To Find a Mate: Somewhere, TX Saga (VonBrandt Family Book 4)

by Krystal Shannan

  “I’ve seen you every week for six years.” His voice was so soft, the wind almost carried it away, but he couldn’t manage any more volume. Adam didn’t even want to say the words, because they meant this was all real. Paige had really been taken from him, and she wasn’t coming back.

  “Six years?” Her eyes glanced around her yard, landing on the car, on her house, but still no recognition. “I don’t remember.”

  “I know.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb, more than a little surprised that she continued to allow him to touch her. “It’s okay that you don’t remember.”

  She pulled on the sleeves of the hoodie and her hands disappeared inside the big arms. “I think I want to remember.”

  A sharp burn coursed through him, landing behind his eyes and making him tear up. “I really wish you could.”

  “What happened to me?”

  Adam dropped his hand. This wasn’t enough. He didn’t just want to touch her. He wanted to hold her, cradle her, protect her. But he hadn’t been able to protect her, and she shouldn’t ever trust him again.

  He was responsible for her being a walking vegetable. If she spent the rest of her life like this, only being able to remember the last twenty minutes of her life, she would never know him again.

  A tear slid onto his cheek, and concern wrinkled Paige’s features.

  She found the tear with her thumb and left her hand on his face.

  Adam turned into her hand, wishing she understood just how much he now believed she was his mate. He could tell her, and she’d forget in half an hour. “What do you remember?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” She shook her head and her eyes unfocused. “You said my name is Paige, and I think you may be right, but I can’t tell you how I know that.”

  “You don’t remember this house, or maybe the bakery?”

  “No.”

  He pressed a long breath between tight lips. This was absolutely not going to be okay with him. There had to be a way to reverse the spell. “Paige, I’m going to have to ask you to trust me, okay?” He took her by the shoulders, expecting her to flinch. Instead, she relaxed against him. “Before you forget who I am, I need to take you somewhere.”

  Her eyes were round and innocent, and when she nodded, Adam felt the unmistakable pull of Fate.

  He almost dipped down to kiss her. If they stayed in such close proximity, he was going to kiss her, if he didn’t get a grip on himself. There was still so much magick crackling between them, he could almost forget that she didn’t know him.

  The movements of her body, the way she leaned in to him, the way she watched his lips—they seemed so much like familiarity. But she still hadn’t called him by his name.

  “You can take me anywhere you want,” she whispered. Her breath was so soft against his face, he didn’t want to break this moment.

  Adam leaned just a bit closer, testing whether she would pull away, but Paige held fast and glanced down at his mouth.

  If he’d been a different man, he would absolutely have kissed her, but he couldn’t. He needed to get her to his brother, to safety, before she forgot him again.

  He bundled her into the truck and watched her carefully as he pulled out of her driveway and headed for the ranch house.

  Paige didn’t take her eyes off him. “Where are you taking me?”

  “To my brother’s house.” Adam put his hand on the console, trying to keep the itch from driving him to hold her hand. That would be too much.

  He wanted to. Wanted to touch her, keep touching her. The magick was not taking a back-seat this time. All those days he’d walked in to Meg’s Bakery and felt the comfort of Paige’s presence, and hadn’t know it…

  Fate was making up for all that. Every single hair on his body seemed to drag him toward her with electric pull.

  “Who’s your brother?” she asked.

  Adam tapped his fingers on the hard plastic. “Well, one of my brothers is the sheriff here. The other one, Aaron, he’s…he’s like my father. He has a ranch here, along the Manzano.”

  A wistful smile crept across Paige’s face. “Does he have horses?”

  “He does.”

  Suddenly, the warm feel of Paige’s skin slid over his and he looked down to find that she was holding his hand. She also stared at their touching flesh and quirked her head to one side.

  “Is this okay?” she asked.

  “That you’re holding my hand?” A sizzle of energy shot through him when she moved her fingers to intertwine with his.

  “Yeah. Is it weird? It just felt like something I wanted to do.”

  Adam pulled her hand to his lips and kissed the warm flesh on her wrist. “It is not weird.”

  She giggled and something lifted inside him. Paige was learning. She trusted him. She felt the magick.

  If he could just get her to his brother, he’d find the Banfields and make them reverse the spell. If she could last that long.

  Adam turned in to the ranch and punched in the code for the gate.

  Paige made a noise and pointed out the window, squealing about the horses that had finally been let out to graze. One of the new stallions was running along next to the car. Stag. He had good instincts.

  “He’s beautiful,” she said. “I think I’d like to have a horse someday. They are amazing animals.”

  “His name is Stag.” Adam smiled at her easy joy. Nothing seemed to faze her.

  She hadn’t been freaked by seeing the wolves the first time, or by the shifting pair on the ranch, or by his admission that werewolves were real. Paige had taken it all in step. If he could just get that Paige back, everything would be right with the world.

  “Stag. That’s a weird name for a horse. I mean, I suppose he is very agile, like a stag would be, and he definitely likes to jump around. But it’s just…it’s weird naming one animal after another animal. It would be like if I bought a cat and named her Frog, or if I had a dog and I named him Wolf.” Her fingers tightened around his with every syllable of her ramble.

