She looked briefly in the bathroom and laughed when she found a plastic caddy filled with dog grooming supplies. "Again, nothing but the best." She handed it to him with a smile and Thomas realized he was running out of hands, and that against his better judgment, he was going to be removing things from a crime scene.

Also against his better judgment, he was contemplating a relationship with a woman.

Emma reached the bedroom and stopped dead. She stared at the king-sized bed covered in zebra-stripe satin and piled high with red pillows. Then she examined the floor-to-ceiling black lacquer entertainment center on the opposite wall.

"Holy moley." She bent down to peruse the video and DVD titles. "You weren't kidding that this guy was a bit on the flamboyant side."

She straightened up, put her hands on those lovely hips he'd just been staring at, and Thomas watched her face light up as she surveyed Slick's CD collection. "Wow. All disco. All the time. This guy knew how to get down."

Thomas heard himself chuckle, and it reminded him that Emma was the sweetest, funniest, most interesting woman he'd ever been around. He liked her so much. He enjoyed her company. He wanted to get his hands under her shirt so badly that his knuckles ached.

She went to the closet next. The louvered doors were already opened, also sprinkled with powder. She tamed quickly to ask him a question about what she could and could not touch when her braid went flying over her shoulder, and Thomas responded as reliably as one of Pavlov's dogs. Everything below the waist perked up and was raring to go.

"Sure. Go ahead," he heard himself saying, then nearly hyperventilated when she got down on her hands and knees and pulled out two boxes from the back of the closet.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, his maid chanted, because Emma's ass swayed a little when she reached, and swayed a little more when she scooted backward, and then got all packed nice and tight in her pants when she sat back on her heels.

Dear God, he wanted to clutch her hips and take her from behind. He wanted to open her up like a new Wal-Mart.

"Thomas?"

Emma swiveled at the waist to talk to him, her face alive with laughter and surprise. "Did you look in these boxes?" She suddenly frowned. "Is something wrong?"

What was wrong was that they hadn't talked about what happened on the porch the other night. What was wrong was that Thomas was going to lose his mind if he didn't resolve all the unanswered questions about Emma Jenkins and what he was doing paying for her consulting work, staring at her spectacular ass, needing to be in her presence.

A lot of things were wrong.

"Not a thing," he said, lowering the dog food bag over the decidedly unpleated front of his trousers. "Find something interesting?"

"Ooh, yeah. Check this out." She pulled a box across the carpet and with dainty fingers held up a tiny blue sequined garment, then a matching headband with a jaunty peacock feather. "Nice, huh?"

Thomas blinked. Oh, that box.

Next, Emma held up a silver lamé jumpsuit with a rhinestone collar, then the green leprechaun ensemble. Emma put everything back in the box and cast him a sly glance. "You know, Tobin, unless Hairy had more than one St. Patrick's Day costume, I think you've already seen this stuff. Am I right?"

Thomas cleared his throat. "Yes, I did. I thought it would be fun for you to find."

Emma shook her head and got back on all fours to shove the box into the closet. Thomas gritted his teeth.

"Huh." She stood up, hands on hips, and frowned. "Has Hairy demonstrated any kind of special skills?"

"Skills?" Like falling in love with my underwear?

"Yeah, like jumping through hoops or standing up on his hind legs or spinning or flipping or anything? Things a circus dog would do?"

"Hairy? My Hairy is a circus dog?"

"I have no idea," Emma said, laughing. "But he sure does something that requires a festive wardrobe."

"Yeah. So did Slick. Remember the sailor suit I told you about? The one Hairy was wearing when I found him?"

Emma nodded, a cute little divot forming between her eyes.

"Well, I guess I failed to mention that Slick was wearing a matching outfit when he died. Little sailor cap and all."

Emma crossed her arms up under her breasts, stretched one leg out to the side and tapped her toe. "Anything else you need to tell me?"

Several things, actually, he thought. "Nope," he said.

Emma pursed her lips and squinted at him, maintaining her impatient schoolmarm posture. She looked unbearably sweet, he thought.

"You better not be shitting me, Tobin." Her voice was decidedly unsweetened.

"I hear you." I'm a dead man when she finds out the check I gave her is my money.

He watched Emma march back to the entertainment center and peer at the CD player. She hit the ON button, then pushed PLAY, and suddenly the whole apartment came alive with the throbbing disco beat of the Village People's "In the Navy."

If it weren't for the sight of Emma's laughing face, her lovely hips rocking back and forth, and her sweet voice singing "'Where can you find pleasure, search the world for treasure…?'" Thomas would've been certain that he'd died and taken the express elevator to his own personal hell.

"Oh, for God's sake-disco dancing dogs?"

While Emma laughed, Thomas couldn't help but stare at her over in the passenger seat of his Audi. She looked exceptionally pretty in the sunshine, those streaks of burgundy and gold dancing in the lustrous pleat of her dark braid. The rosy cheeks. The shining blue eyes.

She looked like a freaking Ivory soap commercial.

Not that that was a bad thing. In fact, it conjured up a real pleasant image-Emma all wet and pink in a steamy shower, where he'd volunteer to lather her up-but good.

"No joke," she said. "There are a couple groups that hold regional and national dance competitions. Everybody wears elaborate costumes and does difficult routines-and it's not just disco, we're talking country line dancing, hip-hop, Riverdance stuff. You name it."

Thomas shook his head and briefly shut his eyes. "How has this been allowed to happen in our country?"

Emma let loose with a loud guffaw, and Thomas glanced over in time to see the way she threw back her head, the feminine line of her jaw, the sweet pale throat, the succulent little earlobe he'd once held between his teeth. He licked his lips.

"Well, Thomas, you're the guy who says people are capable of anything."

She turned toward him and her eyes crinkled up with amusement. "This is just another unusual thing that human beings do in their spare time-they dance with their dogs. You got to admit that it's harmless enough. And I figure if we find the group Scott Slick belonged to, it might give you a lead in what happened to him, right?"

It was possible, so he nodded. "You ever seen one of these dance competitions?"

"Yup, a couple. They're lots of fun."

"I'll take your word for it."

She laughed again. "I'll make a few calls this afternoon, see what I can find. Are you free tonight? Can we try a few things with Hairy this evening?"

"I'm free until about ten-thirty. I've got to work tonight."

"What are you working on?"

As Thomas glanced at those blue eyes brimming with curiosity and intellect, he thought maybe the real attraction of Emma wasn't the physical at all. It was her mind. Her sense of humor. Her innate kindness. All wrapped up in that modest, soft-smelling beauty.

How was a man supposed to defend himself against all that? Why would he even want to?

"The team is starting a new campaign tonight. Some guy in Hancock asked around about getting rid of his ex-wife-a pretty common situation-and we're… well, I'm meeting him at midnight for a drink. We're going to talk things over."