Take a Chance on Me (17 page)

"That's because you're used to blood and guts." Leelee's nose scrunched up. "I bet my mom screamed like a maniac—total NC-17 kind of stuff."

"True. But it was still the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen." Emma patted her hand and stood up, stretching.

"Hey, Em?"

"Mmm?"

"I … nothing."

Emma felt the corner of her mouth hitch up. "Sounds like something to me."

"Just good night."

"Good night, Elizabeth Weaverton, girl wonder."

After one more touch of her hand to Leelee's head, Emma closed the heavy oak door and stood a moment alone in the upstairs hallway. To her left she could see her father sprawled across his bed, snoring happily, his body lit by the flickering blue light of the TV screen.

At the other end of the hall was her bedroom. She could see in through the open door to the big double bed of her girlhood and the familiar wallpaper of tiny yellow flowers. Emma remembered the summer she and her mother picked out the wallpaper pattern. She'd been thirteen, just a little older than Leelee was now.

Emma's mother had been dead by the spring.

She gripped her elbows and hugged herself tight, thinking that life had a habit of sneaking up on you.

Here she was, back in that old bed surrounded by that old wallpaper, a divorced thirty-something raising her friend's child in her dad's house.

Never in a million years could she have predicted this.

She felt Ray nudge the back of her knee.

"All right, old boy."

Emma turned off her father's television, kissed his cheek, then headed down the back stairway to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of iced tea before returning to the porch rocker.

Ray bumped her leg again, looking for attention, and she laughed. For a woman without a love life, she certainly felt needed in this world.

Emma let her gaze travel about two hundred yards over to the Weaverton place—now the residence of a nice young couple and their little boy—a small white clapboard farmhouse partially hidden by a line of windblown pines. How many nights just like this one had she and Becca met in those trees to plot out their lives?

They hadn't been too good at predicting the future.

Emma pushed against the railing with her big toe and started the rocker moving again, and Ray let his three-legged, blind carcass fold onto the pine-board floor with a heavy sigh. He had the right idea—it was late.

The groan of the rocker sounded like breathing. In accompaniment, she filled her lungs with warm, wet air and let it out slowly. She put down her iced tea and let her hands stroke the soft skin of her upper arms.

She let her fingers brush up her neck and across her shoulders and down the front of her loose, thin cotton gown.

She had a perfectly normal body. A strong body. A bit on the ample side—just like her mother and exactly the opposite of Becca—but what else was new? Emma had never been sleek enough or tall enough or thin enough to be considered chic, as Aaron often pointed out.

Her fingers roamed down her softly rounded belly to her thighs and back up along her sides.

Many women her age had already had a kid or two, their bodies stretched by babies that had grown inside them. What did she have? No stretch marks and a career she loved.

Her touch moved to her breasts.

Many women her age had nursed a baby. They knew what it was like to bring life into the world and sustain it with the magic of their own flesh. What was her contribution? Emma had thought about this often enough, and she always came back to this truth: When a pet became a behavior problem, it was often a death sentence, and she used her heart and mind to give living creatures another chance.

That was her gift to the world.

She laid her head against the rocker and sighed, as her hair swept down around her shoulders and brushed against bare skin. She felt the tips of her breasts rise to hard little peaks beneath her light touch, just as nature intended, the flesh blissfully unaware that it was her own lonely hand that strayed there and not the soft, seeking mouth of an infant.

Or the hot, demanding mouth of a lover.

She moved her hands to the softness of her thighs and pushed the nightgown up and away, letting her thoughts stray to the way Aaron once touched her—but a lethal stab of sorrow and anger came with the remembered pleasure.

So as she allowed her left hand to roam up her thigh, she let her imagination veer off toward Thomas Tobin. She remembered the heat of his skin under the cuff of his dress shirt, the flash of longing in his eyes, the way he almost smiled at her, maybe even almost kissed her…

God, how she'd lied to Velvet! Of course she was attracted to him—what woman with a pulse wouldn't be? His eyes were electric. His mouth was stern but sensuous and bracketed by impossibly sexy dimples. He was built out of solid rock.

In Emma's rational mind, she knew Thomas Tobin was too perfect a physical specimen for a woman like her, but this was her fantasy, and by God she was allowed to go ahead and remember how he'd intrigued her, revved her up, how he'd given her goosebumps.

She wondered what made him so damn grumpy. She wondered what he looked like naked.

The thought startled her, but she forged ahead, giggling quietly, trying to imagine what all that hot muscle would feel like under the flat of her palms, what it would feel like to have a man his size press his hard weight into her, wrap his arms around her waist, take her.

She breathed deep, then exhaled slowly.

