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.