Knock Me Off My Feet (18 page)
"Don't move."
"Why
?"
"Because I don't want to do this."
"But I do." He moved a step closer.
"I'm not ready," she breathed. "Please."
"Not ready for what?"
"For you, Quinn." Once again she surveyed everything the man had to offer and she let out a little whimper. "All
of
you."
"You sure felt ready a minute ago."
"My body is. The rest of me isn't."
He stopped and brought a hand up to his forehead and rubbed furiously. "What are you doing to me, Audie?"
"Oh, God. I'm sorry. I don't mean to do this. I'm just scared, OK? I'm scared of you."
His eyes widened and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, aware that he might look a bit
…
damp. "Why in God's name are you scared of me?"
Audie stared at him, handsome and sexy and rumpled and hard as concrete. She closed her eyes.
"Because of who you are, everything you are, everything I feel—everything I'm not very experienced with." Audie's breath was coming in gulps and she dared to look at him again. "I need to be sure, OK? You're different, and I need to be sure. Can you give me one more chance to try to get ready for you?"
Quinn turned away and crumpled onto the couch. She watched him grind his palms against his closed eyes.
"Are you OK?"
"I'm fine."
"You're not hurt or anything?"
He laughed, letting his head fall back as his eyes swept over her from top to bottom. "Men aren't physically injured when we can't complete the act, you know. It's just something we tell women."
Audie put her hands on her hips. "I know. Like 'Size doesn't matter.'"
He chuckled. "Kind of like that."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
"Why are you being so nice about this, Quinn? If I were you, I'd be calling me names right now."
Quinn sat up and put his elbows on his knees, staring at her. "Now why in the world would I do that, Homey?" A grin appeared on his stricken face and Audie's heart melted. "See, I want to get in your pants—and stay there—in the worst possible way, so how would name-calling accomplish that?"
She could see his logic.
"I'll put up with a bit more torture if I have to. I've already decided you're worth the wait." The grin spread wider. "I'll just think of tonight as an appetizer—a nice juicy appetizer at a restaurant with real slow service."
She laughed. "I'm pretty tortured myself," she said, smiling down at him, acutely aware of the truth of that statement. She was wet, trembling, and aching inside for him to fill her, but despite all that, he'd just made her laugh! How did he do that? Did he have any idea what a lethal combination that was for her?
"Everything you need should be in the guest room, Quinn."
"Not quite everything."
"I'll see you in the morning, Detective." She wanted desperately to kiss him good night but remembered the good-night kiss on his deck and knew they'd be right back where they started. With a sigh, she headed down the hallway.
"Hey, Homey?" He saw her spin around.
"Yeah?"
"Can I ask you a question?" He peered around the end of the couch.
Audie laughed outright. "Quinn, at this point I think you can ask me anything, so stop asking if you can ask me and just ask me."
"Great." He smiled broadly. "I was wondering if you'd come see our pipe band play at CityFest next week, since you're going to be staying in town now."
Audie had to giggle at how cute he looked, peeking at her, obviously wanting her to say yes.
"Sure. I'd be delighted. Kilts and all, Stacey?"
"Kilts and all, Homey."
* * *
An hour later, Audie was still wide awake, trying to sort out why she'd just run away from what had promised to be
outstanding
sex.
Did she want a guarantee of some sort?
No, she wasn't stupid. There was no such thing as a guarantee.
Did she need to know him better?
No, not really. She knew he had a kind heart and respected her wishes, no matter how crazy they made him. She knew the things he'd told her that night took a lot of courage. Stacey Quinn was a good man.
Did she trust him?
Yes, she trusted him.
Did she trust herself?
Bingo—that was the issue right there. It was a foregone conclusion that they wouldn't last long. Nothing ever did.
It was just a matter of time before he'd want too much from her, before he'd expect something she couldn't give.
It was only a matter of time before she hurt him, and she really didn't want to hurt Stacey Quinn.
She liked him too much.
On the dock the other night, she told him she sucked at relationships, and it was the truth. She was giving him a chance to step away. But he didn't. He pulled her closer instead.
Why did he do that?
"I don't know the first thing about love," she whispered
in the dark. "You should have listened to me, Quinn!"
She flipped over on her stomach and groaned with frustration, because that's exactly what she was dealing with here—love—whether she wanted it or not. For the first time in her life, she was thinking of possibly, maybe, trying to love a man, not just have a sexual relationship with him.
And
that
was what scared her about Quinn.
At the same time, Quinn was lying awake in Audie's chic gray-and-white guest room, staring out from the platform bed to the dark windows and the darker sky, wondering just how much longer she'd make him wait. His body hurt. He still tasted her. Everything from the waist down was throbbing and hard and ready.
