The woman who slid out after him was in her late twenties, and she had some good solid hips on her. She wore her brown hair slicked back into a little knob, and her camo tank top let me know she was muscular and fit. At the moment, Camo was looking around the front yard like she was the tax assessor. The man who got out the other door was a little older and a lot harder.

Sometimes, even if you’re not telepathic, you can tell by looking at a man that he’s had a rough life. This man had. The way he moved told me he was on the alert for trouble. Interesting.

I watched him, because he needed watching. He had shoulder-length dark brown hair that flared around his head in a cloud of cork-screws. I found myself eyeing it enviously. I’d always wished I could get my hair to do that.

After I’d gotten over my hair envy, I noticed that his skin was the brown of mocha ice cream. Though he wasn’t as tall as Alcide, he had thick shoulders on an aggressively muscled body.

If I’d had a “Bad to the Bone” alert on the brick path up to the front porch, it would have gone off just after Corkscrew set his foot on it. “Danger, Will Robinson,” I said out loud. I’d never seen Camo or Corkscrew before. Hamilton Bond got out of his truck and came over to join the little group, but he didn’t come up the porch steps to stand beside Alcide, Corkscrew, and Camo. Ham held back. Jannalynn joined him. The Long Tooth pack appeared to be both expanding its ranks and rearranging its pecking order.

When I answered the knock on the door, I had my hostess smile in place. The bikini would have been sending the wrong message (Yum, yum, available!), so I’d pulled on some cutoff jeans and a Fangtasia T-shirt. I pushed open the screen door. “Alcide!” I said, truly glad to see him. We gave each other a brief hug. He felt awfully warm, since all my recent hugging experiences had been with the less-than-room-temperature Eric. I felt a sort of emotional ripple and realized that though Camo was smiling at me, our embrace hadn’t been a welcome sight to her. “Hamilton!” I said. I nodded at him since he wasn’t within hugging distance.