“It’s more serious than that, Q,” Martin said angrily.

Quentin quickly looked around on the floor for something non-electronic that wouldn’t cause a fire when he ripped it up and threw it at Martin. Martin had no right to lecture Quentin about the band’s serious troubles.

Luckily, before Quentin could bust up more of his house, Martin was saying, “Okay. Love you, too. Bye.” He clicked the phone off and informed the others, “The Wookiee used the word imbroglio in conversation.”

“What does that mean?” Erin asked.

“She’s onto us,” Quentin said.

“It’ll be fine,” Erin said soothingly. “We’ll do the burly hick act.”

She was right, of course. They couldn’t turn on each other with this PR she-monster approaching. They had to face her head-on. Quentin turned the intercom to the control room back on just long enough to dismiss the technicians for the day. Then he stepped around the piano and over a mass of cables to huddle with the others. “Okay, we’ll show her that we’re tight-knit, so she’ll be satisfied that we’re not breaking up, and repulsive, so she’ll run screaming from the state and leave us alone.”

“Sounds like she doesn’t scare easily,” Owen said.

“Whose turn is it to get drunk?” Martin asked.

“It’s my turn,” Quentin said, “but you know me. I’ll blow our cover. Let me get drunk at something that doesn’t matter so much, like the Fourth of July concert. That means it’s Erin’s turn.”

Erin shook her head. “We were going to record ‘Barefoot and Pregnant’ tomorrow, Q. I don’t want to be hungover when I’m recording something with that much fiddle in it.”

“It’s for the greater good,” Quentin told her.

“It’s your turn,” she responded with more heat than he thought this issue deserved. “You can get a saline IV in the morning and be okay. I’ll be sick for two days.”

“Fine.” He shrugged.

“But don’t start laughing and crack us all up,” Owen warned him.

“I’m telling y’all,” Quentin said, “if I’m getting drunk, you have to be prepared for certain things.”

“And remember Rule Three,” Martin added.

“You think I’m going to sleep with the PR rep sent by the record company?” Quentin exclaimed. “She’s a Wookiee.”

“Let’s get to it,” Erin said impatiently. “I don’t think I have any alcohol in the house. Do y’all?”

“We have a six-pack,” Quentin said. “Not enough.”

“Do we have time to go to the store?” Owen asked.

Martin said, “She’d already left the Galleria when Rachel called.” He glanced at his watch. “Traffic’s died down. She’ll be here any minute.”

Quentin said, “Owen, take the Timberlanes home, and ask them if they have some liquor we can borrow. Martin, find cards and poker chips.”

Owen pulled the glass door of the sound booth, which didn’t budge. Mr. Timberlane rose from his seat in the control room in slow motion to open it. Then Owen followed Mr. and Mrs. Timberlane up the stairs at a glacial pace. Martin, in a show of forethought that had been rare for him lately, waited with his foot propping the broken door open until Quentin put his own foot in the space.

Quentin watched Martin climb the stairs, then turned to Erin, who was packing her fiddle away. “I’ll go put in my contacts.” He paused. “You should take your bra off.”

“You wish.” She sashayed toward him with her fiddle case. “If I take something off, everyone else does, too.” She snapped her fingers. “That’s it! Strip poker. That’ll scare this lady away.”

“Excellent,” he said, and kissed her forehead. Then, because they were alone now, he added, “Let me see them.”

Unperturbed, she batted her eyelashes at him.

“I can’t catch any kind of break today,” he said dejectedly, holding open the sound booth door until she walked under his arm, then mounting the steps to the kitchen after her. It really was disturbing. No one in the group was allowed to have sex with Erin—that was Rule Two. But she’d pretended to be his girlfriend on and off for the last two years. That had made for a lot of very pleasant PDA. Even in private, if he teased her and asked to see her br**sts like he used to when they were dating, she would at least flirt back. After Thailand, he’d told her to pretend to break up with him and choose Owen instead, but he hadn’t foreseen that she’d take her fake flirting with her.

They all met a few minutes later on the back patio in the evening heat. Quentin and Martin had taken off their shorts and thrown them in the pool, and Erin had stepped inside the house to take off her bra, by the time Owen arrived with a wooden crate he set on the outdoor table.

