KNOCK ME OFF MY FEET

  She reached for the coleslaw. "I didn't think it was a big deal. Griffin finally convinced me to call the police."

  Russell chuckled. "Ah, yes, Griffin Nash—your adviser and moral compass."

  "At least I have one," she snapped.

  He smiled sadly. "Bye, Audie. I'll call you next week to remind you about the contract."

  "Later," she said, not looking up.

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  August 27

  Dear Homey Helen:

  Have you ever noticed how some stains just never come out, no matter how hard you scrub? I think you owe your readers the truth. I think you should tell them that not everything can be made nice and tidy, that some things never come out right—in the wash or in life.

  Perhaps I'm just bitter.

  Fondly,

  Your most loyal fan.

  PS: I so enjoyed your tip on how to remove furniture indentations from deep pile carpet.

  "At home? This came to your home address?" Quinn's frown lines deepened as he went from Audie's face to Stanny-O's.

  "It was in my mailbox last night."

  "Why didn't you call me?"

  "I … uh, you were off duty."

  "You've got my card. You call me anytime, all right?" Quinn made sure she saw that he meant it.

  She nodded.

  "I don't get it." Stanny-O rose from his desk and held an open box of candy under Audie's nose. "The guy threatens to drop you in the Bass-O-Matic with the last letter, then gets all philosophical about it in this one. Care for a mint?"

  "Wow! Yes!" She grabbed a Frango Mint and tossed it in her mouth, feeling the chocolate melt on the back of her tongue.

  "Another?"

  "Sure! Thanks, Stanny-O." She smiled at him until she saw the surprise in his small blue eyes. "I'm sorry, Detective. I heard Quinn call you that."

  "Ah, no problem, Audie." He grinned at her. "One more?"

  She nodded happily and snapped another mint from the box. Stanny-O seemed quite pleased with himself.

  "Hey, Willy Wonka, any report from the state police lab yet?" Quinn asked.

  "Yeah. All of them are off a midline ink-jet printer, nothing fancy, nothing high-powered. Like from a home office kind of setup, one of the major brands. Nothing unusual that would make it traceable."

  Quinn nodded. "And where are we on fingerprints?"

  Stanny-O looked down at a page of handwritten notes. "Griffin Nash, Marjorie Stoddard, Audie here, we got Tim Burke's on file, along with Will Dalton, Kyle Singer, and Darren Billings, who apparently ran with a bad crowd as a juvenile. And we had Mr. Russell Ketchum come in. He didn't like getting his hands dirty, by the way."

  "Little late for that," Audie mumbled to herself.

  Quinn heard her and raised his eyebrows in amusement. "We had a nice long visit with Mr. Ketchum last evening," he said.

  "You going to arrest him?" Audie looked hopeful.

  "Nah," Stanny-O said. "Being an asshole lawyer isn't a chargeable offense last time I looked. Besides, we can't seem to come up with a reason he'd do this. I mean, what would Russell Ketchum have to gain if you got scared and quit the family business?"

  Audie looked at both the detectives. "Nothing. He'd actually lose quite a bit, personally and for the law firm. Homey Helen has always been one of their biggest cash cows."

  "Exactly," Stanny-O said. "So, we'll put him on the back burner."

  "Thanks for bringing this in," Quinn said, placing the latest note inside a manila envelope. He rose off his desktop and cupped her elbow. "I'll walk you to your car, OK?"

  "Sure—" Quinn was already hustling her across the room, his palm now flat against the small of her back. "Bye, Stanny-O."

  "See ya," he replied.

  Quinn spotted her Carrera 911 in the parking lot without much trouble, and they walked together toward the car. He put his hand on her upper arm as she opened the driver's side door.

  "What are your plans today?" Quinn asked.

  Audie shrugged a little. "Stuff at the office. I thought I'd go for a run this afternoon after lunch. Then I've got a book signing and talk at the Newberry Library tonight."

  "Where do you run?"

  She pursed her lips. "Lincoln Park. Why?"

  "Today you've got a partner."

  "Quinn, I don't think—"

  He very softly brushed his knuckles across her cheek, and the jolt of his touch made her eyes fly wide.

  "He knows where you live, Audie, and my commander doesn't want another Homey Helen getting hurt on our watch—bad for the city's image and all. End of discussion."

  He dropped his hand, but the whole side of Audie's face tingled. She looked into green eyes filled with determination—and concern—and she sighed.

  "Am I right in assuming that if I tell you to go to hell you'll just follow me anyway?"

  Quinn smiled and nodded.

  "Meet me at three o'clock at the main entrance to Lakeside Pointe, then. I usually do a loop up to Montrose Harbor and back, sometimes wander through Lincoln Park Zoo, about ten miles or so. Can you handle that?"

  "I can handle it." He let his fingers barely graze the top of her hand and whispered, "See you then."

  * * *

  He was precisely on time, appearing from behind a massive black marble pillar, already grinning.

  "Do you need to stretch?" she asked him.

  Quinn tried not to look at her below the neck, and God, it wasn't easy.

  "Already did. You?"

  "I'm ready. Let me know if you can't keep up." She shot him a smile.

  They took off side by side down the paved pathway, through the green ribbon of public parkland along Lake Michigan. This afternoon, the water shimmered in the sunlight and absorbed the blue of a cloudless sky. It was hot but less oppressive than the last few days had been.

  Once they'd hit a comfortable pace together, Quinn decided he'd risk looking at her. She wore a pair of high-cut running shorts and a torso-length black sports bra. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She had nice wide shoulders. And her legs were muscular and trim—the legs of an athlete.

  "I like running with you better than running after you," he said.

  "Yeah, but I bet it's harder to look at my butt this way." She kept her eyes in front.

  "Maybe you should be a detective," Quinn mumbled.

