LITMIR.BIZ

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Selena said before she had to make introductions.

      Even so, in passing, Maxine gave Quinn the once-over as she did with all Selena’s dates, then flashed a thumbs-up.

      As if.

      How could Maxine see this man as anything but the thorn-in-her-side he’d become?

      She pushed Quinn through the downstairs doorway onto the sidewalk. “What’s going on?” he asked.

      The chill morning fog had yet to lift, and she wore nothing but a long-sleeved tee. To keep warm, she’d either have to jump up and down in front of Quinn like a woman gone mad or walk. “Let’s walk,” she said.

      “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

      “No!” She didn’t want to sit down anywhere with this guy. It would appear too normal. Dare she say too much like a first date? She wanted to hang onto the idea that he was, at most, a necessary evil. “A short walk’s all we’ll need.”

      “If you say so.” Without asking, he took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

      She didn’t want him to be thoughtful. And she certainly didn’t want him to smell good. As his jacket did. Of leather and sandalwood. She tried to shrink from the lining which still held the heat of his body.

      “Is this a bad time?” he asked.

      “Yes. No. I don’t know.” After Maxine’s appraisal, Selena was now all too conscious of Quinn’s looks. He was handsome in a brooding, tortured-hero sort of way. What the hell was going on? This guy had already reduced Axel to a tail-wagging zombie. Now he’d reduced her to a blithering idiot. She nearly ran into a busker setting up his boombox, laying down plywood and a tip jar, getting ready to dance for the Sunday morning brunch crowd.

      Jack observed Selena trotting erratically beside him and wondered what had her so on edge. “I know I should have called,” he said, “but I thought the DVD was important. It’s a documentary on the psychology of dogs. It shows the natural order of things in canine packs. I thought if you watched it with your son—if he got the information in a nonthreatening way—maybe he’d be willing to see what I have to offer.”

      When she didn’t speak, he added, “Axel isn’t a difficult case. We could take care of most of his issues with one session in the park. You saw how he responded just now in your apartment.”

      “Ah, yes, about that…what planet did you say you were from?”

      He felt a laugh begin in his chest. A strange sensation. “You need to watch the DVD, then I’ll answer all your questions at our next session.”

      “You seem certain there will be a next session.”

      He wasn’t certain. He was making it up as he went. To prolong the walk. With her. “It depends on Drew. Kids his age are usually fascinated with animals. Use the DVD to draw him into the process.”

      “So now you’re an expert on kids as well as dogs. Do you have any of your own? Kids, that is.”

      “No.” He didn’t want to get into the fact that he wasn’t sure he should have kids. He hadn’t had the best of father models. “Let’s just say I think both Drew and you really want what’s best for Axel…but neither of you wants to admit what you’ve been doing hasn’t worked out the way you’d like.”

      “Are you always so sure of yourself?”

      He could have asked her if she was always so defensive, but he didn’t want to risk driving her away. “I know dogs. And I’ve worked with enough dog owners to understand their reservations.”

      “Their reservations until they discover the ‘truth’?” She stopped and faced him, defiance making her eyes sparkle. “The ‘truth’ according to Jack Quinn?”

      Refusing to be baited, he stood his ground. “Watch the DVD. Then we’ll set up an appointment. I know Drew’s in school, but what’s your schedule like? Late afternoons or early evenings good for you?”

      She turned and headed back in the direction they’d just come. “My work schedule’s flexible.”

      “What do you do? If I know what my client does, I can often find a more relevant way to explain what I’m trying to accomplish.”

      “I’m an installation artist.” She said it as if she didn’t expect him to understand what that was.

      “Installations. Temporary works? Like those prayer cairns that appeared for a few weeks last summer on Baker Beach?”

      She stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes wide. The fog had formed minute droplets in her hair and on her eyelashes, making him think of a land of fairies and sprites and impish spells. She took his breath away.

      “D-did you have anything to do with them?” he asked, trying to regain his composure. “The cairns, I mean.”

      “Yes.” For the first time she looked at him with real interest. “You knew what they were?”

      “Sure. I’ve lived in Asia.” Though he’d been surprised to see the dozen or so piles of rocks at intervals along the San Francisco coast. They’d appeared as if by magic. Sticks anchored in the rocks bore pennants—scraps of cloth really—on which were written prayers, poems, quotations. There was nothing to explain them, but many people who saw them added to them. “I even tied on a few thoughts of my own. I liked the idea of good vibrations being swept across the entire country on the wind.”

      Her expression was nothing short of dumbfounded.

      “Although I work with animals,” he said, “I don’t live in a cave.”

      For a fleeting moment, she seemed embarrassed. Or guilty. “Most people’s first thought when they hear installation art is dying a river green on St. Patrick’s day.”

      “What do you tell people like that?”

      “I tell them, no, it’s more like getting the sea lions to lounge in the sun on Pier 39,” she said, her tone biting.

      “I would think that’s performance art,” he replied, unable to resist the urge to needle her a little.

      “You know the difference?”

      “It’s not a hard distinction to make. But I do have an aunt who’s an art historian. You need to cut most people more slack, though. It’s not as if your occupation’s an easy one to grasp at first.”

      She stared hard at him as if she didn’t quite know how to take him.

      “Do you have anything around the city now?” he asked.

      “Actually, I do. The owner of Tryst, the new restaurant in SOMA, asked me for a sidewalk installation. He wanted someone dining inside a Plexiglas cubicle, twenty-four/seven. I told him with a name like Tryst, his restaurant deserved something more subtle. More mysterious.”

      “So what did you come up with?”

      “A visual novella, so to speak. I used the cubicle and put a table and two chairs inside.” As she spoke, an unabashed enthusiasm lit her features, clearing away all wariness. “The next day a glass of wine and a woman’s handbag appeared at one place. The day after that, a second glass of wine and a man’s umbrella hooked over the other chair. Yesterday some grainy photos appeared thrown on the table. Looked like a private eye might have taken them with a telephoto lens. A man and woman caught in the act. Tomorrow the butt of a revolver will appear from the woman’s handbag. The man’s chair will be tipped over. Tuesday police tape will appear around the cubicle. And by Wednesday, the whole thing will have disappeared.”

      He laughed aloud.

      “I am having fun with that one although I have to make the changes in the dead of night.”

      “Alone?” He suddenly felt protective.

      “No. There’s no shortage of art students in the

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