He pulled out a small box and tossed it to Quentin. Over-the-counter sinus medication, expired ten years ago. “Mrs. Timberlane is worried about your allergies,” Owen explained. Next came a dozen tomatoes from the Timberlanes’ garden. Finally, in the bottom of the crate, Owen reached several dusty bottles of tequila. “The Timberlanes took a trip to Mexico in the seventies.” He handed one of the bottles to Quentin. “Get started, Q.”

Quentin broke the seal on a bottle, unscrewed the top, took a swig, and grimaced. It was for the greater good, he reminded himself, but he hadn’t wanted to get drunk tonight. He’d wanted to have one beer, bake some bread, and retreat to his Fortress of Solitude to read the latest issue of Clinical Immunology and Allergy Today.

He was in for a long night.

2

Quentin’s a coke fiend, eh? That’s too bad. Well, thanks anyway for e-mailing his pic. First impression:

GOOD LORD.

Let me study it. Perhaps I was too hasty.

Okay, GOOD LORD.

Is that a stalk of straw in his mouth? O that I were this straw. Caution be damned, I might just let him sniff coke off my na**d belly. Though it would be a long line, because my belly is the size of Brooklyn.

Wendy Mann

Senior Consultant

Stargazer Public Relations

Sarah clicked her phone off and tucked it into her bag, shaking her head. Now in her ninth month of pregnancy, Wendy clearly felt the heat. There but for the grace of God go I, thought Sarah, telling herself she wasn’t jealous of Wendy.

Sarah had parked in the brick driveway of Quentin’s gorgeous old Spanish Colonial mansion. The rest of the group lived elsewhere in town. According to Manhattan Music, they were all staying with Quentin to record the album. In the past, Quentin’s girlfriend Erin would have moved in with him while the other two men stayed in the guesthouse out back. But now that Erin had switched boyfriends, she’d also switched residences, staying with the drummer in Quentin’s backyard. Judging from the look of Erin in her push-up bra on the album covers, the wonder was that the group hadn’t had more problems over the years, and that all three men hadn’t been tossing her around like a baseball.

Two enormous pickup trucks filled the mansion’s garage. A pink Native American dream catcher hung on the rearview mirror of a red Corvette, obviously Erin’s, pulled to one side of the driveway. Sarah wondered where the fourth vehicle was. Considering their behavior, one band member or another might have lost his license. But if that were the case, she would have known, because the event would have made the Cheatin’ Hearts Death Watch in the Birmingham newspaper.

Sarah had found out about the Death Watch through Rachel, who headed the Cheatin’ Hearts’ PR office. A tall African American woman with imposingly long dreads, Rachel looked the part of no-nonsense caretaker of the band’s reputation, such as it was. Something had been fishy about her protectiveness of her employers, though. She didn’t have much of a poker face. When Sarah had raised one eyebrow at her, she’d confessed that she and Martin had dated in the past.

And when Sarah asked Rachel to fill her in on recent events, Rachel very practically handed Sarah a scrapbook of the Cheatin’ Hearts Death Watch, which was more complete and informative than the dossier Stargazer could have compiled with any amount of digging. This feature of the newspaper’s entertainment section had started two years before, just as the band made the move from local favorite to national debut act. It had run weekly in the past, but more often lately because there was more material to work with.

Fistfights between the band members broke out on-stage with such regularity that some fans reportedly came to witness the violence rather than the billed attraction, as if it were a hockey game. Besides these events, the rundown for the year so far was this:

In January, Erin and Quentin broke up because he had an affair with the band’s manager. Quentin overdosed on co**ine—or went into shock after eating an almond, depending on whether you believed the press release—and stayed a day in an Oklahoma City ICU. The band had to reschedule a week’s worth of concert dates. Quentin and Erin got back together.

In February, the band embarked on months of overseas tour dates, with plenty of partying in between. Quentin and Erin broke up. Owen was shot in the shoulder in a bar fight in Crete, with more delayed concert dates. Quentin and Erin got back together. Quentin and Erin broke up. Martin was arrested for public indecency in Osaka. Quentin and Erin got back together.

