“Xander? Are you okay? I’ve been worried sick—”
“I’m going upstairs to get changed. Then you’re going to take me to where I’ve been living,” he said bluntly.
“To where—?” Her throat closed up tight again.
He meant to his apartment. She couldn’t refuse him as much as she wanted to.
“To my house, apartment. Whatever. Where I’ve been living. You know where it is, don’t you?”
She looked up and met the accusation in his stormy eyes. She nodded slowly. “Yes, I’ve been there once, before you came home.”
“Let’s not call it home,” he said bitterly. “It obviously hasn’t been my home for a while.”
She swallowed back the plea that she wished she had the courage to make to him. It could be his home again—it had been these past weeks. Why couldn’t he just let them start afresh? She knew why. Xander was the kind of man who did nothing without weighing all the options, without being 100 percent certain of whatever he did. He didn’t like surprises, and this morning had definitely been a very unwelcome one.
“Okay, let me know when you’re ready.”
“I’ll be right down,” he said and left the room.
Olivia took her mug to the sink and tipped out the congealed contents. Even thinking about the dash of milk she’d stirred into her coffee made her stomach lurch in protest.
The prospect of taking him back to his apartment terrified her. What if he remembered everything? The anger, the lies...the grief?
She had to face the truth. He may not want to even see her again after today. In fact, if he remembered the rest of his lost memories, he very likely would get on the phone to his lawyer and tell them to continue with the proceedings she’d requested a halt to. There was nothing she could do about it, and the helplessness that invaded every cell in her body was all-consuming.
Olivia found her handbag and car keys and went to the entrance hall to wait for him. The keys to his apartment were in the bottom of her bag, exactly where she’d left them the day she’d brought him home from the hospital. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Xander was dressed in a smart pair of dress trousers and a business shirt when he came back down. He’d obviously had a quick shower, and his hair was slicked back from his face. He’d trimmed his beard to a designer stubble. Now he looked far more like the corporate Xander who’d walked out on her two years ago.
“Ready?” she said, needing to fill the strained air between them with something, even something as inane as the one word she’d used.
Of course he was ready. He was here, wasn’t he? Impatience rolled off him in waves.
“Let’s go,” he grunted and held the door open for her.
Even in his fury he couldn’t stop being the gentleman he intrinsically had always been. His courtesy, however, brought her little comfort.
The drive toward the harbor bridge and into the city seemed to take forever in the frigid atmosphere in her car. Once they hit Quay Street, Xander shifted in his seat.
“Where are we going?”
She could tell it frustrated him to have to ask. “Parnell. You have a place on the top floor of one the high-rises.”
He nodded and looked straight ahead, as if he couldn’t wait to get there.
By the time Olivia pulled into the underground parking garage and directed Xander to the bank of elevators nearby, her nerves were as taut as violin strings. She felt as if the slightest thing would see her snap and fray apart. The trip up to Xander’s floor was all too swift, and suddenly they were at the front door.
She dug in her bag and drew out the keys, holding them up between them.
“Do you want to do the honors?” she asked.
Xander took them from her and looked at the key ring. “I don’t know which one it is,” he said, a deep frown pulling between his brows.
She pointed to the one that would lead them inside and held her breath as he turned it in the lock and pushed the door open. Olivia followed him as he stepped inside. The air was a little stale, and there was a fine layer of dust everywhere after a month with no cleaning service. She almost ran into Xander’s back when he stopped abruptly and stared around the open-plan living area off the entrance hall.
“Do you...is it... Is anything familiar to you?” she tentatively asked.
Xander simply shook his head.
* * *
He hated the place. Sure, it was functional—beautiful, even, in its starkness—and heavily masculine. But it didn’t feel like home. The lack of a feminine touch, with not even so much as a vase on display in the built-in shelving along one wall, confirmed that he lived here alone. Of course, if he’d had a new partner, she’d have been the one at his bedside after he woke up, not Olivia.