The terrible sound returned.

Now came a knock on Quentin's bedroom door. Sarah went cold, and realized that she was naked but for the weight of the emerald chain on her collarbone. She'd pulled off her clothes and flung them somewhere when Quentin had set her down in bed earlier in the night, because she'd vaguely recollected that she'd lied to him that she slept in the nude. Now she s.n.a.t.c.hed one of his long-sleeved shirts out of his closet, shrugged it on, and opened the bedroom door for Martin.

In a T-shirt and sweatpants, hair mussed but the ubiquitous gla.s.ses on, Martin strode past her and knocked quietly on the bathroom door. "Q," he said. The door opened, Martin slipped in, and the door locked behind him.

Sarah stood in the dark with her arms folded across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, staring at the locked door. She didn't want to put her ear to the door, but she didn't want to be left out, either. It hurt so much to be snubbed. She didn't belong to Quentin, and he didn't belong to her, but she cared about him. She deserved to know what was going on.

There was more coughing and more of the terrible sound, and Martin speaking low. Then the door opened, spilling light into the hallway and making her blink. Martin put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed briefly. "He's okay, kid," he told her. "Go back to bed." He padded across the carpet and closed the bedroom door softly behind him.

The bathroom light clicked off and Quentin met her in the dark. "I'm okay," he choked in a strange, gravelly voice. He pushed her in front of him to the bed and drew her under the covers beside him. "You sleep in the nude," he said, claiming the shirt she wore and throwing it across the room.

"You're supposed to, too," she protested, feeling a T-shirt and boxers on him.

"I may have to get up again"-he stopped, pounded his chest, and cleared his throat several times-"and cough up my other lung."

Her eyes hadn't readjusted to the dark. She couldn't see his face. She reached out to put her hand on his chest, over his heart. "Is this the asthma?"

"This is the asthma." He cleared his throat again. "s.e.xy, isn't it?"

Maybe he was still thinking this way, that their relationship was all s.e.x appeal and business, but Sarah had moved way beyond this. She didn't want to care so much about him. But there it was. She rubbed his chest soothingly. "Don't lock the door on me."

"I have to."

"Why?"

"Don't get too close to me," he said. "The record company sent you."

"If I were your girlfriend, you'd let me in."

"You're not my girlfriend," he said, and coughed. Then his body convulsed in a coughing fit.

She pressed her body to his quaking chest and curved her arms around him. His coughing subsided.

He said roughly, "I wish you were."

She scratched his scalp with her fingernails and stroked the waves of his hair, tugging her fingers through the tight curls at his nape. He settled his head against her chest and let her hold him. Soon he was asleep.

She lay awake for hours, listening to his healthy, even breathing. Finally she fell back asleep. But immediately, it seemed, she awoke again in the room bright with morning light, and listened to Quentin's shower.

When the hissing water shut off, she stumbled out of bed to wash the lake out of her hair. They pa.s.sed each other in the hallway to the bathroom, her naked but for the necklace, him naked and beautiful, with wet curls. As his arm brushed against her arm, he said, "Gulp."

She stepped into the hot shower and slowly came back to life. This meant that her brain began functioning again, but also that her nipples hardened and her s.e.x ached for the naked man she'd just pa.s.sed, and pa.s.sed up.

She slicked the shampoo out of her hair and opened her eyes. His dark, blurred form leaned against the wall outside the shower, arms crossed, watching her. He couldn't have seen much because the shower door was translucent gla.s.s, but her body thrilled that he was watching her at all. She stepped close to the gla.s.s and slowly pa.s.sed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s near it, where they'd be clear through the mottling, as if she were innocently rinsing under the shower stream. Seeing him shift positions uncomfortably, she suppressed a laugh. And rolled the door open. "You had your turn," she said.

He wore cargo shorts and the green camo T-shirt. His eyes were still on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. With effort he lifted his green eyes to her face. "I had my turn in the shower. I didn't have my turn at you." He stepped forward to take her mouth with his.

She drew him into the shower stream, then reached out to roll the door closed behind him. His T-shirt darkened and stuck to his solid chest.

He pushed her out of the hot stream and against the cold marble wall. His soft lips ma.s.saged hers, then traveled to her ear, making her shiver. His hand slicked down her torso, traveled around to her front, and cupped her mound. "If you were my girlfriend," he said in her ear, raising more goose b.u.mps, "I'd put my mouth right here." He worked his thumb on her c.l.i.t to emphasize his point.

