"I do declare," her mother said innocently. Then, with a not-so-innocent smile, she asked, "What do you think of Frank?"

Sarah eyed the white-haired gentleman who seemed to own the poker table. "As an adversary or a date?"

Her mother cupped her hand over the phone and whispered, "The next stop for the World Poker Tournament is San Juan. He wants me to fly to the coast and sail to San Juan with him on his yacht." She looked toward the table as Tennessee Frank motioned to her that the hand was over. In her normal voice she said, "Sweetie, I have to go. I have another few days here. I'll call you from the boat. Give my regards to your Quentin." She put the phone back in her bag and walked toward the poker table. Tennessee Frank jumped up to pull out her chair for her.

Erin giggled. "That was an awfully short explanation of how your mother got to the featured table in the World Poker Tournament."

"My mother doesn't have time for me," Sarah said. "But in a good way." She turned to Quentin, who still refused to look at her. "Quentin, thank you!"

"What'd he do?" Erin asked, cheerful and suspicious.

"We played bridge with my mother," Sarah gushed before she thought. This date sounded decidedly unromantic. But maybe it would seem serious to Erin that Quentin had met her mom. "My mother's been unhappy, and Quentin goaded her into making a big change in her life, a switch from bridge to poker. At least, she thinks Quentin goaded her."

She scooted across the couch until her knee touched Quentin's. Despite his uneasy look at her, she said, "Whether you did it on purpose or not, thank you for resuscitating my mother." Tenderly she kissed the corner of his mouth.

She still didn't understand what the problem was, but she expected him to thaw at the good news about her mother. But he didn't respond to her kiss. As she drew away, he put one hand to his temple like he had a headache, green eyes flat. Then, without a word, he vaulted over the back of the sofa and went outside to the patio.

If he was falling for Sarah instead of Erin, as Wendy had suggested in her e-mail, he had a funny way of showing it.

Erin watched her sympathetically. Yet again, Sarah felt that she and Erin could be good friends. If. If only.

"He's really mad," Erin said. "You'd better go after him."

Sarah didn't particularly want to take relationship advice from Erin about Quentin. "He'll get over it. I don't even know what he's mad about."

"Have you been toying with him?" Erin asked. "Q doesn't like to be toyed with."

"Yes he does," Sarah protested. "He likes games."

"To a point," Erin said. "Listen. Lord knows I don't want to help you with Q. But he sings sharp when he's distracted. I want to keep the peace and finish this alb.u.m today. So I'm going to give you a hint."

Sarah was stuck on the fact that Erin didn't want to help her with Quentin, and had admitted this, as if throwing down the gauntlet. Erin was jealous. Soon Erin would take Quentin back. This was just what Sarah had wanted all along. So why had her heart stopped beating?

The door down to the studio opened and Martin walked into the room. He said to Erin, "Tag. Your turn."

Erin gave Sarah one more quiet warning. "Q puts on, but he only gets really mad once a year or so. Well, I take that back. This year he was mad after he got out of the ICU in Thailand, and he was mad after you convinced him to drive. And now. Hmmm, you've caused two out of three. You'd better go after him."

Sarah was tempted to stay and argue with Erin about who exactly had made Quentin mad after she convinced him to drive. But if Erin wanted Sarah to appease Quentin, there must be a genuine problem. Uneasy, Sarah stepped outside into the bright, hot morning.

Quentin stood in the shade of a crepe myrtle tree, bees buzzing wildly in the white flowers. Strong arms folded across his chest, protecting himself, he looked out over the panorama of Birmingham.

After Sarah approached him, he stood silently for several more minutes. She began to wonder whether he would acknowledge her at all. Finally he said slowly, "I don't want to play this game with you anymore."

"Okay," Sarah said. Wendy had thought, and Sarah had wanted to believe, that Quentin had picked Sarah over Erin. Now Sarah realized that it was the other way around. He felt that he was cheating on Erin, and he wanted Erin back after all. That's what he'd said: it wasn't a good idea for Quentin and Sarah to have s.e.x, because of Erin.

What Sarah had revealed to Erin about the hand job must have freaked him out further. To him, it was a disaster. But from the perspective of the plan, it was perfect.

