What Not to Were Read online

  None of this made any sense. Not a single second from the moment she’d awakened. Taking a deep breath, she tried to get a grip on herself, tried to clear her head as Ezra continued to knock. “Gramps! Just give me a minute. Okay? Please. Let me get a shower, and then we’ll talk.”

  She heard him cluck his tongue from behind the door and grumble. “I’ll make coffee, Kitten, but you hurry it up in there or I’m gonna go drag that horse-puckey shoveler from his damn house and tear his throat out!”

  She almost laughed at how sure Ezra was that something had gone wrong with Nash. If only he knew how wrong.

  Pulling herself up to the edge of her bed, she glanced at the clock and realized she’d told Kirby she’d drop by later this morning to check in on her—it was the first time she’d let anyone open the center for her. If she didn’t make an appearance, Kirby would become suspicious.

  Several deep, shuddering breaths later, she padded to her bathroom—the one her grandfather had renovated just for her, with an enormous white cast-iron tub and freshly whitewashed bead board along the walls.

  He’d said he’d done it because all girls should have a private place to make their pretties without having to do it around whisker stubbles and globs of shaving cream.

  But today, it didn’t soothe her the way it usually did.

  Today, as she caught sight of the soda tab still on the chain around her neck and fought a sob, nothing could soothe her.

  * * * *

  Ezra frowned, his weathered brow wrinkling as he poured another cup of coffee for Daphne and Greta, who’d rushed over the moment Ezra had stuck his interfering nose in and called them. “Say what now, girl?”

  God. She was talking about having sex in front of her grandfather. Somehow the natural order of things had become quite a SNAFU.

  Calla let her chin fall to her chest and said one more time, “He kicked me out of his house, Gramps. Told me he had no idea who I was or how I’d gotten him into the bedroo—Well, you know what I mean. But he very clearly said he didn’t know who I was and then he practically shoved me out the door.”

  Twyla Faye curled around her ankles. “Butthead! I know, I’ll curse his sinfully delicious keister! He’ll be in Vegas gettin’ hitched to the fountains at the Bellagio while Elvis croons ‘Love Me Tender’ in just a swish of my tail!”

  Calla reached down and scooped up Twyla Faye, setting her on the table. “No. No more marriage proposals to inanimate objects. I appreciate your wanting to defend my honor, but you keep your magic to yourself. Please.”

  Daphne’s eyes went wide—again—while Greta fondled her precious whistle, her knuckles white. “Do you want me to send Fate over there, Calla? He’ll wipe the place clean with him! Oh, wait. I know! I’ll have Fate call Mother Nature—she’ll whip up a tsunami. A big, ugly wave of water that’ll wipe him clean off those rippley thighs of his! She can be one uppity bitch, but she’s a real tiger in a pinch. You know—”

  “No!” Calla shouted, hopping up from the dining room chair, her heart still racing. “I don’t want you to send anyone anywhere.” Unless they could send her back in time.

  Reaching for the countertop, she leaned into the cool exterior of her fridge and kept trying to breathe.

  This was a waking nightmare.

  All while she’d taken a shower, she’d tried to understand what had happened. What would make Nash go to sleep saying he loved her and wake up not recognizing her?

  All of the acceptance and love she’d experienced last night was trashed. The image of his face, his eyes, roaming over her as though she’d taken advantage of him, kept flashing through her brain, making her want to vomit.

  That’s when doubt had begun to set in. All the horrible words Reed had once said about hoping he could forget what she looked like naked, when he’d thought she was out of earshot, began to worm their way into the cracks of her insecurities.

  Oh God, it was too horrible to believe Nash would do something so heinous. Pretend he didn’t know who she was because he’d discovered she repulsed him?

  Even if he’d lied through his teeth this morning, he’d never be able to pull off a ruse as enormous as that for long. He’d have to fake it not just with her but with virtually everyone who knew him.

  Would anyone be so cruel as to fake amnesia because she disgusted them?

  Slow your roll, Calla. You’re going off the deep end. It’s ridiculous to even consider Nash would go to these lengths to ditch you. Let go of Reed’s ugly words. They have no place here.