"I'm not your girlfriend," she said weakly.

"You look like my girlfriend. Let's see if you taste like my girlfriend."

He went down on his knees and still had to bend a little to get under her. Spreading her thighs with his warm hands, he began to tease her with his tongue, and then to suck her. And then she wasn't sure what he was doing, because she'd never experienced anything like it. She felt herself open.

He stopped. "Sarah," he said gently.

"More!"

"Breathe," he ordered her.

She took in a ragged gasp, but it was hard to worry about pesky things like breathing when her center radiated heat. He must have sensed that she was too dizzy to stand, because he held her with both strong arms and laid her on the marble floor of the shower. Sliding his forearm underneath her b.u.t.tocks so he had her just where he wanted her, he gave her the most intimate kiss.

The feeling was incredible. It was so good that she could hardly stand it. But she could and did stand it, because when she tried to shift away from his hungry mouth, he held her more firmly. She had no choice.

Then came a moment when she was hyperaware of everything touching her: hot water splashing over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, cold marble under her back, warm arm under her a.s.s, Quentin's hot tongue. She knew she was about to come. She put her hands in his hair. That wasn't enough. She wanted to give back what he gave. But when she reached toward his shorts, he took both her wrists in one hand in that familiar, delicious grip.

There was no release but her screams. She bucked under him. Still he held her. He pressed his mouth to her until she stopped.

Moving to the inside of her thigh, he kissed her even then, as if he regretted it was over. She took a shuddering breath of wet air.

A pounding sounded out in the bedroom, on the bedroom door. Erin's voice called, "Q, where's breakfast?"

Quentin bit down on Sarah's thigh so hard that it almost hurt. "I'm gonna skin me a fiddle player," he grumbled. Then he rolled open the shower door and called, "Step one, take eggs from refrigerator. I'm in the shower."

"That's the point!" Erin said.

Sarah whispered, "She heard me. She knows we're in here together."

He rolled the shower door shut. But by this time, cold air from the room whirled in the shower, mixing with the hot spray. Sarah shivered and weakly tried to sit up. He pulled her into his lap and warmed her with his strong hug. "There's no reason to feel caught," he whispered. "This is what we wanted, to make her jealous."

Sarah giggled nervously. "Don't you feel caught?"

"Yeah, but I'm not sure it's a bad thing." He kissed her gently, his tongue playing at the corners of her mouth, as if he planned to do this all morning.

With a reluctant sigh, Sarah said, "You need to go after Erin. You're supposed to get her back. You have to go after her and string her along." Sarah reached down to unb.u.t.ton and unzip his shorts, this time without resistance. She reached her hand past his boxers and around his big, solid c.o.c.k. "But first, I could return the favor."

He closed his eyes, took in a deep breath through his nose, and exhaled. "I can't let you do that," he said, pushing her hands out of his shorts.

"Why not?" she coaxed him.

"Because my self-control has limits. If you got me off in this shower, I'd have to have you right here. Or maybe I'd bend you over the bathroom counter, depending on how things worked out. And you don't want that." He rolled the shower door open again. She shivered in the cold draft.

Defrosting in the warm water, she thought, That's exactly what I want.

At the m.u.f.fled galloping noise, Quentin looked up from the stove. Sarah ran down the stairs from his bedroom in her high heels. In a high mood. He noted with amus.e.m.e.nt that the more comfortable she became with him, the less sophisticated she got, with the athlete showing through.

"Good morning," she sang to Erin, hugging her on her barstool. "Good morning," she sang to Owen, reaching up to pat his head. "Good morning," she sang to Martin, pinching his cheek.

She clopped into the kitchen. "Good morning," she purred suggestively to Quentin. She still wore the emerald necklace, this time with a plunging white shirt.

He knew he was grinning, and his bandmates were glaring at him, but he couldn't help it. He put his hands on Sarah's a.s.s and kissed her. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Can't eat breakfast. Goofed off all day yesterday. Got to get to the office. I already called your driver and he's probably waiting for me."

"You have to eat breakfast," he protested, calculating how long it would take to make her a breakfast burrito to go.

"Office," she repeated, already pulling away and clopping toward the door to the garage.

