Playing Dirty (Stargazer #2)(74)
Author: Jennifer Echols

He opened his eyes and asked her gently, “You didn’t grow up in Schenectady, did you? You grew up in Fairhope.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked coyly.

“I can see you with big trees behind you, Spanish moss, watching the bay,” he said. “I hear it when you say my name. And I hear it when you’re about to come. You don’t sound like Schenectady when you come. You sound like a Southern girl enjoying herself.”

Sarah sighed as the last of Natsuko dropped away under Quentin’s gaze. “Fairhope lost to your high school in the football playoffs once.”

“I remember.” Quentin nodded. “I came down for Owen’s game.”

“I wonder whether we saw each other.” She envisioned sixteen-year-old Quentin, tall and thin, a head above the crowd, untamed hair, glasses, a coat in November, worn jeans, the deck shoes in comparatively mint condition. She asked, “Can you picture me with brown hair?”

“I didn’t see you there,” he said. “If I had, I would have known it right then.”

Known what? she ached to ask. But she didn’t want to know.

After the dusk faded, they went back inside. They had run out of ingredients for Indian food. Now, between bouts of making love, they talked, or one of them slept. Sarah thought each time surely that was the last time. And each time, after a pause, she felt Quentin rise into her again.

Late at night, when the noise of traffic outside her window had all but died away and Quentin had fallen asleep, Sarah fantasized about what it would be like to be with him, move in with him, marry him, have kids with him.

She could do the band’s PR from home. She pictured herself living in his Birmingham mansion, surrounded by hills and trees. But he’d be gone on tour all the time. And she’d always worry about what he was doing on tour with Erin.

Okay, this was a fantasy. She didn’t have to think about Erin. She could pretend Quentin was faithful and not interested in Erin. She pictured him devoted to her. This was easy, after he’d made such careful, caring love to her all afternoon and evening. She pictured him as a guy she’d met at college, dated in the vibrant city, moved in with, and eventually married, like Harold. Like Wendy and Daniel, an easy relationship with nothing more serious keeping them apart than Daniel being exacting, Wendy talking out her ass, and the waterbed effect that had winged her in pregnancy. And now they had a beautiful baby.

Sarah and Quentin would not.

She realized, heart sinking into her belly, that she had fallen in love with him, and this was going to turn tragic.

But not yet. Not tonight.

She felt his eyelashes flutter and his stubble scrape against her cheek, and he stirred awake. In the soft glow from the streetlights outside, he smiled his slow, sleepy smile at her.

“What have you done to me?” she whispered.

He stirred against her down below. “Let me show you.”

They slept late in the morning, made love, ate one of Quentin’s huge breakfasts, made love again, and hailed a taxi for LaGuardia. Sarah was hopeful. In the sunny morning, possibilities for the future seemed brighter. Natsuko was skeptical. What Sarah read as Quentin’s enthusiasm this morning, Natsuko read as mania.

There did seem to be a marked increase in heavy petting when the airplane neared Birmingham and the Fasten Seat Belts light blinked on. And in the terminal, as they were about to pass through security, Quentin flattened her against the wall and pressed his lips to her chin. On her scar.

She shoved him away. “Did you check your phone?” she asked him suspiciously. “Did you get a message from Erin?”

He stepped out of the way of other travelers passing. “No, I haven’t gotten a message from her at all,” he said.

Sarah nodded. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” She looked through the security checkpoint. “You think she’s out there waiting for you, don’t you?”

He put both hands in his hair. “Sarah—”

“You know each other so well.” She turned on her high heel and stalked toward the gate.

“Sarah,” he said above and beside her as she walked quickly. “Sarah, I don’t want to leave it like this.”

As they passed into the public section of the airport, Erin looked up from a bench. Her big, innocent blue eyes held a troubled expression, and she wrapped both arms around her abdomen. She looked strikingly like Wendy had looked sitting in the airport when she was pregnant.

Sarah went cold.

She supposed it could be Owen’s baby.

And it could be Quentin’s baby, from several weeks before.

Or Quentin could have had a relationship with Erin all along, unbeknownst to Sarah. Sarah didn’t think so. She’d been with him so much. She didn’t know where he’d find the time. He actually needed sleep at night. Besides, if he’d done it in the last few days, Erin wouldn’t know she was pregnant this soon.

No, it was from before. Erin hides sobriety from men. She must have suspected all week, and now she knew for sure. It was Quentin’s baby, all right. Otherwise, Erin wouldn’t have come to fetch him from the airport.

Quentin called to Sarah, but she kept walking right past Erin. She wasn’t going to look back. It took forever for her to reach the door to the parking deck where she’d left her BMW. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer. She looked back.

He was in the huddle stance again, a winded football player, fists on hips, head down. Like he was listening to Erin’s plan. Not like he was in love with Erin.

Now he rocked back on one foot, hands still on hips, and watched Sarah go. And in that one glance, Sarah saw that she’d been fooling herself.

He wasn’t in love with Erin. He’d told Sarah he was, out of habit. Now he was in love with Sarah.

She had sensed this, but Natsuko had been protecting her. Quentin had fathered Erin’s child. When he found out, he would marry Erin, just as he’d talked about doing whatever Sarah wanted to do that first morning. Because he was a decent guy. A responsible man.

Mission accomplished. With Erin and Quentin on the mend, permanently this time, the band would never break up now. Sarah walked out of the terminal before she could cry.

“There is a vibe,” Erin had said to Quentin at the airport. “But I’m not going to ask if you did her. In exchange, I want you to concentrate on this concert, and let the record company go on her way.”

Tamping down his panic, Quentin had obeyed, for the time being. He’d watched Sarah’s perfect ass in those tight pants exit the terminal. She’d looked back only once, wearing the poker face.