  Greta tapped her on the shoulder with a knuckle. “If what you told us earlier, about your suspicions and Nash, is what you’re currently batting around in that head of yours, knock it off. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but I do know that boy’s character. He’s no douchcanoe. If he said he didn’t know who you were, he didn’t know who you were.”

  She’d confessed to them her deepest, most outrageous fear—about her birth defect. She’d told them all about Reed, and how much she’d idolized him for almost as long as she’d worked for him.

  She’d never seen any of his flaws through her haze of worship and clouded judgment. He’d known about her prosthetic long before they were ever intimate, after she’d accidentally left the package she’d ordered online on top of her desk.

  He’d known, and when she’d finally admitted her feelings for him and they were about to embark on a night she’d fantasized about for years, when he finally saw her naked, he’d looked away in disgust.

  And even as strong as she was, as much as she’d wanted to walk out of his bedroom with her head held high, she’d turned tail and run, ashamed. Shortly after, she’d heard him on the phone with one of his buddies, describing how sickened he was by it, and then she’d left for good.

  Daphne poked her then brushed Calla’s hair from her eyes. “Did you hear Greta? Knock it off. I’d believe a lot of things, but I’d never believe that of Nash. Denny? Maybe. But not Nash.”

  Her panic subsided, but only a little. “Then what is going on?”

  Greta’s shoulders sagged beneath her Mavericks jersey, her round face going grim. “I don’t know, but we can damn well find out. I sent a text to Winnie but no response just yet.”

  “I think we should still send Mother Nature. She’ll natural disaster it out of him.”

  “No!” both Greta and Calla shouted in unison.

  Calla reached for her friend’s hand. “Please, Daphne. Don’t do anything until I can get a better grip on this, okay?”

  “Then do that, Calla. Get a grip on it. But don’t go where you keep going in your head. I don’t know that I can ever believe Nash would be so cruel as to pretend not to know who you are just because—”

  “I only have one breast!” she shouted in frustration, regretting it the moment the words shot from her mouth.

  “And I have a fat ass,” Greta stated. “So the hell what?”

  Yeah. Nash had said that, too.

  The room grew quiet, with only the throb of her heart pounding in her ears.

  A sharp knock on the door made everyone jump.

  Ezra rose, hiking up his suspenders before he opened the door. As it swung open, Nash’s face appeared.

  And then it disappeared, as Ezra knocked Nash to the ground with a solid right hook.

  Chapter 7

  Calla handed Nash a Ziploc bag full of ice to put on his jaw while Greta gave Ezra the stink eye to keep him from rising from his place on the couch.

  Nash shook his head, the damp ends of his hair curling up just above his collar. “I don’t get it.”

  “But you got it, boy! And you deserved it,” Ezra growled.

  Nash winced as he ran a hand over his bruised jaw. “Ezra, I already apologized. I honestly don’t remember your granddaughter. You’ve known me all my life, why would I lie?”

  “You should dang well be at the open end of my shotgun, you cow-dung slinger!” Her grandfather shook a gnarled finge
r at Nash before Greta blew her whistle, making both Calla and Ezra wince.

  “Knock it off right now, Ezra Allen! You heard what the boy said.”

  Oh yeah. They’d all heard what he’d said. He recognized everyone but Calla. He knew every single person in the room except for her.

  Nash looked to her, his eyes blank and devoid of any emotion other than confusion, cutting her to the quick. “So you and I…we…last night?”

  “That’s right, Twinkle Toes,” Daphne sneered, her eyes narrowed. “Right after you waltzed Calla on out of the VFW hall and back to your place. You made the whoopdedoo. A night this entire town’s been waiting on for three solid months. We even had a raffle going. Beer for a year at Skeeter’s.”

  “And chicken wings,” Calla muttered, her cheeks turning bright pink. “Don’t forget the chicken wings. A bucket.”

  “An entire bucket?” Nash asked. “Did you really just say a whole bucket of chicken wings? I’ve never known Skeeter to be so generous.”

