Audie giggled. "Well, first off, I don't cook. You realize I don't cook, don't you?"

Quinn raised one eyebrow. "I saw the penicillin ranch in your refrigerator, woman."

She snickered. "Oh, yeah, there's that. But even if I did cook, I could easily leave the kitchen till the morning if you werestanding naked in front of my dishwasher."

"This is good to know," he said, taking another bite of salad. "It may ease your mind to know we'll never face that dilemma, because I always clean as I cook."

Audie's head popped up. "Huh?"

"Clean as I go along. I wash what I can while the food cooks and soak the rest after I serve. I put the utensils and measuring cups in the dishwasher. I clean off the counter. That way, when the meal's over, it only takes a few minutes and I can go enjoy myself with a clear conscience."

Audie stared at him. "Wow-I think I read about that in a Homey Helen column once."

Quinn laughed and enjoyed watching her eat for a moment. "I'm just curious, Audie, and I don't want to piss you off, but didn't any of this stuff ever rub off on you? I mean, didn't you ever see your mother do any of this around the house?"

Audie went very still, and Quinn wanted to kick himself for asking that. He didn't want her to be sad tonight. He wanted her to relax and have a good time.

She put her fork down and turned to him. "The truth is Helen didn't have much timefor me, even before she and Marjorie started the column. Everything had to be just so-the meals, decorating, cleaning, entertaining my dad's business partners-I always felt like I was in the way.

"Then when she started the column, she hired Mrs. Splawiniski to cook and a whole parade of cleaning ladies to do everything else, and I don't think my mother ever set foot in our kitchen again unless it was to oversee the latest remodeling project or give instructions to the caterers."

Quinn stopped chewing and stared at her.

"So the answer is no. My mother never taught me to cook and never showed me how to make people feel welcome because she didn't have the time-she was too busy telling the rest of the world how it was supposed to be done."

She picked up her fork again and took another bite of fish. "This has got to be the most delicious thing I've ever tasted in my life."

"Was there anything at all you liked about your mother?"

Audie stilled again, then shrugged. "I admired her for being a successful businesswoman. I admired her going for what she wanted in life."

Quinn leaned back in his chair and studied her. Though he thought he knew her fairly well by now, the initial question he had about Autumn Adams was still the one he couldn't answer-why didn't she just bag the Homey Helen routine and do what made her happy? Why didn't she go for what she wanted in her life?

"I've decided I'm not going to sign the syndication renewal, Quinn." She looked up at him, her toffee-brown eyes wide and hopeful. "I've decided to quit the column and try to go back to the Uptown Alternative School. What do you think?"

Quinn reached over for her hands and held them between his. "I think that's great."

"Really?"

"Really. I've been sitting here trying to figure out why the hell you haven't done it sooner."

Audie laughed softly. "Because I've been a wimp and a fool, Stacey."

"That's not-"

"It's true. I think I've been spending the last year trying to earn the love of a dead woman. Pretty pathetic, huh?"

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, it is pretty sorry."

"I meant I'm sorry you had to go through that." Quinn stroked her hands gently. "So why now? Is it the letters that made you finally decide?"

"No." She looked right at him. "It was you."

Quinn blinked his eyes as if he'd heard wrong, and his hands quieted. "Me? How do you figure?"

She wasn't sure if this was the time to say this. She wasn't sure if there would ever be a right time, because this was going to be another one of those firsts Quinn had mentioned.

"Because being with you these last few weeks has reminded me what it feels like to be happy. Now I want more, and I can tell you that being Homey Helen isn't the way to get it."

Quinn was watching her carefully, his eyes focused on her face, and Audie knew he was waiting for her to continue.

"And I realize that nothing I do is ever going to make her love me, because she's gone. If I want to be loved, I think I should stick with living people. The odds are better."

He pulled on her wrists. "Come here to me."

"The kitchen's not clean."

She landed with a thud against his chest, and his deep laughter rumbled through her. He leaned her back into the crook of his arm and kissed her, pressed her close, and he tasted like caramelized vinaigrette and sweet lust, and Audie was powerless against the slam of desire she felt for him.

"How much happiness and love do you think you can stand, woman?" His lips were on her throat and his hands were pulling her silk shell from the waistband of her running shorts.

"I couldn't begin to tell you, Quinn," she said through the giggles. "We'll just have to experiment." She began unbuttoning his shirt.

"I thought you said I was the most aggravating man you ever met in your life. So how can I make you happy?" His hands were sliding up and down the front of her blouse, and her nipples stiffened with each pass of his palms. He leaned forward and began to nibble at her through the slippery fabric, his mouth leaving little wet marks all over the front of her.

"Oh, God, that was weeks ago-now you just make me completely insane." She gasped. "Especially when you do that."

"We're going inside, Homey." Quinn stood up from the chair with Audie still attached to his lap and hurled open the kitchen door. She assumed they were headed for the bedroom, but she was wrong. Quinn set her down on the kitchen counter, right over the built-in dishwasher, right next to the sink full of soaking pots and pans.

"Here's another good reason to clean off the counter as you go," he said.

Audie started laughing, but Quinn's mouth was on hers and, as it often was with him, the line between laughter and bone-melting pleasure blurred. With him, they almost seemed to be the same thing.

"God, what are you doing, Quinn?" His hands were at her hips and he was pulling her running shorts and underwear out from under her.

"I want you naked in front of my dishwasher."

"I'm on top of the dishwasher."

"Same diff."Heyanked the blouse over her head, then the bra.

By the time he grabbed her legs and hooked them over his shoulders, his eyes were drilling into hers and his smile had grown completely wicked. Audie was nearly hyperventilating.

"How about whipped cream? Damn, I don't have any. Hold on."

"What do you have?" It occurred to Audie how bizarre it was to be chatting in this position, naked, sitting on top of a dishwasher, her legs flung over the shoulders of a man in an apron.

"How about some honey, honey?"

"Honey?" Audie let her head fall back because what she was imagining made her brain too heavy to hold upright. Then she felt him shift in front of her, heard him groan. She looked up, and he was opening the cabinet directly overhead. "Perfect."

Next, it occurred to her that despite the fact that she was thirty years old, she was about to have another first.

He crooked his arms beneath her legs and unscrewed the lid to the honey jar. She closed her eyes. Then she heard the utensil drawer slide out to her left and heard him grumbling as hesearched for something. A melon bailer? A garlic press? She tried not to think about it.

"Now we're cookin' with gas," Quinn muttered in his gravelly voice. Audie opened her eyes to see him dip a little wooden drizzler into the jar until it was heavy with slow-dripping honey.