With the storm creating such a mess, she was glad she had Adam’s company tonight. It was more fun riding out the storm with a fellow wolf. She brought the corn on the cob out of the freezer. She covered the cobs in butter and lemon and pepper spice and wrapped them in foil.
“Hey, thanks for everything,” he said.
“I need to thank you for coming to my aid with the pregnant lady tonight. I thought she might deliver her baby if the ambulance didn’t get there in time. Not to mention I wouldn’t have had a ride after she and her toddler were picked up.”
“The Uber driver should never have abandoned you like that.”
“He was afraid his car would be damaged in the storm, and it’s his only income.” Sierra felt she had to see the driver’s point of view. Not all people were born to be heroes. She was glad Adam was.
“He still shouldn’t have left you and the woman and her child to fend for yourselves.” Adam took a deep settling breath. “Why did you call Leidolf first and not me?”
She was surprised that he thought she should call him first. She would have, if she had thought he was close by. “I didn’t know where you were. I thought you might still be in the middle of a case like you can be. I called Leidolf, since the ambulance couldn’t get there right away, hoping one of our wolves would be close by. He said you had headed home and thought you were nearest to my location. As to another matter… About the driver’s door?” She had struggled and struggled with that door, and she figured there was no getting the woman out that way.
He smiled. “Yeah, it just needed a little more muscle.”
“Ha! I loosened it for you.”
He laughed, then he started the steaks.
She went inside and set up several candles on the bar and lit them. Once she’d put the silverware and place mats out, she was thinking this looked more like a date than just something nice to do during an electrical outage and bad weather. She brought out a tub of butter and set it on the bar. “Do you want some red wine?”
“Sure, that would be good.”
She opened a bottle of burgundy and poured each of them a glass of wine. Then she fixed them each a glass of water.
He gave a quick call to the hospital to check on the pregnant lady and the toddler. “Thanks,” he said, then ended the call. “Both the pregnant mom and little girl are fine.”
“Oh, good. I would have worried about that tonight if you hadn’t checked on them.”
“Yeah, me too.”
When they were finally ready to eat, they sat down on the leather barstools. This was really nice, she thought, looking at Adam’s bare chest as he began to eat. Really nice.
She sure hadn’t expected this to happen! “So how is your new partner?”
* * *
Adam wasn’t entirely surprised Sierra would ask him about Tori. The guys all wanted to know about her, naturally, but so did some of the women, curious if he was interested in dating her.
“She’s good. She’s prompt. Hell, she often gets to work before I do. She has a good head on her shoulders when it comes to investigating a case. She’s former FBI, but she wanted to work with me because I’m a—”
“Wolf, naturally. So she knew you before? How did that come about?” Sierra sounded surprised because he’d never mentioned her before.
But he didn’t know her. “Leidolf knew her, apparently. I had never met her before. He convinced her to come here to join the pack.” He buttered his potato.
“That’s what a good leader does. Looks for valuable assets to add to the pack. So is it a matchmaking effort on our leaders’ part?”
Adam smiled at Sierra. He swore she was fishing to see if he was actually dating Tori or even interested in dating her. “Maybe. But several bachelor males in the pack are interested in dating her. I’m sure that was another consideration for convincing her to join us.” He carved up some more of his steak. He guessed if Sierra was going to get personal with his life, he might as well ask about hers. “Did you have fun on South Padre Island?”
“Yeah, I did. It was relaxing. I swam in the pool, walked on the beach, swam in the Gulf, ran as a wolf at night on the beach. I even sketched some drawings of people at restaurants and at the beach. I had a great time.”
“That sounds like the kind of vacation I would have enjoyed, only I would have been building sandcastles and taking pictures instead of drawing. My drawing is in the vein of stick figures.”
She laughed. “You did great on the first photoshopped photo art that you created. Sandcastles, eh? That would have been fun.” She took a sip of her wine.
“But you came home early.”
“It would have been more fun to have stayed two whole weeks if I’d had a friend along . I would have too. I certainly hadn’t expected to come home to a tornado.”
“I so agree. I thought about you on the beach while we were socked in with rain. I would have been there in a heartbeat if I could have been. It sounds like the perfect place to take a vacation.”
“It is, but knowing you, you would never have the time.”
Adam suspected that he was in the same boat as her boyfriend as far as the notion of dating her went. “Especially after Josh retired, though with Tori to help, we’ll get caught up eventually. So what happened with the boyfriend?” He wanted to know if Sierra was still dating the ass or if she had finally given up on him and ended the relationship.
She sighed and picked up her corn on the cob. “He’s going to bite the dust once I’m able to tell him so.”
That was good to hear. Adam didn’t like that anyone would treat her with so little regard. “You still haven’t talked to him?”
“Jethro, his brother, finally got through to me once you asked me to turn on my phone. I told him I was fine and having fun, not to worry. He was anxious about me telling Richard that he had been having sex with a human woman in Richard’s bed. I thought he was also concerned that I was upset that I had come all that way to see Richard and he wasn’t even there.”
“So are you going to tell on his brother?”
She chuckled. “That’s all you guys would worry about.”
“Not me. If I had a brother, I would never have abused his trust like that. So are you?”
She ate the rest of her corn. “I doubt it will come up in the conversation whenever, if ever Richard calls me.”
“Do you think Jethro will have told him you were there and angry about Richard not being there?”
“Yeah. And Richard will undoubtedly smell that I’ve been there. If he ever checks all the messages I left him, he’ll know.”