Husbands and Other Strangers

She was probably scared. But then, who wouldn’t be, in her position? Part of her memory had been whisked away like a so-called alien abduction. That would have rattled anyone. And although she was outgoing, Gayle had never been what he would have called the blindly trusting type.

Which was why she’d been so suspicious of him. Why she was still suspicious of him, if that look in her eyes was any indication of the state of her mind.

This was going to take a hell of a lot of patience, he warned himself. More than he’d ever had to dig up before. Taylor really hoped he was up to it.

You have to be up to it, he upbraided himself. The prize was far too precious. And he had no intention of losing it.

“The doctor said you could go home now,” Taylor told her.

Gayle deliberately looked toward her brothers. The less encouragement she gave this poor joke of theirs, the better. Not that she wouldn’t have been interested in spending some time with this guy her brothers had dug up. The man had definite potential, especially around the mouth and eyes.

His dark-blue eyes looked as if they’d been the inspiration that had led someone to coin the phrase about eyes being the windows of the soul. His looked as if they were almost bottomless. And his mouth—there was something incredibly sensual about his mouth even though, so far, she’d only seen it looking unhappy.

Or maybe her reaction to him was because his mouth was pulled back into a frown.

This wasn’t the time. She was letting her mind wander, taking her thoughts on a wild and very obviously purposeless chase.

She had to keep her mind on her goal. Getting out of here.

“Good,” she declared.

Gayle began to look around the small enclosure for her clothes. And then another thought struck her. With a sense of foreboding, she had the uneasy feeling that she wasn’t going to like the answer to her question.

Anticipating what he thought was Gayle’s next move, Taylor bent down and removed the plastic shopping bag tucked just above the wheels of the gurney. When the nurse on duty had brought Gayle her one-size-fits-all hospital gown, she’d placed Gayle’s bathing suit, as well as the shorts and tank top Jake had thought to bring with them, into the bag.

“Looking for these?” He held up the bag.

She took the bag from him mechanically, mumbling a thanks she was hardly aware of uttering. Gayle looked at Jake. There was only one way to find this out, and she might as well get it over with.

“Um, Jake, I can’t remember.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth and then forged ahead. “Where do I live?”

Taylor didn’t wait for Jake to answer. “With me,” he told Gayle. “You live with me.”

She hadn’t been prepared for the intense wave of panic that washed over her. It all but robbed her of her breath. “No, I don’t,” she insisted.

“Yes,” Jake said to her, quietly but firmly, “you do.”

Sam was right there to back him up. “He’s right, you do.”

She wanted to scream “No.” To shout that the joke was over. But beneath it all was the strong, underlying fear that they weren’t playing a trick on her. That for whatever reason, part of her memory was gone.

“Guys, you’re scaring me.”

“No more than you’re scaring us,” Taylor told her evenly.

She looked from one face to another, ending up with the man she wanted to believe was an impostor. Her eyes reverted back to Jake. Her throat suddenly felt dry, and her head began to spin again. She fought to keep from getting dizzy.

“Really?” she asked Jake, her voice hardly above a whisper. She stared into her older brother’s eyes, certain that if he was lying to her—the way she was fervently praying he was—she could tell. She could always tell when Jake was lying. He squinted.

“Really.”

Jake wasn’t squinting.

Shaken down to her very core, she sighed.

“Then why can’t I remember?” she demanded, looking at Jake. Ever since she’d taken her first step, she’d fought to be independent, to be taken seriously on her own merit. But right at this moment, she wanted her big brother to take care of her. To make things right. “Why can’t I remember anything about him?”

Jake ached for her as he struggled to make sense of all this. He took Gayle’s hand in his. “We don’t know, Gayle.”

“The doctor said he doesn’t even know,” Sam chimed in, as if that could somehow make her feel better. That she wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand.

“Guys, could you leave us alone for a minute?” Taylor asked his brothers-in-law.

Panic returned, as raw and nearly as unmanageable as it had been that very first time her father made her jump into the water and swim on her own as he stood on the side of the pool. She’d flashed a confident smile, wanting to be his golden girl. But inside she’d been trembling. She’d been four at the time.

“No,” Gayle cried, grabbing Jake’s arm. She didn’t want to be alone with this man. “Don’t.”

Very gently Jake peeled her fingers away from his forearm.

“We’ll be right outside, Gayle,” he promised, backing out of the area. A beat later Sam followed. Leaving the two of them alone.

For a moment Taylor stood there in silence. It was killing him, seeing her like this. Ever since he’d known her, Gayle had been vibrant, feisty. He couldn’t ever recall her being frightened, the way she so visibly was now.

And then it came—that look he’d become so familiar with in the past year and a half. Defiance. Relief flooded over him, emotions threatening to close his throat. His Gayle was in there somewhere and he was going to go in and find her, even if he had to drag her out, kicking and screaming.

It would be like old times.

“Well?” she demanded, doing her best not to let this man see that she felt as if she was falling apart. She’d never been this frightened….

Except that she had, she suddenly realized. Something, just now, had flashed through her brain, a glimmer of a memory moving so fast she couldn’t catch hold of it. All she could grasp was the hem of a fragment of fear. But fear of what or who, when and why, none of this had any answers.

Damn it, this was so frustrating. She felt like a book with all the even numbered pages missing. Nothing made any sense to her. Least of all why she couldn’t remember this man everyone told her was her husband.

“We’ll take this slow, Gayle,” Taylor promised. “One day at a time.”

He fought the urge to take her into his arms and just hold her. Knowing that it was the last thing he should do. A hint of a smile formed as it occurred to him that if he did do that, she’d probably toss him across the room with one of those martial arts moves of hers. Martial arts had become her newest passion. Gayle did nothing by half measures. Whatever she undertook, she did so wholeheartedly.

It was the same when they made love.

God, he just had to bring her around. Had to make her remember their life together. And he didn’t care what the doctor had said, he couldn’t help but take this personally. She’d remembered everything. But him.

There had to be an underlying reason for that. The trouble was he wasn’t sure he was going to like the answer once he found it.

She never took her eyes off him. He’d seen old tapes of Gayle at swim meets. She always watched her opponents the same way. Was that how she saw him? As an adversary?

“And meanwhile,” she said, “I’m supposed to come home with you.”

“It’s where you live.”