Never mind Sarah's perspective. Sarah had fainted, and Natsuko took over.

She said, "You're right. We've made Erin jealous enough. Why don't you try her?"

He turned the flat black-green eyes on Sarah. "What?"

She felt her resolve falter at the violence of his expression, but she stood her ground. "Why don't you ask her to dump Owen and get back together with you?"

He put his hand firmly behind her head and kissed her hard on the mouth. She tried to pull away, but he pressed himself closer to her. His erection teased her through her pants. Now his tongue in her mouth imitated his c.o.c.k inside her, and she parted her lips for him.

She heard the kitchen door close. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Martin glance briefly in their direction, then sit down at the table. Quentin reclaimed her attention by sliding his hand down to her crotch, and she didn't care this time whether Martin liked to watch. Quentin pushed her a few steps under the buzzing crepe myrtle, and as his head brushed the lower branches, white blossoms showered them both.

Sarah jerked and slapped her hand to her shoulder before she even registered the pain. "Ow!" she squealed. Her l.u.s.t drained away all at once.

"What?" Quentin asked. He peered at her shoulder, picked at it briefly, and pushed her out from under the crepe myrtle and across the patio. "Ice on it," he muttered.

"What is it?" Martin asked as they pa.s.sed the table.

Quentin said, "Bee sting."

"Oh," Martin said. "In the context, I thought it must be Cupid's arrow."

"Or Vulcan's spearhead," said Sarah, "where appropriate."

In the cold kitchen, Quentin lifted her up to sit on the counter. He put ice in a rag and held the bundle to her shoulder. He still gazed at her with dark, serious eyes, without speaking.

She stared back at him, fascinated. The air around his head had begun to scintillate, and her skin tingled insidiously. Her mind ran in circles. She forgot where she was and looked around in alarm, then remembered she was on a job at the Cheatin' Hearts' mansion, then forgot again.

The idea grew, and fell. It couldn't be. The realization returned and blossomed into terror. She hadn't seen a bee. She had only felt the sting. Quentin had told her she'd been stung by a bee, but really he'd shot her up with something awful. He had drugged her, just like Nine Lives had drugged her. She whispered, "What have you done to me?"

She jumped down from the counter and ran for the door to the garage, processing even as she moved that her car keys were the other way, upstairs in Quentin's room, in her bag.

Before she'd made it five paces, he caught her around the waist. "Sarah! What's the matter?"

"Don't touch me!" She twisted away from him and dashed for the kitchen again, pausing to pound quickly on the door out to the patio, to catch Martin's attention. She spun against the kitchen counter and grabbed a long knife out of the block. When Quentin came around the corner, she pointed it at him.

He stopped in surprise. Keeping his eyes on her, he reached to open a drawer and pull out a pen. He put his other hand to his neck. "Is your throat closing up?"

Her throat was closing up. Her throat was closing up. He hadn't gotten her high for fun. He'd poisoned her. "What did-" she started, but she could hardly form the words. She swallowed with difficulty. "Tell me what you gave me or I'll kill you."

Martin opened the door from the patio. She looked in that direction. Suddenly Quentin grabbed her wrist and twisted it. She dropped the knife. He wrapped her in a wrestling hold with one arm and both legs while he struggled with the pen.

In a desperate burst, she pulled away and dashed across the marble floor as the dark room closed in on her.

"Grab her!" Quentin said.

She ran full-force into Martin, who caught her and held her firmly. Quentin came at her with the pen.

"Don't let him," she tried to say, but her voice was gone, her throat was closed, sparkles flashed in front of her eyes. She whispered, "Martin, don't let him."

"Put her down," Quentin said.

They pushed her, pulled her, manhandled her down to the cold marble floor while she tried to scream. Nine Lives' full weight was on her chest. His knees pinned her arms. He yelled at her, "Sarah! Hold still and let me give you this shot, or you're going to die!"

"Martin," she mouthed desperately.

Martin said soothingly in her ear, "Sarah, I used to be a nurse. I wouldn't do anything to hurt you. You're allergic to bees. You're going into shock. Your blood pressure has dropped, and you're seeing things and thinking things that aren't real. This shot will help you. We keep it here because Q is allergic to everything. Hold still. Okay, you're pa.s.sing out, but you'll come back. There she goes."

