The room was steamy and the shower vent still roared, which made it easier for him to sneak inside unheard. But she wasn’t in the bathroom. Wrapped in a bathrobe, she lay on the bed, facing the window, with her back to him.

He walked softly around the bed, aiming to startle her. He still wanted a little revenge for the phone to Owen’s nose and the jar of garam masala and, now, the copy of Clinical Immunology and Allergy Today.

She was curled in a ball, asleep. The morning sunlight streaming through the window lit her fair skin and glinted in her wet hair, still dark from her shower so there wasn’t much difference among the brown, blond, and pink strands. Fist under her cheek, she looked like a normal, beautiful girl. Except for the red scar under her chin, livid without makeup dabbed over it.

He longed to touch her soft cheek and caress her awake. But three enormous bouquets of flowers in vases on the dresser caught his attention. Several mornings ago he’d watched her run. It seemed strange to him that she’d nap instead at the same hour. The flowers might have something to do with it.

He stepped over to the first bouquet, blooms in vibrant colors. He found an envelope tucked among the stems and read the card, which he supposed was from Sarah’s pregnant friend.

You may be 30, but at least

you’re not knocked up.

Love, Wendy & Daniel

Ouch, her thirtieth birthday. That was rough for women. He was already planning to work a weeklong break into the tour on either side of Erin’s thirtieth birthday this fall so he wouldn’t have to be in the same state with her. No wonder Sarah had curled into the fetal position and given up on the day.

The second bouquet was two dozen red roses. The card for this one read,

Birthday wish granted.

Harold

Harold. Her ex-husband. Folded inside the card was a form. Glancing once at Sarah, who still breathed evenly, Quentin unfolded it. A copy of a divorce decree from a New York court, dated yesterday. Harold Fawn v. Sarah Seville.

Quentin stood for a full minute, staring at the paper, staring at the sleeping Sarah, going back to the paper. She’d told him yesterday that her husband had cheated on her when she said she wanted a baby. And that this was before she had pink hair and showed her cleavage. But Quentin simply couldn’t picture Sarah married to a jackass, no matter how she was dressed. She wouldn’t stand for it.

Would she?

He wondered how Rio fit into this.

Now he studied the third bouquet warily. If the messages got worse as he went down the dresser, he wasn’t sure he wanted to open the last one. The bouquet itself didn’t instill confidence. There were flowers, but they all seemed to have thorns, and some green stalks thrown in couldn’t have been anything but briars. And—was that a Venus flytrap? He reached for the card and withdrew his hand carefully, half expecting to be bitten.

Happy b-day

See you soon

Nine Lives

He detected movement out the corner of his eye and whirled around just in time to see Sarah, a terrified expression on her face, start toward him.

He backed away from her, toward the door. “Sarah,” he began in explanation.

He’d almost reached the door when she slapped his cheek with enough force to turn him around sideways. While he was still off balance and stunned, she pulled open the door and shoved him into the hall.

The door slammed. The dead bolt clicked.

He rubbed his stinging cheek, staring dumbfounded at her door. Then he crossed the hall and knocked.

There was a pause. She was breathing hard. “Who is it?” she called sarcastically.

“It’s your friendly neighborhood country music legend, Quentin Cox.” When she didn’t respond, he went on, “You may know me for hit songs like ‘Slap My Face and Slam the Door.’ ” Still there was no response but her breathing.

He backed a few paces away and sang a medium-tempo ballad at full volume:

Slap my face and slam the door.

You never done that way before.

I feel bad I scared you so

But now I don’t want to go.

I’m just standing in the hall

Singing to you through the wall.

You done shook me to the core.

Slap my face and slam the door.

As he sang, several hotel patrons down the hall peeked out of their rooms. When he finished, there was a smattering of applause. He tipped an imaginary hat. “Thank you very much,” he said in his Elvis impression.

The lock clicked open, and Sarah threw herself into his arms and buried her face against his chest. She said into his T-shirt, “I don’t recall hearing that song.”

“There’s always room for one more on your album.”

Without loosening her hold around him, she looked up into his eyes. “That was really good. I can’t believe you made that up standing here.”

He shrugged. “It ain’t brain surgery.” He stroked his hand through her wet locks. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Oh.” She seemed to realize only now that she was standing in the hotel hallway in her bathrobe with, he thought with pleasure, nothing on underneath. She pulled him into the room and closed the door.

“Why don’t you lock this from now on?” he asked as he turned the dead bolt. “In case the Grand Ole Opry comes calling unannounced.”

“Usually I’m careful,” she said. “I must have forgotten the last time. People kept knocking on the door this morning, bringing me ominous flowers.” She put a hand up to his cheek. “It’s really red. I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay. I’m used to it.” He laughed. “I have that effect on women. Though I have to say, Erin’s slap is more like a love pat next to yours. Yours will make a man think twice.”

She smiled guiltily. “How did you get a key?”

“You’re not the only one with connections,” he said mysteriously. “You’re always busting into my house unannounced, so I thought I’d return the favor. I didn’t mean to scare you that bad.” In turn, he put a hand to her chin, not quite touching her scar. “What happened to you in Rio?”

Predictably, she pulled away from him and closed herself in the bathroom. When she came back out, she wore a tank top and running shorts. And she’d regained her composure. Damn. He wondered what it would take for her to tell him what had spooked her in Rio.

He tried once more to throw her off. Sitting casually on her bed, he said, “So. You’re turning thirty, your divorce came through, and Nine Lives wants to see you.”

Her smile vanished. “You read the cards.”

