“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…”