nodded, accepting her condolences, and ran a hand over his face, feeling stubble rasp at his palm.
There was something more to the memory of losing his mother but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Some kind of underlying emotion bubbling under the surface, not quite clear enough for him to fully grasp.
‘I don’t seem to be able to remember a lot about her at the moment. I know the time I spent with her at the end of her life was...difficult...but I’m not entirely sure why.’
Elena folded her arms and leant against the counter top. ‘From what you’ve told me about her, I don’t think you were particularly close, at least not when you were younger. You were keen to move away from the place where you grew up and she didn’t want you to.’
She looked at him, as if expecting this to jog his memory, but nothing new came to him.
Sadness swelled in his chest.
What was wrong with him? Why was he getting maudlin all of a sudden? Perhaps the trauma to his head was somehow affecting his emotional state. That had to be it. He knew it wasn’t his usual way to discuss how he was feeling with anyone, particularly not a woman. It was one of the things that had contributed to destroying his relationship with his ex-fiancée. Her constant need to try and get into his head and fix him had caused him to feel both hounded and suffocated.
There was something about Elena that invited confidences though.
But what was it?
A half-formed answer flitted around the edges of his mind, just out of reach, and he pushed an unnerving resurgence of panic away, telling himself there was no point in trying to force his memory to come back; it would reappear in its own good time. Perhaps after he’d had a good night’s sleep in his own bed.
He stood up carefully, relieved to find his dizziness had subsided, and started to make his way towards the door to the corridor that led through to his bedroom and en suite bathroom.
‘Where are you going?’ Elena asked, dashing out of the kitchen to intercept him.
He bristled at her bossy tone. ‘I told you, I need a shower.’
‘Not on your own. What if you get dizzy and fall?’
‘Are you offering to join me?’ he asked with a teasing smile, feeling his pulse pick up at the thought of it.
She visibly tensed, then shot him a cool, reproving smile. ‘I’ll wait in your bedroom, just in case you need me,’ she said, turning on the spot and striding away from him, her body language looking a little stiff and awkward now.
He wanted to call after her that he wouldn’t need her, that he didn’t need anybody, that he was fine on his own. But he had the oddest feeling that that wasn’t the case at all.
CALEB MANAGED FINE by himself in the shower, despite the sharp pain that shot through his chest every time he moved his left arm. Checking over his body now that he was naked, he was shocked to see how much of it was covered in angry-looking bruises. It made him realise just how lightly he’d got off considering he’d been hit by a motorbike.
Or so he’d been told.
He still couldn’t remember a thing about it.
Tamping down on the now familiar swell of unease, he wrapped a towel tightly around his waist and stared at himself in the mirror, tentatively touching the raised bump in his hairline where he’d hit his head. Perhaps all his errant memories were trapped in the bump and when it went down they’d be released back into his brain.
He shook his head at himself, wondering where his normally sane self had disappeared to. He really didn’t feel like himself at the moment. There was a strange sense of having lost something heavy from deep within him, as if a weight he’d been carrying around had lifted from his body and was hovering somewhere over his head.
Or perhaps the accident had just knocked all the sense out of him.
Whatever it was, the best thing he could do right now was carry on as normal. There was no way he was letting a slight blip in memory and a small fracture stop him from functioning properly.
Giving his reflection a firm nod, he turned away from the mirror and left the en suite.
He expected to find Elena waiting there for him and was preparing to bat away any help she tried to offer and prove to her he wasn’t as frail and vulnerable as she clearly suspected he was, so was surprised—and, if he was honest, a little disappointed—to find the room empty.
The sound of voices floated in through the open bedroom door and he heard the swish and click of the front door closing, then the gentle pad of feet on the hallway tiles as someone walked towards the bedroom.
‘Oh, you’re out,’ Elena said as she emerged in the doorway, her cheeks flushing with colour as she eyed him standing there with just a towel slung around his hips.
He suppressed a smile as she averted her gaze and pretended to be studying a picture on the wall next to her, as if making a point of not staring at his half-naked body.
‘Who was at the door?’ he asked.
‘Benita.’
‘What did she want?’
‘She brought your mobile phone over, which you’d left on your desk. She thought you’d want it, but I told her you wouldn’t be dealing with anything work-related today because you need to rest.’ She turned to look at him now, her expression serious. ‘I also said that you wouldn’t be back in the office for a while.’
‘You did, huh? Well, unfortunately, I don’t have time to be off work right now.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’ll take the phone.’
When she flashed him an I-don’t-think-so expression he added a determined, ‘Thank you.’
‘Caleb, I really don’t think you should—’
‘I’m not interested in what you think,’ he said, feeling irritation prick at the back of his neck.
But, instead of handing the phone over like most people would have done when he used that tone of voice, she crossed her arms and fixed him with a hard stare.
‘There is no way I’m giving you this phone tonight. You need to rest and get a good night’s sleep and you’re not going to do that if you’re worrying about what’s going on at work without you. I’m sure you’ve hired an exceptional team of staff and they’re more than capable of handling things there without you for a couple of days.’
He glared at her in disbelief. No one ever talked to him like that and it was rather shocking to have her facing off with him, especially here in his own home. In his own bedroom.
‘How do you intend to stop me from taking it from you?’ he asked, putting on an amused smile to cover his incredulity.
She didn’t even blink. ‘By doing this,’ she said, lifting open the front of her blouse and sliding