"-was just putting ice on the sting, and she started looking at me like I was the devil," said Nine Lives. "When I go into shock, I get this feeling of doom like the world's about to end, but I never think someone's trying to kill me!"

"You're wheezing, Q," Martin said behind Sarah. "Would you get off her? You've scared the h.e.l.l out of her. It doesn't matter why right now. Go call 911 and use your inhaler."

Nine Lives lifted his weight off her chest and walked back into the kitchen. He made a terrible noise each time he breathed.

If he was still walking around, he could still hurt her. She reached down and yanked off her shoe and threw it in the direction of the retreating blur- "-is going to be okay. Everything is fine. It's over now. You're fine. Everything is okay," Martin recited as he rubbed her hand insistently, too hard, so she knew she was alive. The room jumped, jarring dangling cords and tubes. She lay on a stretcher in an ambulance, with Martin sitting beside her.

The siren sounded shrilly, a few chirps. She must not be important enough for the full-blown constant wail. She must be okay.

"Everything is okay," Martin said.

She looked into his vacant eyes and wondered if he recited this litany to himself as he let the drugs take over.

"Don't worry, kid," he murmured, stroking a lock of hair away from her face. "I've got your back."

Quentin sat behind a crash cart with a defibrillator on top. Sarah couldn't see him, but he could hear her if something went wrong. In the last two hours, everyone he'd worked with at the hospital had walked by and made a comment: "Heard you panicked over a bee sting." "Heard your girlfriend got stung by a bee and you lost it." "Heard you didn't have your shot with you in Thailand and had to go to the ICU. That was stupid." "How come Martin wins Grammys and you don't?"

He had a response for the last: "How many hit singles have you written?" But the rest he deserved. And although he normally would take the ribbing in the good-natured way in which it was intended, today he held his head in his hands and wished he could sink into the linoleum.

Over and over he reviewed the weird scene in his mind. He was holding an ice pack to Sarah's shoulder, and she was there with him, perfectly sane. And then, all of a sudden, she wasn't. She was like a racehorse that reared back at being pushed toward the starting gate, her muscles taut and strong and moving under her skin, fear and anger making her eyes wild and unseeing. Well, she seemed unseeing, up until she beaned him in the back of the head with her shoe.

He was touching the scab in his hair when Owen and Erin finally came away from Sarah's bedside. Owen slapped his shoulder supportively and Erin rubbed his back.

Then came Martin. "She wants to see you. h.e.l.l if I know why. She was panicking. You panicked, too, and strong-armed her and made it worse. You can't panic, Q." He launched one of his impressive cussing performances.

"Martin, he feels bad enough already," Owen said over the cussing. Erin put a soothing hand on Martin's chest, to no avail.

Finally the attending hollered across the room, "Martin, get out of my emergency room if you're going to talk like that. I'm sure Q deserves it, but you need to take it outside."

Martin flung a few more choice words at Quentin before finishing, "Don't you touch her again." He stormed out of the room. Owen and Erin gave Quentin sympathetic looks, then went after Martin.

Ignoring the stares that followed him, Quentin stood up, popped his neck, and walked to Sarah's bed. The privacy curtains were drawn on either side, leaving only the end of the bed open to the bustling room. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, her arms encircling them. She was a small spot of vibrant color in a field of white. As he sat down in the chair drawn up to the bed, he glanced at the monitor and saw that her heart rate, blood pressure, and pulse-ox were back to normal. She watched him with her poker face.

He said, "Tell me what happened in Rio." He glanced at the monitor again. Her heart rate was going up.

"Martin told me you went into anaphylactic shock like this in Thailand," she said quickly. "I believe you now, that you don't do drugs, and allergies and asthma have been sending you to the hospital all along."

"Great," he said flatly. "Tell me what happened in Rio."

She swallowed. "Martin told me this is what happened to your mother, too."

Quentin nodded grimly. "Rio."

She shook her head.

