TAKE A CHANCE ON ME

  "Well, Emma, I think I'm suffering from a lack of something in my life."

  "Really?" Emma's eyes widened. "Iron? B-twelve?" It damn sure wasn't testosterone.

  One side of Thomas's mouth hitched up, creating a deep dimple in his cheek again. He cocked an eyebrow. "You're cute, too."

  "Oh, gee, thanks."

  God. She needed to regain her ability to think. And though it had occurred to her that she could easily clasp her arms around his neck, fling her legs around his waist, and slurp him up right there on the basement steps, the idea wasn't all that practical. Beckett and Leelee were home and the steps were rickety.

  "I'll meet you on the front porch in a few minutes." She turned and ran while she still could.

  As Thomas watched her voluptuous backside bounce up the steps, the appreciation he felt for Emma Jenkins slammed into him on all possible levels of consciousness.

  Physical? Oh, hell, yeah—he wanted her, sweaty and naked right here on the stairs, right now and forever, his hands all over that ass of hers, his mouth all over her farmgirl skin.

  Emotional? Yes, unbelievably so. It was nearly as strong as the hunger in his body and he didn't quite know how it had happened. But it seemed final somehow. Predetermined. Like walking into a stranger's house and knowing you were going to live there one day.

  Intellectual? His mind had never clicked into place like this with a woman—not even Nina. Nor had he ever enjoyed talking to a woman as much. So, okay—that, too.

  Metaphysical? Spiritual? Sure, why the hell not? If he was going down, he might as well go down in a giant ball of flame, so why not admit that he had felt the unseen hand of destiny the day he walked into her clinic? Weirder things had happened.

  There was only one thing he wasn't sure of. He'd have to ask sooner or later, wouldn't he? It was for his protection, and, ultimately, hers.

  "Hey, Emma?"

  She turned around at the top step, her face flushed and beautiful and her chest rising hard and fast beneath the misbuttoned pajama top. "Yeah?"

  "What were you playing just now?" He inclined his head toward the drums.

  "Foo Fighters—an offshoot of Nirvana." She saw the blank look on his face and smiled down at him. "Alternative rock."

  "Are they a top-forty group?"

  She shook her head, a bit bewildered by his question. "I don't think—but I don't listen to top-forty music."

  Emma watched as he shoved his hands deep into the front pockets of his jeans, locked his eyes with hers, and let go with the sweetest, most heart-throttling smile she'd ever seen.

  "Hurry up in the shower," he said.

  * * *

  Chapter 9

  More, More, More

  « ^ »

  "My customary fee is two hundred dollars an hour."

  Thomas felt his right eye twitch—dear God, he'd forgotten about money—and he could just picture Stephano's reaction when he got a load of that requisition form.

  He gave a businesslike nod. "Of course. I'll arrange for a professional consulting fee."

  Emma's face scrunched up and Thomas watched her nervously fluff her still-wet hair. They'd been sitting on the porch railing for half an hour or more, but her thick hair had yet to dry in the humid air, and slick sections gleamed in the light from the citronella candle between them.

  "I don't mean to sound like a jerk about this, but I'll need a written consulting agreement with the state police that specifies how and what I'll be paid."

  "You drive a hard bargain, Doctor."

  He watched her caress the shock of white fur on Hairy's head. The dog was curled up in the space between her legs, snuggled into the folds of her loose skirt—damn mutant always got the best seat in the house.

  "It's just that Aaron left me so much debt." She looked up at Thomas, her eyes full of worry and embarrassment. "Our practice—my practice—is on rocky footing right now. My time and expertise are my only capital and—"

  "No need to explain, Emma. You're a professional. I need your help. We'll do it right—I wouldn't want this any other way."

  Emma sighed, then flashed Thomas a smile that was part relief and part just plain gorgeous. She was just plain gorgeous.

  She'd come out on the porch wearing this gauzy sundress thing with little straps, and Thomas had been unable to stop staring at her elegant neck and the dainty collar-bones beneath the flawless skin. She was such an interesting combination of female loveliness and real strength. Her shoulders and upper arms were soft but obviously worked—wailing on drums, cleaning out horse stalls, comforting frightened animals.

