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of his fingers around mine, making me teary. I sniffed and blamed my hormones.
    “This creep an acquaintance of yours?”
    “God, no!”
    “What’s he look like?”
    I screwed up my nose. “Old guy done up like a neon light and driving an ancient Holden that sounds like a bulldozer. I didn’t get the complete rego number but Tanya reckons it’s enough for her cop friend, Paul, to find the owner’s address on the police data base.”
    “And once you get hold of this thug’s address—no way will you be trotting off to question him on your own—” He paused, chocolate colored eyes boring into mine. “Right?”
    I scowled at him. He scowled back. Then, after jerking my hand from his grasp, I raised my eyebrows and peered at him sideways. Was Ben trying to dictate what I could and couldn’t do?
    “Because I’ll be with you.” At that Ben smiled. A slow, gorgeous, eye crinkling smile that made me wish we were still at home, alone, in my bedroom, with the graphics from page 48 of the Kama Sutra open on the laptop beside us.
    As a slow steady thump sent heat trekking to the pit of my stomach and juices to parts of the anatomy I won’t bother mentioning, I licked my lips and ran my fingers through my hair. Ben’s grin widened. He knew what I was thinking.
    Oh boy! I glanced at my watch and scrambled to my feet. Time for the handlers involved in the first race of the day to collect their dogs from the kennel house and prepare them for racing. Plus, if I didn’t move away from Temptation Incarnate right this moment… I’d do something I’d regret later, like take Ben on top of a table in the middle of the betting ring at the Gawler track with a couple of hundred spectators cheering me on. Hell, the chief steward would throw the book at me. And it wouldn’t be the Kama Sutra either. More like Crime and Punishment .
    Before I could move off toward the kennel house to collect Witchy Woman for the first race of the day, an open maiden for dogs that hadn’t yet won a race, Bob and Marjorie Sanders, two of my favorite owners, bore down on me.
    “Hi Kat. How do you think our boy, Clark, will go today?” Bob asked, goosing my cheek with a noisy kiss. “Worth risking a couple of thousand on him?”
    Before I could answer I was engulfed in the comforting scent of vanilla as Bob’s wife, Marjorie, clasped me in a bone crunching bear hug. “Don’t bother answering that old fossil, dear,” she said. “Just ignore him. He’s pulling your leg. I swear—some days my eighty five-year-old husband acts like he’s going through delayed adolescence.” She tutted and rolled her eyes. “Two thousand dollars? We’ll be investing our usual two dollars each-way on Clark—regardless of whether he has a chance or not.” She stepped back and eyed me with concern. “It’s good to see you at the track again, dear. Are you well? Recovered from what that evil man tried to do to you?” She shook her head, tightly permed gray hair like a silver helmet. “If I had my way, he’d be sleeping on a bed of nails every night and never see the outside of a prison again.”
    “I’m fine now, thanks, Marjorie. And glad to be back racing.” I smiled at the two representatives of the RSL Aged Care facility, the syndicate that owned one of my best up-and-coming young dogs. White haired, in their eighties, and devoted to each other, Marjorie and Bob never missed an opportunity to see their dog race. Win or lose, the lively couple treated each outing like a festive event. In fact, when Clark, known to his race-track fans as Wonder Boy, qualified for the final of the Derby a couple of months ago, the RSL organized buses to bring all the residents of the Home to the track. Unfortunately that didn’t eventuate. Due to the ferocity of the fire that burnt my kennels to the ground, Clark, like all my greyhounds, had been suffering from smoke inhalation and had to be scratched from the Derby final.
    Leaving the Sanders husband and wife team to