  “Is beer for a year and barbecued fowl really the point here?” Calla asked, mortified her grandfather was hearing the intimate details of her night with Nash.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “So we’ve been dating for three months? Why can’t I even remember Ezra ever mentioning he had a granddaughter?”

  The three women looked at each other. He genuinely appeared confused, his strong features riddled with concern. How had she been so totally wiped from his memory?

  Calla’s heart sank right to her toes. What did you say to the man you’d spent three months of the best days of your life with when he didn’t remember them?

  Did you call the doctor? Did witches even have neurologists?

  “I don’t know,” Calla murmured.

  He shook his head, dropping the Ziploc bag on the end table as he rose, his big frame casting a shadow over the sunlight pouring into the picture window.

  Placing his hands on her shoulders as though she were his grandmother rather than his lover, Nash looked down at her. “Look, I came to apologize for the way I reacted. What I,” he lowered his voice, “what I said about your…it was insensitive and rude, and I was caught off guard, and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you that.”

  Oh, irony. His tone was so somber, so much more like that of the Nash she knew, she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep her tears at bay. “Yeah. I get the caught-off-guard thing.”

  “Okay, so if we know each other, and I’m taking everyone at their word that we do, tell me about us. Tell me how we met—”

  “You’ve been sweet on her all your life, sugar,” Twyla Faye chirped.

  Nash looked down at the floor, his jaw clenching. “Twyla Faye?”

  Sweet Jesus in a sling, he even knew her lizard.

  She blinked up at him, slow and steady. “The one and only.”

  Nash’s brow lined with more confusion. “What are you doing here? At Ezra’s?”

  “I live here now with Calla, you big goon. Phew, honey, somethin’s gone all wrong in that noggin of yours, hasn’t it?”

  Nash let go of her shoulders and sat back down on the recliner, running his hands over his temples. “I don’t get it. Twyla Faye’s a familiar, but you’re a werewolf like Ezra, right? Why would you need a familiar if you’re a werewolf?”

  Every word he spoke was like a small dagger in her heart. It was an effort not to sink into the couch and never again leave its cushy warmth. She swallowed hard. “Yes. I’m a werewolf, and Twyla Faye’s witch left her behind when she left Paris, so I adopted her. Now, do witches and warlocks have doctors? Because I think you should see one.”

  Daphne shook her head. “No. We have magic.”

  The magic wand! Of course! “Okay, so can’t you alacazam him and make this all go away?”

  Daphne rubbed Calla’s arm, her eyes sympathetic. “None of us are powerful enough to break a spell like that, sweetie. That’s if there is a spell to be broken. I don’t know about Greta, but I sense no magic around Cowboy Nash’s aura.”

  Greta shook her head, her face grim. “Not a lick on my end either.”

  Frustration welled in her chest again. “Then who is powerful enough to break a spell if there’s one to be broken?” Why hadn’t she thought of that in the first place? Magic. Maybe someone had put a spell on Nash. But why? Who would do this?

  Greta popped her lips. “Winnie. Whom I still can’t get in touch with.”

  Sinking to the couch, Calla let her head rest in her hands and stole more deep breaths.

  “This is crazy,” he murmured, but then his dark head popped up. “Pictures. What about pictures? Do you have any of us? Maybe that’ll jog my memory?”

  Hope sparked momentarily. “I have tons of selfies of us.” Calla stood, grabbing her phone from the kitchen table and scrolling to her picture gallery, where she pulled up a picture of she and Nash at the corn maze just last month, their cheeks pressed together, his cowboy hat perched on her head with tall stalks of corn husks towering behind them.

  Setting on the edge of the arm of the recliner, she asked, “Do you remember the corn maze?”

  Lifting his Stetson from his head, he applied pressure to his temple with his thumbs. “I remember eating my way through a full rack of baby-backs and following it up with some of that blue cotton candy the kids from the school sell. I remember that day well because it was one of the hottest days we’ve had to date in Paris.”

  Defeat clawed at her. “So everything but me.” It was like someone had come along and snatched her right from his life, but forgot to take all of his memories with them.

