Part 12

Quinn stopped to get some coffee at Kelly's. Humming as she stirred in the cream, she looked up to see Sean.

He had come down from upstairs. Quinn wondered what he was doing up there.

"I got a room upstairs," he said, as if he read her mind. He asked for a cup of coffee. "It's Emily's old room."

"You really like Emily, huh?" Quinn asked him.

"Of course."

"You were willing to move up here for her, Sean. You even have to take a test to continue in your job."

"Which I wouldn't do for you? I might have."

"I wasn't referring to that."

Sean smiled. "What do you see in this guy you're dating anyway? From Emily, I gather he's kind of strange."

"Strange?"

"Well, for instance, he never would tell her the simplest fact about his past or his family."

"I already know about all that, and why."

"She doesn't seem to have minded it," he said. "She insists she loved him."

"Be careful, Sean," Quinn advised him. "If you don't do everything her way, she drops you. And if her family doesn't like you, they tell her you did something wrong, and she drops you with no further questions. And that includes when she says she loves you. Love, as she puts it. Heck, she probably so-called loves you already."

"Nah," he said. "To tell you the truth, I think she loves Zander still. I can't understand why, but that's another question."

"Loves? No. Unless you are falling for her definition of love."

"I would like to talk to this Zander," Sean said. "He sounds unusual."

"I don't think he has the time to be part of your research into unusual personalities."

"Are you still racing cars?"

"Yes. What of it?"

"Just making conversation."

"Oh, so you're going to be my friend now."

"Why not?"

Quinn shrugged. "Suit yourself." She turned and left.

"Your grades are terrible, Emily," Sean said, looking at her report card, at the Quartermaine family breakfast, after he had politely asked if he could see it, and Emily had shrugged her shoulders.

"I know."

"If you want to get into law school - - "

"I know. I had a lot on my mind all year."

"Maybe you should cut back on your work hours."

"I like work better than studying."

"I really don't understand it," said Monica. "She was at the head of her high school class in her senior year."

"So she did well all through high school?"

"She did OK, but especially well her senior year," Monica said. "Which is a miracle, because of Zander."

"How does Zander reduce grades?" Sean asked.

Monica smiled. She liked Sean. "I guess he doesn't. You would think he would, though. Spending all that time with him and the high stress of getting oneself involved in his legal problems."

"Why was it stressful?" Emily asked, as if it had happened to someone other than herself. "Alexis was working on it. She told me what to do."

"Well, but you walked out with Zander when he got out of jail and got shot at. That could have happened any time."

"You got shot at?" Sean asked.

"No, they were shooting at Sonny, and Zander."

"So I take it you didn't get shot?"

"No, Zander did. But it was in the arm, and he recovered really quickly. Sonny got shot bad."

"Still, you're in a line of fire, and that's really got to be scary," Sean said. "That would scare me away from hanging out with somebody, if I thought someone was out there trying to shoot them."

"Is that how you'd treat your clients?" Emily asked him.

"Good one, Emily!" Sean said. "But then you'd have let Alexis be the one in the line of gunfire."

"She was there too."

"After that, much as we tried to get Emily to stay away, Zander was often in the line of fire," Monica continued. "He was to testify against the bigger fish."

"That'll do it," Sean surmised.

"We had to get a bodyguard. She gave him the slip. To go and be with Zander."

"Should have just gotten the bodyguard for Zander," Sean observed.

Monica stopped for a minute. "That's not a bad idea, Sean! I wish you'd been around then!"

Bernard Bach was ready to brain AJ. They were having a meeting at Bach's office at Baldwin & Baldwin.

"So you were taking her to Zander's but you don't know where Zander lives?"

"She would have told me where to go when we got to the end of Lake Road."

"I see. Since she had a headache, and she was tired, you were driving. But she was ready for another visit."

"Well, I didn't think she should drive, but that didn't mean she couldn't talk to Zander."

"You were willing to take her to talk to this Zander?"

"Why not? It wasn't such a hard thing to drop by. And I could always hope he wasn't home and then just get her to go home. Deal with Zander another day."

"This was important enough to leave a party for?"

"Sure. It was a whim of hers to go see Zander, and the party wasn't that big of a deal."

"Did Emily have a seat belt on?"

"No. I could kick myself for that. I just assumed she'd have the brains to put it on. I don't know what she could have been thinking."

Bach sighed. "Is she a smart girl, your sister?"

"Yes and no," AJ said. "Book smart, yes. As to the rest, not always. Take Zander, instance. She got involved in his problems. She finally gets herself out of it. Then she's here to be in a wedding, and rather than enjoy the party, when she hears something about his past came out, she wants to talk to him about it right then, even to leave a party. Shows me she's still attached to Zander. And she got involved with some other guy who didn't work out. Smart for academics. Dumb when it comes to her love life. I really worry about that. I hope she grows out of it."

"But you didn't talk her out of it, and even took her."

"Better to go with me than to go without me. I'm only her older brother. I don't have total control. She's over 18, anyway."

"OK. So you can't talk her out of going to see Zander, though she has too much of a headache to drive."

"It sounds odd," AJ said, "and Zander is the biggest headache there is. But we've always tried to get Emily to quit being interested. Breaking up with him doesn't do it, necessarily, I guess."