“I did,” he admitted, “but I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known our relationship was this antagonistic.” Oops. He added, “Antagon—Is that a word?” Still she frowned at him, so he held out his arms for her. “Come here. You’ve had a bad enough morning.”

She collapsed onto the bed, put her head against his chest again, and allowed him to rub her back and to finger her damp hair. She wailed, “It’s not just that. Did they tell you what I said to Erin yesterday?”

He chuckled. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Do they all hate me?”

“No, but they think you went to a rough New York high school.” He didn’t believe she’d been to high school in New York at all, but he wanted to test her reaction.

“Rough track team,” she qualified.

He traced patterns on her smooth shoulder. “Erin gets mad, and sooner or later she gets over it. I’ve got a lot of experience with this. Anyway, right after you left, Martin told Erin that she’d met her match, and Erin got mad at Martin. Then Owen tried to jump between them, and Erin got mad at Owen. Then they all came downstairs to the studio and yelled at me. So you probably weren’t out of the driveway before we’d forgotten about you and were mad at each other, just like normal.”

Immediately he wanted to correct this statement. He certainly hadn’t forgotten about her. He’d hardly thought of anything else in the five days he’d known her. But he didn’t point this out, since he couldn’t do her. It was bad enough that he was sitting on her bed, marveling at how beautiful she looked with no makeup and wet hair.

Trying to appear unconcerned, he wove a blond section of her hair into a pink section as he asked her, “Is Nine Lives out of jail?”

Sounding utterly exhausted, she said into his chest, “Would you please go with me to buy a gun?”

“Sarah—” he started.

“I don’t want another of your lectures on gun safety. I won’t shoot it. Just go with me to pick one.”

“Sarah, hear me out, now. You are the poorest shot I’ve ever seen. Owen is a better shot than you, and Owen once shot his own hound dog.”

“Oh no! Was he okay?”

“Well, he was upset—”

“I meant the dog.”

“Oh. Sure. It just grazed him. But since you’re this poor a shot, and you want a gun this badly, I’d say you need to go to the police. Or tell me what happened in Rio, at the very least.”

“You’re right.” She sat up with a forced smile. “It’s not that bad. He’s probably still in jail. He could have had one of his employees send the flowers.”

This made sense to Quentin. But whether or not Nine Lives was out of jail, he wasn’t going away. He’d remembered Sarah’s birthday, and he’d bothered to send her flowers. Sooner or later, Sarah would be forced to deal with him again.

Quentin knew he’d tried too hard to get her to confess, and that she’d drawn way back, when she asked, “Why aren’t you working on my album?”

“We’re taking the day off,” he told her. “We’re going down to the lake, and you’re going with us.”

“The hell you’re taking the day off!” she said. “My album is due in two days. I’ve got a courier coming!”

“We’re almost done with it.” He reached out to play with her hair again, lacing a brown section into a pink section, despite the look she gave him. “You don’t want the last two cuts to stink, do you? We need to take a break and blow off steam today. We’ll work late tomorrow and be done with it in the afternoon of July first, easy, in plenty of time.” He shrugged. “The others have already left. Nothing we can do about it now. And it’s your birthday.”

She said grudgingly, “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

He gazed at her skeptically. “You just spent nine months in Rio and you don’t have a bathing suit?”

“Nine Lives got up when the sun went down.” She licked her lips as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. Then she brightened. “I know where I can get a bathing suit on our way out. Erin shops there for all her evening wear.”

“Great.” He rubbed his hands together. “Now I just need a place where I can get you a birthday present. You messed up this time, because if you were my girlfriend, you would’ve told me it was your birthday.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

He gave her a look.

“Okay, maybe I would.”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” he said knowingly. “Get your stuff together.” He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and headed into the hallway, dialing Mr. Timberlane, who would know the right jewelry store.

She followed him to the doorway. “Where are you going? What are you doing?”

“I’m ordering you a birthday present,” he said patiently. “What do you like? Diamonds? You seem like an emerald kind of girl.”

She blinked at him, taken aback. It almost made him sick to think that this Harold Fawn jackass never bought her anything.

She said, “Quentin, seriously, I can’t let you do that.”

“You would if you were my girlfriend.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

He gave her the look again.

“Okay, maybe I would.” She grinned.

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t fasten the dead bolt. I’ll let myself back in.”

9

En route to hospital. So far this is not the magical experience promised by all the books we read on childbirth, but I’m sure any second now I will have sunshine and rainbows streaming out of my vagina.

Wendy Mann

Senior Consultant

Stargazer Public Relations

“No working today,” Quentin demanded, reaching for Sarah’s phone.

“Keep your eyes on the road.” She exited her e-mail. “I’m not working. Just checking on my pregnant friend. Hey . . . ” She squinted at the truck pulling onto the highway in front of them. “Is that Owen? They must have been in Target, too.”

“They were. I wasn’t really interested in the Taylor Swift posters. I distracted you while they bought you some birthday presents.”

“Aren’t you busy.” This was one of her mother’s favorite derogatory phrases. She patted the big bench seat of his truck cab. “Looks like you were busy yesterday, too.”

“I was. We finished the big bad recording session in two takes, after all that hullabaloo, because I am so freaking good. And then I went to get my driver’s license. Do you want to see it?”

“I’d love to.” He handed her his wallet, and she examined his laughing photo. “This is the happiest driver’s license I’ve ever seen.” She handed it back to him. “And then you bought this . . . truck.”

“You don’t like my big-ass truck?” he asked in mock disappointment.

She turned to the rear window. “Why does it have a gun rack? You don’t carry rifles around.”