Part 14 (1/2)
”Me, too,” Quentin said. ”I'll sew it up.”
Sarah called from the hood of the BMW, ”You're not really going to give Owen st.i.tches, are you? Come on.”
Quentin shrugged. ”I've done it before.”
”In that case, I'm leaving.” She slid down from the hood.
”Oh, please don't leave,” he said, going to her. He hesitated to hug her because he was soaked with sweat. ”You keep leaving.” Sensing Owen behind him, he whirled and socked him with another left hook to the jaw. This time Owen went down in a heap on the driveway. Quentin turned back to Sarah, shaking out his sore hand. ”You can stay over at Erin's house until the bloodcurdling screams die down.”
Sarah waved toward the woods at the edge of the driveway, where cameras flashed from behind the fence. ”I have to get to the office to take care of this new PR fiasco.”
He stepped closer to her, despite his sweat. He took her hand and stroked down one slender finger to her perfect smooth nail. ”If you were my girlfriend, you'd stay and take care of me because I got my a.s.s kicked.”
Sarah looked down at Owen on the driveway, who might have been unconscious. Martin was slapping him to revive him. She looked back at Quentin pointedly. Then she leaned to his ear and hissed, ”If I were your girlfriend, the more I thought about how you came on to Erin, the angrier I'd be.” She slammed the door of her BMW and sped down the driveway in a huff for the second time that night.
Owen was six foot four, but Quentin and Martin managed to drag him into the house and dump him over the back of the couch and onto the cus.h.i.+ons. Of course he snapped wide awake when Quentin gave him a shot of anesthetic at the edge of his scalp. He started cussing.
”This needle is nothing compared to that chunk of wood you were about to whack me with,” Quentin grumbled. He adjusted the lampshade so he could see better, and Martin handed him the needle carrier with the needle and suture material.
”I wasn't going to whack you with it.”
Quentin pulled the first suture taut before he said, ”Owen, you suck at poker. I saw the look on your face. You were going to take me out with that two-by-four!”
”Didn't you want me to pretend to be doing Erin?” Owen protested. ”If you ask her to flash you her t.i.ts, shouldn't I act p.i.s.sed?”
”Owen, you dumba.s.s. No one knew about that except Erin and me, and maybe Martin. You don't have to fake being p.i.s.sed at me for something no one knows I did.” Of course, Sarah knew, but Owen didn't know she knew.
”Well, there's no reason for you to fake being an a.s.shole,” Owen griped. ”It's so much easier for us to publicize how you're an a.s.shole in real life. Ow! How many drinks have you had?”
”Two.”
Owen groaned, and Martin asked, ”Do you want me to sew it up?”
”How many drinks have you had?” Quentin asked Martin.
”More than two.”
”Then, no.” Quentin pulled several more sutures taut, and Owen calmed.
Finally Owen asked quietly, ”Are you in love with Erin?”
”Of course not,” Quentin said. ”I mean, I love her like you love a friend. A friend with a really nice rack.”
Martin asked Owen, ”Are you in love with Erin?”
”No,” Owen said emphatically. ”She's beautiful, but she's high-maintenance.”
Quentin felt some relief at the verisimilitude of this statement. He'd come to the same conclusion when he and Erin had broken up two years before.
But he would have felt better if Owen had been able to look Martin and him in the eye when he said it.
8.
I'm having contractions, but apparently my discomfort is not sufficient for me to be admitted to the hospital just yet. Sarah, we did both agree to get pregnant. I went into this with my eyes open. I know it's not your fault that things didn't work out on your end. I'm not blaming you. But when the contractions come, I like you less than before. I can't help it. If I happen to text you some curse words in the next few days, please consider it my way of including my best friend in this joyful experience.
Much love, Wendy Mann Senior Consultant Stargazer Public Relations Sarah arrived at the mansion in the morning and peeked into the kitchen. Mouthwatering smells hung in the air, but the counters were clean. Breakfast was over. Listening for a moment at the door down to the studio, she heard Erin's fiddle, but not Quentin's ba.s.s guitar.
On a hunch, she stepped as quietly as she could out the back door and across the patio, past the pool, to stop under the crepe myrtles buzzing loudly with bees. She looked down the slope toward the screened porch off the lower story. Sure enough, Quentin sat in the lounge chair, intent on a magazine open on his knees, occasionally sipping coffee.
His hair was still damp and wavy from his shower. He wore his gla.s.ses, but no s.h.i.+rt, and the sight of his tanned muscles made her fight down a wave of heat. He looked like a commercial for outdoor furniture, or gla.s.ses frames, or exercise equipment. He could have sold her just about anything.
She reentered the house and explored the depths, unexpectedly discovering Martin's bedroom, a small movie theater, and a sauna on the bottom story before she walked through an unfurnished, blank white room to the screened porch.
She jerked the door open and asked, ”Where's my alb.u.m?”
Immediately she was sorry, because Quentin jumped a foot off the lounge chair and the magazine went flying. They were both lucky he hadn't been holding his coffee.
”Didn't anybody ever tell you it's rude to walk in on people without knocking?” he asked angrily with his hand over his heart.
She called up anger to match his. ”You owe me an alb.u.m. Until I get my alb.u.m, you shouldn't do anything over here that you don't want me to know about.”
He cracked a smile then. ”Anything?” he asked suggestively.
She bent to pick up the magazine, making sure that he got the full view of her back end. ”Anything,” she said emphatically. She held up the magazine and waited for an explanation.
He shrugged. ”I lifted it from the waiting room the last time I saw the allergist.”
She raised one eyebrow. ”You stole a copy of Clinical Immunology and Allergy Today?”
”They were out of Fish and Field.” He ran his hands through his hair as he did when fl.u.s.tered-she was finally able to read him a little. He said, ”I didn't expect you. Clearly.”
”I thought we had a date.”
”You left so late, and you acted all mad,” he accused her.
”You may be mad at me by the time our date is over. t.i.t for tat, as we like to say.”
”That's vulgar.” He smiled.
While waiting for him to put in his contacts and find a s.h.i.+rt and the dilapidated deck shoes, she got into her BMW and put the top up. The ordeal promised to be traumatic enough for him. She didn't want to make it worse by keeping the top down. Then she waited on the hood for him.
”Where are we headed?” he asked, rounding automatically to the pa.s.senger side.
”You tell me.” She tossed him the keys.