“Spear, are you stealing my cereal and milk again?” I dropped the rifle to my side and stepped through the door.

It wasn’t Spear. This guy didn’t look like the Dough Boy and probably wouldn’t ever get fat around the middle.

No, this was the guy from my dream. And he was smiling at me around a spoon.

Bare-chested.

In a pair of the old doc’s scrub pants tied low on his hips. 

Maybe some other girl would have been cool about it. My brain short-circuited because I didn’t raise the rifle I just walked toward him and planted my free hand in the middle of his really perfect chest.

I guess I expected him to dissolve into thin air. What never occurred to me until I felt warm skin and a steady heartbeat was that he might actually be real.

That was when I remembered the gun.

I took a step back and threw the rifle up to my shoulder. I must have looked ridiculous since the barrel of the thing was about two inches from where my hand had just groped him.

“Who the hell are you?” 

He put the spoon in the bowl and set them both down on my desk very slowly so as not to get a dart in his lickable chest.

Jesus, what the hell was wrong with me?

“My name is Garrick, or sometimes just Gare.” He had an accent which threw me.

“Like an alias?”

“No. Like a shorter, less old-fashioned version of my name. You know, a nickname.”

Definitely an accent, maybe English, maybe Aussie. I suck at figuring out where people are from. 

“How did you get in here? Where are your clothes? Where is my wolf? And did you really finish all my cereal?”

“Um, yes, I think I finished your cereal. Sorry, I was hungry.”

“That was the one you picked to answer?”

He took a step to try and get around the gun and I swung in an arc to keep it between us.

“The other answers are harder to come up with.”

Did the guy have amnesia, maybe he’d been in an accident but he didn’t have any fresh wounds. There was some old scarring but it gave him a dangerous air.

Holy hell! What was wrong with me tonight? First sex dreams and now I can’t look at this guy without thinking I have never wanted to untie the string on a pair of scrubs so bad in my life.

Garrick started laughing like I’d said that out loud and I hadn’t.

“What is so funny?” I pressed the rifle against his chest.

“Mmm, nothing. May I sit down?”

“Go ahead. We aren’t going anywhere until I get some answers.”

“Of course not. What if you don’t like the answers?”

“This dart can knock out a bear.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” 

“Let’s start with an easy one. Where are your clothes?”

“I didn’t come with any.”

“You just showed up here naked in thirty degree weather.”

“Um, yes?”

“Are you not sure?”

“About the weather?”

“Don’t get cute.”

As if he needed any help in that department. Crap! Concentrate! He smiled at me and then tried to hide it behind his hand.

“This isn’t funny. Where did you come from?”

“Oh that one is easy.”

He sat up straighter in my chair.

“I’m from just over the Canadian border.”

“That has to be an hour and a half north of here!”

“Hmm, that far?”

“That’s it. I’m calling the sheriff.”

“Leah, please. Don’t.”

Now I went dead still. 

“How do you know my name?”

“Spear, that was your officer’s name, yes? He said it.”

“You’ve been in here since we were both here?”

“Sort of, yes.”

“Look, I don’t have time for this bullshit. I’ve got an injured wolf to round up.”

“What if I tell you he’s fine?”