“Then he does know you as well as he claims,” Kieran said.
“Is that what he claimed? I thought he did, once. Peter was always very ambitious. He expected to take over his father’s business. His family and mine were pleased when we decided to marry. We—” She breathed deeply to calm her heart. “We planned the wedding right after I graduated from college. I’d already been studying wolves, but I was ready to give it up for Peter.”
She sensed more than saw Kieran lean forward, almost reaching out to touch her. “And then the quarrel with your father.”
“Yes.” She worked her fingers into knots in her lap. “When I argued with my father on my graduation day, things were bad enough that I… cut myself off from him completely. Refused to take the money he would have given me to start a new life with Peter. That was money Peter had counted on for his business, money he needed. He was always honest about that.” She leaned over her hands. “We went our separate ways. I resumed my studies, and Peter married someone eke who could give him what he wanted. I didn’t see him again until yesterday.”
“And now, Alexandra?”
And now. And now what? She could never believe Peter again. She knew why he’d come to find her.
“You have money now,” Kieran said, laying it out for her in cold, hard facts. “You could have whatever you want. He told me what your old life was like. You could have it back again.”
“The way Peter thinks I should?” She laughed helplessly. “For him, money solves everything. Clean slate. Start over.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
He saw too keenly, and she’d said too much. She pushed to her feet. “I love my work here, Kieran. It’s my life. I’d never give it up. That money can go rot in an old tree trunk for all I care.” Except that it came from Father. And Mother. It’s all I have left of what could have been, if I—
She turned away from unbearable thoughts and met Kieran’s gaze. “I don’t miss what I used to have.”
“Not even love, Alexandra?”
“Didn’t we go through this before? I—”
But he would not be put off. He rose, towering over her as he always did, even though his walk was still unsteady. “You loved Peter once. Can you live without that now?”
“Live without it? I’m grateful I don’t have any such complications in my life!”
“Then you choose to be alone.”
“Yes. I choose. And what about your choices, Kieran?” she said, desperate to turn the subject. “Your past? What about your parents, your family? What happened after I met you as a boy? Isn’t that what you came to me to find?”
He walked slowly to the window and gazed out. “Strange you should ask, Alexandra. Schaeffer helped me remember.”
“What?”
He turned his head, just enough for her to see the strength of his profile against the fading light of evening. “You said I was drunk. It wasn’t the first time.”
His voice grew strange, and Alex had the eerie feeling that Kieran had left the room in all but body, as if he journeyed on inner paths she couldn’t reach.
“You remembered… getting drunk?”
“I remembered,” he said. “Places like the bar. Many of them.”
“You remember being in places like that bar before?”
“A hundred times,” he said, with a kind of weary resignation. “Wandering from place to place, one after another.”
Alex stared at him. Was this the result of today’s debacle—Kieran’s remembering a past of barhopping?
“And fighting,” he continued. His mouth curled up. “I remember that, too.”
She sat down in the armchair. “You remember fighting. Were you acting out your memories today? Did you make a habit of this in your former life? Getting drunk and—and…”
He gave no reaction, only a tight, self-mocking smile.
She fought down her anger. “So you remember going from place to place,” she said at last.
“Running,”
“From what?”
He turned away from her again. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I did discover something else, Alexandra. When Howie’s men came for me, I tried to shift.”