Above his waist, in the region of his heart, there was another sensation entirely—a warm one, one that made him smile, one that made him feel like something was locking into place. It felt like that night by the boathouse, when he opened his arms to Audie and she stepped inside.
Quinn knew he had a tendency to set the bar pretty high for himself—personally and professionally. And he knew he'd always had a clear idea in his head about what love would feel like when it came into his life.
He wanted what his parents had and he decided early on that he'd settle for nothing less. He wanted the kind of love that was beautiful and resilient and funny. He wanted passionate love. He wanted love that would challenge him, complete him, make him a better man.
So why was he suddenly wondering if he'd found that in Autumn Adams, a rich, WASPy Cubs fan in the middle of a vocational crisis? A woman who decorated her apartment in the Neo-Landfill style?
It was so outrageous that he almost laughed out loud.
Just then he heard her outside the bedroom door. He closed his eyes and lay still, his heart hammering, wondering what was going to happen next. Would she dive into this bed with him, already naked? Would she drag him into her bed, ripping off his clothes on the way?
Nothing happened. And Quinn waited.
Audie leaned up against the doorjamb and stared at him in the dim light. His holstered gun rested on the nightstand by his head. His face looked lean and smooth and strong in the shadows, his mouth pulled into a straight line in sleep. He had such beautiful bones at his brow, around his eyes—and she wanted to touch him there, touch that sweetness she saw in him.
His mouth began to twitch into a smile—a dream, she thought—and she saw the little boy in him again. She shook her head in surprise. All the way back to her room she thought to herself,
Stacey Quinn has taken me by surprise.
Later, when Quinn was satisfied she was asleep, he slipped into his holster and tiptoed across the football field of an apartment. He nearly broke his leg on the running shoes strewn in the middle of the hall, then stopped in front of her closed bedroom door.
He listened carefully, opened it without making a sound, and looked down at her.
She lay halfway on her stomach, the covers all twisted up and thrown
off,
which made complete sense to him. He remembered all the nervous energy he saw in her that first day. Of course she'd be the kind to toss and turn all night, but he'd find a way to live with that.
He smiled down at her. He'd pictured her in leopard skin, hadn't he? Well, here she was, wearing one of
Griffin
's old soccer jerseys, the name "Nash" in bold white letters across the back over a big number ten.
He saw a sliver of white panties where the shirt rose up over her bottom, the same little cotton things she'd worn earlier. No leopard skin there, either.
Quinn admired the long line of leg tucked up chastely in sleep, her thick wavy hair tousled out behind her head. She was so sexy and vulnerable that he had to hold his breath to suppress a sigh of contentment.
Damn, he wanted this woman. He wanted everything she could possibly give. And he startled himself with this next thought: Could Autumn Adams ever love him?
Eventually, he closed the door and leaned against the wall just outside, sinking down into a heap in the hallway. He let his head fall back, knowing there was a silly grin plastered on his face, and fell asleep.
* * *
In the morning, Audie woke up, opened her bedroom door, and tripped over something large. She banged her head on the opposite wall and started cussing.
Quinn had already pulled out his weapon and Audie went scrambling backward down the hall on her hands, like a frightened crab.
"God, Audie! You scared the shit out of me!"
"Me? You! You're pointing a gun at me! Put it away! What the hell are you doing in the hallway? Put away the gun!"
He holstered his weapon and groaned, rubbing a hand through his disheveled hair and over his scratchy beard, trying to calm his heart.
"I came to check on you last night."
She blinked at him and clambered to a stand, pulling down on her nightshirt, letting her pulse die down. "You were worried about me?"
"Yes."
OK, fine, Audie decided. He could be worried about her if he wanted. She'd find a way to live with that. She took a step forward and offered him her hand.
"Good morning, Quinn," she said, hoisting him to his feet. "Thanks for keeping me safe."
"My pleasure."
"And thanks for not shooting me."
"I aim to please."
Chapter 8
"
G
et the hell away from me with those things!"
Stanny-O backed off, returning the Frango Mints to his upper right desk drawer, eyeing his partner warily.
"All you had to do was say 'No thanks.'"
Quinn looked up at him, stupefied.
"No thanks?
I've been telling you 'No thanks' for four fuckin' years, and apparently you haven't heard it a single goddamned time because every
day
—every day,
Stan—you ask me if I want a mint and the answer is
no,
I don't want a mint. I don't like 'em and I never fuckin' will."
"Jeez, Quinn." Stanny-O shoved his hands in his pockets and stared hard at his partner. "Are you hammered?"
"What?"
"Well, excuse me, but you don't usually ramble on like this unless you've been drinking."