  The lakefront was crowded that day, and a steady parade of cyclists, joggers, skaters, and walkers streamed by.

  "Do you play any sports, Quinn?"

  "Hoops now and then. Pickup hockey. A little soccer with the guys in the neighborhood."

  "Where do you live?

  "Well." Quinn fell behind her for a moment to let a group run by, then returned to her side. "I live on the North Side now, but I meant the neighborhood where I grew up."

  "And where's that?" She glanced over at him. He wasn't even breaking a sweat.

  "Beverly. You've probably never even heard of it."

  "Sure I have. The stronghold of the Irish South Side. Nineteenth Ward. Alderman Paul Ryan."

  Quinn looked at her in shock before it dawned on him. "Oh, yeah, Timmy Burke. How could I have forgotten?"

  She grinned at him. "He talked about it sometimes. So how long have you two known each other?"

  "Too long. We grew up about a block apart and went to school together, from kindergarten all the way through Brother Rice."

  Quinn dropped back again to avoid a bicyclist.

  "Having trouble keeping up, Detective?" She increased her pace a bit.

  "I'll let you know, Homey."

  Audie's head whipped around and she laughed outright. "Homey? That's funny, Stacey."

  "Point taken," he said. Suddenly Quinn darted around a dog walker and took off a bit faster. Audie pulled up alongside.

  "Are we racing, Quinn?"

  "Nope. Just out for a nice jog."

  Quinn tugged at the neck of his Police Athletic League T-shirt and jerked it forward over hi
s head with one hand. The gesture struck Audie as an overtly macho thing to do, and as he tucked the shirt inside the back of his running shorts she tried not to look at him below the neck. God, it was hard.

  "Don't you worry about skin cancer?" Audie asked. "You're very fair."

  "All the time. I wear SPF thirty."

  She cast him a sideways glance. He was a soft peach color and covered with pale freckles and light brown body hair. He was lean and hard and she could see the ripple of muscle through his back and shoulders. His upper arms looked powerful. "So how Irish are you, Quinn? Your grandparents or something?"

  He laughed and caught her eye. "Them, too. But Da and my mother were both born there. They came over in the sixties. I'm first-generation."

  "Oh, I see."

  "Do you now?"

  Audie chuckled. "No, not really. I don't know much about Ireland. I suppose you're Catholic?"

  "I suppose I am. You got something against Papists?"

  She blew out air. "No. Are you trying me make me hit you again or something?"

  He laughed. "Just making conversation. How about you? My guess would be Presbyterian."

  Her mouth fell open and she glared at him. "Why do you say that?" Was it her imagination, or had he just kicked up the pace?

  "Well, there's growing up rich in Winnetka. The name Adams. The general upscale North Shore WASP thing you have going on."

  "Upscale North Shore WASP thing?" She huffed. "That's pretty insulting, Stacey. If you must know, I'm nothing, really, but my parents were married in the Presbyterian Church. Don't tell me you're prejudiced against Presbyterians?"

  This time it wasn't her imagination—he'd just sped up again.

  "I've got nothing against Presbyterians in particular, just Protestants in general."

  She narrowed her eyes at him and shook her head. "You're mocking me."

  It was a marvel to her how slowly his grin spread and how much smug sexuality was conveyed in the gradual curl of his lips. "I'm just playing with you, Homey. It seems you've got a fine sense of humor for a Protestant girl."

  She rolled her eyes and made a break for it, turning on the heat now. She began to weave and pivot through the crowd of people, skateboards, scooters, bikes, and dogs, leaving Quinn in the dust. It served the cocky bastard right.

  Then he ran right by her.

  As she chased him, Audie knew she was being childish. She knew he was teasing her, testing her. She realized she should just turn around and have a nice, peaceful, quiet run home. She didn't need this aggravation.

  But instead, she focused on the white T-shirt bobbing along his compact, muscular butt and the really nice set of his shoulders and poured it on.

  Just as she reached him, he slowed considerably, and Audie had to twist sideways to avoid slamming into him.

  "You're very graceful, Homey. And fast. You play a mean forward, too."

  Again he surprised her. A compliment—several of them in a row, in fact.

  "Thanks. You're pretty fast yourself." Audie was sweating up a storm now and she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.

  "Here." Quinn tossed the shirt to her and she mopped her face with it. The clean, bracing scent of him nearly made her topple over. She slowed almost to a walk and raised the shirt to her face once more before she tossed it back to him.

  "I'd like to talk to your brother sometime soon," Quinn said.

  Audie stopped dead. "Drew? Why? You think he's writing the notes?" She placed her hands on her knees and leaned forward, catching her breath. "That's ridiculous."

  Quinn grabbed her arm suddenly, pulling her off the pathway before she was flattened by a kid on Rollerblades.

  They stood in the grass staring at each other, breathing fast. They'd been sprinting for quite a distance.

  "Not necessarily, but I need to check it out."

  She nodded, swallowing hard, staring at the muscles in Quinn's chest and his little pale pink nipples. "Drew wouldn't do something like that," she breathed, letting her eyes travel down Quinn's rippled abdomen and then out over the lake, anywhere but at that body! "Anyway, there have been, what, eighteen letters now?" She let out a laugh. "Andrew Adams is incapable of that kind of scheme, Quinn. It would mean coming up with a plan and sticking to it—you know, commitment. Not his strong point."

  Quinn took her hand and they walked together across the grass, toward the water, and Audie stared at his striking profile. This man left her bewildered. In a span of thirty minutes, Stacey Quinn had insulted her, aggravated her, mocked her, complimented her, made her laugh, and saved her from harm.

  And now he cradled her hand with such tenderness that she couldn't bring herself to pull away. In fact, she found herself moving closer to his side.

  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.