by Amy Boyles
I shot a frantic look to Cordelia. She showed me her phone. “I’ll call over there and see if everything’s okay. How’s that?”
I nodded quickly. I knew she could see the hunger in my eyes, the fear and longing that radiated from my every pore.
“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t want to sound desperate, but I was just about as desperate as I could be. Suddenly I had to know if Axel remembered me. I needed to make sure it was a fluke, that he’d woken up as hungry to see me as I was to see him.
Cordelia punched a button and held the phone to her ear. “It’s ringing,” she said to me.
I crossed my fingers. Every little bit of luck helped in a situation such as this one, right?
“Hi, Karen, it’s Cordelia. I was just calling… Oh, okay. Sure. Here she is.”
Cordelia hopped off the chair and handed the phone to me. “She wants to talk to you.”
A large gaping hole formed in the pit of my stomach. Hope and happiness were tossed inside to fall to the very bottom. I just knew whatever Karen had to say, it wasn’t good. It couldn’t be. Otherwise she would have kept talking to Cordelia.
Maybe I was being ridiculous. Karen may have just wanted to talk to me to see how I was feeling.
That was probably it. I didn’t need to get all worked up. To be so worried when there was nothing to worry about, right?
“Hi, Karen,” I said after pressing the phone to my ear. “How is he today? Ready to get married, I hope.”
My stomach clenched. Please, please let Axel be okay.
“About that,” Karen said.
Terrible start to the conversation.
I threw all the hope I had left into my voice. “About what?”
“Pepper, I would have called you earlier, but I was hoping things would change. That somehow he would be different within a few hours, but he’s remained the same.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
I was up, on my feet. Clips stuck out of my hair. One side of my head had tight curls, the other was a mess of frizz. It didn’t matter. I opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch.
Cold ripped through my robe, zipping down to my core. I shivered.
“Well,” Karen explained. Sorrow filled her voice, and I closed my eyes. “I had hoped that Axel would start talking about you soon. That he would be okay, but I’m afraid to say that he isn’t. I asked him about you again, and he said that he doesn’t remember who you were.”
My knees folded, and I hit the wooden floorboards hard. Pain ricocheted to my neck. “So he doesn’t remember me?”
“No, I’m so sorry. We’ve called a doctor, who should be here soon.”
“Does he remember anyone else?”
Karen paused. “That’s the funny thing. He remembers everyone else but you. You’re the only person Axel doesn’t know. I’m so sorry, Pepper. I wish I had something better to tell you, some good news.”
I thanked Karen for explaining everything to me and hung up. The front door opened. My family stood in the frame, their faces shining with expectations—one I couldn’t give them.
“Well?” Betty said. “What’s the verdict?”
I closed my eyes to stop the tears from flowing. “The verdict is, it looks like the wedding is off.”
Chapter 8
“I want to see him,” I said.
Karen and Roger stood in Axel’s living room. According to them, the doctor had already come and gone.
“The doctor said to let him rest,” Karen explained. The anguish in her eyes told me everything I needed to know. “He said that Axel should come out of it soon.”
“Should or will?” I said.
“Pepper.” Roger placed his hands on my shoulders. “We have to give him some time.”
“Time my foot.” Betty boobed her way between me and Roger. “If my granddaughter wants to talk to her fiancé, you need to let her.”
Roger shot Karen a searching look. Karen sighed and nodded. “He’s downstairs.”
“Thank you.”
“But Pepper,” Karen pleaded, “you have to understand that Axel is upset about this as well. It’s hard on him knowing he has a fiancée and can’t remember her.”
I narrowed my gaze. “We’ll just see about that.”
It came out weird, but what I meant was—we’d see about his memory. By the time I finished with Axel Reign, not only would he remember me but he’d be sorry that he ever forgot that I existed.
Or else.
I tromped downstairs and found Axel staring into a black cauldron at his work space.
“I thought you’d moved most of this stuff.”
He glanced up at me. A blank expression filled his face. “Why would I have moved it?”
I sighed and slumped onto a chair. “Because you bought us a house. You have your own work space there.”
“Oh. Look…”
“Pepper,” I prodded him.
“Pepper. I’m so sorry.” He was. Sorrow filled his eyes. He crossed to me and took my hands. “I’m trying to figure out a spell to change all this. It doesn’t make any sense that I would remember everyone else and not you.”
“That makes two of us.”
“But I want to.” His voice was filled with truth. “I want to remember everything about you. I take it,” he said shyly, “we haven’t mated yet.”
A blush bloomed on my cheeks. “No.”
He rubbed his chin in thought. “That means our tie isn’t as strong as it could have been. Easier to sever.”
I studied him. “Sever?”
He nodded. “Can I have a lock of your hair?”
“Of course.”
“I think there might be a spell that focuses on you. Since I can’t remember you, if I add a part of you to a spell, then that might jog my memory.”
I crossed my fingers. “Let’s hope so.”
Axel snipped a lock of hair and dropped it in the cauldron. He threw in a handful of dirt, breath of a newborn baby, snakeskin and wool from a black sheep.
