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 the phone down inside the neck, so that it nestled in between her breasts.
He swallowed hard. There was no way he could physically try to take it from her now. Even though he ached to. Very much.
‘Cute,’ he growled, his frustration coming over loud and clear.
She smiled serenely. ‘Someone has to save you from yourself.’
‘I don’t need saving,’ he ground out, folding his arms.
‘I beg to differ. I know you, Caleb; you’ll work all night tonight to make up for the time you lost in the hospital.’
He frowned. ‘How would you know that?’
‘Because you regularly worked through the night when we were at university to make up for any time you lost.’
‘That sounds like me,’ he said slowly, as the unsettling feeling of not remembering his university days bit at his nerves again.
‘So I’m staging an intervention. Again.’
‘Again? What else have you kept so close to your chest from me?’ he asked, raising a suggestive eyebrow.
Her jaw appeared to tighten and she frowned. ‘I mean it’s not the only time I’ve had to point out that you work too hard, that’s all,’ she said, looking a little uncomfortable now.
Despite the fact he could probably have held both of her wrists in one hand and easily retrieved his phone, he could tell from the steely look in her eyes that she wouldn’t tolerate such behaviour.
Frustration pinched at him. He was going to have to let her win this one.
‘Right, well, now that’s settled I’ll leave you to get dressed,’ Elena said, her mouth twitching at the corner with what looked like suppressed amusement.
She was enjoying ordering him around. Damn her.
As soon as she’d walked away he strode to the door and swung it shut with a little more force than was entirely necessary.
Okay, so he was grateful to her for helping him get out of the hospital, but he had the unsettling feeling he would have been better off staying there if this was the kind of treatment he was going to have to put up with for the next couple of days.
* * *
Elena walked out of the room with blood rushing loudly in her ears. She couldn’t quite believe she’d just hidden his phone down her top, but it had been obvious he wasn’t going to allow himself to rest if she didn’t force him to. After an accident like this he needed time to recover and heal. Especially as it appeared his memory still hadn’t fully returned—even though he was clearly trying to brush that tiny detail under the carpet.
She was painfully aware that she’d know the moment it all came back to him because she’d probably find herself out on her ear.
Though hopefully that wouldn’t happen any time soon.
The phone pressed uncomfortably against her breastbone as she walked away from him and as soon as she reached one of the spare bedrooms she removed it and stuffed it under the mattress at the side of the bed she always slept on. If he came into the room to look for it while she was asleep—just the thought of that gave her the jitters—he’d have to lift both her and the mattress up in order to get to it.
Not that she believed for a second he’d actually do that. He was too proud. She had wondered for one panicked moment earlier though whether he’d ignore her insistence that he took the evening off work and stuff his hand down her blouse to grab his phone, but luckily decorum had prevailed. She gave a little shiver. That would have been altogether too much to handle. She’d already been struggling to hold it together in his half-dressed,