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  His head dipped low, hiding their faces with his black Stetson. He rubbed her nose with his, the length of his dark hair rustling over the collar of his black shirt. “Oh, yeah. Totally forgot about that. How remiss of me,” he teased, jutting his hips at her to reveal the rigid line of his shaft.

  Calla snickered then sobered. “But we have to talk first.”

  He mocked a sigh. “Lord, woman, are we going to have the ‘I’m a werewolf, you’re a warlock, some people won’t be happy about us dating’ talk again? Because I told you, I damn well don’t care what anyone wants but us.”

  “I don’t either.” Her pack usually had strict rules about mating. But not for her. In fact, if she brought home an elephant and told them she was going to make little werephalants, they wouldn’t care.

  Because she was deemed inferior.

  His smoldering green eyes held concern. “Then what else is there, honey? I thought we’d talked everything out when we decided to wait on the whoopee and chose to really get to know each other first?”

  They’d both agreed after meeting up again, they were at the stages in their lives where they wanted commitment, a future with someone, families, and they were willing to really get to the core of one another before they took the final leap to a deeper, physical connection.

  But that wasn’t the only reason she’d wanted to wait.

  Letting her hands fall, Calla grabbed his from their place on her waist, her eyes serious when she gazed into his. “Can you just trust me and wait until tonight?”

  Nash smiled down at her, the grooves on either side of his mouth deepening. “Of course I trust you, and you do know, I’ve waited eleven years for this. There’s nothing you can tell me that will make me change my mind about tonight. Not even if you’re a serial killer.”

  Nothing…

  She hoped that was the truth, but she couldn’t bring herself to answer. Instead she said with a smile, “So tonight? Eight o’clock?”

  Nash pulled her back in tight again, whispering his mouth over the side of her neck. “You’d better put your two-steppin’ shoes on.”

  “You can two-step? Shut the front door.”

  “Oh, the things I can do, Miss Calla. Just you wait and see, Beautiful.” He dropped a gentle kiss on her lips, a kiss that never failed to make her knees buttery soft, before giving her bottom a playful swat. “Eight o’clock sharp. I’m off to grab what I hope will be my last cold shower. See you tonight, pretty lady,” he rumbled deep and sexy before he strode off toward his truck, his low-slung jeans doing maddening things to her insides.

  Tonight.

  Three months of dating, and talking into the wee hours of the morning, and making out without passing first base, and laughing, and getting to know one another all over again had been so many things. Exhilarating, frustrating…but mostly they’d been blissful, and the slow simmer of their romance was all coming to fruition, and one thing was very clear to her.

  She wanted Nash Ryder—forever.

  Calla just hoped he’d want the same thing once tonight was all said and done.

  * * * *

  Nash removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow, using it to shield his eyes from the glaringly hot sun when he heard a car pull up along the dirt road leading to the stables.

  Denny Parks threw his long legs from his expensive Mercedes, slamming the ice-blue door shut and striding toward Nash, kicking up dust clouds with his pricey shoes.

  Fuck.

  Denny was slick and reeked of city dwelling. He was better off in Dallas or Houston, where there was plenty of concrete and glass to hide behind while he bought and sold failing companies.

  What the hell he wanted from Nash was a mystery. Other than Calla, Nash had nothing a guy like Denny wanted unless it was an ass-stompin’.

  “Nash,” he drawled when he approached, starkly out of place in pressed pants and a silk shirt that clung to his thin frame in the heavy humidity.

  “Denny. What brings you to this neck of the woods? You lookin’ to earn some extra cash getting your hands dirty while you muck some stables?”

  Denny postured, puffing his chest out in his attempt to be a man. “I’m looking to warn you.”

  Nash stood up straighter, topping Denny by at least two inches. “Warn me? What could a guy like you warn me about, Parks? Falling stock prices? Corporate takeovers? Wait. I know. Shoes that cost more than most people make in a month and are way too shiny?”

  “Calla.”

  Nash’s eyes narrowed and his chin lifted. There it was, all out on the table. Denny seemed to think because he was a were, he had some unspoken right to Calla. The hell. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, pal.”