  He shook his head, his eyes distressed. “I don’t know what to say…”

  What else was there to say? As she aimlessly flipped through the pictures on her phone, she stopped at the one by the creek behind his ranch. It was from the day he’d built the campfire and given her the soda tab still around her neck.

  Calla pulled it from her T-shirt, dangling the necklace in the air. “Do you remember this? You gave it to me the day you asked me to be your girlfriend.”

  His tanned brow furrowed. “A tab from a can of soda?” he asked, as though it were preposterous he’d given her a symbol of love fashioned from a soda tab.

  Tears stung her eyelids but she bit the inside of her cheek. “Yes. You built a fire and roasted hotdogs, and we ate by the creek and you asked me to be your girlfriend. I joked about whether that proposal came with your high school ring. So you gave me the soda tab…”

  “As a gesture of love,” he murmured.

  Hope reared its head again. “Yes! Do you remember it?”

  “No. I just assumed that’s why I did it.”

  More tears threatened to fall, but she was saved by another knock at the door. Daphne strode across the floor, her flowing maxi-dress swirling around her feet as she moved.

  She slid the chain and opened it to find her husband Fate outside. Flinging herself at him, Daphne sniffled into his neck. “I’ve never been so glad to see you!”

  “What the hell’s going on over here?” he asked, his tone sharp and with a hint of anger and boatloads of authority. “When I got back home from my workout, Travis said you were crying and left in the middle of breakfast come to Calla’s. Something about Nash and his memory? What’s happening here?”

  “It’s Nash,” Daphne said, pulling her husband into the apartment, clinging to his hand. “He can’t—”

  “Remember who the hell I am,” Calla finished for her, her voice shaky.

  His eyes scanned the room, zeroing in on Nash and Calla as he strode across the floor without a word, clamping a hand on each of their shoulders.

  His large fingers curled into the flesh around the cap of her shoulder and instantly began to shake as his grip tightened. Calla sat immobile, afraid to move. She didn’t understand magic and its complexity, nor did she understand how Fate kept from warning people about their futures, but she stayed perfectly still in
the event he’d discover something she couldn’t.

  The room became sort of swirly, the air thick and unmoving, even with the central air blowing steadily from the vents in the ceiling.

  Calla gulped as a frisson of electricity sizzled through her, taking an upward climb only to dive-bomb and explode, making her literally tremble.

  When Fate let go of them, she would have fell to the floor if not for Nash grabbing her arm to keep her upright.

  Daphne was the first to speak, her eyes wide with concern. “Honey?”

  Fate looked at them, his handsome face grim, his transfixed eyes on Calla. “One day.” He spat the words as if they hurt.

  “What?” everyone chimed in unison.

  Daphne swatted at him, waving her hand in front of his eyes. “Don’t be cryptic, big guy. We have a crisis here!”

  Fate responded again, this time quieter, calmer. “One. Day.”

  “Details?” Calla squeaked.

  Daphne suddenly nodded her head as though she understood, her hoop earrings bouncing. “Let me apologize for my husband. You all know him as Chatty Cathy Fate. Strong but certainly not the silent type. Lover of all things party, watermelon-seed-spitting pro, sack-race champion, and limbo king. You know—in general, happy go lucky? But when he gets visions, he loses some of his words due to their power. And as you all know, he’s mostly not allowed to reveal what he’s seen. So whatever he’s seeing must have some kind of glitch attached to it. Something that wasn’t meant to be and will upset the order of things.”

  “So whatever’s happening right now wasn’t meant to be?”

  Daphne shook her head. “Something like that. It just means that your fates are unnatural, maybe even manmade.”

  “Manmade? Meaning a person was possibly involved in this?” But who? Who cared that she and Nash fell in love? Denny? She didn’t have time to dwell on it right now. They had to act if they only had one day to fix this.

  Daphne bit her lower lip before replying. “I wish I knew more, lovebug. I just don’t.”

  Oh, this was bad. So very bad. Whatever he’d seen was clearly not good.