Sarah didn't pause to let it sink in. While she had them off balance, she went on. "The other reason I won't be your manager is that the Cheatin' Hearts will never make it without Quentin. You could get a new lead singer, but you'd never recapture what you have now. I doubt Manhattan Music would even re-sign you without him.

"You could break up, and each of you could make it on your own. You could have long, successful careers in Nashville. Write songs. Join other bands. Produce alb.u.ms for other people. But you can't go on as the Cheatin' Hearts. Each of you is integral to the group, but Quentin is-"

As she paused to find the words, Martin offered, "The life."

Sarah took a big swig of beer and banged the bottle down on the table with finality. "I have a flight to New York soon. Tell me how we're leaving this so I don't have to come down here again."

Erin said quietly, "You need the group to stay together to keep your job, right? So don't tell Q we had this conversation. Maybe he won't self-destruct, and we'll go back on tour like we always planned."

"Girlfriend." Sarah felt tough athlete Sarah rise up to subdue crafty Natsuko. "You are not hearing me. You're in denial. You can't go on tour and pretend nothing's happened. Martin is addicted to heroin, and you're pregnant with Owen's baby."

Erin watched Sarah for one, two, three beats, unmoving, expressionless, so long that Sarah thought she'd guessed wrong.

Erin burst, "You b.i.t.c.h!" at the same time that Owen exclaimed, "What?"

"Ouch," Sarah said, "and you haven't told Owen."

Owen and Erin jumped up from the table simultaneously. Erin screamed at Sarah, but Owen blocked her with his big body.

Sarah stood up and clacked across the flagstones. It was a relief to close the kitchen door on the screaming. She slid her bag from the counter.

When she turned around, Martin stood in the kitchen with his lit cigarette. "I've enjoyed having you spy on us, kid." Swaying a little on his feet, he took her hand.

"Me, too." She looked into his beautiful dark eyes behind the crooked gla.s.ses. She asked him, "Are you going to kick it now? You're the link between Erin and Owen on one side, and Quentin on the other. You're going to have to take some positive action to keep the band together. You'll lose everything you love if you don't."

Martin squeezed her hand. "Ask me again when I'm sober."

They stood in exactly the spot where Quentin customarily kissed her good-bye and banged his head on the door. Martin kissed her on the forehead. And then she walked through the garage to her car.

For the first few minutes of the drive to the airport, she felt numb, thought nothing. Then pieces of the puzzle began to fall out of the sky, littering the highway in front of her.

She was devastated. Last night, Quentin had tried to tell her. He'd basically asked whether she could take him as she thought he was, and she'd basically told him no. Having him turn out to be a brilliant college grad on a mission to save the children should have been a bonus. It was no good trying to explain to him now that she would have jumped at the chance if it hadn't been for Erin.

She was outraged. He'd lied to her over and over and over. He had pretended to her that he didn't know the word renegotiate.

But above all, she was hopeful. There would have been no reason for Quentin to pursue her last night after s.e.x when he knew she was leaving for New York soon, unless he meant it. He loved her.

It was just a matter of finding him.

For the first time in nine months, she didn't have a plan.

Well, the plan definitely should not include a trip to the airport. She turned the BMW around at the next exit and headed back the way she'd come. And quickly ground to a halt in a traffic jam. She heard on the radio there was a collision up ahead between a busload of fans headed to the Nationally Televised Holiday Concert Event and a limousine.

She might as well make use of this downtime. Maybe Quentin had left her a message. She reached into her bag and switched her phone back on. As she drew it out, her eyes fell on Quentin's asthma inhaler, which she'd forgotten to leave at the mansion.

She flinched as the phone rang in her hand.

Quentin jumped down from his big-a.s.s truck. He ran through the garage and into the kitchen.

And hit a wall of cigarette smoke.

"Q!" Martin exclaimed. He let out a stream of epithets, this time directed at himself, because he'd smoked in Quentin's path. "Man, I am so sorry!"