  The whole time he'd been sitting there telling her the truth about his job, he'd been lying to himself that he hadn't really noticed the graceful line to her jaw, the ladylike tilt to her head, or the pretty shape of her fingers.

  But the truth was, he'd noticed all these things about her, and more.

  The dress she'd chosen kind of hung on her like a sack, and except for the loose, square neckline, it managed to hide the goods real well. But the buzz Thomas got from looking at the shapeless dress was getting louder and louder in his brain, as if her modesty was pushing some hot button Thomas didn't even know he had.

  As if her modesty was the sexiest thing he'd ever seen in his life.

  Maybe it was because most of the beautiful women he'd ever known used their bodies as currency—a means to control men, trap them, turn their brains into mush so things happened the way they wanted them to. Always the way the woman wanted.

  Yet Emma seemed to downplay her body, hide its power, with the simple tees, the baggy sweatshirts, the loose dress—and that's what drove him crazy. It made him wonder exactly what was under there—what juicy and round and firm sections of flesh lurked beneath the fabric—and whether they were simply too dangerous for public display.

  God help him if she should ever wear anything even remotely revealing. He might stroke out on the spot.

  "So how in the world did you get started with this, Thomas? You've got to have the strangest job of anyone I know."

  He felt his grin spread from ear to ear. "Coming from you that's really saying something."

  "Yeah. No kidding." She giggled and continued to pet Hairy. "You promised me the whole story."

  He nodded. "It's simple, really. I was with the Baltimore County State's Attorney's Office about three years when I was assigned a murder solicitation case, and it ended up going to trial. I won. Then when the next one came in, I got it. Then the next. And pretty soon I'd prosecuted a dozen cases and become a kind of expert, and when the state put together a task force they asked me to head it up. That was seven years ago."

  "What's it like posing as a hit man?"

  He shrugged. "It's difficult, but there's a need."

  "Have you ever thought of doing something else—something less … I don't know … depressing?"

  He laughed at that and studied her lovely face. Sure, he had. He used to think about teaching, high school history maybe, where he could do some rugby coaching on the side. He used to think that as a teacher he might be able to prevent at least some kids from becoming the kind of adults he now encountered on a daily basis. But he was probably just kidding himself.

  "Doesn't it get to you, Thomas?"

  He watched her lean back against the wide brick pillar and tilt her head. He couldn't remember the last time he'd allowed anyone to ask him questions this personal.

  "Sure it gets to me. I've seen enough to know that people are capable of anything. And there are days when it seems like there isn't a decent person on the whole planet. But let's get back to Hairy."

  "All right." Emma gave him a soft smile. "You were about to tell me how Hairy's owner met his untimely end."

  "His name was Scott Slick," he said, relieved to change the subject. "Age forty-one. Ran a very successful sports betting operation in Baltimore. Died from blunt force trauma to the left temple, hit by the edge of a blender. There was a struggle. I think Hairy was hiding somewhere watching the
whole thing. He was sitting by the body when I found Slick dead."

  Emma's brows knit together. "Really? Sports betting?"

  "Yeah—college and pro football and basketball mostly. But also boxing, hockey, even baseball."

  "Hairy belonged to a bookie?"

  Thomas laughed softly, amused to hear street slang from Emma's sweet mouth. "Yeah. A very rich bookie. And up until tonight, Hairy had been doing so much better. Then Pam turned on the blender…"

  As Thomas described Hairy's extreme physical reaction to the sound, she realized he could be right—Hairy may have witnessed the crime. And Thomas may have even hit on the method they could use to glean more details from the dog.

  "Besides the blender, have you exposed him to any other stimuli associated with the murder? Have you given him something to smell? To hear?"

  Thomas shook his head. "I don't have anything."

  "You have no physical evidence?"

  "Well, a shoe print. Some trace skin and hair that's being analyzed, but nothing like the guy's shirt or something that Hairy could get a good whiff of." He watched her nod. "What do you think?"

