Playing Dirty (24 page)

Owen’s gift was a silver toe ring with heart cutouts. Sarah thought Erin must have picked it out, but Owen actually smiled at Sarah when she opened it, as if he wished her well for once. She wasn’t sure what to do. What the hell? She stood and hugged him. Kindly he whispered, “Happy birthday,” in her ear.

She sat down to a small, flat box. This must be the emerald from Quentin. He leaned over expectantly, watching her. She opened what she thought would be a gold chain with a small emerald pendant.

Everyone gasped.

The whole thing was emeralds. Lots of emeralds, large and small, set in circles. The necklace was narrower in the back, cascading to a pendant in front.

Erin looked grim.

Owen’s sarcasm returned. “Look, the royalties for ‘Come to Find Out.’ ” He slapped Quentin on the back. “Good thinking.”

Sarah looked to Quentin in horror. Quentin shook his head and smiled. When he motioned, she turned around obediently so he could clasp the heavy necklace around her neck.

“Looks great with your tank top,” he said.

She put her lips to his ear and whispered, “I can’t take this.”

“I’m rich,” he whispered back. “If you were my girlfriend, you’d shut up and kiss me.”

She sat back to gaze into his laughing green eyes. Then she put her arms around his neck and kissed him like a girlfriend who’d just gotten a very expensive, very beautiful birthday present.

Quentin’s father leaned over Sarah to flick a lighter to the candles on the birthday cake. Just as Sarah was taking a breath to blow them out, Quentin’s stepmother said something in Hindi.

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Sarah said. This day seemed so foreign and yet so right.

Quentin laughed and laughed his musical laugh. Finally he choked out, “Make a wish.”

Sarah looked around at the faces smiling at her. Her eyes lingered on Quentin. She wished that he wasn’t
in love with Erin, and that he and Sarah could be together. She blew out the candles.

They spent the afternoon at a huge modern house tucked among shady trees along the lake. Sarah was apprehensive about changing into her bathing suit along with Erin in the bathroom. She was afraid Erin would take the opportunity alone with Sarah to share exactly what she thought of her and the emerald necklace.

But the tension melted when they saw that the red bikini Sarah had bought at Target was identical to the one Erin wore, and with their country heels and toe rings on, they looked comically like they’d planned to dress as twins.

Erin giggled. “I guess country floozy and rock ’n’ roll floozy aren’t all that different.”

Sarah agreed, “Not in a bikini.”

Laughing together, they passed Martin sleeping on the living room couch and walked down the lush lawn to a sandy beach and a pier. Quentin and Owen were setting a large ice chest down on the wood. Owen reached in for a beer.

“I thought it was Erin’s turn to get drunk,” Quentin said.

“I traded with Owen,” Erin said.

Sarah thought again, uneasily,
Erin hides sobriety from men
.

“Look at you,” Quentin said to Sarah. He held her
arms away from her body and examined her midriff, then her breasts. He took her hand. “Come with me into the lake,” he growled at her, “or I’m going to pick you up.”

Sarah rather wanted to be picked up. But she let him pull her into the water, which was clear in the shallows and warm as a bath. Then he picked her up anyway, wrapped her legs around his waist, and kissed her deeply.

They kissed for a long time, standing in the lake, dappled in bright sun and shade from the overhanging trees. Quentin was erect against Sarah, underwater where no one could see. She got a thrill rubbing against him with Erin and Owen lying in the heat on the dock twenty feet away, and with motorboats passing by out in the river channel. She wondered if he caught the buzz, too.

“This is great,” she said, voicing all her appreciation for the long, heady crotch rub with her handsome friend on her birthday. “Is the house yours?”

Quentin was kissing just above her bikini on her chest. He said without raising his head, “Owen bought it for his parents.”

“Where are they?”

He kissed above her other breast. “Last week he sent them to Australia for their anniversary.” Kiss. “At least, that’s what he said.” Kiss. “I think he just wanted to get them out of town because of Erin.”

Her eyes darted to Erin, lying unaware on the pier with her hand on Owen’s back. “Why?” Sarah asked. “What about Erin?”

Quentin kissed his way up Sarah’s neck. “Erin in general. Parents don’t like Erin.”

“Owen’s parents, or your parents?”

“
All
parents,” Quentin said in her ear. “I wish you could have heard what my stepmom said about her at the restaurant. Of course, you
did
hear it. I’m glad y’all don’t speak Hindi.” He sucked Sarah’s earlobe.

“Why don’t parents like Erin?”

He stopped and gazed over at the pier. “Are you kidding? Look at her. She
looks
like trouble.” He turned back to Sarah and slid his hands down to her ass. “Of course, my stepmom only had nice things to say about you, and look at
you
. This is how I like my women. Barefoot, pink ponytails, bikini, emerald necklace.” He stuck his tongue in her ear.

They spent the long, hot afternoon alternately lying on inflatable rafts in the water and lying on towels on the pier, spreading sunblock provocatively on each other’s hot skin, making out, and talking. The sun sank lower in the sky, and the four of them devoured the leftovers Quentin’s stepmother had packed from lunch.

Then Quentin and Sarah lay down together on the pier once more, and Sarah reviewed what she’d found out in the last few hours. They liked the same TV shows—and he told her about a few intriguing ones that had debuted while she’d been in Rio. They liked the same movies. They had voted for all the same presidential candidates. She had hidden her surprise that Quentin had voted. If she hadn’t known better, she
would have basked in the glow of falling in love with him. She’d felt this way at first with Harold, except they’d never had the intense physical connection she and Quentin shared to back up the mental one.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? She and Quentin might have similar tastes, but they weren’t intellectually compatible. She couldn’t pretend she’d really be happy long-term with Quentin. What if intelligence
didn’t
descend through the mother? She would wake up in the morning to the sound of birds chirping in the crepe myrtle and the children running into the walls.

