satisfied nod, Olivia jammed the lid back on the storage box and fled down the stairs. She’d have to come back later and get the rest of Xander’s clothes. She certainly couldn’t just take a box down to their bedroom right now because she didn’t want to invent explanations for why his things were stored away, either.
In her bedroom—their bedroom, she corrected herself—Olivia laid the jeans and sweatshirt on the bed and was getting her own clothing together when Xander came out of the en suite wrapped in a towel, a bloom of steam following him.
“I see we got the hot water problems fixed,” he said, coming toward her.
“Yeah, we ended up installing a small hot water heater just for our bathroom.” Olivia nodded. “Did you leave any for me?”
“I invited you to share,” Xander said with a wink.
She huffed a small laugh, but even so her heart twinged just a little. He sounded so like his old self. The self he’d been before they realized they were expecting a baby and would be dropping to one income for a while. While they’d never been exactly poor, and her income as a high school art teacher had mostly been used to provide the extras they needed for the renovations, it had still been a daunting prospect. Of course, since then, Xander’s star had risen to dizzying heights with the investment banking firm he now was a partner in. And with that meteoric rise, his income had hit stratospheric levels, too.
“Hey,” Xander said as he walked over to the bed and picked up his clothes. “You expecting me to go commando?”
“Oh, heavens, I didn’t think. Hang on a sec.”
Olivia shot into the guest bedroom and grabbed a pair of the designer boxer briefs she’d brought back from his apartment. She tossed them at him as she came back in the door.
“There you are. I’ll grab my shower quickly. Then I’ll get some breakfast together for us, okay?”
* * *
Xander caught the briefs she’d thrown at him and nodded. “Yeah, sounds good.”
The bathroom door closed behind her, and he sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly feeling weak again. Damn, but this was getting old, he thought in exasperation as he pulled on his boxers and stood up to slide on his jeans. They dropped an indecent distance on his hips.
He stepped over to the chest of drawers and opened the one where he kept his belts. He was surprised to find the drawer filled with Olivia’s lingerie instead. Maybe he’d misjudged, he thought, opening another drawer and then another—discovering that the entire bureau was filled with her things. That wasn’t right, was it? It was as if he didn’t share a room with her anymore. She said she’d moved his clothes to the guest room, but it seemed odd that she’d have moved everything. And shouldn’t there be empty spaces left behind where his things had been?
Xander spied the pair of trousers he’d worn yesterday, lying on the floor. He picked them up and tugged the belt free from its loops. As he fed the belt through his Levi’s he wondered what else he’d forgotten. What else was so completely out of sync in this world he’d woken up to? Even Olivia was different from how he remembered her. There was a wariness there he’d never known her to have before. As if she now guarded her words, not to mention herself, very carefully.
Olivia came through from the bathroom, and his nostrils flared as he picked up the gentle waft of scent that came through with her. A tingling began deep in his gut. She always had that effect on him. Had right from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. So how was it that he could remember that day as if it was yesterday, yet his brain had switched off an entire chunk of their life together?
They went downstairs—Olivia tucked under his shoulder with her arm around his back, he with one hand on the rail and taking one step at a time. His balance and coordination were still not quite there, and he fought to suppress his irritation at being so ridiculously helpless and having to depend on his wife to do such a simple thing. He normally flew down these stairs, didn’t he?
“What would you like for breakfast?” Olivia asked when they reached the kitchen.
“Anything but hospital food,” he replied with a smile. “How about your homemade muesli?”
She looked startled at his request. “I haven’t made that in years, but I have store-bought.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I’ll just have some toast. I can get that myself.”
Olivia gently pushed him onto a stool by the counter. “Oh no you won’t. Your first morning home, I’m making you a nice breakfast. How about scrambled eggs and smoked salmon?”
His mouth watered. “That sounds much better. Thanks.”
He watched her as she moved around the kitchen, envying how she knew where everything was. None of it was familiar to him. The kitchen was different to the poorly fitted cupboards and temperamental old stove that had been here when they’d bought the property in a deceased estate auction. The place had been like a time capsule. The same family had owned it since it had been built. The last of the family line, an elderly spinster, had lived only on the ground floor in her later years, and nothing had been done to modernize the property since the early 1960s.
The aroma of coffee began to fill the room. Feeling uncharacteristically useless, Xander rose to get a couple of mugs from the glass-fronted cupboard. At least he could see where they were kept, he thought grimly. Automatically he put a heaping spoon of sugar in each mug.
“Oh, no sugar for me,” Olivia said, whipping one of the mugs away and pouring the sugar back in the bowl before putting the mug back down again.
“Since when?”
“A couple of years ago, at least.”
Just how many of the nuances of their day-to-day life did he need to relearn, he thought as he picked up the mugs and moved toward the coffee machine. She must have seen the look that crossed his face at the news.
“It’s okay, Xander. Whether I take sugar or not isn’t the end of the world.”
“It might not be, but what about important stuff? The things we’ve done together, the plans we’ve made in the past few years? What if I never remember? Hell, I don’t even remember the accident that caused me to lose my memory, let alone what car I was driving.”
His voice had risen to a shout, and Olivia’s face, always a window to her emotions, crumpled into a worried frown—her eyes reflecting her distress.
“Xander, none of those things are important. What’s important is that you’re alive and that you’re here. With me.”
She closed the distance between them and slid her arms around his waist, laying her head on his shoulder and squeezing him tight as if she would never let him go. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, trying hard to put a lid on the anger that had boiled up within him at something so simple, so stupid, as misremembering whether or not his wife took sugar in her coffee.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pressing a kiss on the top of her head. “I just feel so bloody lost right now.”
“But you’re not lost,” Olivia affirmed with another squeeze of her arms. “You’re here with me. Right where you belong.”
The