  “It wasn’t my choice.” He laughed and put the car in park in front of the big house. “My horses have normal names.”

  “You have horses, too?” She didn’t let go of his hand when he opened his door, like she expected him to drag her across the console. Instead, he sat with her for a long moment, just enjoying the pressure of her palm in his.

  “I do. I raise broncs. Not like Aaron’s big herd. Just very special horses that we train for rodeo.”

  “I think I’d like to have a horse someday,” she said.

  A big punch landed in Adam’s gut. She’d just said that. Was she forgetting him already? He squeezed her hand.

  “We should go inside.”

  She nodded. “I’m ready when you are.”

  He jumped out of the car and ran around to her door to help her out. Maybe if he could just be touching her all the time, she would keep remembering him. Knowing him. Adam took her hand again when he came alongside her.

  Paige squeezed him back and let him drag her up the steps and into the house. The big doors were ajar. Inside, he could hear raised voices and he pulled her to a stop beside him.

  “Maybe you should wait here so I can go speak to my brother before you meet him.” When he let go of her hand, she was visibly nonplussed, and he almost grabbed it again, just to calm her.

  “Can I just go with you?” she asked.

  The voices inside rose another level and he distinctly heard Aaron shout something about shifting. He just couldn’t risk Paige being exposed to anything that they were going to punish her for later.

  “I promise, I’ll just be a second.” He sat her down in one of the big, grey chairs in the foyer. “I just need you to trust me.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “I don’t know why, but I do trust you.”

  Adam squeezed her shoulder. He knew why she trusted him. The magick drew them together. It was comforting. But it would only go so far. He had to get the Banfields to undo the spell.

  Every
spell had a counter-spell.

  Time to be quick about it.

  “We have never, in our history, had to use this spell,” Aaron was yelling from the dining room. A loud clash of something ricocheted through the marble-floored hallway and Adam almost ducked.

  “When you employ a security team, and they tell me we have to perform the spell, I don’t ask questions,” came the voice of Siobhan Banfield.

  So, the witches were here. He quickened his step. Adam stepped into the dining room to find the two flame-haired witches standing on an opposite side of the table from Aaron and Tonya. Both pairs were holding on to each other, almost propping each other up, and the air swam with anger.

  “Well, you should ask questions,” Aaron spat. “You should always ask me first. Katherine, you should know this.”

  The Banfield sisters lit up when their eyes landed on Adam, but he was still harboring enough anger, he didn’t want them to feel even a moment of peace, after what they had done to Paige.

  “Here you are, Adam.” Katherine walked around the heavy dining table. “Thank the gods. Did you find Miles?”

  “I did.” He settled his hands onto his hips. “No thanks to you two.”

  “We didn’t know where he went,” Siobhan interjected. “We had no idea this girl was your mate.”

  “Paige,” Adam growled. “Her name is Paige.” The room quieted for a long moment and Adam leaned his hands on the cold wood of the table.

  He didn’t want their shouting to spook Paige, and getting mad at the Banfields wasn’t going to do him any good. He took a long, deep breath. “I need you to change her back,” he said.

  Katherine and Siobhan exchanged a glance. The older witch shook her head at him. “Back to what?”

  “I need you to get her memories back. I want her to know me again.” A tightness crept into his chest at those words. He hated saying these things in front of Aaron, but he just didn’t have a choice. He had to be as clear as he could be if he wanted to get Paige back.

  Siobhan’s laugh was almost a cackle. “There is no getting her memories back.”

  His brother gritted his teeth. “Watch your tone, Siobhan. That’s my brother.”

  Adam shook his head. “Wait. It can’t be reversed at all?”

  Tonya’s eyes rounded and tears filled them. “That’s why Aaron’s so mad about the witches not checking with us first. It’s irreversible.”

  Aaron crossed his arms and kicked at the chair in front of him, which clanged against the table and the floor.

  That’d been the noise Adam had heard, the chair. Aaron wasn’t throwing things yet. It wasn’t that serious.

  “But there’s a counter-spell,” Adam said, leaning forward. “There’s always a counter-spell.”

  “It’s not really a spell, strictly speaking,” Katherine kept her eyes on Aaron, like she was afraid he would explode. “It’s a very precise physical kind of magic.”

  Siobhan stepped between her sister and the wolves. “It’s a little like creating brain damage. We cut off her memories from their long-term-making capacity. That way, we don’t have to erase anything, per se, and the person won’t ‘go back’ to their old life.”

  “You damaged her brain?” Adam’s chest began to burn. “You violated her?”

  “It’s not like that at all,” Siobhan said, stepping toward him. “And you’re the ones who made us create the fucking spell in the first place. So don’t blame us when we finally use it—to protect you, I might add—and it’s not exactly how you want it to be.”

  “She is his mate,” Aaron whispered. “You don’t understand what this is going to be like for him.”

  Tonya slid her hand up Aaron’s arm. “We shouldn’t talk about this here.”

  “You’re telling me, really, there’s no way to fix her?” Adam found himself having to force the words out. They didn’t seem real.

