Playing Dirty (Stargazer #2)(21)
Author: Jennifer Echols

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 the 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.”