Quentin stumbled, coughing, out the back door to the patio. Erin and Owen's argument echoed against the house. He told them desperately, "Sarah checked out of her hotel last night, and she's not answering her cell."

Erin and Owen didn't even slow down. Quentin glanced over at Martin, who had sat down at the patio table, cigarette b.u.t.ts and ash around his chair. Quentin fleetingly wondered what could have stressed Martin out so badly that he needed to smoke even when he was high. In the name of self-preservation, when they roomed together in college, Quentin had convinced Martin to stop smoking. Or so Quentin had thought. But that could wait.

"Hey!" he said.

Erin paused in yelling at Owen just long enough to tell Quentin, "She came here and now she's gone."

Quentin stepped between Erin and Owen to stop the stream of vitriol. He took Erin by the shoulders and looked down into her big blue eyes. "When was she here?"

"She just left," Erin said, her eyes meeting his gaze for the first time. "Q, we're all aware that you need to use your inhaler. So go do it. You can't always be the center of attention." She laid into Owen again. Incredible.

"I need to be the center of attention right now," Quentin said, leading her by the hand to the chair beside Martin. Next he shoved Owen toward a chair, and Owen was so engrossed in his conflict with Erin that he didn't even shove Quentin back. Now they were all sitting down, with Quentin standing in front of them, about to make the smartest or the stupidest move of his life, and Erin and Owen were still going at it. Finally Quentin shouted, "Shut up!"

Erin and Owen shut up, shocked at being yelled at by someone other than each other.

"I slept with Sarah," Quentin said.

Owen's eyes narrowed. Erin's shoulders sagged. Martin let his head loll back on his chair to gaze at the treetops.

"I slept with Sarah," Quentin repeated in a rush, "and I love her, and I'm going to ask her to marry me. I have a ring and everything." He felt in his pocket to make sure the ring box was still there. "Well?" he asked impatiently when Erin and Owen continued to stare at him and Martin continued to be high. "Are you going to kick me out of the band?"

"We already tried that," Owen said, "but Sarah wouldn't let us."

It was Quentin's turn to stare in disbelief. "Sarah told you I broke Rule Three?"

"No, but-" Owen held his head in his hand now. "Martin broke Rule One."

"I know," Quentin said at the same time Martin said, "He knows."

Owen paused, then said, "And Erin and I broke Rule Two."

"I thought you did," Quentin said. "And then I thought you didn't."

"After you and Owen had that fight in the driveway," Erin said, "I told him not to look at me anymore when we were around you. And to be nice to Sarah, because he thought Sarah knew what was going on. That seemed to work."

"It did," Quentin acceded, turning to Owen. "Dumba.s.s. You were supposed to fake doing her."

Owen shot Quentin the bird.

"And I'm pregnant," Erin said.

"Are you taking folic acid?" Quentin asked automatically.

Then his brain caught up. He had Owen down on the hot flagstones, vaguely aware of Owen's chair still skidding, metal across stone, into the pool. He gripped Owen's throat with one hand and swung the other fist back. Martin was shouting at him.

"I'm in love with her!" Owen choked out.

Quentin hesitated and eased his grip on Owen's neck.

"You don't understand," Owen went on breathlessly. "All those love songs I've written with Erin, I've written them for Erin."

"Even 'Only a Flesh Wound'?" Quentin asked.

"I mean it," Owen said. "I'm in love with her. I've been in love with her for so long. And I just can't stand it anymore that you're with her-"

"For G.o.d's sake, Owen," Erin broke in, "that ended two years ago. I keep saying this."

"But you've been making out with him ever since," Owen called to her.

"That was the act!" she protested. "How was I supposed to know that it made you jealous? I didn't even know you liked me! You acted like I was about as attractive as Martin!"

Martin murmured to the sky, "Please don't drag me into this."

"And you had s.e.x with that girl from the record company in Nashville!" Erin wailed.

"Only to make you jealous," Owen said. "I know that's terrible. Except I did enjoy the b.l.o.w. .j.o.b."

