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in position. ‘Come on over, we’ll show you. You might like to help.’
    Let the sell-job begin. He had sudden visions of lifting traces of fur samples from the rocks, CSI style, and studying them for genetic variation under multi-million-dollar microscopes. Or extracting blood samples from the cute little fur-balls blinking at him. ‘Sure, why not?’
    Kate threw him a pair of rubber gloves and a couple of plastic bags then handed him a large spatula as he grew close. ‘What do you want—vomit or scats?’
    One of her team snorted. Grant just blinked at her.
    â€˜Sorry.’ She was all innocence. ‘You did say you wanted to help?’
    He had a sudden recollection of her joking about not wasting a valuable sample on smearing him with seal poop. ‘You cannot be serious?’
    She sank onto one hip and braced long slim wrists on her waist. ‘Were you hoping for something sexier? Sorry; seal riding’s all done for the day.’
    With a sarcastic smile, she bent down and artfully scooped a mountainous pile of silvery black gunge into her plastic bag, taking care to get every last bit. Grant’s stomach turned. She handed the bag to an assistant who labelled it for her and put it into one of three eskies over near the limestone cliff-face.
    â€˜You’re not kidding.’
    She straightened and looked at him. ‘Do I strike you as a comedian?’
    No. Not at all. But he was damned if he was going to be shown up by a greenie. He glanced around the rocky beach. The way he figured it, what came back up had to be better than what had gone all the way through. ‘I’ll take vomit.’
    Her smile, instant and genuine, was at least as dazzling as the sun burning down on them. It stole his breath almost as much as the odour from her sample, which reached him in the same moment. His stomach lurched again.
    â€˜If you puke, do it away from our samples. We don’t want any contamination.’ With no further discussion, Kate turned back to her collection and left him in the dubious care of one of her team, who showed him the basics of vomit scooping.
    He only gagged twice, which he was pretty proud of. And he collected three whole samples before he reluctantly gave in to his curiosity.
    â€˜Why are we doing this?’
    Kate worked hard to disguise the tiny, triumphant smile. But she wasn’t fast enough. Weirdly, it didn’t bother him. Instead,it birthed a warm kind of glow that something he’d done had finally pleased her. A rare enough sensation, when it came to her.
    â€˜Our study relates to the foraging habits of these females so we can determine what level of threat the seals pose to commercial-fishing harvests.’
    â€˜And collecting the foulest substance known to humankind will tell you that how, exactly?’
    Kate straightened and zip-locked a particularly feral sample into containment. ‘Beaks and ear bones.’
    Don’t ask. Curiosity, real and genuine, blazed. Do not ask! He stared at her, burning, determined not to speak.
    â€˜OK, go ahead and tell me,’ he blurted and the power slipped further.
    Kate’s face exploded with life, earnest passion glowing past the smears of dirt and goodness knew what else on her flawless skin. ‘We sift the faecal samples to isolate the otoliths—ear bones—of the food in their stomach. Then we pair the otoliths up, identify and count them, and it tells us how many fish each seal ate and of what species.’
    There was no chance on this planet he was going to admit to the unconventional brilliance of the plan. How else could you figure out what the black goo once was? ‘You do realise it’s absolutely disgusting?’
    â€˜Oh, completely. But sensationally effective.’ She shrugged. ‘Everything else digests.’
    He scraped another sample into a fresh bag, mouth-breathing the whole time, still fighting back the stomach heaves. When he spoke,