She filled out those battered jeans quite thoroughly, from where the denim stretched over her round hips and curvy thighs all the way down to where the straight legs ended in a pair of scuffed-up leather clogs. A nice, full, and hospitable package of feminine flesh she was, not all bony and pointy like some women. And under that long-sleeved T-shirt, he could make out the soft but sturdy shoulders, the ripe swell of her breasts, the inward curve of her waist. It was painfully obvious that those weren't buttons he'd felt poking up beneath the paper towels. This Emma Jenkins, DVM, was easy on the eyes-and the hands. Maybe the DVM stood for "Damn Voluptuous Mama."

Then he stopped himself, as he always did, and wondered what the doctor's dark side looked like. Sure, the woman was pretty, but he knew all too well that even pretty people had ugly sides, and they could be mighty ugly indeed.

Which one of the four great appetites had ensnared the lovely Emma Jenkins? he wondered. Guns, drugs, money, or sex?

She didn't look like a gang-banger, but after running the Murder-For-Hire Task Force for seven years, he wasn't surprised by anything anymore.

She didn't look like an addict or an alcoholic, but he'd known plenty who managed their masquerades just fine-scout leaders, teachers, ministers-you name it.

No, in his experience it was usually money that motivated women to make stupid choices. Less often it was sex. So the question was which of those two evils did Emma Jenkins serve, and how low did she go?

If it was money, maybe she had a habit of bouncing checks. Maybe she shoplifted steaks from the Super Fresh butcher case. Or maybe, desperate for prestige and a comfortable lifestyle, she'd cheated on her vet school admission tests.

Or it might be more complicated for her, Thomas thought, like a combination of material greed and the desire for sexual control. Maybe the lovely Dr. Jenkins had lied to some rich loser about being pregnant, then trapped him into a marriage he didn't want!