Stargazer: Playing Dirty Part 18

"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 h.e.l.l at a very young age and still struggled to make lemonade out of lemons.

And as she watched him, her whole perspective on him s.h.i.+fted. 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 pa.s.sing the time with her while they fixed his relations.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed him earlier. But he was awake now, staring at the vaulted ceiling.

Sarah knelt beside him on the carpet and took his hand. She said gently, "Martin, if you OD before you finish my alb.u.m, I may lose my job."

"What do you mean-" Then their eyes met. "Okay," he said, defeated. "Don't tell Erin or Owen. They'll kick me out of the band."

"So I've heard," Sarah said. "You're making things very difficult for Quentin."

"I know," Martin said. "Q doesn't understand evil like you and I do."

Sarah went still. She heard her own heart beating. Yes, she'd seen evil in Rio. Somehow Martin sensed this. And he was in a similar evil place now, battling his drug cravings.

He drew her hand onto his chest and held it open with both his hands, rubbing his thumbs over the lines as if reading her palm. "I have a birthday present for you," he said gravely. "There's a gun. In my room. In the top left-hand drawer of my dresser. It's unregistered. It can't be traced back to me. Or to you."

They watched each other for a few long moments. Martin was not Nine Lives, yet he'd guessed at another man's drug-fueled obsession with Sarah.

And he was afraid for her.

"The gun's there for you if you ever need it." He smoothed his thumb across her palm one last time, erasing the dark future he saw there.

She squeezed his hand, trying to give him a lot more comfort than she felt herself. "Come on, let's go get some suns.h.i.+ne." She pulled him until he reluctantly got up from the sofa and followed her down to the motorboat, where the others waited. And she tried to leave that feeling of foreboding behind.

But now Erin caught Sarah's eye and patted the empty seat beside her in the bow. Sarah smiled and climbed into the boat, over Owen, toward the inevitable. Quentin backed the craft away from the pier and sped across the glinting water. Crouched below the lip of the boat, Sarah and Erin could hear each other perfectly, while the men couldn't hear them at all above the roar. Here it came.

Sarah went first. "I'm sorry about what I said to you yesterday. It was a gut reaction. I didn't know why Quentin wasn't driving, but I thought it was important for him to get over it. And I thought his friends would be happy for him," she added, hoping to induce a guilt trip.

Erin wasn't falling for it. "I know it's not my place to say, because Q and I aren't together anymore. But it p.i.s.ses me off that you come in here and try to fix everything and act like you know what's going on, because you don't."

"He clearly had a problem. I helped him solve it. How can that possibly get under your skin?" Sarah asked, knowing exactly how.

"You have no idea," Erin said. "He gets mad at us for mothering him, especially me, but I can't help it. I've known him five years, and I've sat with him in the ICU twice this year, thinking he was a goner. I've sat with him in the hospital a bunch more times. I don't know how many times I've been with him to the emergency room and they let him go the same day. We do that so often, it doesn't even register."

"You feel protective of each other." Sarah nodded. "But there's a point at which protectiveness becomes codependence."

"I don't think that's bad," Erin said. "Q provides the master plan, and comic relief, and food. Owen manages the money."

Sarah wondered at the wisdom of putting the dumba.s.s in charge of the money.

"Martin has the final say on the music," Erin went on. "And I-"

Erin didn't verbalize it, but Sarah was thinking it, and she figured Erin was, too. Every village needed a wh.o.r.e.

Erin brushed her blond hair out of her face against the wind. "I agree that we're dysfunctional. But we're functional, too, in our way. It's taken an enormous effort for us to record two alb.u.ms and go on two world tours in two years. We've done mostly what we didn't want to do, when we didn't want to do it. We've been unnatural."

Erin was trying to tell her something. Sarah glanced up at Quentin behind the wheel of the boat. He might have been watching them, but she couldn't see his eyes behind his sungla.s.ses. He wore his poker face.

"I'm glad you convinced Q to drive," Erin said. "It's not that. It's everything. We've built our relations.h.i.+p as a band over five years, and you want to unravel it in a week."

Sarah had no idea what Erin was trying to convey to her. She said, "It would help me avoid stepping on toes if all of you would be honest with me and tell me what's going on, so I don't have to figure it out piecemeal."

"We can't do that," Erin said stubbornly. "I mean, we all like you, Sarah. I know Q really likes you. But you were sent here by the record company. We had a hard time getting a contract with them, and then we had a tough negotiation between the first and second alb.u.ms. We don't trust them as far as we could throw them, and that extends to you. I'd like us to be friends, but that's how it is. Truce?"

Sarah took the hand Erin offered and shook it. "Truce," she agreed, feeling relieved that she and Erin had made peace. At least for now.

As the boat slowed, they both sat up on the bow seat. Ahead, a high rock formation covered in colorful graffiti broke the expanse of dark green forest lining the lake. Gathered at the base of the rock were perhaps a hundred pontoon boats and ski boats, with a few sailboats thrown in for good measure. Some were tied together in flotillas. Others wove in and around, drifting away on the current and maneuvering back to see the display. Every few minutes, someone jumped from the highest point of the rock formation amid applause and whistles.

Quentin cut the engine and let the boat drift silently into the ma.s.s. A splash signaled that Owen was overboard. They watched his broad back as he swam toward the sh.o.r.e.

