Playing Dirty (Stargazer #2)(37)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“That’s not what I was worried about.” Owen called across the room in a sharp tone Quentin rarely heard from him, “Erin!”

Erin started up from the couch. She’d been lying curled with her back to Martin.

“What if Sarah comes in?” Owen asked Erin. “Sarah’s not going to be convinced you and I are together if you’re sleeping with Martin.”

This hadn’t occurred to Quentin. Erin and Martin took naps together occasionally. He’d never thought much about it. They all were lonely.

Erin sleepily wandered around the coffee table and flopped onto the opposite side of the sectional. “I want a vacation,” she groaned. “I want one day, just one day, when I don’t have to fake anything.”

Quentin was about to make an orgasm joke when Owen said, “That’s what the trip to Thailand was supposed to be for.”

“Okay.” She sighed. “I want one day when I don’t have to fake anything and nobody ends up on a ventilator.”

Owen turned to descend into the studio again, but Quentin pulled him into the kitchen and whispered, “You can’t break a rule with her.”

“I was going to remind you about the same thing,” Owen whispered back. “You’ve been gone with Sarah for hours.”

Quentin still wasn’t one hundred percent sure that what he suspected between Owen and Erin was really going on. He said in warning, “Owen.”

“Quentin,” Owen said in the same tone.

“Owen.” Quentin laughed, because this wouldn’t get them anywhere. Owen wouldn’t admit anything, if there was anything to admit. All Quentin could do was wait and see, while the world crumbled around them. He couldn’t sense that vibe like Erin could. He suspected, but there wasn’t any way to find out for sure.

Or was there? Owen went back down to the studio, and Martin disappeared in the direction of the bathroom. Erin was alone on the couch, elbow on the armrest and head in her hand, blond curls cascading over the leather, watching the orchestra through half-closed eyes.

Quentin jumped over the back of the sectional and sat beside her. He took her hand and rubbed her callused fingertips and her fingernails cut down to the quick for fiddle playing, so different from Sarah’s careful manicure. He said honestly, “I’ve been meaning to tell you all week. I feel terrible. I should have gone to your concert with the orchestra.”

She gazed at him coldly. “You said you had to stay home so it would look like we were in a fight, to set up the thing between Owen and me.”

“I should have figured out a way to go,” he said. “I really regret missing it. I know how important it was to you, and I wanted to see you do it. I’m sorry.”

“Well, I’m still mad,” she said stubbornly. “Check with me in another week. And I don’t want to flash you, and it’s not funny, so don’t even ask.”

He stared hard at her. Something in her eyes was different. She’d turned him down before, but she’d at least flirted back. Tonight she was aloof.

He gave her his best teasing smirk. “Let me see them.”

He recognized a flash of real anger in her face before she slapped him, hard. She flounced out the door to the patio, headed for her house.

Oh no. She and Owen were lovers.

Martin stood in the bathroom doorway, laughing. “If you have ever deserved to be slapped,” he said, “that was it.”

Quentin rubbed his cheek, thankful Martin found it funny. Martin hadn’t figured out yet that Erin and Owen were breaking Rule Two. Maybe he never would. Maybe he’d never get off heroin, either. The whole thing was hopeless.

Quentin sighed, “Want to go to Five Points?”

“I’m there.”

The hip bar had an older clientele and an elegant feel. That’s why Quentin liked to create a disturbance there. Martin starting a fight there made more of an impact than Martin starting a fight in a sports bar out on Highway 280. Quentin listened carefully to Martin’s shouts from the kitchen over the noise of laughter in the crowded room, but the altercation hadn’t escalated enough yet.

In the meantime, he wished a beautiful woman would sit next to him and make inane conversation with him to take his mind off his problems until Martin punched someone. He didn’t know what to do about Owen and Erin, and he was so frustrated about Sarah.

Sarah slid onto the barstool next to Quentin. “Buy me a drink?” she asked.

Swallowing his surprise, he murmured, “I was just thinking about you,” and retrieved the kiss he’d intended to have in the car. Hands on her face, he let his thumb linger at the corner of her mouth. She hesitated, but her eyes were hard on him with wanting, and a woman couldn’t fake that look. As if this helped his predicament.

He liked a little intrigue in case the Cheatin’ Hearts Death Watch was observing, but this kiss quickly flamed too hot for a public place, even for him. Her lips were too soft and too open, and he was getting too hard. He ordered her a drink, picked up his own, took her hand, and led her through the press of the crowd to a small booth against the wall. “How’d you find me?”

“I have a mole in all your haunts.” She laughed. “Please tell me you’re not getting drunk again.”

“Oh, no,” he assured her. “Martin and I act like we’ve had quite a few before we get here. Then I sit at the bar and make passes at hot chicks. Just for show,” he added when a hurt look flitted across her face. “Martin goes in the back and gets in a fight with the kitchen staff. We try to call the car to pick us up before the cops come. Sometimes our timing is off.”

Sarah pressed her thumb to the corner of her mouth, where Quentin’s thumb had been. This was unconscious, surely. And that was strange, because Sarah didn’t do much of anything unconsciously. Then her thumb moved across her cheek to the scar on her chin, and he knew that was unconscious.

“What’s the matter?” she asked uneasily. “Why’d you come down here?”

“Had a fight with Erin.”

“What about?”

He took a big swig of his drink. “Flirted with her and she got mad.”

Sarah raised one eyebrow. “Flirted with her, how?”

“Asked her to show me her tits.”

Sarah scowled at him. He winked at her, so she’d see it was all in fun. She sat back against her high leather seat.

Uh-oh. She really liked him.

She had really liked him, and now he’d screwed himself.