annoyed with them, but he fed them well anyway—so well that it almost made up for Sarah’s coffee. The pancakes were fluffy, the eggs were perfection, and the fruit was fresh and cold. It probably was the best breakfast Sarah had ever eaten. Which wasn’t saying much, because her mother wasn’t known for her culinary skills, either. The other three made no comment, as if they ate like this every morning. What luxury. Sarah ate until she was stuffed. Owen and Quentin were still eating when the doorbell rang.

  Quentin put down his food and took the foil-wrapped plates to the front door. They heard him exclaim from several rooms away, “Hot damn!”

  “The Timberlanes have a garden,” Erin explained to Sarah.

  Quentin returned carrying a large grocery sack. “I got some corn. See? It pays to be nice to people. I’ll make this for lunch, and I’m not giving you any.” He gestured to Erin and Owen. “You remember that the next time you make fun of me for being on a ventilator.”

  Owen asked, “How long are you going to milk this ventilator thing?”

  “I was near death!”

  “It’s hard to feel too sorry for you,” Sarah couldn’t help commenting. “You OD’d on coke. You did it to yourself.”

  “No he didn’t,” Owen told Sarah at the same time Erin said, “He has food allergies that close up his airway and make him go into shock unless he gets his medicine in time.”

  “She doesn’t believe you,” Quentin said simply. He turned to Sarah. “No corn for you, either.”

  Was he so stupid that he’d already completely forgotten they were supposed to be lovers?

  The doorbell rang again, and three long-haired men reeking of cigarette smoke let themselves in the door from the garage, waved briefly into the kitchen, and stomped down the stairs to the studio. They were followed immediately by a grizzled man with an impressively laden tool belt. “Came to fix your door?” Quentin pointed him down the stairs, too.

  Sarah had never felt so sad about a door being repaired.

  “I guess we’d all better get to work,” she remarked. So there would be no mistaking her message, she pointed at Quentin, then pointed toward the garage. She waved good-bye to Erin and Owen as she slid off the stool. Erin waved back. Owen stared. Sarah heard them whispering behind her as she rounded the corner.

  She met Quentin at the door to the garage. “You’re not very good at this,” she whispered acidly. “You act like you love fresh corn and that waffle iron more than me.”

  “It’s a pancake griddle,” he whispered back. “You told Erin last night that I remind you of Ernie from Sesame Street. That’s not good for business, either.”

  “Touché.” Sarah laughed.

  “Let’s try again to make Erin jealous,” he said softly, stepping closer and slipping his hand under her shirt. “We’ll do a better job this time.”

  Her whole body tingled at his touch. She pulled off his glasses just before their lips met.

  At first, she let him kiss her. Then she broke the kiss. When he stopped in surprise, she licked his lips with the tip of her tongue and simultaneously rubbed her thigh across his groin.

  He had exactly the reaction she’d been counting on strategically, and aching for physically, all through breakfast. He took in a gasp, let out a small groan, and kissed her hard, with drive.

  That’s when she put her hand on his chest and pushed him away. “Better.” She settled his glasses back across his nose.

  He opened the door to the garage for her. She was such a masterful femme fatale that she managed to hold his hungry gaze without tripping in her heels while she descended the two steps. “I want my album,” she said.

  “I’m going to give it to you,” he said darkly.

  Maneuvering between the pickup trucks in the garage, headed for her BMW out on the driveway, she heard the door to the kitchen close behind her. Then a soft thud. Then a faint curse. She smiled to herself and kept on walking.


  Quentin collapsed with his back against the door. And banged his head in frustration. And cussed.

  “Did you break Rule Three?” his bandmates hollered from the kitchen bar. Even Martin had finally dragged himself up from the guest room/opium den to confront Quentin about Sarah.

  “You think I’d be beating my head against the door if I’d broken Rule Three?” Quentin exclaimed. With effort, he pushed away from the door and returned to the kitchen under their accusing glares. He started an omelet for Martin like everything was normal, even though he knew Martin wouldn’t eat it.

  When he looked up from the pan, they still stared grimly at him over the bar. They didn’t believe him. Nobody believed him today.

  “I swear to God I didn’t,” he said.

  Their looks didn’t change. They were going to kick him out of the band.

  “I swear on the statue of Vishnu in my daddy’s front yard,” he said desperately. “Erin, you believed me earlier!”

  “That was before she came downstairs,” Erin told him. “There was definitely a vibe between you two.”

  “Well, I was going to,” he confessed. “I had full intention of breaking Rule Three.” He laughed nervously. “And then I passed out.”

  Owen exploded in laughter, and Erin clapped.

  Martin said quietly, “If you’d broken Rule Three, being drunk wouldn’t have been an excuse. A rule is a rule.”

  Quentin said, “Yeah, but—”

  “There’s no ‘but’ if you break a rule.”

  Martin was really beginning to piss off Quentin with his hypocrisy. Martin was high, for Pete’s sake, his pupils pinpoints behind his glasses.

  “Y’all made me get drunk!” Quentin protested.

  “It was your turn,” Owen said.

  “Yeah, but we could have skipped me and moved to Erin if we’d known Chewbacca was a hot chick.” He reached across the bar to poke Martin’s chest with the eggy spatula. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “Because you acted like you were going to hit me,” Martin reasoned.