  The Paige who had driven with him in the car to the ranch was almost normal. Almost. She was everything Paige had been—quirky, cute, a little on the quiet side, but occasionally rambly.

  Only there was no memory of him in her head.

  Adam stepped back from the table. “I can’t deal with this right now, because I have a woman waiting in the hallway who doesn’t remember who the hell she is.” Anger burned in every inch of his body. “She doesn’t even remember her own fucking name, people.”

  Tonya’s hand went to cover her mouth and Adam kept stepping backward.

  There was nothing they could do.

  He expelled a long breath and turned back to the door. He couldn’t even imagine what this must be like for Paige. He wasn’t even certain that she’d remember him again when he went back to the foyer.

  “Paige,” he called out. His voice echoed back on himself.

  Silence.

  He got to the foyer and found her chair empty and the door wide open. Miles’ hoodie was in a pool on the marble floor and Paige was nowhere to be found.

  Chapter Eleven

  Adam ran down the porch stairs, his heart in his throat. She wasn’t in the truck. She wasn’t in sight. He yelled her name and got no response.

  He turned in a circle and found all the visible spaces empty.

  Could she have wandered in the house somewhere? But the door wouldn’t have been open. Maybe she heard something coming from the dining room that had spooked her?

  “Paige!” he yelled across the yard, then followed his voice. The barn was empty. Someone had put all the horses out after the run…

  Wait. Horses.

  Adam bolted, full-speed, toward the pasture that ran along the road. If Paige was still Paige, only without the long-term memories, then she would still love horses. She’d even said in the car, she loved horses.

  She was still Paige.

  When he got around all the parked vehicles in the driveway, he finally spotted her. She was wandering along the pasture fence, still dressed only in her black shorts and a tiny tank top. She had to be freezing.

  He slowed to a jog, unsure how to approach her. Back at her house, she hadn’t wandered far, and even when she hadn’t recognized him, she seemed to be at least a little at ease around him. He didn’t dare sprint at her. She might run. Paige might hurt herself trying to get away from him.

  His chest burned at the thought. The more he considered how hard it would be to have her out and loose in the world, the more it burned him.

  She reached toward one of the horses and the animal walked up to the fence. Paige stroked the creature’s nose, and Adam had almost caught up when she glanced at him over her shoulder.

  For a moment, she seemed unsure if she would scream or run. Her face was almost blank, and she had that new-colt look about her—the wobbly sense that the wrong step might make her topple.

  “Paige.” He exhaled. “Thank God I found you.”

  Her empty stare knifed at him. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know herself. Her hand stilled on the horse’s nose.

  “Who’s Paige? And why don’t you have a shirt on? I mean, don’t get me wrong, you don’t need one, and I know it’s wrong of me to be staring at some guy I don’t know who’s running around half-naked, but I’m not sure how I got here. I saw the horses and I just couldn’t resist coming over here.”

  A knot formed in his throat. She’d reset again and didn’t know him. He licked his bottom lip, then bit it, holding back the admonition for her not to run away again. She wouldn’t know she’d run away. And she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from doing it again.

  “You are Paige,” he said.

  One of her eyebrows rounded. “It’s weird that I don’t remember my own name. I must have gotten hit on the head or something.” She stopped petting the horse and put that hand on her forehead. “Maybe I have a fever.”

  “You just had some bad mushrooms.” He reached for her hand. Instead of shaking it like a stranger, she took it in her own and stood beside him.

  They stayed there, looking at the group of horses who’d crowded a
round them.

  Paige looked down at his hand, then trailed her gaze up his arm, and finally landed on his eyes. A tiny smile crept across her features and a glaze of pink crested her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.” She dropped his hand. “I feel like I should know you.”

  A knife of pain twisted in Adam’s gut and he couldn’t speak for a beat. With a long exhale, he said, “You should know me.”

  “Good.” She slid her hand into his and moved a bit closer, keeping her eyes on the horses. “Because holding your hand makes me feel warm and I’m getting cold.”

  He looked around, nervous. The wind was cool, though lower speed than it had been, and both of them were practically naked. “Maybe we should go inside the house.” Adam tugged on her hand just a bit and nodded up to the big house. “Tonya could make us some coffee.”

  Paige shook her head and shrank back. “Who’s Tonya?”

  “My sister-in-law.” He stopped pulling. “That’s okay. We can stay here.”

  She wrapped her arms around her body and gazed back out at the horses. “I just want to stay here. I think they make me forget that the world seems strange to me right now.” She looked up at him with a shy smile. “And I feel safe with you for some reason.”

  Something tightened inside him and Adam took one step closer to her. “You’re cold, Paige. Would you mind if I put my arm around you?”

  The pretty pink swath on her cheeks returned. “I guess that would be okay.”

  He slid his arm around her shoulders and she shivered, so he pulled her closer, so he was protecting her whole body from the wind. Adam wasn’t sure how to tell her that she was always going to be like this, but perhaps it wasn’t important. She’d forget it anyway.

  They stood for a long time, just staring at the horses. A warmth began to build in him, and the wind didn’t seem to faze either of them any longer. She was learning to trust him.

  Would she be able to learn that? Without her long-term memory capacity, would she always be meeting him again for the first time?