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What was he doing to her?
Qui
"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."
Qui
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, Qui
She was ru
"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 ru
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 Qui
Qui
"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, Qui
"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… " Qui
"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 Qui
"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."
Qui
"I got two bathrooms," she said, a hint of challenge in her voice. "And forty-five minutes."
It was ten till seven, and Qui
Qui
"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.