“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 muffled 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 amusement 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 ass 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. Sexual relations with that woman,” he said in his Bill Clinton impression.

Owen said, “We all know by now that Clinton needed to define sexual 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 boobs? Come on! Erin won’t even let me look at her boobs. 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 screwing 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 pissed 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 album. 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 God. 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 hell 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 sex

My only question here would be, WHY NOT?

> because he’s still in love with her

Right. Damn.

> 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.

> orgasm in the shower. Not your run-of-the-mill “unh”-and-I’m-done orgasm, either. This orgasm extended for miles either way down the highway. They probably felt this thing in Tuscaloosa.

Wow, this is better than reality shows about rednecks.

> wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong

It’s not wrong. All you’ve ever had is Harold Fawn. You deserve some hot-boiled ’Bama love.

> what if I fell for him?

Oh, hell, Sarah, let him go down on you if he wants.

Wendy Mann

Senior Consultant

Stargazer Public Relations

Late that afternoon, Sarah drove Rachel and two new employees she’d hired to the photo shoot for the album cover at the statue of Vulcan. The Cheatin’ Hearts were already there, lying in lounge chairs in the bed of Quentin’s truck, watching the photographers set up their tripods around the wall at the base of the statue. Quentin jumped down from his truck and met Sarah at her car door.

He kissed her briefly, softly on the lips. “I missed you today.”

“I missed you, too.” She smiled up at him. This was the understatement of the year. Normally she loved the office work of her job, in which she dotted all the i’s, crossed all the t’s, made sure everything came together, and networked in a friendly way with the media. Even back when she thought she was in love with Harold, daydreams of him never distracted her from her job.

Quentin was a different story. Sarah had known she was good at multitasking, but she’d amazed even herself at her ability to give statements to the press about the band and the album release and the upcoming concert while simultaneously fantasizing about making Quentin come.

He glanced toward the new employees climbing out of the backseat of her BMW. “Since when do you give rides to the paparazzi?”

“The Cheatin’ Hearts’ star is still rising. After your concert, Rachel’s going to need more help. These ladies were hanging around at the bottom of your driveway, and they seemed perfect for the job, so I asked them to keep doing what they were doing but report your movements to me as well as the media. That’s how I knew you’d gone to the bar at Five Points with Martin the other night.”

Quentin’s eyes followed the women across the parking lot. “You hired the art school girls?”

Sarah laughed at his name for them. “They’re well qualified. They have lots of experience following you around. And Beige will graduate from college in August. Amber will, too, if she can manage to pass geology.”

In the same surprised tone, he asked, “Their names are Beige and Amber?”

“I thought it was weird, too, that they have such neutral names to go with their black garb. You’d think they’d be Drucella and . . . I don’t know.”

“Noir,” Quentin suggested. He drew Sarah by the hand toward his truck. Erin stood nearby, with a makeup artist touching up her lipstick. Owen and Martin still lay in chairs in the payload. Martin wore long sleeves in the heat.

Sarah looked back at her car and motioned for Rachel to join them. Rachel shook her head almost imperceptibly and sat on the hood of the BMW.

Quentin lifted Sarah onto the tailgate of his truck, hopped up beside her, and draped one heavy arm around her shoulders. “You look tired. You should have eaten breakfast.”

“I had the first course,” she whispered.

He gave her a lopsided smile, green eyes sparkling. “Maybe that’s why you’re tired.”

“Then I could get used to being tired.” She sighed with satisfaction.

He rubbed her arm. “I’m sorry. You’re tired because I woke you up in the middle of the night.”

“Don’t be sorry. I always have trouble sleeping. And anyway, how do you know I was awake? You were asleep.”

“I could feel you tossing and turning.” His voice softened. “I dreamed about you.” He wrapped both arms around her from behind.

She tried to enjoy it. Just drop all the schemes and worries and enjoy it for a moment: the hot sunshine, the fresh summer breeze slightly cool at this altitude, and Quentin’s protective embrace, almost as if he loved her. Of course, he didn’t love her, and fantasies aside, Natsuko insisted that Sarah keep this in mind.

And then he kissed the top of her head, absently, asking nothing in return. As if he loved her.

It was all for show, she reminded herself. For Erin, who watched them from a few yards away as one man pulled at her hair and another coated it with hairspray.

To distract herself so she wouldn’t cry, Sarah asked Quentin, “What’s the name of my album?”

Quentin said, “Buns of Steel.”

Sarah squinted up at Vulcan high on his pedestal. “I thought the statue was made of iron.”

“Buns of Iron ain’t funny,” he told her with exaggerated patience.

The crew moved away from Erin’s hair. “Your turn, Q,” she called from underneath her enormous coif.

“I’m not going to wear makeup,” Quentin said stubbornly. “We go through this every time. I won’t be facing the camera anyway. I have an idea.”

Erin looked apprehensive, Martin groaned, and Owen cursed.

Quentin released Sarah from his hug and slid off the tailgate. She noticed for the first time that his faded black T-shirt was emblazoned with white words: Will cook for sex.

Sarah said, “You dressed up for the cover shoot, I see.”

He looked down at his shirt, then back up at her. “I can honestly say that I gave it no thought whatsoever. Anyhow, I had some idea I might get na**d.”

“Naked?”

He took off his shirt.

“Quentin,” Sarah warned him.

“Bear with me.” The pun struck him, and he laughed so hard that he had difficulty unbuttoning his shorts. Between spasms, he said low enough that only Sarah could hear, “You want some more, don’t you.”

“Who could resist an ego like that?”

He dropped his shorts and boxers together.

“Quentin!” she gasped. “The park’s still open!”

“We got permission to be here,” he reminded her, kicking off his shoes. “Surely they expected something like this. Everybody in Birmingham knows we get na**d. It’s art, right?” He pointed to the art school girls for confirmation, and they nodded.

Erin called, “We’ve been arrested for public indecency so many times—”

Quentin finished, “We should set up the Jefferson County court system to debit our account.” He walked over to the photographers, who moved back ever so slightly. He pointed and framed with his hands, explaining his vision. Erin, Owen, and Martin went to sit on the retaining wall.

Then Quentin, with his back to Sarah and the photographers, struck a pose exactly like Vulcan, one arm raised to the sky. Sarah understood the picture now: Quentin as Vulcan in the foreground, his bandmates behind him on the wall, and the real Vulcan above them and in the background. The cameras flashed, and a ring of spectators began to form.

After a few minutes, Quentin relaxed and motioned to Owen. The two of them came toward the truck, Quentin still na**d. They opened the doors and rummaged in the cab.