Chapter 3 Heart of Glass

If Emma had been alarmed at the sight of Thomas Tobin in a suit, then how could she describe what she was feeling now, seeing him sprawled out in a waiting room chair with disheveled hair, unshaven face, and worried eyes, his powerful legs sticking out of a pair of loose shorts, his broad shoulders and chest draped in a washed-out rugby shirt ripped at the elbows and splayed open at the collar?

Stunned was a good word. Like a doe in the high beams. Like a dieter looking into The Cheesecake Factory display case. Like the love-starved woman she was, looking at the most delectable serving of man she'd ever seen.

Thomas raised his eyes to the door. He scrambled to his feet, tucked Hairy into the crook of his arm like a football, and waited for her to reach him.

The journey across the waiting room played havoc with Emma's sympathetic nervous system. Her mouth went so dry she was afraid she'd dehydrate while her hands were so wet she had to wipe them on her sweatshirt.

She came to a stop and slowly raised her chin. Thomas hovered over her, his blond head lowered, his eyes wary and waiting. "Hey, Emma," he said in a husky whisper.

A bolt of hot lust spiked Emma to the floor through the cork soles of her Birkenstocks. Just a simple two-word greeting in that raspy male voice and she was toast. A goner.

Hairy began to squirm.

"He's got to pee." Thomas began to walk away but suddenly turned and peered at Emma, like a man double-checking the door lock before leaving on vacation. He narrowed one eye. "I'll be back."

Emma wheeled around to watch the Terminator stride out the door, noticing how long his legs were, how much taller he was than her, how much bigger, and how if she wanted to she could reach her arms straight out and they'd be the perfect height to grab on to his tight butt.

She blinked hard and shuddered. What was she-insane? Why the hell did she drive out here-to torture herself? She must be ovulating.

"Your boyfriend's been real worried about his little dog."

Emma spun back the other way. She hadn't noticed there was anyone else in this room, in the world! But an older couple sat on a pair of yellow vinyl chairs just a few feet away, and the woman smiled sadly at her.

"My boyfriend?" Emma was trying to force the haze from her brain. It was one in the morning. She was tired. She was crazy. She was ovulating-how was she supposed to carry on a conversation?

"I'm sorry. Your husband, then?" The woman produced a brave smile and Emma could see she'd been crying. The man had been crying, too.

Emma sank down into the chair next to her. "Actually, I'm the little dog's vet. I'm here to-" She stopped, unsure how to finish and aware it wasn't important anyway. She reached for the older woman's hand, thin and dry in her own. "Why are you here tonight?"

The woman's chin began to crumple and her lower lip trembled. "Leonora-she's our Shih Tzu-didn't come in from the backyard after Letterman."

"I knew right then…" The man lowered his eyes and shook his head. "She always comes in after Letterman."

"She got out under the fence again," the woman said. "We called and called, then went out searching and found her by Frederick Road. There's so much traffic there."

"Do they have her in surgery now?"

She nodded. "The vet already told us not to keep our hopes up. There was a lot of…" The woman's voice broke and she began sobbing. Her husband's arm went around her and he completed her sentence.

"Internal injuries, you know."

Emma knew all too well what happened when a Shih Tzu met a Subaru. She gripped the woman's hand while she cried.

She'd seen countless people grieve for their pets over the years, from macaws to Mastiffs. When a pet died, the sense of loss was profound, pure, and uncomplicated. The intensity of the bond between animal and human would forever awe her.

"I know the vets here will do whatever they can to save Leonora." Emma made eye contact with both the woman and her husband. "But when an animal's injuries are so severe that there's no chance for any quality of life-I'm afraid the most humane thing to do is to stop the suffering."

The man nodded grimly.

"She must be a very special dog," Emma said.

The woman's back straightened and she smiled. "Oh, yes! Leonora's the most wonderful dog we've ever had! She's our third Shih Tzu-only two years old."

The husband reached for his wallet and flipped it open. "Here she is."

He placed a worn brown wallet in Emma's palm, open to a professional studio portrait of a happy little ball of gray fluff. She couldn't help but smile.

"She's a cutie-and I bet feisty, too. Shih Tzus can be a real handful."

The couple began to laugh in agreement, just as Thomas returned.

Emma watched him pass silently through the door and stop, posing like a Viking god in Nikes with no socks, his trusty wheezing sidekick tucked against his side.

Thomas scanned Emma's face, dragged his eyes to where her hand grasped the old woman's, then locked his eyes on hers.

And it happened.

Emma inhaled sharply. Time slammed to a halt. Tectonic plates shifted. Because Thomas Tobin just grinned at her.

He obviously tried to suppress it, but the smile lasted long enough to make his eyes glitter like Christmas tree tinsel and create two deep, heart-stopping dimples at either side of his mouth.

No, this was not exactly the way she'd always imagined it would be-and she'd certainly pictured herself better dressed for the occasion-but who was she to complain?

Emma Jenkins had just officially been swept off her feet.

There was something way too intimate about this, he decided. It felt foolhardy. Dangerous.

It must be because it was the middle of the night, and as he'd seen often enough, the night could conjure up a false sense of intimacy between complete strangers.

Why else would he be sitting in an empty diner drinking coffee and eating blueberry pancakes with a woman he hardly knew, listening to her share details about her life? Why else would he be lulled into telling her anything about his own life? He'd never do that sort of thing in the daylight.

Day or night, in fact, Thomas couldn't remember ever having a conversation like this with a woman he'd just met. He and Emma had been all over the map in the last two hours-college, family, hobbies, work (he'd managed to be sufficiently vague about his job so far), and now she was laughing nervously and explaining that just when she'd decided to separate from her husband, her best friend out in California died and left her kid to Emma to raise.

She tucked a shiny section of hair behind an ear, wiped a drop of coffee off her upper lip with the tip of her finger, and he couldn't take his eyes off her even if he wanted to-even if she had a kid and was on the rebound from a divorce. He simply couldn't stop looking at her.

He'd decided she was more than pretty-she was beautiful. Her hair was thick and straight and fell loose over the top of her shoulders and gleamed under the light fixture above their booth, browns and golds and reds moving in waves, almost as if her hair was alive, breathing when she breathed.

Her eyes were the most delicate blue he'd ever seen. It struck him as ridiculous, but her eyes reminded him of the fuzzy zip-up baby thing he bought for Jack when he was born. Pam put Petey in it when he came along two years later, and the color kept getting softer with all the washing. He remembered how his nephews had felt solid but fragile tucked into his arms, how sweet they smelled after a bath, how new.

Thomas tore his gaze away and stared out the dark window, his heart beating too fast, his chest hollowed out with a sudden sense of emptiness. He looked at Emma again, because he had to.