What was he doing to her?

Quinn faced her then, the sun behind him turning him into gold, and he smiled. "You really are extraordinarily beautiful, Audie-for a Cubs fan."

"Ha!" She stood in front of him, smiling back. "And you're the most aggravating man I've ever met in my life."

He thought about that for a moment, exploring her face with his eyes. "Would you believe me if I said I don't mean to aggravate you?"

"Hell, no."

Quinn leaned his head back and roared, and the gesture reminded her of the family photo she had seen on his desk.

She wondered what it was like to grow up in a family like his, where people laughed and smiled and threw their arms carelessly around one another, sure that they were loved.

As if he read her mind, Quinn draped an arm loosely over her shoulder. "My brothers would love you. What do you say we go see the lions, Homey?"

She was running late. They shouldn't have stopped for ice-cream cones near Lincoln Park Zoo. They shouldn't have sat under the tree and talked as long as they did. Now it was after six o'clock, and she still had to get showered and change into the Homey Helen uniform and get to the library in less than an hour.

"Can you wait while I get my clothes out of the car?"

Audie cocked her head at him, confused. "What? Your car-?"

"It's in a visitor space in the garage. I'll get a shower at your place and go with you to the book signing."

She closed her eyes to gather her patience.

"Three minutes," he said, already running off to the garage elevator, leaving Audie standing at the building's lakefront entrance, a bit confused.

She turned and stared at the water, dotted with after-work sailboats, and suddenly longed to be out on the family's forty-three-foot cutter. Alone in the wind. Alone where there were no threatening letters, no contracts, no book signings, no South Side Irish detectives who made her crazy.

He was so easy to talk to. She'd told him more in the last few hours than she'd shared with Griffin in the last ten years-and it scared her. She was a private person. She knew she could talk a lightning streak, but it was usually surface things. She didn't open up very easily. Yet she had with him.

"So what's the story on the column, Audie? How did you get where you are?"

He'd asked her that as they lolled in the shade just outside the zoo, licking their ice-cream cones. Seeing him apply his tongue and lips to the creamy white concoction had caused her insides to flip, and all she could think about was that wild kiss on the sidewalk. She'd probably think about that kiss for the rest of her life.

"You know how my mom died?" Audie had asked him.

He nodded, holding her gaze. "I certainly do. I know the guys that handled her homicide."

"Oh, of course," she said sadly. "Well, we'd never talked about the column, because I guess everyone just assumed Helen Adams would live forever. She was only sixty-two, still very energetic and busy-and fabulous, of course." Audie smiled a little.

"And then Marjorie called me that night to tell me she'd been mugged and beaten. So I get to see her on her way to surgery and she looks like she's dead already-she didn't even look like my mother. Her hair was all sticking up and her skin was gray and… " Audie closed her eyes for a moment.

"She made me promise I'd do it. She made me swear to her that I'd take over the column. We'd never even discussed it before, but, well, I agreed because I thought she'd get better and it wouldn't be an issue."

Audie looked up at Quinn and blinked. "Then she died. And poof-I'm Homey Helen."

Quinn was crunching on the sugar cone now, still watching her carefully. A thin trickle of ice cream slipped from the point of the cone and ran down his wrist. Audie watched him scoop it up with the tip of his tongue, and little black spots began to dance in her vision.

"Why would she ask you to do that? Didn't she know-?"

"That I'm a spaz?"

He frowned at her. "That the column wasn't something you were particularly interested in."

Audie chuckled and finished up her own ice cream before it liquefied in the heat. "What I wanted wasn't part of the equation. Never really was," she said, munching her cone.

Before she realized what was happening, Quinn leaned forward and licked softly at her forearm, removing a wayward pearl of melting ice cream from the fine hairs there. Audie gasped.

"So what happened with the estate?" he asked nonchalantly, as if his warm tongue hadn't just raked over her skin.

Audie blinked, trying to recover her composure. "Uh, I got the apartment, the syndication contract, the office… " He was licking his lips and smiling at her, which was completely unfair. "… the Porsche, and half of everything my mother and father had accumulated. Drew got the house on Sheridan Road, the summer house in Door County, the sailboat… " Quinn gently sucked on each of his fingers, never taking his eyes off hers. "… and the rest of the cash." She let out a breath when she finished.

"So how much has your brother managed to lose in the last year?"

Audie snorted. "A lot of it. I don't know how bad it is, really, but if you think he wants to do the column, you're way off base."

"OK. Why's that?"

It was her turn to grin. "I think that will become obvious when you go talk to him."

"Fair enough."

Audie lay back in the grass and Quinn propped himself up on his elbow to gaze down at her.

"How long do you plan on keeping this up? How much longer can you do this?"

His words were hushed now, and the rough, musical quality came back to his voice. She liked that sound very much, and her eyes automatically followed it, entranced.

"I'm not sure," she said. In the afternoon light, she could see the fine lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. Those remarkable olive-and-gold eyes looked right through her. "I'm supposed to be signing a new contract within the month."

"And?"

"We really need to be heading back."

Quinn returned from the parking garage and came up behind her. She spun around to see that he had a garment bag slung over his shoulder and that he stood very close.

"I got two bathrooms," she said, a hint of challenge in her voice. "And forty-five minutes."

It was ten till seven, and Quinn waited patiently in Audie's living room, looking out the massive glass wall to the blue expanse of lake, the long stretch of city, and the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier. It was so clear this evening that he could see the Indiana Dunes and the pale silhouette of the Michigan shoreline.

Quinn had been ready for a while now, but he could still hear Audie cussing and bumping into things at the other end of the huge apartment.

"Oh, crap! Hell!"

He smiled to himself again. So this was Homey Helen's abode. He wondered if the original Helen was flopping around in her grave like a mackerel.

It wasn't filthy. In fact, the guest bathroom was spotless, probably because it was never used. But the rest of the apartment was in a state of utter disarray.

Newspapers, magazines, books, and sweat socks were scattered on tables. A half-filled microwave popcorn bag had toppled over on the expensive Italian couch, leaving oily streaks on the leather. He'd seen how three soccer balls had rolled to a stop in odd places, like in front of the stove. He couldn't imagine the ball was in the way since the kitchen obviously wasn't used for much-there was nothing in the refrigerator but bottled water, a jar of jalapeño peppers, and what appeared to be some kind of shriveled moss-covered ball that may have once been a citrus fruit.