Quentin gave him a warning look. Dumba.s.s.

Owen got the message. "Completely terrible," he repeated. "Erin, I would have done anything. I'll still do anything." He looked up at Quentin with pleading eyes. "I love her, man."

Quentin stood and helped Owen up with one hand. Then he pointed Owen's shoulders in Erin's direction. "Say it to her."

"I'm in love with you," Owen said softly. He crossed the patio to kneel in front of her chair. "I love you," he said, looking up at her. He laid his head in her lap. "I love you so much."

After five years of Owen and Erin acting in private like no more than friends, this was so strange. Quentin turned to Martin to see what he thought. Martin rolled his eyes and let his head loll back on the chair again.

"Baby, I love you, too," Erin cooed, stroking Owen's hair. "I wouldn't have done it with you if I didn't. There was too much to lose." She glared at Quentin.

Quentin clapped his hands. "Enough of this touchy-feely s.h.i.t. I've got my own woman to grovel to. Where did Sarah go?"

"I think . . . the airport," Erin said uneasily.

"The airport !" Quentin said. "Y'all sold me down the road ! What is she doing at the airport ? What did you tell her?"

Owen turned around to sit on the flagstones with his back against Erin's legs. He gave a man-sized sniff. "We asked her to be our manager," he said hoa.r.s.ely.

"What'd she say?" Quentin asked in horror.

"She said no."

"That's not a good sign."

"And in the process of asking her," Owen explained, "we told her everything."

"What do you mean, everything?"

"Q, you're wheezing," Martin said without moving his head from the back of his chair.

"We told her we've known all along that the two of you weren't really doing it," Erin said helpfully, winking.

"Did you tell her I got into med school?"

"Yes, but she didn't act surprised," Erin said confusedly.

"She pulled the Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi on you and made you think she wasn't," Quentin said.

"I didn't get that at all," Erin said slowly. She looked to Martin. "What about you?"

"I don't know," Martin said, lifting his head. "My perception may be a little off because I'm a heroin addict."

Both Erin and Owen stared at Martin like he'd grown a second head. Erin backed away from Martin, over the arm of her chair, across to Owen's other side.

"It's heroin, Erin," Martin grumbled, "not cooties."

Quentin smacked his fist into his hand. "Y'all focus! Did you screw me over or didn't you?"

Owen had both his arms around Erin now. From the depths of the bear hug, Erin said, "She knew everything, Q. She knew I was pregnant. In fact, the b.i.t.c.h told Owen I was pregnant."

Quentin struggled to stay upright as a wave of dizziness swept over him. "Oh no!" he said. "No wonder she was so p.i.s.sed at me last night! She thought it was my baby!"

"Well, now she knows it isn't," Erin said simply. "What's the problem?"

"The problem is that she went to the airport anyway!"

"What are you so stoked about, Q?" Owen protested. "Don't you think she'd rather date-"

"Marry," Quentin said. "Don't you get it? I want to keep this one!"

"Don't you think she'd rather marry a college graduate than a hospital orderly?" Owen asked. "You'd have been able to hide that from her for about two more days. Too many people know."

"I realize that," Quentin said. "Things weren't going well last night, and I didn't want to p.i.s.s her off any more than I already had. But I wanted to be the one to tell her. Otherwise, she'll think I've been trying to fool her the whole time."

"But you have been trying to fool her," Erin pointed out.

"I realize that!" Quentin said again before yielding to a fit of coughing, having traveled the full circle of emotion and returned to desperation.

"Outsmarted yourself," Owen muttered.

"Q, you're wheezing," Martin said again. "Go get your inhaler."

It really was becoming hard to breathe. Quentin stomped across the patio and up the steps. The cigarette smoke had aired out of the kitchen, but he'd let the attack go on too long. He tripped and almost fell on the step on the way in, then fumbled in the drawer for the inhaler.

No inhaler. He'd used it up the day they'd used the adrenaline shot on Sarah.