"Me, too," Quentin said. "I'll sew it up."

Sarah called from the hood of the BMW, "You're not really going to give Owen st.i.tches, are you? Come on."

Quentin shrugged. "I've done it before."

"In that case, I'm leaving." She slid down from the hood.

"Oh, please don't leave," he said, going to her. He hesitated to hug her because he was soaked with sweat. "You keep leaving." Sensing Owen behind him, he whirled and socked him with another left hook to the jaw. This time Owen went down in a heap on the driveway. Quentin turned back to Sarah, shaking out his sore hand. "You can stay over at Erin's house until the bloodcurdling screams die down."

Sarah waved toward the woods at the edge of the driveway, where cameras flashed from behind the fence. "I have to get to the office to take care of this new PR fiasco."

He stepped closer to her, despite his sweat. He took her hand and stroked down one slender finger to her perfect smooth nail. "If you were my girlfriend, you'd stay and take care of me because I got my a.s.s kicked."

Sarah looked down at Owen on the driveway, who might have been unconscious. Martin was slapping him to revive him. She looked back at Quentin pointedly. Then she leaned to his ear and hissed, "If I were your girlfriend, the more I thought about how you came on to Erin, the angrier I'd be." She slammed the door of her BMW and sped down the driveway in a huff for the second time that night.

Owen was six foot four, but Quentin and Martin managed to drag him into the house and dump him over the back of the couch and onto the cushions. Of course he snapped wide awake when Quentin gave him a shot of anesthetic at the edge of his scalp. He started cussing.

"This needle is nothing compared to that chunk of wood you were about to whack me with," Quentin grumbled. He adjusted the lampshade so he could see better, and Martin handed him the needle carrier with the needle and suture material.

"I wasn't going to whack you with it."

Quentin pulled the first suture taut before he said, "Owen, you suck at poker. I saw the look on your face. You were going to take me out with that two-by-four!"

"Didn't you want me to pretend to be doing Erin?" Owen protested. "If you ask her to flash you her t.i.ts, shouldn't I act p.i.s.sed?"

"Owen, you dumba.s.s. No one knew about that except Erin and me, and maybe Martin. You don't have to fake being p.i.s.sed at me for something no one knows I did." Of course, Sarah knew, but Owen didn't know she knew.

"Well, there's no reason for you to fake being an a.s.shole," Owen griped. "It's so much easier for us to publicize how you're an a.s.shole in real life. Ow! How many drinks have you had?"

"Two."

Owen groaned, and Martin asked, "Do you want me to sew it up?"

"How many drinks have you had?" Quentin asked Martin.

"More than two."

"Then, no." Quentin pulled several more sutures taut, and Owen calmed.

Finally Owen asked quietly, "Are you in love with Erin?"

"Of course not," Quentin said. "I mean, I love her like you love a friend. A friend with a really nice rack."

Martin asked Owen, "Are you in love with Erin?"

"No," Owen said emphatically. "She's beautiful, but she's high-maintenance."

Quentin felt some relief at the verisimilitude of this statement. He'd come to the same conclusion when he and Erin had broken up two years before.

But he would have felt better if Owen had been able to look Martin and him in the eye when he said it.

8.

I'm having contractions, but apparently my discomfort is not sufficient for me to be admitted to the hospital just yet. Sarah, we did both agree to get pregnant. I went into this with my eyes open. I know it's not your fault that things didn't work out on your end. I'm not blaming you. But when the contractions come, I like you less than before. I can't help it. If I happen to text you some curse words in the next few days, please consider it my way of including my best friend in this joyful experience.

Much love, Wendy Mann Senior Consultant Stargazer Public Relations Sarah arrived at the mansion in the morning and peeked into the kitchen. Mouthwatering smells hung in the air, but the counters were clean. Breakfast was over. Listening for a moment at the door down to the studio, she heard Erin's fiddle, but not Quentin's ba.s.s guitar.

On a hunch, she stepped as quietly as she could out the back door and across the patio, past the pool, to stop under the crepe myrtles buzzing loudly with bees. She looked down the slope toward the screened porch off the lower story. Sure enough, Quentin sat in the lounge chair, intent on a magazine open on his knees, occasionally sipping coffee.