  But Denny stiffened, his angular jaw going tight. “She belongs with her own kind, Ryder.”

  Nash barked a laugh, yanking his leather gloves off and shoving them in his back pocket. “You mean you?”

  Denny took a step backward as Nash moved in closer. “I do.”

  He scratched his head as if he was the very moron Denny thought he was. “Funny, but I thought it was up to Calla to decide who she wanted to be with. How’d you get a say in it?”

  “I’m just telling you the kind of trouble it could bring her with our Council if she chooses to disobey pack law.”

  Nash froze. He’d heard about the kind of shit Calla could get if the Council disapproved of their relationship, but she didn’t seem bothered by it when he’d brought it up.

  It wasn’t like different species didn’t couple up, but they didn’t do it without a lot of grief. Werewolves were particularly picky about pack purity and breeding and any number of qualifiers in mating—very unlike witches and warlocks.

  “Well then, I guess we’ll deal with that when the time comes.” And it would come. He wanted Calla more than he’d ever wanted any other woman, and he’d take on whatever Council he had to in order to make it happen.

  No slick prick like Denny Parks was going to prevent it either.

  “I could lodge a complaint with the Council myself.”

  Nash tightened a fist at his side to keep from ripping Denny’s face off. He didn’t much like being threatened. “You could. I’m sure that’ll have Calla running straight into your underdeveloped arms.”

  Denny’s face went red, and it wasn’t from the heat. “I’m just throwing it out there, for your own sake as well as Calla’s.”

  Nash put his Stetson back on his head and leaned into Denny, summoning all of his “bless your heart” charm his mother had instilled in him since he was a toddler. “Why don’t you hop back into your purty car before I let Bitty out of the pasture.”

  “Bitty?”

  “My bull. Hates the color blue. Damned funniest thing, too. Don’t most bulls hate the color red, Den? But not Bitty. He hates blue. I’d sure hate to see your fancy car all crumpled up like a tin can,” he warned low and deep.

  Denny backed away, pulling his key fob from his pocket and beeping his car door open. As he slid inside, he shot one last parting warning. “Better be careful, Ryder. Your magic can’t save Calla if the Council takes her to task.”

  Nash turned his back to the roar of Denny’s engine and grit his teeth as he strode up the dirt drive to the stables to water the horses.

  He’d waited a long time for tonight. He’d had more cold showers than a prison inmate in order to stick to he and Calla’s deal—because he’d wanted her to know he didn’t just want to fool around.

  He was damn well in love with her. All of her, and whatever it was she needed to talk about was something that left him puzzled. Maybe it was a deeper conversation about the Council and the repercussions they could suffer?

  But that didn’t sit right with him. Every once in a while, when Calla was watching TV with him or she was working in her center’s kitchen, whipping up those melt-in-your-mouth cupcakes, and she didn’t know he was watching, she had an almost haunted look in her beautiful blue eyes.

&
nbsp; He wanted to crush that haunted look. Stamp it out as surely as he’d stomp out a campfire, and replace whatever she was sad about with only happiness.

  Ever since she’d come back to town, when he’d seen her lugging boxes up the stairs to the apartment she lived in with her grandfather above the senior center, her dark hair falling around her shoulders, the glisten of sweat on her forehead, her curvy bottom swaying and her firm breasts encased in frilly lace top, he’d known.

  She’d just turned eighteen when she’d left Paris for the last time that summer, and he was five years older. Though, even then, Nash had wanted her. But she was too young, and her life needed living before she made serious choices.

  So he’d never told her about all those feelings she evoked in him as they shared inner tubes in the creek and snuck bottles of beer from his father’s fridge.

  But tonight he would. He’d tell her before they made love for the first time. He’d tell her afterward, too.

  And he wasn’t going to let her Council or a needle-dick like Denny screw that up.

  Chapter 3

  BIC popped open the cheerfully colored stained-glass door to Winnie’s house, letting the scent of lavender and blissfully cool air flow out. “Calla! Winnie said you’d be dropping by. C’mon in.” She motioned with a chubby hand for Calla to enter, her other hand gripping the beloved whistle hanging securely around her neck; the one she used to keep the children in line at Miss Marjorie’s Preschool for the Magically Inclined.