Following her, he backed her against the door and kissed her again, deeply, doing to her tongue what he had done to the rest of her earlier. She shuddered under his hands, and he couldn't help breaking the kiss and laughing.

She smiled, too, and cupped his chin in her small hand, then clopped down the steps into the garage. As she reached the bright sunlight outside, she turned back to him and smiled one last time. A secret smile: more to come.

But he felt the band glaring at him all the while. He knew that this lover routine would go over like a lead zeppelin. He returned to the stove and feigned surprise at the expressions on their faces. "Now what?"

"There was no thud," Martin said. "You didn't bang your head against the door in frustration. That's a bad sign."

Quentin pointed at him. "I did not. Have. s.e.xual relations with that woman," he said in his Bill Clinton impression.

Owen said, "We all know by now that Clinton needed to define s.e.xual relations."

"Well . . . " Quentin paused to think. "I may have touched her inappropriately."

"Q!" Erin wailed.

He banged the frying pan down on the stove and said in a rush, "It's been five days and I haven't broken Rule Three! I've been so good! You expect me not to touch her b.o.o.bs? Come on! Erin won't even let me look at her b.o.o.bs. I don't know what the world's coming to. Y'all never let me have any fun. A month ago, I was in the ICU-"

Martin groaned.

"-about to die-"

"You used that one already," Erin said. She set down her fork and drew the bow across her fiddle in another funeral tune.

"You have to call off this thing with Sarah, trying to make Erin jealous," Owen said.

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"Just tell her the truth," Owen suggested. "You don't really think she'd tell the Evil Empire, do you?"

"Yes," Martin and Erin said together.

"Yes, I do," Quentin agreed. "She botched the Nine Lives job, and now she needs a big success or she'll get fired. She's using us. If she knew we've been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with her, she'd tell the Empire so they'd see what a difficult case we are and what a great job she's done." He wasn't sure whether he believed this, but it didn't matter. He was just trying to get them off his back for five more days.

"But here's an idea," he said, running his hands through his damp hair. "I could break Rule Three with her, and then she'd feel loyalty to the band, to me, and then we could tell her."

Again they gave him that collective silent stare of disapproval that was as familiar to him as his own face.

"Y'all seemed cool with her yesterday," he complained. "Why are y'all p.i.s.sed about her today?"

Erin said acidly, "Because she has moved in with you."

"That's just to make you mad," Quentin said lightly. "And she's scared of Nine Lives." He glanced at Martin. If Owen asked later, Martin would back him up on this. "Nine Lives is in jail in Rio, but for some reason, Sarah seems to think he's going to get out and come kill her."

Owen said, "I know how he feels."

"Okay, okay," Quentin said, holding up his hands in defeat. "I probably won't even see her today, except at the photo shoot. Tomorrow I'll hardly see her because we're finishing the alb.u.m. July second, she'll be stuck in the office all day doing PR for the concert. We have rehearsal for the concert on the third. On the fourth, after the concert, she'll leave." Fighting down his panic at the thought, he managed to shrug. "I can keep from breaking Rule Three with her for five more days."

He sighed. "I really want to, though." He looked to Martin for camaraderie. "Did you see her in those pants?"

"Yeah," Martin said sympathetically.

"Which ones?" Owen asked.

"The red ones," Quentin and Martin said together.

"Oh yeah," Owen said knowingly.

Quentin watched Erin carefully, but she didn't glare jealously at Owen, thank G.o.d. She glared only at Quentin.

"Okay, Erin, I said okay."

11.

> I know you don't want to be bothered with this right now,

Are you kidding? What the h.e.l.l else am I going to do while breast-feeding 24/7? Your drama with the country star is at least as entertaining as any of these reality shows about rednecks. You're welcome.

> acting like I was with Quentin to make Erin jealous, so that she'd want to get back with him. But we haven't had s.e.x My only question here would be, WHY NOT?

> because he's still in love with her Right. d.a.m.n.

> emerald necklace that must have cost a fortune. I'm sure it's just to keep up the facade, and of course I'll give it back to him when he makes up with Erin Whatever.

> o.r.g.a.s.m in the shower. Not your run-of-the-mill "unh"-and-I'm-done o.r.g.a.s.m, either. This o.r.g.a.s.m extended for miles either way down the highway. They probably felt this thing in Tuscaloosa.