Tears stung her eyes, salty and bitter. What the hell was going on? “Did you just say you don’t know who I am?”
His lips, so often tilted upward in a warm smile, thinned to a tight line. “I’ve never seen you before in my life, and if this is some kind of joke, if you drugged me or whatever, I’ll take you to the Witch Council and see to it you end up in jail if you don’t get out of my damn house in the time it takes me to count to ten!”
“Drugged?” she muttered, her knees trembling.
“You tell me,” he responded with scathing sarcasm, pointing to the rumpled bed. “Apparently, you were in charge of this rodeo.”
Calla’s mouth fell open, her throat going tight. He was serious, deadly so. She’d only seen him angry once or twice, and it had been over Denny’s advances toward her, but it wasn’t even close to the rage she smelled on him now. His large body literally shook with it, the muscles in his arms tense, his stance defensive.
Pulling the sheet to her, she yanked it off the bed, suddenly embarrassed to be standing completely naked. “I don’t…understand.” What was going on?
Grabbing her by the arm, he hurled her clothes at her. “How convenient. Somehow you tricked me into bed with you. Put something in my drink at the dance, maybe? I don’t know and I don’t give a damn. Get out of my house!”
Searching his gaze, she sniffed the air between them, forced herself to see his eyes full of anger and wild with disapproval, and it shook her to her core, digging a hole in her soul, deep and agonizing.
Whether it was shock or disbelief or fear, rather than try to explain or rationalize or even prove he knew who she was, Calla tore her arm from his grip and ran.
With the sheet still around her, leaving everything but her purse, which she grabbed by the front door, she yanked the door to his house open so hard, she pulled it clear off the hinges.
She stuck her clutch purse between her teeth and let the sheet fall away, caring little if any of the ranch hands saw her as she took off toward the pasture, letting her shift take over.
As she flew past Bitty, he muttered a “Mornin’, Calla,” but she ignored everything except for the overwhelming need to get home—to hide.
The crunch of bone shifting, the stretch of skin, freed her as she made a dash for the fence, arcing high over it and landing on the other side with her paws now intact.
And she kept right on running over Nash’s vast acreage, her brain racing, her heart aching and tattered. She panted for breath around her purse, the harsh sunlight beating down on her back as she aimlessly tore through a patch of pecan trees.
Nothing made sense. Nothing. But she didn’t think about it. She didn’t do anything but let the hot air swish past her sleek fur as she tried to outrun her pain.
Nash stared after the woman who’d just left his bedroom, furious. What the hell had he had at that dance last night and who the hell was that woman?
His lips thinned when he looked down at her clothes scattered over his floor, but as his eye caught what she’d called a prosthetic, he remembered his ugly words and regretted them. Despite the fact that she had no business in his house, he’d said something cruel in his surprise, and that disgusted him.
He needed coffee and a shower, in that order, and then he was going to investigate what had happened at the dance last night. He didn’t even remember leaving the hall.
In fact, curiously, he didn’t remember going to it either. He only remembered that his plan was to attend. Period.
How fucked-up.
But hold on. Had he been the one to initiate a one-night stand with her? That was so unlike him these days.
Yeah, but chemistry happens, Ryder, and you have to admit you found her pretty attractive even as angry as you were.
Damn. He’d acted like a real ass.
Someone had to have some answers, and if she was responsible, he was going to see her ass, as sweet as it was, in the pokey until he could contact the Council.
And if you’re responsible?
Then he was damn well going to figure out why he couldn’t remember how she got into his bed and in the process, see if she might be interested in beginning again.
For some reason, some unexplainable, irrational reason, he almost hoped for the latter rather than the former.
Calla pushed her way onto the tiny fire-escape at her grandfather’s window, her bulky body pressing against the iron rails, and scratched the glass with her paw, dropping her purse on the small landing. Ezra was a sound sleeper. So sound, she doubted he’d wake if a tornado landed in the middle of the bedroom.
When he didn’t stir, she scratched and whined again. The last thing she needed was for anyone to see her like this. Not today. Not after…
Popping upright, Ezra ran a hand over his bead and scrubbed at his eyes as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Calla-Lilly? What in the hell are you doin’ out there, Sunshine?”