Her reaction to Thomas Tobin was perfectly understandable—he was just different, that was all. Aaron was slim and wiry and dark and for most of her adult life that's what Emma equated with sex—Aaron's whipcord body, his efficient, medium-sized package of maleness, his quick, light movements and charming smile.

Of course that's why Thomas Tobin fascinated her so. He was everything Aaron was not. He was golden and broad and brooding and looked like he could pick her up, toss her over one shoulder, and carry her away to his cave, where he'd ignore her feeble protests, pin her against the nearest flat surface and…

Whoa! Emma shot up out of the rocking chair like she'd been launched from a catapult, the cotton gown falling below her knees.

What time was it? Who in God's name would be calling her at this hour? What the hell was she doing nearly grooming the poodle on the front porch?

What if Leelee had seen her? What kind of example was she setting? Hadn't the poor kid seen enough?

Emma grabbed the portable phone in the hallway and took it back outside where she wouldn't wake anyone.

"Hello?" She was aware she sounded out of breath and somewhat annoyed.

"Dr. Jenkins. I'm very sorry to disturb you so late, but—"

And before she could stop herself, she heard the words slide out of her mouth: "Well, hello there, Thomas Tobin."

Emma winced, aware that she'd just committed a major error. Was there any logical, work-related reason why she'd remember the sound of his voice?

No.

Was there any reason for her to say his name like that, in a sigh and a whisper, unless she'd just been rubbing her hand along the inside of her left thigh while picturing him in a Conan the Barbarian loincloth?

No. And he'd know that immediately. And she could just see him on the other end of the line, one eye narrowed, his mouth drawn in a severe line of displeasure.

So when she heard him laugh—granted it was just a short spurt—she was shocked.

"You got ESP or something?"

Emma forced herself to take advantage of the opening. "As a matter of fact, Mr. Tobin, in a way, I do. It just so happens that I was dreaming about your dog … uh… "

"You were dreaming about Hairy?"

"That's right. Hairy."

After a pause, Thomas said, "Do you dream about weird little dogs a lot, Dr. Jenkins?"

Only when they're owned by stud puppies like you…

"It's very common for vets to have work-related dreams," she said, trying hard to sound authoritative. "It's an outlet for stress. Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Tobin? Is there something wrong with Hairy?"

It suddenly occurred to her that he couldn't possibly know her home number. It was unlisted and she only gave patients her answering service number—for precisely this reason.

"And how in the world did you get my home number?"

"Oh. Under the circumstances, I didn't think you'd mind that I … uh … had a friend find your number."

What kind of friend had access to unpublished numbers in the middle of the night? What were the circumstances? Emma was waiting.

"It's Hairy. He's been having trouble breathing for a couple hours now and I'm not exactly sure how serious it is or what I should do, but it seems to be getting worse."

Emma straightened to attention. It was possible the dog was having a reaction to the medications she'd prescribed—not likely, but always possible. "Describe his breathing right now, Mr. Tobin, and tell me exactly when and how it started."

Emma listened to Thomas's description of a night of cards and cigars and she found herself relaxing.

"Who is your primary veterinarian again?"

"I don't have one."

"What? Well, I'm a behaviorist, Mr. Tobin, and I'm not usually on call for this kind of thing, but I agree that the dog is probably having a reaction to the smoke and it could be serious. Where do you live?"

"Federal Hill. Baltimore ."

That was a good half-hour away. "There's a twenty-four-hour emergency clinic in Catonsville called VetMed. You should go right away, and be sure to keep an eye on him during the drive."

"Thank you."

"Take his medications along to show the vet, all right? I'll call ahead and meet you there."

Silence.

"Mr. Tobin?"

Thomas cleared his throat. "You're meeting us there? Why would you do that?"

That was a good question. How many times had she gone out to see a patient in the middle of the night since she and Aaron opened the practice? Exactly once: when Adolph the St. Bernard attacked his owner while she made herself a midnight snack of ham on rye.

"Hairy is my patient," she said.

More silence. "Please call me Thomas, and that's very nice of you, Dr. Jenkins."

"It's Emma, remember?"

When he finally responded, it sounded like he was in severe pain.

"All right—Emma."

* * *

Aaron Kramer sipped his whiskey and peered into the darkness of the hick bar. Even without the small changes he'd made to his appearance he would be nobody out here. Nothing. He was blissfully invisible—

more than a hundred miles from home and a million miles away from his life.

Could he risk thinking that he was safe? Could he really believe that he'd gotten away with it? Could it really be that for once in his fucking life he'd gotten lucky?

It had been twelve days now since he'd killed that weasel, and the police had yet to come smashing in his door. Of all the times in his life when he'd needed luck to be on his side, this was it.

He'd take it.