  She shrugged. "We can try. We'll use a process of elimination, introduce one stimulus at a time and categorize his response." She saw Thomas give her a little frown. "Let's backtrack a bit. Dogs have basically four ways to deal with something they come across out in the world—we vets call it the four F's—flight, fear, fight, or … well … sex."

  After a two-second beat, Thomas leaned his head back and laughed, then lowered his eyes right on hers. "Sex doesn't start with an f."

  "Vet humor." Emma swallowed. "Anyway, it's going to take a while, and there is absolutely no guarantee that we'll come up with any helpful information."

  "I understand."

  "And you still want to hire me?"

  Thomas nodded. "Hairy is our only witness. We've got to at least try."

  Emma let her gaze fall to the creature in her lap. She stroked his warm skin and scratched behind his ear. "I'll have to think about this a little, establish a protocol for the tests. And I'd like to visit the crime scene and see whatever evidence the police have. Is that possible?"

  "You got it, Doc."

  "Then it's a deal." Emma stretched out her hand to shake on it. The second Thomas's warm palm slipped against hers, she remembered that touching him was hazardous to her peace of mind. She pulled back too quickly.

  "A deal," Thomas repeated, kind enough not to let on that he noticed her nervousness.

  They remained quiet, and Thomas looked out onto the sloping lawn in front of the farmhouse. He watched the fireflies flash, listened to the crickets talk. It was beautiful here, peaceful and dark and full of the smells of open land. It brought back memories of the summers he spent with his grandparents, memories long buried by the accumulated sensory assault of city life.

  "I haven't seen this many lightning bugs since I was a kid." Thomas nodded toward nature's laser show. "It's wild."

  "Yeah. And it's late in the season—I'm amazed they're still out here in those numbers." Emma's voice trailed off as she followed his gaze. "It's like the last singles dance of the year."

  "Of their lives," he said.

  Emma glanced at him, intrigued. Thomas Tobin continued to surprise her with his somewhat skewed take on the world and the combination of sorrow and humor that leaked out of him. His job went a long way toward explaining his pessimism, but there was more to Thomas than he was sharing with her. She could feel it.

  He continued to look out on the grass with what Emma thought might be longing, and a touch of irony.

  "Do you know anything about fireflies, Emma?"

  "Mmm. A little." She took a deep breath of the night air, and got a whiff of Thomas himself—undertones of male musk with lighter notes of soap and—oregano, maybe? It made her shiver.

  "I think I remember reading that the males fly up in the air and the females remain near the grass." She watched the dance of light on the lawn. "The flash we see is the result of a chemical reaction inside their bodies, and along with the flight pattern, it works like a kind of signal to attract potential mates. That's what all the commotion is about."

  Thomas shot her a bemused smile. "Isn't it always?"

  Emma said nothing, just studied him, watching the graceful turn of his head as he went back to scanning the yard. She wasn't certain what was happening here, but she knew it wasn't about fireflies. It was about the two of them—two very different people who had some kind of strange affinity for each other that neither knew what to do with.

  She gave Thomas a good once-over, and the nervous fluttering in her belly was back with a vengeance. The man sitting in front of her was beautiful, something she'd known from the first. But tonight, she saw him with greater clarity, and appreciated what she saw—what she sensed. She felt her blood run hot and her breath quicken. She felt the anticipation build.

  And she smiled to herself.

  Emma knew the accepted theory on the human sexual response: males became aroused primarily from visual stimuli while females responded to an amalgam of more subtle sensory input—ambiance, so to speak. She looked over at Thomas and nearly snorted with laughter—she was a textbook example of the female sexual response tonight, no doubt about it.

  And the stimuli she was getting right now were mighty stimulating indeed. Thomas radiated sexual heat. He broadcast his sexuality. His voice vibrated with it. His eyes sparkled with it. He smelled like sex.

  She looked down at his body. He was wearing a pair of worn but nice-fitting jeans and a soft gray, short-sleeved Henley unbuttoned at the throat and untucked at the waist. He was in his usual Nikes with no socks.