His hair was still damp and wavy from his shower. He wore his gla.s.ses, but no shirt, and the sight of his tanned muscles made her fight down a wave of heat. He looked like a commercial for outdoor furniture, or gla.s.ses frames, or exercise equipment. He could have sold her just about anything.

She reentered the house and explored the depths, unexpectedly discovering Martin's bedroom, a small movie theater, and a sauna on the bottom story before she walked through an unfurnished, blank white room to the screened porch.

She jerked the door open and asked, "Where's my alb.u.m?"

Immediately she was sorry, because Quentin jumped a foot off the lounge chair and the magazine went flying. They were both lucky he hadn't been holding his coffee.

"Didn't anybody ever tell you it's rude to walk in on people without knocking?" he asked angrily with his hand over his heart.

She called up anger to match his. "You owe me an alb.u.m. Until I get my alb.u.m, you shouldn't do anything over here that you don't want me to know about."

He cracked a smile then. "Anything?" he asked suggestively.

She bent to pick up the magazine, making sure that he got the full view of her back end. "Anything," she said emphatically. She held up the magazine and waited for an explanation.

He shrugged. "I lifted it from the waiting room the last time I saw the allergist."

She raised one eyebrow. "You stole a copy of Clinical Immunology and Allergy Today?"

"They were out of Fish and Field." He ran his hands through his hair as he did when fl.u.s.tered-she was finally able to read him a little. He said, "I didn't expect you. Clearly."

"I thought we had a date."

"You left so late, and you acted all mad," he accused her.

"You may be mad at me by the time our date is over. t.i.t for tat, as we like to say."

"That's vulgar." He smiled.

While waiting for him to put in his contacts and find a shirt and the dilapidated deck shoes, she got into her BMW and put the top up. The ordeal promised to be traumatic enough for him. She didn't want to make it worse by keeping the top down. Then she waited on the hood for him.

"Where are we headed?" he asked, rounding automatically to the pa.s.senger side.

"You tell me." She tossed him the keys.

Instead of catching the keys, he watched them fly through the air and land in the bushes.

She'd expected this might be difficult. Patiently she walked around the car and retrieved the keys-again bending over with his view of her in mind. Then she straightened and dangled the key ring from one finger. "Take me for a ride, and I'll take you for one."

He didn't smile, just leaned back against the hood of the BMW with his arms crossed. "That's a nice package you're offering. But there is nothing you or anybody could give me that would make me drive a car."

"Why not?"

"I don't drive."

She didn't want to have this conversation again. "It isn't just about driving," she said. "It's for the good of the band. Driving will help you in the long run, because it will start to detangle some of the disabling codependence you have with your bandmates."

"The dis-What?"

"Disabling codependence," she repeated slowly. "You act like a dysfunctional family. You all make Erin feel s.e.xy so she doesn't need to seek a stable relationship outside the band. You think for Owen and allow him to be a dumba.s.s. You function for Martin so he can do heroin."

Quentin glanced toward the house. "Erin and Owen don't even know about Martin," he whispered.

"But they've unwittingly created an environment where it's safe for him to be an addict," Sarah said. "And you know. You're the primary enabler."

Now Quentin looked angry again, so she finished quickly, "And they drive you around, or allow you to hire a car without questioning you. Not to mention your diabolical leadership style. You play the rest of them like p.a.w.ns in your chess game.

"None of you has a mental problem, except Martin's addiction, which he might get over with help. Potentially, you could function very well together. But you'd have to learn to come together as a band, as a job, and then go home to your separate lives."

Quentin glared at her. "I thought you wanted me to get back with Erin."

"Yes, we want to keep that part," Sarah said despite the knot in her stomach, "but the rest has to go."

"We got this way because we're always together. We're always on tour."

She shrugged. "Then maybe you shouldn't tour so much."

He gave her a look of disbelief. "The record company wants us to tour, to promote our alb.u.ms."

"The record company wants the band to stay together and put out more alb.u.ms," she corrected him. "So get in the driver's seat."

He shifted against the hood of the car and recrossed his arms, as if he planned to stay put.