Quinn closed his eyes and said softly, "Of course I'm not drinking." Then his eyes flew wide and in a much louder voice he added: "But I'm gonna start slamming heads if you ask me one more time if I want a Frango-fucking-Mint!"
Stanny-O began to nod slowly and smoothed his fingertips along his goatee, letting the understanding settle over him. He sauntered over to Quinn's desk, taking a wide, cautious berth before he plopped down on the edge.
"Not getting any, eh, buddy?"
Quinn turned to him and glared.
"I take it she don't want to go there."
Quinn ignored him.
"She's a beautiful woman. Hell, she's fun, too, just wonderful. I think I'm in love with her myself." Stanny-O began chuckling. "Want some coffee?" He walked across the room to the coffee island and came back with two Styrofoam cups.
"You know, Quinn, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven the night Audie and me went for pizza after one of her games. There she was, sitting across from yours truly, easily the prettiest woman in the place—even in her uniform with her hair up all messy the way she wears it—and she had me laughing so hard at one point, telling me stories about what a crazy mo-fo Darren Billings was, I thought I was going to choke to death. I haven't laughed that hard with a woman in I don't know how long."
Stanny-O sighed. "Did she ever tell you about dating
Billings
, Quinn? Did she ever tell you what he used to do at the Popeye's drive-through?"
Still no reaction.
"Oh, well." He shrugged. "I'm sorry she's making you nuts."
Quinn grunted.
"I think she's perfect for you. I really do. And I know it must be really hard to be close to gettin' some but not really gettin' any, if you get what I mean. It's gotta be tough, buddy."
"Are you done yet, Stan?"
"No, I'm not
done,
Stacey. You're going to tell me what's going on."
"No, I'm not."
"Sure you are. You're my partner and this is our case and she's our responsibility. So you're going to tell me what's going on."
Quinn closed his eyes and wrestled with the fact that he was close to having a heart-to-heart with Stanley Oleskiewicz. He trusted the guy with his life every day, true enough, and knew he was in good hands—but his ego?
"She's driving me completely crazy."
"What's she doin'
?"
"Being Audie."
"I hear you."
"Being goofy and disorganized and sexy and tenderhearted. Being unable to tell a lie without falling over her own two feet. Being vulnerable." Quinn looked up to Stanny-O and frowned. "Did you request the Helen Adams files again?"
"Yeah. I got 'em. Kerr and McAffee should be here any minute." Stanny-O gave his partner a solid pat on the shoulder before he went back to his chair. "Rick Tinley's the uniform assigned to her until five," he said, tossing a stack of files to Quinn.
"Good. Tinley's a good guy."
"You going to keep doing the night shift?"
"As long as it's needed," Quinn said.
Stanny-O started snickering. "Can I just tell you what a privilege it is to know a man such as yourself—a man who can make that kind of personal sacrifice for the well-being of our fair city?"
"Blow me, Stan. Besides, you're on duty tonight until I get through with practice—probably ten-thirty or so."
"Yeah, I know. So, what's the deal—is she running around the apartment in one of those little
"Sorry, no. She sleeps in old soccer jerseys."
Stanny-O let go with a long and low whistle. "And I bet they don't got a number five on the back, no matter what you say."
Quinn looked up from the files, and for the first time that morning he felt himself smile. "You know what, Stan-My-Man? You're absolutely right—it's the number ten."
Stanny-O winked. "Told you."
* * *
Officer Rick Tinley was nice enough. He was about forty-five, soft-spoken, and had already shown her pictures of his three kids. But the idea of a policeman following her around made Audie terribly uneasy. Wasn't it supposed to have the opposite effect?
Audie was third in line at the coffee shop and kept glancing back at the officer as he leaned against the wall, nodding like one of those stupid wobbly-necked dogs in the back of a rusted-out car.
Good grief, she was bitchy this morning. Maybe once she got some caffeine in her system she'd mellow out. She rooted through her bag for some cash.
Tinley said he was on a diet and just wanted a medium house blend with skim milk, but Audie knew that only the big guns could handle her foul mood this morning. She scanned the menu on the wall until she saw the promise of deliverance—the double espresso mocha freeze grande.
She sighed. No, it wasn't hot sex with Quinn, but it
was
cold chocolate with whipped cream, and for now, it would have to do.
She was weighing the advantages of a carrot muffin over her usual cranberry biscotti when the man at the front of the line turned around with his order. It was Tim Burke.
"Well, good morning, Audie. What a pleasure this is!"
Revulsion slammed into her at the sight of him, and a chill traveled up her back. Rick Tinley instantly appeared at her elbow.
At that moment, Audie felt trapped. She imagined how good it would feel just to scream at both of them to
back off!
