“Agreed. I can drop you off at your place, let you get a hot shower, dry your hair, and dress. I’ll pick you up, and we’ll head on over there.”

The clinic took only lupus garous in for long-term care. In an emergency, they would provide care for humans, stabilizing the patient so they could be sent off to the hospital in Bigfork. That meant human visitors rarely came to the clinic. They would have to be on alert when Debbie dropped by to see Franny and her baby.

“Thanks, sounds like a good plan,” she said.

Debbie pulled off her sopping-wet sweater and dumped it on the floor. This was the first time in the four and a half months they’d worked together that they’d had a situation like this, where they needed to get warm and dry pronto, and were too far from anywhere to do it quickly. He hadn’t expected Debbie to start stripping though. It was a good idea, but he just hadn’t predicted it.

Next, came her black turtleneck. He was trying to concentrate on the ice and snow-covered road, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw that her bra was purple and white polka-dotted silk. He smiled a little, never figuring her for wearing bright and fanciful underwear.

She unfastened her bra and dropped it on the floor. He nearly missed his turn to the main road that would take him to Whitefish. He really was trying to be a gentleman, but, hell, he’d worked with her for months, and lots of times he’d envisioned what she would look like naked when she was wearing a skintight diving suit. Now she was stripping next to him?

Not that this wasn’t essential to their, well, her good health, but it was wreaking havoc with his libido, despite how cold and wet he was. He was a wolf, after all. But he was going to have a damn accident if he wasn’t careful.

She used one of the towels they kept in the car when they went diving to cover her waist and another to dry herself off.

Thankfully, she was concentrating on pulling on a dry turtleneck and then a sweater, too cold to notice him glance at her. They always kept a couple pairs of clothes in backpacks in the car for diving and emergencies. She struggled to get her jeans off next, and then wiggled out of her panties, which matched her bra.

As soon as she’d pulled on the rest of her dry clothes, zipped her parka up to her throat, and tugged her ski hat on, she said, “Pull over. You’ve got to get out of your wet things too.”

“I bet you say that to all the guys you dive with.” He pulled onto the shoulder and they switched places, the cold outdoors feeling even icier.

She laughed. “If I were diving with Lou Messer, probably not. His brand-new wife told the sheriff if he paired Lou up with me, he’d be leaving the police dive force.”

Allan smiled. “I heard she checks up on him all the time, wanting to know where he’s at, what he’s doing, is he safe. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with her. If I did, I’d probably say something and get myself into trouble.”

“Yeah, but everyone needs your expertise, so they’re stuck with you.”

He laughed. “Stuck with me, eh?”

“It can be a good thing. I still can’t believe you went back for Franny’s purse. They could have gotten it when they pulled her SUV out of the culvert.”

“You know how women are. She was probably afraid of losing her credit cards, cash, driver’s license, no telling what. Maybe a special keepsake she was afraid might be lost.”

Then it was Allan’s turn to remove his wet clothes. He moved the passenger seat as far back as he could to give himself more leg room, and began the tedious project, his fingers numb with cold, and the shivering impeding his progress.

“Well, it was sweet of you, but too risky.”

After he got a dry flannel shirt and wool sweater on and had yanked a wool ski hat over his head, he finally felt relief. Then he tugged at his boots, socks, and jeans. When he got down to his black boxers, Debbie said, “I figured you for white briefs.”

“I figured you’d wear white lacy bikini panties and bra.”

“You looked!” But she was smiling when she said it.

He chuckled and pulled on a pair of blue briefs, jeans, socks, and a pair of dry boots.

All dry now, he was feeling a hell of a lot better. His hair was cut short, but Debbie’s was long. He was certain her wet hair was making her cold still, but the hat she wore would keep the heat from escaping in the meantime.

He got a call on his cell and fumbled to get it out of the console, realizing then he was still feeling some of the effects of the hypothermia. The call was from Paul. He and the rest of the SEAL wolf team members still did contract missions together, but they’d put that part of their life mostly on hold while they raised families. The shared responsibility of raising lupus garou pups was all too important to a pack like theirs.

Now wasn’t the best time to call because Allan was with Debbie, but Paul would know that. Which meant Allan was probably needed for a pack-related emergency, and he worried that it had to do with Franny and her claim that the accident she had been involved in hadn’t been an accident. With Paul’s broken leg still incapacitating him, Allan was taking up the slack.

“Allan, we’ve got a problem.”

“Okay. Just a sec. Debbie and I were just on a case, and we’re suffering from a mild case of hypothermia.” Which Paul would be aware of, as the EMTs who rescued Franny would have told him. But Allan couldn’t let Debbie know that Paul was aware of it. “We’re dropping by her place so she can dry her hair and get warmed up a bit and I’m headed over to my cabin. Can I call you back?” Allan didn’t want to have to watch what he was saying.

“Call me as soon as you can. We have a minor emergency.”

“Will do.” Allan was dying to know what the emergency was all about, if it was related to Franny or something else, but he really didn’t want to ask in front of Debbie and then have to make up some story about it later.

They ended the call and he phoned the clinic. “How are Franny and Stacy doing?” he asked Dr. Christine Holt.

“They’re in stable condition. Your partner didn’t suspect anything?” Christine asked him.

“No.”

“Good. Are you all right? The EMTs said that you went back in the water after her purse.”

“Yeah, in case she had something important in there.”

“Well, she pulled a piece of paper out of her purse, sopping wet, the ink all gone, but she said it wasn’t important anyway. She was so out of it, she just knew she had to have her purse with her. Both Franny and her baby will be fine. Her husband is here with them now.”

“Good to hear. Debbie and I will be dropping by later as soon as we can get dry and warm.”

“Give us a heads-up when you’re on your way. We don’t have any other patients at the moment, but you never know when we might, and we need to make sure that Franny remains human.”

“Will do.”

“Take care.”

Allan told Debbie about the condition of Mom and Baby, but not about the purse. He didn’t want her reminding him how he shouldn’t have gone after it.

He was tasked with ensuring all the new wolf pack members worked well together, but he also helped with any trouble the pack was having. He should have been interested in one of the lovely single she-wolves, but he couldn’t get his thoughts off a certain sexy, kick-ass human. Some of it was because they worked together, but they also had a lot in common: they both loved to dive as a hobby, loved thrillers, Italian food, and read some of the same fantasy books.

“I’m glad to hear Franny and her baby are doing well. Is there a problem at home?” Debbie asked.

“Not sure. Probably some minor family issue.” This was the part Allan hated. He’d told her about his family, as far as he could say. That his mother and sister had taken Paul in. That he was like a brother to them. But Allan hadn’t been able to say much more than that. Certainly nothing about their wolf pack, and their increased longevity, though that had changed and they were aging nearly the same as humans now, but they hadn’t figured out why. He and his family had lived for many years, though they didn’t look it.