  His long legs were slung over either side of the wide, flat porch railing. He rested his palms on the thick surface of his muscled thighs as he leaned back. She stared at the way his golden hair shimmered in the candlelight, and the way the light played on the curly blond down of his ropy forearms. And yes, she let her eyes travel down his flat stomach to his narrow hips and the vortex of those big legs, and did a little mathematical calculation having to do with relative size of anatomical parts. She hoped she wasn't foaming at the mouth.

  She jerked when she heard his voice.

  "You got to hand it to the little bastards." Thomas caught her eye. "They're out there in their flashiest outfits, facing the possibility of rejection, giving it their best shot. Those little bugs have guts."

  Emma had been looking at his crotch—no doubt about it. This was an excellent development, but Thomas didn't quite see how he was going to capitalize on it.

  Emma was sparking at him. There she was with her face tilted coyly, flushing prettily with well-deserved embarrassment. Her hair fell loose on her shoulders and her eyes shone up at him. A faint smile pulled on those kissable lips. Her hands caressed Hairy gently and rhythmically—where he sat between her legs.

  Thomas bit his tongue and closed his eyes. With indirect communication like this, who needed words?

  He opened his eyes and locked his gaze with hers, knowing with certainty that biology had the upper hand tonight, over there on the lawn and right here on the porch railing. In fact, right about now, Thomas could say with confidence that for him, biology had become reason. Biology ruled, biology spoke, and God yes, he was listening.

  He wanted this woman. She was special. She was different. He'd been waiting for her.

  Could it possibly be that simple?

  "I can't help but see that you're flashing at me," Thomas whispered.

  Emma's eyes went huge and she laughed nervously. "Only because you've been flashing at me."

  "How kind of you to notice."

  "Would you like some more iced tea?" She'd abruptly dumped Hairy into his arms, jumped off the railing, and swept away their half-full iced tea glasses before he could even respond. She was already inside the house, and he sat there, stunned.

  If Thomas didn't kiss her soon, he would implode—no question about it. He had to fix things so
that when she came back, he could nonchalantly get her into a good kissing position.

  He placed Hairy on the floorboards of the porch. "Go play with stinky Ray." As if he understood, Hairy toddled over to the much larger animal and circled around by his side, then curled up and plopped down, soliciting only a few curious sniffs from the old, blind dog.

  The front screen creaked open, then slammed shut, and Thomas turned to see Emma walking toward him on alluring bare feet. The foyer light shone through her filmy dress and provided a nice outline of her hips and breasts. Her hair lifted off her shoulders in the light breeze. It was like a scene in a wet dream, only better.

  Emma gave him a shy smile and bent forward to put the glasses of tea on the table, and oh, yeah, Thomas looked down the neckline of her sundress. He tried not to. He really did. But he was too weak. And her breasts were creamy and full and looked like they'd fit perfectly in each of his big hands. They looked perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

  Implosion was imminent.

  As Emma resumed her place across from Thomas, sitting cross-legged and leaning up against the column again, she saw that Thomas had done some rearranging in her absence. He'd moved the citronella candle behind him and left his pillar to scoot much closer to her. There was nothing between them anymore, and it made her a little nervous.

  "What are you thinking?" he whispered.

  That I want to jump you and howl at the moon, she thought. What she said was, "It's a beautiful night," and nearly rolled her eyes at her pitiful lack of imagination.

  "The most beautiful I've seen in a long time, Emma."

  Her heart stopped. "Really?"

  She noticed that she'd somehow adjusted her position to mimic his. She'd straddled the smooth wooden shelf with bare legs, shoving the sundress down for coverage. When had she moved? Why couldn't she remember moving?

  But she was now painfully aware of the exact location of every part of her body, because certain parts of her were starting to hum. Her breasts felt irritated and confined even in the loose dress. She felt her thighs fall open a bit more, relaxing, parting, and that small fine-tuning caused her to swell and moisten under her dress. She caught Thomas's eye and began to strum and tingle all over.