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 album 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 sex, 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**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 lust 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 passed 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?”