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U ntil disaster struck, Trooper Andy MacMathan had been patting himself on the back for finding so many stranded motorists in this deadly winter storm and getting them to safety, including one man who had lost control of his car and landed down the embankment. Now Andy laughed darkly at himself.

A snowplow had covered the man’s whole car except for his driver’s side mirror. After several police officers had searched for him in vain, Andy found him and got him aid for hypothermia and dehydration.

But now this.

One totaled cruiser, on top of him, no less. And pain was shooting through his ankle. It was either sprained or something was broken. Not to mention, he was pinned down now.

“Hey, are you okay?” The woman started a mini avalanche as she descended the embankment, the snow rolling down beside him.

Hell, she’d wrecked his cruiser, buried him with it, and injured him, though not gravely, thankfully, but no, he wasn’t okay. But then he frowned. He thought he recognized her voice, but couldn’t place her.

“Do you have a shovel?” Snowflakes buried his goggles as fast as he wiped them off. His muscles tensed as he tried to free himself, exasperated with being trapped.

Silence. Either she did, or she didn’t have a shovel. He figured she didn’t. “I’ve got one in my vehicle.”

She crunched through the crusty snow as she climbed the incline, opened her hatchback, and closed it.

She plowed through the snow on her way down to him.

She was dressed in snow boots, waterproof pants, a black parka, and a faux-fur hat, and carried a small shovel.

Like him, her face was covered in cold-weather protection—goggles and a ski mask to ward off frostbite.

“Are you hurt?” She sounded worried.

“My ankle. It might be sprained.” After that, he immediately took her to task. “You were speeding too fast for the weather and road conditions.” He took another whiff of the air as she tried to dig some snow out from around his left side. “You’re?—”

She frowned. “A polar bear. Like you. Surprise, surprise. Wait…”

“Monica O’Connell?”

“Andy MacMathan?”

“Well, hell, I’ll be.” He’d seen her a year ago when she passed through White Bear, had a flat tire, and he'd really hoped she'd moved to White Bear so he could date her.

“Why did you try to protect your car when I couldn't brake? I could have killed you.”

Now she was scolding him? “Your brakes weren’t working?” Bad brakes were not a good scenario at any time, but especially during a blizzard.

“No. What do you think? That I was trying to run you over?”

“Some people hate getting a traffic ticket for violating the law.”

She scoffed.

He smirked while she tried to dig at the snow, but she was only using her left hand and wasn’t progressing. “Here, let me do it.”

“Be my guest.” She handed him the shovel and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket.

“No reception.” He didn’t have to look at the bars on her phone or his. He’d already tried calling for help when his vehicle got stuck.

“I know . I thought I would try again, just in case. What about your radio?” She sounded just as exasperated with him as he was with her.

“In the car, but you can’t get to it until I’m out from under it.”

“ I. Know. That .”

He smiled a little, amused by her response to his comment. But he wasn’t making much headway digging himself out. She watched for a while as he struggled to extricate himself. He groaned as the movement sent shooting pains through his injured ankle.

“Here.” She pulled the shovel out of his hands, appearing irritated. Again, she used her left hand only to dig.

She needed to use both hands to make any headway. It finally dawned on him that she might have also been injured.

“You injured your right hand?”

She glanced at him. “Yes. And I’m right-handed.” She struggled just as much to dig him out, but she was wincing a lot as she worked on the snow, one little shovelful at a time.

It appeared she had just as little patience with him trying to get himself out as much as he did while watching her make the effort. Then, he finally figured that was good enough and tried to use his good foot to push himself out.

“You’re probably not strong enough to pull me out, but maybe with you pulling and me pushing, I can get out from under the car.”

“You know what? Sure. I can do this.” She began yanking off her clothes, but then groaned and took it a lot slower.

He knew then what she planned to do, but hoped she wouldn’t bite him once she was in her polar bear fur coat. She was a pretty blonde with a great-looking body, well-toned, and looked stronger than he gave her credit for.

Then she shifted into her bear—a beautiful white bear with big white teeth. She reached down, grabbed his jacket collar with her teeth, and pulled him out. He groaned as his ankle hurt even worse, though the snow helped keep the swelling down. He would need to remove his boot.

