Playing Dirty (Stargazer #2)(51)
Author: Jennifer Echols

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 assured 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. “Hello? 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.”

Quentin started the boat and piloted it fast across the rush of lake reflecting the pink sunset. Occasionally he glanced sideways at Sarah, whom he couldn’t hear over the roar of the motor, talking animatedly with her friend. He’d liked her hair before, but the punked-out schoolgirl look with two pink ponytails at her nape really moved him. He let his eyes travel to her perfectly polished toenails, up her long legs to her strong, smooth thighs, and he wished for the millionth time that he could make love to her.

As he cut the engine and coasted into the pier at the marina, Sarah was saying into the phone, “I just jumped off a cliff into a lake. Got water up my sinuses and can’t get it out. Which is not nearly as bad as your experience this morning. Or perhaps somewhat similar.”

“Vonnie Conner sighting,” Owen called to Quentin.

Quentin saw the still-buxom still-a-blonde standing at the top of the hill, under the pine trees, with her arms crossed. “She’s up there waiting for us?” he asked in disbelief.

Sarah clicked her phone off. “Who’s Vonnie Conner? High school sweetheart?”

Owen said, “Vonnie Conner broke up with Q when he tried to get his driver’s license but couldn’t get into the car. Because of course a girl can’t date a guy who can’t drive.”

“I wouldn’t mention that if I were you,” Erin warned Owen.

“Doesn’t matter that the guy’s mother had just died,” Owen went on. “Vonnie Conner is such a bitch!” He said the last word loudly enough that it echoed across the lake.

At the top of the hill, Vonnie couldn’t have heard the first part of the sentence, but she heard the last word, and she knew who Owen meant. She uncrossed her arms.

“Owen, you dumbass,” Quentin said. “Thanks for telling PR more than she needs to know. Again.”

“Hey,” Sarah said, turning Quentin’s chin so that he had to look down into her eyes. She whispered, “Just because it happened when you were young doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”

Quentin shook his head to clear it. Sarah was right. He shouldn’t be too mad at Owen. He could tell by the way Owen looked through him that Owen was fabulously drunk. And Owen hated Vonnie Conner on Quentin’s behalf.

Quentin even managed a smile for Sarah. “Vonnie Conner is in charge of Hank on the Banks, which is the annual Hank Williams festival here at the amphitheater. So we always crash it.” He helped Sarah out of the boat, then sauntered up the pier and up the hill with her.

As they walked, Sarah leaned into him. She slid her hand down his shirt and around the waistband of his bathing suit. She bent his head down so she could nibble his ear. She took his hand and guided it under the string of her bikini bottoms, which . . . Jesus, it was getting hard to concentrate on Vonnie Conner.

They stopped as Vonnie stepped into their path. “Quentin Cox, you’re not supposed to be here!” she hollered. “Owen,” she called as Owen and Martin passed carrying the ice chest, blankets, and lawn chairs, but Owen kept right on going.

“I’ve got every right to be here,” Quentin told Vonnie. “The judge threw out that restraining order.” Sarah kissed his jaw.

“Only because you were in chess club with the judge in high school,” Vonnie snapped.

Quentin covered Sarah’s ears with his hands. He appreciated that Sarah giggled like an idiot. “Do you mind?” Quentin asked Vonnie. “You don’t have to go spreading that around.”

Vonnie was royally peeved. “If you’re going to come to Hank on the Banks anyway, why don’t the Cheatin’ Hearts play? Next year we could arrange—”

Quentin interrupted her. “On the Fourth of July, we have a Nationally—Tell her, Sarah.”

Sarah took her lips away from his ear just long enough to recite obediently, “Nationally Televised Holiday Concert Event.”

“What she said,” Quentin continued, “and you think we have time to drive down here to your two-bit local festival?”

In an unusual show of aptitude, Vonnie seemed to appreciate the irony. She asked, “Is this about the tenth grade?”

Quentin winked at her and slipped his arm around Sarah’s waist to lead her away.

Vonnie flung after them, “Nice hair.”

“It’s Napoleon,” Sarah called over her shoulder. “Like the ice cream.”

Quentin glanced at her uneasily. Had her mother told her that he’d been made? Surely not. Sarah would have said something about it before now.

He rubbed his hand appreciatively across the smooth skin of her bare back. “Thank you,” he whispered to her.

“No problem,” she said flatly.

He leaned out to assess her expression as they walked, but she wore the poker face. He said quickly, “I didn’t mean to—I’m not after Vonnie, you know. She’s married. I’m just settling an old score.”