“Concentrate on it working,” he instructed. “On a successful spell.”
I closed my eyes and believed as hard as I could that this would work.
I felt like the Litte Engine That Could, just pushing and wanting this more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly true. I’m sure I’d wanted other things just as much.
Nope. Now that I thought about it, nothing compared to this.
Magic uncoiled from the cauldron like fingers, drifting into the room and winding around the space. The wisps of fingers reached for me, and I let them poke and prod. Seeing as I was the person who had been forgotten, I figured it best to allow the magic to inspect me, as it was.
More and more magic crept from the cauldron until a greenish fog filled every nook and cranny of Axel’s workroom. It permeated everything, even my lungs, and I had to stop myself from coughing.
“I can feel it,” Axel said. “It’s working.”
Relief filled me. Thank goodness. This entire ordeal would be over soon.
As more magic poured out, the room became heavy, dense, the fog so thick I could barely see anything.
Axel’s voice rose. A flash popped from the cauldron, and the fog disappeared.
The magic had gotten in my eyes, making my sight blurry. I blinked until the straight lines of Axel’s body appeared.
I was afraid to ask, but I had to. “Well?”
Axel’s smoldering gaze met mine. He crossed out from behind the workbench and strode over to me.
He took me by the arms, lifted me to him and kissed me. The passion in his kiss took me by surprise. I quickly melted into him, letting the tension that had filled me all morning dissolve.
He was back! Axel was back. He remembered me. We could get married now. Time was short. I mean, we only had a couple of hours, but there was still time to throw it all together. Call Idie and have her fix my hair, make sure the caterer was ready and set the doves that still followed me around every
where I went.
The wedding would go on as planned.
Axel pulled away. I curled my fingers into his shirt. “Oh, thank goodness,” I gushed. “I thought you were lost to me forever. You can’t imagine how terrified I was. How horrible I felt. What a nightmare.”
I smiled at him. “But you’re better now, right?”
He took my hands and rubbed his thumbs across my knuckles. “Pepper,” he said quietly, “the spell didn’t work.”
My jaw fell. “It didn’t? But what about the kiss?”
He shook his head and stared at the floor. Great. Now he couldn’t even look at me.
“I kissed you because I hoped that it might help me remember.”
“But it didn’t.”
He shook his head.
“Tell me something. When you kissed me, did you feel anything? Anything at all?”
Please, please let Axel say he felt something when we kissed.
But he shook his head. He dragged his gaze from the floor and looked at me. Anguish filled his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t feel anything.”
My throat dried. What could I say? What was there to say? The doctor had come. Axel had even tried magic to remember, but nothing had worked.
What more was left?
Tears started to come, but I blinked them away. “What do we do now?”
He hiked a shoulder to his ear. “I wish I had an answer for that, but I don’t.”
“He was spelled,” Amelia announced later that day.
Betty had put out a modest brunch of biscuits and chocolate gravy, which isn’t gravy at all. It’s a cocoa powder, milk and sugar mixture. Over biscuits it’s absolute heaven.
Even though I didn’t have much of an appetite, I still managed to suffer through a couple of bites of heaven.
“You think so?” I directed to Amelia.
She sipped from her glass of sweet tea. “Absolutely. How else could this have happened? Axel has forgotten everyone but you? Please. Betty”—she pointed a biscuit at our grandmother—“you need to get on this immediately. Figure out what happened.”
Betty smirked. “If we’re thinking Axel was spelled, the first thing we need to do is figure out who did it.”
“Molly,” I said without hesitating.
“She does have a thing about familiars,” Mattie added.
Betty scoffed. “The whole familiar thing was a long time ago.”
Mattie whisked her tail right and left. “But my memory is forever.”
“She has been horrible to me ever since she arrived,” I said. “And she rode my dragon without asking. Who does that?”
“Molly,” Cordelia and Amelia said in unison.
“We need more possibilities,” Betty said.
“Drew,” I chirped. “The new woman at Della’s venue shop. She tackled Axel when she saw him.”
Betty stroked her chin. “So that’s two. Gives us a decent point of origin.”
Excitement built inside me. “How will you go about it? Breaking the spell if he’s under one?”
“If a woman spelled Axel to forget about you, it stands to reason that she would also have worked magic to make him focus on her.”
Amelia puckered her lips into an O. “Wow, do you think someone would be so obvious?”
“Or stupid?” Cordelia snarked.
“We’re dealing with jealousy, girls,” Betty said ominously. “When it comes to matters of the heart, there is little that makes sense.”
“So what do we do?” I said. “What’s the easiest way to nab the person?”
Betty rubbed her lips together. “There are several. You can follow Axel and see who throws herself at him.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m not going to start stalking him.”
“It’s for a good cause,” Amelia said.
I shot her a scathing look. My cousin wilted. “Sorry,” she whimpered.
A simmer filled Betty’s eyes. “Or, Pepper, you could spend all your time with Axel. Make it obvious you’re not going anywhere. That might drive whoever did this so crazy she shows herself out of jealousy.”