Not that brains were everything. As her mother had pointed out, one had to weigh brains with such things as ability to play bridge and make quiche. And as Sarah and Quentin began to talk again, she forgot their differences, because they seemed to agree on everything that meant the world to her. They both wanted kids—and they laughed uncomfortably about the phantom baby Sarah had threatened Quentin with their first morning together—but they also wanted to keep their busy careers, and they weren’t sure how to balance this.

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “I think I would make an excellent mother. I think I could do a better job than my mother. But my mother did a pretty good job. We misunderstood each other when I was a teenager. And our relationship hasn’t been good lately because life came calling. I mean, death. You know.”

She uttered this in a nonchalant way, with her eyes closed to the sun, so that he could take it or leave it.
But he was quiet so long that she thought she’d offended him, even pushed him into defensive anger like the day before.

“Exactly,” he finally said. “My dad and I misunderstood each other, and death came calling, and it wasn’t his fault. I know that. But it’s hard to let go.”

She opened one eye and saw that his eyes were closed. She closed her eyes again. It was so much easier to talk with their eyes closed in the massaging sun.

“Your mom died of allergic asthma,” she said carefully.

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“They were never sure whether it was something she ate or something she inhaled as we drove by in the car. They’d adjusted some of her medicines so the side effects wouldn’t be as bad. They probably shouldn’t have.”

Sarah asked, “You were driving?”

“She was giving me a driving lesson.”

“Oh.” Sarah sighed. “You were fifteen.” She took his silence for a yes. Poor Quentin. No wonder he’d never gotten over it.

“I managed to drive her to the hospital,” he said without emotion.

“But they couldn’t help her?”

“She was already dead.”

There was another long silence, punctuated by a speedboat zipping close on the lake, the lapping of waves against the shore, and Erin’s chipmunk giggle.

Sarah ventured, “You felt betrayed when your dad got remarried.”

“I did,” he said. “My dad and I made a pact to be strong for my sisters and keep ourselves together. And the next thing I knew, he’d brought five strangers into the house.”

She heard him moving and opened her eyes to watch him turn his beautiful body from his tanned back to his tanned stomach on the towel, eyes still closed.

“I mean, I get along fine with my stepbrothers and stepsisters now,” he said. “But back then, it was hard.”

“You see the parallel with the band, don’t you?”

He opened his eyes. “No.”

“Why you need such tight control of them, so they don’t betray you.”

He blinked.

“And the first time you lost control was in the car with your mother.”

Without taking his eyes from hers, he found her hand on the towel and took it in his. “It wasn’t my fault. There was nothing I could do.”

“Of course not.”

“But I feel guilty just for being there. Just for being alive.”

“I understand,” Sarah said.

“I know you do.” He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed her fingers. Then he smiled sadly. “This is awfully heavy for your thirtieth birthday.” His green eyes were as bright as ever, but for the first time she noticed the laugh lines at the corners.

He was a few months older than her, she knew, but suddenly he seemed older still. He wasn’t just the fun-loving playboy next door that he’d seemed at first. He was a man who had been through hell at a very young age and still struggled to make lemonade out of lemons.

And as she watched him, her whole perspective on him shifted. He definitely wasn’t on drugs. Everyone and everything told her this. She knew all the signs of drug abuse. He displayed none.

And he wasn’t stupid, either. He was oddly eloquent through the colloquialisms. He was smart enough not only to make up hit songs off the top of his head but also to impress her mother at bridge and converse in Hindi. And to manipulate his band’s public relations campaign masterfully. He might even be cultured. He and Owen had both seemed awfully absorbed in Dostoyevsky the day she walked in on them.

He was putting on an act with her. Playing a game. Which meant he was a lot closer to being the man of her dreams than she wanted to admit.

But to him, she was still the enemy, the public relations rescue worker for the record company. He was only passing the time with her while they fixed his relationship with Erin.

Just like Sarah had promised him.

“Uh-oh,” he said. The lines around his eyes deepened as he squinted at her.

“What’s the matter?”

“You’ve changed your mind about something.”

She stroked his fingers as if she weren’t alarmed. She must have dropped her poker face for a moment. “Like what?” she asked.

“You tell me.”

That would do neither of them any good. She changed the subject by sitting up and shading her eyes with one hand. “Let’s swim out to that island across the lake.”

“I can’t make it that far.” He turned his head away from her on the towel. “Have you been lying still too long? You go run around the house a thousand times and come back.”

“You’re a big, strong man. What do you mean, you can’t make it that far?”

“I have asthma,” he said without opening his eyes.

She supposed he really did.

“I’m not saving you, Q,” Erin called. “I’m officially off 911 duty for today.”

“I’m drunk,” Owen said. “I’m ready for Chimney Rock.” He and Erin began to gather towels from the pier and put them in the motorboat floating at the end. Quentin stood with a groan and pulled Sarah up.

“What’s Chimney Rock?” she asked.

“A tradition whenever Owen’s drunk,” Quentin said. “Good publicity. Candid shots by onlookers make it into the Cheatin’ Hearts Death Watch.” He glanced uneasily toward the house.

She reached up and smoothed her hand over Quentin’s hot shoulder. “I’ll go get Martin.”

Quentin said quietly, “I’ll go. You shouldn’t have to deal with him when he’s like this.”

“It’s part of my job,” she said. “You deserve a break.” She walked up the pier and across the lawn, toward the house. She turned around once. Quentin was watching her. Even though she knew he wasn’t playing for keeps, she felt a hot flush of pleasure at seeing his gaze on her. She rode that warm wave into the house freezing with air-conditioning.

Martin lay on the sofa, just as he had when Erin and Sarah passed him earlier. But he was awake now, staring at the vaulted ceiling.