  Calla smiled at her, pulling one of her signature pink-and-purple swirled boxes from behind her back as she set Twyla Faye on the floor. “Good to see you, Greta. I brought a little something for you.”

  Greta’s stern, round face lit up. “You’re killin’ me with these Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch cupcakes, kiddo. Can’t wear all those fancy clothes Winnie talked me into buying if I keep eating them.”

  Calla headed to the long kitchen table, where several of the witches residing at the house were busy making dinner, and propped the box top open. “But they make you smile, and I love seeing you happy, because I never want to make you and that whistle angry.”

  “You love seeing the competition for your hottie Nash Ryder blown outta the water while I get fatter eating these things, is what you love,” she groused with a chuckle before biting into the peanut butter cupcakes and sighing. “I’m letting you have him out of the kindness of my heart because, honey, I’ve seen him stacking bales of hay without a shirt. Consider yourself lucky I don’t take you out in your sleep. But your cupcakes fill the hole of my empty longing.”

  Calla laughed, preening at the look on Greta’s face as she took another bite of her cupcake.

  She loved to bake for her seniors. Baking for others brought her not just great pleasure, but peace. There was a very strict order to baking, every ingredient had to be measured exactly, and when she’d worked for Reed, whose life was chaotic and noisy, baking had helped her find a modicum of control.

  It had begun as a hobby, until guests attending many of the dinner parties Reed hosted had convinced her that her grandmother Lettie’s recipes were something special.

  They became standards that all of Reed’s important friends insisted upon when he hosted a gathering.

  Food was a universal language everyone spoke. How could anyone stay mad when you offered them a whimsical cupcake? It was her secret weapon with even the crankiest of seniors who, in some cases, resented having someone babysitting them during the day while their families worked.

  “I see you brought Twyla Faye? Should I warn Icabod?” Greta asked, preparing to put her infamous whistle to her lips.

  Twyla Faye had a bit of a crush on Winnie’s familiar Icabod—who was, of all things, a Cabbage Patch doll from her childhood—which made everything very weird. If TF had hair, she’d twirl it whenever the subject of Icabod came up.

  “Nah. I say we surprise him with his love muffin. Besides, Twyla Faye promised to keep her scales to herself like all good lizards should, didn’t you?”

  She slow blinked up at them as though she had no idea what they were talking about. “I’m only here to consult on Calla’s dress hunt, and I resent any implication otherwise.”

  Greta chuckled, peering down at the lizard. “Is that a promise? Because the last time you said that, you tried to put a love spell on Ic, and we all remember how that ended, don’t we?”

  Twyla Faye sighed, a long, raspy sound. “Oh, y’all stop bein’ so dramatic. It passed, didn’t it? No gnomes were psychologically damaged in the making of that spell.”

  Greta bent down and looked Twyla Faye in the eye. “Only after Winnie broke the spell, you crazy, lust-mongering amphibian. It was the only way to pry Icabod off that garden gnome in the backyard. He proposed marriage to it, Twyla Faye.”

  Yet another reason—among many botched spells and their resulting mayhem—why her iguana just wasn’t cut out to be a familiar.

  Twyla Faye didn’t twitch when she said, “Garden gnomes get lonely, too.”

  “I’ll use the whistle,” Greta threatened, her eyes amused.

  Calla stooped to pick up the lizard, stroking her back. “You’re a cruel taskmaster, Greta. But I’ll personally vouch for Twyla Faye. If she misbehaves, I give you permission to bring her in for show and tell to the kids at Miss Marjorie’s, and I’ll even let little Percival Gibbons take her home overnight.”

  Twyla Faye gasped, but Calla pressed a finger to her jaw to quiet her. “So I’m just going to head up to Winnie’s closet, okay?”

  But Greta held up a pudgy finger. “Um, no. You didn’t think stuffing my face full of these incredible cupcakes and distracting me with your scaly, back-talking familiar was going to keep me from grilling you, did you? They don’t call me BIC for nothin’.”