In May, thankfully, the world tour ended before anyone was killed, and the band was scheduled to return to Birmingham to record their third album. Instead, they took a detour to the beach in Thailand. Quentin overdosed on coke again. Or had a life-threatening allergic reaction, whichever. This time he was kept alive on a ventilator for several days. His first act on emerging from the ICU was to fire the band’s manager.

Quentin had recovered sufficiently in time for the band to attend the Academy of Country Music Awards. Erin wore a tiara, a bikini, trashy high-heeled wedges, and a beauty contest sash printed with the band’s name in glitter. Arguably this was an improvement over her outfit the previous year, a dress from Target.

Last week, Erin had played a Mozart concerto with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra to benefit the Cheatin’ Hearts’ pediatric asthma and allergy foundation. Even the very worst spoiled stars had a children’s foundation, Sarah had grumbled to herself as she read this installment. And every computer-enhanced musician thought she could play with the orchestra. But apparently there really was some substance to Erin’s talent. Her concerto drew a sold-out crowd, earned her multiple standing ovations, and garnered local critical acclaim and amazement. Martin attended the performance—without Rachel, so they’d been apart at least since then. Quentin didn’t show. Later that night, Erin and Owen were spotted out together at a trendy restaurant, clearly together.

Then, two nights ago, as Martin and Quentin were escorted out of a local bar by police, Martin told reporters that the band probably wouldn’t make the July 1 deadline for recording their album, due to “malaise.”

But of course, after all the negative PR, even this hadn’t been the straw that had broken Manhattan Music’s back. It had been the phone call tipping them off that Quentin would quit the band, tearing apart this cash cow of a country supergroup, before they delivered their third album. Sarah was beginning to wonder whether the whistle-blower was Quentin himself, heartbroken by his friends’ betrayal, lost in a fog of drugs, desperate for help. She was determined to find out.

Steeling herself for her confrontation with the band, she gave herself one last experimental glare in the rearview mirror and stepped out of the convertible with her bag. Shouts and laughter drifted from behind the mansion. They knew she was here because she’d identified herself to an intercom at the gate. She stepped across the driveway, onto slate flagstones between lush plantings that bespoke money, around the side of the mansion, and into a back courtyard with a large pool.

“Welcome to the house of cards,” a man called to her from a table where the four band members sat. Then, “Ow! Who kicked me?”

Erin jumped up and hurried toward Sarah with a loud schlop of flip-flops. She wore the Daisy Dukes—that wasn’t just a costume for the album cover, apparently, but everyday wear—and a minuscule T-shirt with no bra for her ample bosom. And a necklace with a small diamond cross, which Sarah thought understated and strange for a redneck woman.

“Thanks so much for coming!” Erin exclaimed in a chipmunk voice, the high harmony for the group. Sarah could see why the men loved this blond, tiny-voiced, big-breasted girl. And she felt that familiar envy from high school, fresh as yesterday, of beauty queens who were easy with boys.

Erin tilted her head to one side, long blond ponytail curling around one breast. “We’re sorry you came all this way for nothing. Everything’s great with us. And as you saw when you met Rachel, we don’t need any help with publicity.”

“Erin,” Sarah said pointedly, “the only publicity the Cheatin’ Hearts have had this year is bad publicity.”

The three men, whom Sarah could see dimly through the dusk, guffawed and clapped appreciatively. One of them yelled, “Better than nothing!”

“I disagree,” Sarah called back.

Erin gave Sarah a cute pout. But Sarah thought she detected a calculating look in Erin’s blue eyes as she chirped, “Well, have a drink while you’re here! Quentin makes a mean margarita.” She drew Sarah by the hand to the table. “This is Quentin, and Owen, and Martin,” she said.

“I’m Sarah Seville.”

The men stared dumbfounded at Sarah. Her heart raced. She was used to meeting celebrities, but it was strange to study them all day, then finally meet them, larger-than-life. Especially stars as handsome as these. And after spending years as a mousy jock and only nine months as a sexy PR diva, she still got a small thrill from being gawked at.