"I used to work here," Quentin said. He moved his finger in a circle in the air. "These people are my friends. They all think I panicked when you went into shock. You don't panic if you work in the emergency room." He leaned close to her. "You and I know I didn't panic. Or"-he gave a small laugh, despite himself-"I didn't panic first. People with allergies tend to lose it the first time their throats close up, but on top of that you were having some kind of flashback, like you thought I was out to get you. Tell me what happened in Rio. For the sake of our friendship, you have to tell me."

She put her chin on her knees and looked down at her bare feet. "I can't tell you. I haven't told anyone. I even lied to Wendy about the scar, because I don't want to get her involved when she has the baby to worry about. I told her I was mugged in Rio."

"You just jacked me off and threatened me with a knife in the s.p.a.ce of an hour and a half. I'd say that makes us close." He raked his hands back through his hair and took a deep breath before he leaned forward to ask her the question quietly. "Did he rape you?"

"No," she said without looking up.

"Did he try?"

"Maybe."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Did he give you drugs you didn't want?"

"He put something in my drink a few times," she murmured. Then she squared her shoulders and sat up straight, as if suddenly ready to face it. Or, not, because she told the story in the second person, distancing herself. "The high you can deal with. The bad part is that you don't know what he's given you, or how much. He's high when he gives it to you. You can't trust his dosing.

"You can't go to the hospital, because they'll call the police. You can't call the police, because you're on drugs. You can't reach your friend in Moscow. You can't call your pregnant friend in America, and you can't call your mother, because what can they do? It will only wig them out. All you can do is lock your hotel room door until you're not high anymore, expecting to OD the whole time, and pa.s.sing the hours watching Bewitched reruns in Portuguese, which somewhat exacerbates a bad trip."

"Why didn't you leave?" he whispered.

"Oh, this stuff was later." She waved it away with the hand stuck with the IV needle. The tube tapped gently against the monitor. She gazed vaguely at the equipment before continuing. "It was fine at first. Nine Lives and his entourage were a mess, but I kicked them into shape. He got his alb.u.m written and recorded. Slowly. He'd go on a binge and I'd have to pull him back out. But we got it done."

She slipped back into the second person. "You want to be like them, so they'll trust you. You have to do what they do. Like I did with you guys that first night."

Quentin nodded, though he suspected that blending in with Nine Lives meant more than tequila and strip poker.

She went on, "You have to decide what you're going to do, and you have to decide when you're finally going to say no. Toward the end, he wanted me to do something I wasn't willing to do, and I said no. It was lucky that I was cool with his bodyguard and his driver. If they had to choose between us, they'd pick Nine Lives, because he was paying them. But they held him off me a couple of nights."

Quentin stared at her, the pretty, brown-eyed woman telling this horrible story frankly, as if recounting a jog down the road. "And you still didn't leave," he said in disbelief.

"Well, no," she said as if it were obvious. "You don't understand. My husband told me he didn't want a baby, moved out, and got a girlfriend. I dyed my hair pink and wore leather and went to whip up trouble in Rio like I was the anti-mother, you know? I couldn't have the family life that people want. So, h.e.l.l, I was going to have the opposite life, so there.

"After about a month, I realized what paradise it would be to have my job back, and my friends back, and to spend my weekends alone in my apartment, eating Cheetos and downloading romance movies and letting myself go. But I'd lose everything if I fouled up the Nine Lives alb.u.m. I'd lose my job, and no one else would hire me for this kind of work after I blew such a high-profile case."

She shifted uncomfortably on the bed and tried to stretch her arms over her head, but the IV tube pulled taut and stopped her. She put her arms back down. "He finally finished the alb.u.m, I sent it back by courier, and I was ready to get out of there. He had his people bribe the airline to cancel my flight reservation back to the States."

"So you were stuck there with him." Feeling sick, Quentin added, "He fell in love with you."

"I'm not sure that's possible, considering his mental state," she said, so calmly. "And then he comes on to you when his bodyguard and driver are mysteriously absent, as if he's upped their pay to get his way."

"And then what happens?" Quentin tried to hide his horror. He needed to keep her talking.

With one finger, she traced the scar under her chin.

"With what?"

"He was wearing a skull ring. I think this was the crossbone," she said woodenly. "So what do you do?"