  Calla made a comical pouty face, jutting out her lower lip. “But I brought cupcakes.”

  “To grease my wheels, no doubt.”

  “So not true. I just wanted to see your pretty face alight with joy at the prospect of sugar and multi-colored sprinkles.”

  “Winnifred said you’d deflect, but I just want you to know before you go digging around in that closet of hers to find something fancy for the dance, Nash would be nuts about you if you wore a burlap sack and Crocs. I hope you know that.”

  Tears stung her eyes, but she bit the inside of her cheek and forced a smile. “Do you think burlap’s my color?”

  “I think everything’s your color. I’d beat the pretty out of you but you werewolves have sharp teeth. Now, in all seriousness, you and Nash have a good time tonight. And if you need to talk, old Greta’s always here.”

  Clearly, she wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding her emotions if even Greta was offering an ear. Maybe Winnie had told her about her own suspicions regarding Calla? She and Greta were pretty close.

  But it didn’t matter. After the cold, callous world of Boston, where everything centered around the egotistical Reed, if Winnie had confided in her ex-parole officer, it was just plain nice to have someone care enough about her to get upset on her behalf.

  She threw an arm around Greta’s stout neck and squeezed it to keep those damn teardrops from falling, but her heart contracted with a sharp tug.

  The people of Paris had adopted her and made her their own just like they had her grandfather. “Thanks, BIC. You’re really the best.”

  Greta wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, yeah. Also, I have a Bennie riding on tonight. Don’t screw this up.”

  Calla let her head fall back on her shoulders when she laughed. “Even you’re in the pool?”

  Greta batted her away, but not before pinching her cheeks. “Beer for a year’s no damn joke. Now go on and get girlied up. I have parolees to keep in line.”

  With a sniffle, Calla set Twyla Faye back on the floor and flew up the stairs, almost running right into Kirby.

  The witch held out her hands to slow Calla down, her pretty face, with its evenly spaced features and
clear skin, alight with a warm smile. As the sun began to fade in the big windows behind her, it highlighted her auburn hair. “So tonight’s the big night, huh?”

  Calla rolled her eyes. “Don’t you start, too, Kirby Fisher,” she teased. “I’m going to a dance, not an orgy.”

  Kirby stared at her for a minute, one that felt unusually long, before she said, “I think you were smart not to rush into anything. Really knowing someone takes time. If you muddy the waters with sex, it clouds your judgment.”

  Hah. No truer words.

  “Right?” Finally someone who was on her side. Calla hooked her arm though Kirby’s and took her down the wide hall to Winnie’s bedroom. “You’d think this was a NASCAR race, for hell’s sake.”

  Kirby’s head bobbed up and down. “Even thought I’m not allowed to drink on parole, I have to admit, I was still pretty disappointed I couldn’t enter the raffle.”

  “There are chicken wings, too,” Calla added with a snicker she couldn’t stop. Even though it was horrifying that people were betting on whether she and Nash had chosen tonight to be their night, it was still pretty funny.

  Kirby stopped her mid-step, her eyes wide. “Shut up! Chicken wings? OMG. I love Skeeters’ chicken wings! I need to buy some raffle tickets before tonight,” she teased.

  Calla pretended an irritated sigh and shook her head. “No more talk of brews and barn animals. Now, help me pick out something to wear that’ll make Nash drool buckets.”

  As they entered Winnie’s bedroom, Calla spied Icabod sitting on her friend’s enormous bed. His plastic round eyes stared blankly at the far wall, his stuffed body rigid; he certainly came off as creepy. But in fact, when Winnie waved her magic wand, giving him the ability to speak to someone aside from her, he was quite intelligent.

  When Winnie had found out about Twyla Faye, she’d helped Calla adjust to her adopted talking iguana.

  It had taken some getting used to, all this witch magic and talking Cabbage Patch dolls and sometimes talking animals here in Paris. But nowadays, it was no big deal when Nash made his bull Bitty voice his thoughts, or when Icabod sat with them while they all had a cup of tea with Winnie outside in the back beside her amazing gardens.