As hard as she’d pulled to free him from underneath his vehicle, he was sure his jacket collar wore her teeth marks—something more to remember her by.

She moved over to her clothes, shifted, and dressed. “Okay, you’re free. I’ll try to find your radio.”

“If your hand hurts?—”

“It does. But your ankle is injured, and it might be more than just a sprain. I think the airbag tore the ligaments in my thumb. I don’t think I have any broken bones.”

“And your back?”

“Yeah, it hurts. Whiplash, pulled muscles, most likely.” She started to climb to the top of his vehicle, and it settled deeper into the snow.

He was glad he was no longer pinned underneath it.

She tried to open the door. “It won’t budge. You can wait in my car for someone to arrive to take care of you.”

“Where do you think you’re going? You’re supposed to stay with the vehicle. Especially after wrecking mine.”

“Are you going to charge me with hit and run? I’m on a mission, and it can’t wait.”

“An important mission? More imperative than getting out of here?”

“Yeah.” She trudged up to the road, opened her hatchback, took some items out, and brought them down to where he was sitting in the snow. She set the first aid kit on the snow beside him and wrapped an emergency blanket around his shoulders.

“You know how they say people walk for miles in a blizzard like this and are found frozen to death some days later.” He didn’t want her to try to reach civilization to get him help. It would be too dangerous.

Though she didn’t exactly tell him that was her mission.

“Okay, look, you know I’m FBI. What you don’t know is that I must reach a cabin located in a northerly direction from here, where a kidnapped woman might be held hostage. It’s only about four miles from here, and I’ll get there on foot.”

Now, that revelation shocked the hell out of him. “All right, find me a sturdy stick.”

“What? To use as a cane? To go with me? No way. You’ll slow me down.”

“How’s your shooting stance with one hand out of commission and your back hurting like crazy? This is non-negotiable. I’m your backup.”

She frowned at him every bit as much as he scowled at her.

There was no way he would let her do this by herself. “What about your fellow agents?”

“We’re spread so thin as it is, and then this storm hit. I was the closest one to the location.”

“Same with our troopers.”

“Exactly. Pierre said the kidnapper told him not to tell anyone or he would kill her.”

“Then why would he tell you?”

“Because I’ve saved kidnapped victims without getting them killed. Pierre knows me and heard about me being close by on another case I had just resolved. It was on the news.”

“I’ve been busy, so I haven’t seen the news.” Determined to make this work, he needed a walking stick to help support his weight on his injured ankle. “All right. Could you find me a stick? I’m going with you.”

She grunted and stomped through the woods nearby. “Finding a sturdy branch to help you walk will be impossible, as much as the snow has piled up. Fine, damn it .” She stripped off her clothes again.

Even though shifters were used to shifting in front of others, that was mostly if they’d grown up together. She irked him fiercely yet simultaneously ignited a fire in his loins.

The first time he’d met her, she’d been annoyed with him for offering to help her change her tire when she knew how to do it without any problem. Until she realized he was a fellow bear.

She was from Anchorage, which was the end of any real beginning of a relationship, though he’d sure been interested in seeing her further. Not to mention, she was dating some guy then, making him wonder if she still was.

Her human form blurred into a polar bear again so fast it was hard to capture the change with the human eye. She stood up on her hind legs and, with her left paw, swatted a branch so hard that she knocked it clean off the tree.

She grabbed the branch with her teeth, carried it to him, dropped it before him, and waited.

He suspected she wanted him to try it out before she shifted again and dressed in this cold weather, which was the only way to do this. He got to his knees and used the branch to help him stand, and it snapped in two. He wrenched his injured ankle, groaned, and dropped back to his knees.

She growled.

“Fine. I’ll get a branch that works.” He was going with her no matter what, and he could knock off branches with his bear paw, just as she could. However, standing upright could be a problem.

She huffed, turned around, and headed for another tree.

While she was looking for a stronger branch, he struggled to get his boot off before it constricted the blood in his swollen ankle.

He began wrapping his ankle with an ace bandage from the first aid kit.

Then he found a plastic bag to secure around his foot, perfect for keeping it dry, but he needed something more to keep it warm when they hiked to the cabin.

Another branch snapped, and he glanced toward the sound, figuring Monica had knocked off another branch. Hopefully, it would be a much sturdier one.

But she was gone.