She saw the amusement flash through Tim's eyes as he smiled. "I'm glad to see that you're safe and sound. Bye now."
With a polite nod to the officer, Tim walked out onto
"This is nowhere near City Hall," Tinley said with disgust. "What's he doin' up here?"
Audie felt her heart pound and her stomach knot. With what she now knew about Tim, she couldn't bear to look at him! Was he following her? Was he dangerous?
The good part was that if Tim was threatening her, then Drew wasn't. That was a relief, right? So why didn't she feel relieved?
"He lives around here," Audie offered, still staring out the front windows.
"I'll let the detectives know about this little coincidence."
Just then, Audie realized she was glad Tinley was at her side.
She moved to the front of the line with a sigh and began to order. "Good morning. I need one medium house blend with skim only please, plus one banana nut muffin, one chocolate chip biscotti, and a double espresso mocha freeze grande. Oh—and if you could dump a big mound of those little chocolate shaving things on top of the whipped cream I'd really appreciate it."
To his credit, Rick Tinley said nothing. But his shoulders were shaking in silent laughter.
* * *
"Like I said on the phone, I don't got a crystal ball, Oleskiewicz." Detective Ted Kerr stood up from his seat at the conference table and stretched his hands toward the ceiling. "Unless you got one laying around in your fancy new office here that we can borrow."
Stanny-O shot Quinn an amused glance and slapped the files closed. He stacked them in the center of the table.
"And if you recall, Helen Adams was one of eight hundred and seventy-six homicides in the City of
Chicago
last year," Kerr added, leaning his hands on the back of the chair. "We did what we could, then moved on to something that stood a chance in hell of getting solved. You know the drill."
They knew it well, Quinn thought. Just like they knew that Helen Adams's file had already spent several months languishing in the cold-cases unit, where it had plenty of company.
"Like we told you on the phone, we didn't have shit on Homicide Helen." McAffee smiled, enjoying his own turn of phrase. "None of our street weasels knew a thing about it—just your basic wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time mystery—and public figure or not, we had to eat that case for lunch, despite all those god-awful editorials in the
Banner."
Quinn sighed. It was true that Helen Adams had made the quintessential easy target—an older lady, alone, at night.
He and Stanny-O had practically memorized these files by now, but they wanted this chance to meet face-to-face with the detectives who'd handled it, and so far, Quinn had no complaints with how they'd done their jobs.
The first cops on the scene had found Helen Adams sprawled out in an alley behind a warehouse on the Near West Side, barely alive. Robbery was the likely motive. Her purse had been ripped from her arm, and the bag and its contents were strewn on the asphalt around her. Any cash she'd carried was gone.
Her car keys were missing. A watch had been ripped from her wrist. Pierced earrings had been pulled from her earlobes and the little fourteen-karat gold clasps were found a few feet away on the concrete. Her Porsche was found the next day, parked along the
Chicago River
near the Merchandise Mart.
Autopsy results eventually showed blunt trauma to the back and side of the skull with what appeared to be pressure-treated wood. But the weapon was never recovered. There were no witnesses. No significant evidence was extracted from the car.
There were a few things that bothered Quinn about this case, however, besides the fact that the victim was Audie's mother.
First off, what the hell was a sixty-two-year-old woman doing in that neighborhood at night? The file said that earlier in the evening Helen Adams had had dinner with
Banner
CEO Malcolm Milton at Spago's on the Near North Side, and a number of witnesses saw them leave separately. But the security camera at Lakeside Pointe never recorded Helen arriving home that night.
So what had happened after the
tiramisu
and before the trauma unit? How did she get from point A to point B?
The four detectives had already discussed Quinn's main concern—a cell phone call Helen received a little after ten on her way home. It was the only loose end he could find in McAffee and Kerr's investigation.
They'd traced it to a pay phone near
Lincoln
and
Fullerton
, but it lasted just seconds and may have been a wrong number. They found no witnesses who recalled seeing anyone in the booth at that time. It was a dead end—and it bugged him.
Everything at the crime scene indicated she'd been attacked where she lay, and the Porsche was found without a scratch on it, not stolen or stripped, the keys in the ignition. Did the offender drive it there after attacking her? Did Helen leave the car there and drive off with the offender to the scene of the crime?
There were no self-defense wounds on Helen Adams—no marks on her palms or forearms and no material under her fingernails that would suggest she fought against anyone. That meant she went to that parking lot willingly and was surprised by the attack.
So what was she up to? Did someone set a trap for her? Who would want her dead?
Quinn knew they might never get the answers to these questions, because Helen Adams hadn't regained consciousness long enough to talk about the events of that night. The files said she managed a few words to her daughter on the way to surgery, then died.