She felt scattered and depressed, sick of Power Matches, sick of herself and of everything that had once given her so much pride. She moved away from the buffet table and the disappearing woman. She had to pull herself together before the meeting Heath had set up for tomorrow morning. Why had he called it? Probably not to sing her praises. Well, she refused to lose this thing. Bodie said she was obsessed. Just tell Heath to go to hell. She’d tried to explain that failure bred failure, but Bodie had grown up in a trailer park, so some things didn’t compute with him.

She’d been trying with little success not to think about Bodie. They’d become creatures of the dark. For the past month, they’d seen each other several times a week, always at her place, always at night, a couple of sex-crazed vampires. Whenever Bodie suggested they go out to dinner or to a movie, she made an excuse. She could no more explain Bodie and his tattoos to her friends than she could explain the bizarre need she sometimes felt to parade him in front of everyone. It had to end. Any day now, she’d break it off.

Toni Duchette appeared at her elbow, fresh blond chunks in her short brown hair, fireplug figure stuffed into a black sequined number. “Did you bid on anything?”

“The watercolor.” Portia gestured toward a rip-off Berthe Morisot on the nearest table. “It’s perfect to hang over my dresser.”

She remembered the startled expression on Bodie’s face the first time he’d seen her extravagantly feminine bedroom. His outrageous masculinity should have looked ridiculous in her billowy white fairy princess bed, but seeing those sinewy muscles outlined against her silky ecru sheets, his shaved head denting her satin pillows, a frill of lace veiling the tattoos that banded his arm, had merely fueled her desire.

As Toni went on about the donations they’d received, Portia automatically scanned the room for interesting prospects, but this was an older crowd, and supporting the women’s shelter had never been about business for her. She couldn’t imagine anything worse than being under the power of an abusive man, and she’d given the shelter thousands of dollars over the years.

“The committee’s done a wonderful job,” Toni said, surveying the crowd. “Even Colleen Corbett showed up, and she hardly ever comes to these things anymore.” Colleen Corbett was a bastion of old Chicago society, seventy years old, and a former intimate of both Eppie Lederer, otherwise known as Ann Landers, and the late Sis Daley, wife of Boss Daley and mother of the current mayor. Portia had been trying to ingratiate herself with her for years without success.

When Toni finally moved away, Portia decided she’d try again to break through Colleen Corbett’s reserve. Tonight, Colleen wore one of her signature Chanel suits, this one peach with beige trim. Her permed and shellacked hairstyle hadn’t changed since her photos from the 1960s, except for its color, now a polished steel gray.