She'd been afraid of this. It was time she put her Southern heritage to use. She knew how to phrase the proposal in terms a Southern male couldn't refuse. "Be a man, Quentin."

He gaped at her. "Oh, Sarah," he finally said, "don't play that card. Only my sick old granddaddy was allowed to play that card."

"Be a man."

He cursed, slid into the driver's seat, and slammed the door. Quickly she got in with him. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the keys she held in front of his face, shoved them into the ignition, turned the engine over, and burst into reverse. He stomped the brakes.

She instructed him, "You need to gently-"

"I know how to drive," he snapped, jerking the car backward again. Finally he'd reversed and stomped the brakes enough times that he had room to pull forward down the driveway. He stomped the brakes again while the gate opened, then jerked the car onto the avenue.

Sarah was alarmed, but she didn't want to alarm him in turn. After all, she had asked for this. "Where are we going?"

Although the morning was still cool and the avenue was shady, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. "We're going . . . to die."

He looked like death. It occurred to Sarah that he might not have recovered fully from his illness in Thailand. Maybe people looked like this during a heart attack, face pale. She hadn't been there when her dad died.

"Quentin," she said. "You're going to die of a cocaine overdose. Or an allergic reaction, right? And I'm going to die at the hands of a crazed rock star." The words were harsh, she knew, but her tone was soothing. "We're perfectly safe in this car."

She expressed more confidence than she felt, especially when she saw that he was merging onto the crowded highway. She watched for oncoming traffic so she could scream out in panic for him to hit the brakes if necessary. But he looked out for cars in the proper direction. If he could keep from screeching to a halt in another car's path, she thought they would stay alive. As he'd said, he really did know how to drive. He just didn't do it.

She settled back in the pa.s.senger seat, hoping she appeared relaxed, and pressed b.u.t.tons on her phone to view her e-mail messages.

He protested, "If I can cut out on the band for this bulls.h.i.t, you can cut out on People magazine." Sweat wet his hair and forced it into curls at his nape.

"I'm not working," she said. "I'm just checking on my pregnant friend."

"How far along?"

The question struck Sarah as strange. Wendy's husband Daniel had seemed well-informed and very sympathetic about Wendy's condition. But most men in Sarah's experience thought pregnant was pregnant until the baby appeared.

"To hear her talk, about thirteen months." Sarah found Wendy's latest message, chuckled at it, and clicked the phone off.

"What'd she say?" Quentin glanced nervously in the rearview mirror.

"She's still at home having contractions, it's not time to get an epidural yet, and this is all my fault."

"Your fault! It's been a while since high school biology, but-"

"It's a long story. A long, pa.s.sive-aggressive story."

"I've got some time," Quentin said. He glanced again and again at the rearview mirror. Sarah turned around in her seat to see an eighteen-wheeler behind them, tailgating. Birmingham traffic was like this, and Quentin needed to get used to it.

She watched him carefully. Except for the frequent glances at the rearview mirror, he was motionless. He seemed to be driving fine now, but he stiff-armed the steering wheel, and his knuckles were white. She had to distract him.

"It's not really my fault," she said. "It was a collaborative effort. About this time last year, my friend and I were doing well at work, and we were about to turn twenty-nine. We decided that we didn't want to wake up one day, forty-five years old, professionally successful, and barren. We made a pact to go home that night and inform our husbands that it was time to get pregnant."

"Husband?" Quentin grabbed her hand and yanked it in front of him so he could look for a ring while keeping his eyes on the road. At least he'd forgotten about the eighteen-wheeler for now.

She wondered whether he was putting on a show or he really cared she wasn't quite single. How delicious! But she managed to withdraw her hand. She wanted him to keep both hands on the wheel. "A few months later, Wendy was pregnant, and I was getting a divorce. My husband, Harold, got a girlfriend."

Quentin glanced at her, then into the rearview mirror, and tapped the brakes in warning. The eighteen-wheeler backed off. He glanced at her again. He said in disbelief, "You had a husband, and he cheated on you and divorced you because he didn't want to have a baby with you? He didn't want to be with you, when you look like that?"