I clicked my tongue. “Now that, I like. The only issue is making sure Axel wants to hang around with me. I mean, he doesn’t even know who I am. Why would he want to spend any time with me at all?”
Betty folded her arms. A mysterious expression flitted across her face. “Leave that to me. After I talk to him, he’ll want to spend every waking minute with you.”
An impressive thing to say. But could Betty’s plan work? Only one way to find out.
“Okay, Betty. I’m game. Let’s go get Axel.”
Betty shook her head. “You wait here.” She grabbed her coat from a peg and slid it over her shoulders. “I’m gonna bring him to you. After all, you want to be chased, don’t you? You don’t want to be tagging along after this man who doesn’t even know who you are. You want him to come after you.”
I poked the air for emphasis. “Right. Him chase me. Got it.”
“Now,” Betty said, “you hold tight. I’ll be back with Axel faster than you can say ‘molasses.’”
“Molasses,” I said.
She scowled. “Let me get out the front door first.”
A moment later she left. I turned to Amelia and Cordelia.
“As long as Betty doesn’t scare him to death, we should be okay,” Amelia said.
I folded my arms. “I’m going to sit outside and wait for them. The fresh air will do some good. Besides, I have about a thousand phone calls to make, letting people know the wedding was cancelled.”
Cordelia smiled sadly. “Don’t sit out there too long. It’s chilly.”
“Sure thing.” To be honest, it was stuffy inside. I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t the fire or anything like that, it was simply the pity dripping from my family. They were sad for me. I totally understood that. But their sadness weighed on me like a boulder sitting atop my shoulders.
I needed some space.
I sat on the porch swing and rocked back and forth. It was cool, but the biting wind felt good against my skin. I’d been outside for a few minutes when a voice caught my attention.
“Sitting outside because it’s cold or because you like the idea of catching pneumonia?”
The man’s voice had a thick Southern accent. I didn’t immediately recognize it, but I did recognize the face.
“Blake, right?” I said.
Blake Calhoun sauntered up the front steps as if he owned the place. The vampire swaggered in a way that would look stupid on someone else, but on him it looked completely natural.
“Well, I suppose I don’t think it’s cold enough to catch cold,” I said.
Blake pointed to the empty seat beside me. “Mind if I sit?”
I searched the road for any sign of Betty and Axel.
“If you’re waiting for someone, I can mosey along,” he said.
Now I felt rude. I patted the seat. “No, no. Sit.”
Blake stretched his long, muscular legs in front of him after he took the seat beside me. “I heard about your beau. I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay. But hopefully everything will be fixed in a day or so and we can go back to normal. Have the wedding, I mean.”
He studied me. Blake’s dark eyes made me feel as if he was searching my very soul for the answers to the universe. “It’s quite the magical town you have here.”
“Thank you.”
“How does that work, I wonder? How does a place like this have magic?”
“Oh, well, there’s this…” I stopped, realizing I probably shouldn’t talk about it.
Blake smiled warmly. “You’re probably wondering why a vampire would be interested in magic.”
“It is a good question.”
“I’m just a curious man. A curious person. I ask questions. I seek answers.”
“Oh? I’ve only met one other vampire, and he didn’t seem to be the type who was interested in finding out answers.”
Blake reached out and touched a strand of my hair. An electric jolt zipped all the way down my spine. I jumped back.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “It’s part of being a vampire. I have a certain magic to my touch.”
“I think that’s called electricity.”
He studied me, and the heat of Blake’s stare made me feel as if a thousand eels slithered around in my stomach.
I rose quickly, wanting to shake off the icky feeling. “Thank you for your condolences.”
Blake rose. He smiled again. “Let me know if I can help soothe your wounds. You’d be surprised about the healing touch a vampire has.”
Before I had time to react, Blake took my hand and brought my knuckles to his lips. His gaze locked on mine, and I felt myself starting to fall. I felt like I was swimming underwater.
I shook my head and shrugged off the vampire’s power. I pulled my hand from his.
Blake sauntered off the porch. Without turning around he said, “See you, Pepper.”
I didn’t answer. I had the creepiest feeling that Blake was right. He would be seeing me. I also had another feeling about him—that Blake Calhoun wanted more than to simply get to know me better.
He wanted something else.
But what?
Chapter 9
“I’m going to take you to the house you bought for us.”
Axel and I walked down the street toward our cottage. Betty hadn’t lied. By the time Blake vanished, she had arrived with Axel, who looked ready and willing to learn anything and everything he could about us and our relationship.
Y’all, he seemed to genuinely want to remember. It made my heart leap for joy to know that Axel honestly wanted to know me.
The streets were fairly busy as we walked, mostly with visitors who had arrived for the wedding. I think they were still staying in town just to see if we would move forward with the wedding in the next day or so.
For their sakes and mine, I prayed we would, too.
“Here it is.” I opened my arms wide, gesturing to the home. “The little cottage. Want to go inside?”
Axel studied the structure as if trying to memorize every stone, every line and arch. After a moment he said with a big smile that made my heart convulse, “I would love to.”