Erin asked, "Q, how tight did you tie those knots in his scalp?"

"Not tight enough that his brain should stop working," Quentin said. "He's not jumping off Chimney Rock because of that. He's jumping off Chimney Rock for the same reason he always does. He's a dumba.s.s."

Erin said, "I was more concerned that the st.i.tches might come out when he hits the water."

"Good point," Quentin said without concern.

Despite the truce, Sarah felt uncomfortable sitting next to Erin. And she missed Quentin. She walked out of the bow and stood next to him at the steering wheel, watching Owen swim toward sh.o.r.e. She asked Quentin, "Did you ever jump off?"

He looked at her over his sungla.s.ses and smiled. His eyes were light green. "When I was a teenager."

"But you don't anymore? Did you have a bad experience?"

"Nothing like that." He wrapped his arm around her waist. "By now, I've been near death enough times that I don't jump off cliffs."

They watched Owen climb onto the base of the rock formation. He disappeared into the woods. A few minutes later, he reappeared on top of the rocks. A murmur ran through the crowd: "Owen McDonough, Cheatin' Hearts." People around them glanced toward their boat and toasted Quentin with their beer cans. A group of boys in a dilapidated boat emblazoned with Greek fraternity letters chanted, "O-wen! O-wen!" Even silent Martin, zonked on heroin or pouting about Rachel or both, sat up in his seat to watch.

Owen held up one arm like a gymnast ready for compet.i.tion, then leaped into the air. He howled all the way down and landed with an enormous splash. The howl and the splash echoed against the rocks.

Quentin let Sarah go and leaned over the side of the boat, watching the water. Owen didn't surface. Quentin swore and pulled off his s.h.i.+rt, preparing to jump in. Just in time, Owen appeared, gulping air, and stroked toward the boat. The crowd cheered again.

"Come on." Sarah reached behind her neck to unclasp the emerald necklace. She pa.s.sed it to Erin without looking at her, not wanting to rub it in right now. She had other things on her mind.

"What?" Quentin eyed her warily.

"I'm going to jump, and I want you to jump with me."

"No," Quentin said.

"Owen went off," Sarah taunted him.

"Have we told you that Owen's a dumba.s.s?"

"I believe someone did mention that," Sarah said. "But it's my birthday."

Quentin ran his hands back through his hair and then said, "Okay."

"It looks like love to me," Erin sang from the bow.

"It looks like a compression fracture to me," Quentin said. With a grimace, he jumped into the lake with Sarah.

They swam through the water, cool at this depth, and pa.s.sed Owen swimming back. Owen stopped and treaded water, watching them in surprise. "My G.o.d," he said to Sarah, "Q would follow you anywhere."

Sarah laughed as she and Quentin swam the rest of the way to the sh.o.r.e and hauled themselves up onto the rocks. Barefoot, they picked their way up the steep path through the woods. They pa.s.sed a group of giggling girls and a group of men shoving each other on their way down, jumper wannabes who had chickened out.

Quentin said over his shoulder, "If I jump, you're going to owe me."

"I don't owe you anything after those peppers," she shot back.

They emerged from the trees and walked across the warm, flat rock to the edge. "I mean it," he said. "If I do this, you owe me, and I'm going to come get it tonight."

"Do you promise?" She curved her hands around his back and looked up at him. She'd never seen him so handsome. His green eyes laughed, and his muscular, tanned chest was naked to the setting sun.

He kissed her deeply, his tongue gently exploring her mouth. Far below him, the fraternity boys chanted, "Quen-tin! Quen-tin!" Thirty was not so bad, Sarah thought, pressing her palms to his hard biceps and feeling his hands slide down to her bare waist. Even if this was l.u.s.t with Quentin and could never be love, she sure was enjoying it. If it weren't for the threat of Nine Lives coming for her, thirty would be okay after all.

They moved toward the edge of the rock to look over. Sarah started back.

"Don't look," Quentin said. "Don't think about it. On the count of three. One, two-"

Natsuko pushed Sarah off.

Quentin made it the last few one-armed strokes to the boat, released Sarah from the lifesaving hold around her chest, and lifted her up. Owen grabbed her under her arms. She still coughed and laughed simultaneously.

"What's the matter?" Erin asked, bending over her as Owen laid her on the floor of the boat.

"I got water up my nose," she coughed out. "Way up my nose."

"At least it's clean water," Quentin a.s.sured her, climbing up the ladder and into the boat. "They tested it. It's cleaner than New York City's drinking water."

"I don't know what they tested for," Sarah said, "but in my experience, New York City's drinking water isn't green and full of mud."

"You know what's good for that?" Quentin asked.

"If you say peppers-"

Owen handed her a beer from the cooler. She held it to her face, under her eye.

A cell phone rang. All five of them looked around for it while Erin announced, "No working today."

"Mine," Sarah said. Still lying down, she drew her phone out from under a pile of towels. "h.e.l.lo? What? Oh, Wendy!" She squealed and stamped her feet on the floor of the boat.

The others stared at Sarah, then at Quentin.

"Her friend must have had her baby," Quentin explained.

"She has a friend?" Owen asked. At Quentin's look, Owen said, "Kidding. I'm kidding."