Husbands and Other Strangers

Gayle frowned. That’s what he said, but how did she know for sure? If she was his wife, wouldn’t there be a degree of familiarity somewhere, however deep in her subconscious? If he was really her husband, the man she supposedly loved, would her mind really have shut down, excluding him from every thought, every memory?

She’d spent the past two hours sitting in a drafty hospital gown, waiting to be scanned and probed while she desperately tried to summon any kind of memories with him in them. All she’d managed to do was come up against a blank wall.

It had led her to an inevitable conclusion. If this man was her husband, then he must have been a terrible one. There was no other explanation why his very presence had been burned away from her memory banks.

Gayle drew herself up as high as she could manage. “I can stay with Sam or Jake.” Her tone was deliberately dismissive. On a whim she added, “Just until I remember you.” She thought that would put an end to any argument he might have.

Taylor shoved his hands into his pockets to keep from shaking her. A part of him still felt maybe this was payback for some imagined sin. She’d spent the first six months of their marriage testing him, as if she couldn’t believe that he was going to stay and wanted him to go before she became used to her status. Used to him. He’d just dug in and waited her out. He didn’t know if he had the stamina to do it again.

“The familiar surroundings might make you remember faster,” he finally told her.

“Why should they be familiar if you’re not?” she countered.

He threw up his hands, then struggled to regain control over his temper. Shouting at her wasn’t going to accomplish anything. She wasn’t testing him, he told himself. She was thrashing around in the same choppy waters that he was. It was up to him to lead her out of them. How, he had no idea, but he knew he was going to. There was too much at stake to just give up.

“I don’t have any answers here, Gayle. The doctor doesn’t have any answers,” he emphasized. “This is all new territory for me.”

She raised her hand as if she were sitting in a classroom, trying to catch the teacher’s eye. “Let’s not forget me here.”

“I’m not forgetting you,” he said so fiercely he knew he scared her. “Not for one damn second am I forgetting you. And I don’t know why you seem to have forgotten me.”

“Seem?” Gayle echoed, her temper flaring at the single word. She cleaved to the familiar feeling as if it was an old friend. This, this she could remember. Getting angry. Having no fear over voicing her opinions. She was her own person, no matter who this man was or wasn’t to her. She had to remember that. “You think I’m faking this? That I’m pretending not to know you?”

For just a moment the bars he’d placed around his own temper seemed in danger of melting.

“Right now I don’t know what to think,” Taylor shot back. “You’re not above doing things to bedevil me for reasons that I could never fully understand. You—”

Abruptly he stopped himself.

This wasn’t the way to go, even though for him the ground was familiar. Arguing with Gayle might just push her farther into this black hole that had somehow eaten away at the part of her mind that had contained him.

Struggling for control, Taylor blew out a breath. He didn’t need this. He pushed the plastic bag with her clothes closer to her. “Get dressed, Gayle. I’m going to take you home.”

She clutched the bag against her, tossing her head the way he’d seen her do a hundred times before. Her long, blond hair flew over her shoulder. “No, you’re not.”

He leaned in close to her, his lips against her ear. “Yes,” he said quietly, firmly, “I am.”

His breath slipped along the curve of her neck. The shiver along her spine mimicked its path. Something in the distance stirred, although she could put neither name nor description to it.

She dropped it.

Although she didn’t know him, something in the man’s voice told her he wasn’t someone to be messed with, to be disregarded. Certainly not a man she could order around the way she could so many of the others in her life. Even her brothers bent from time to time.

Just her luck, her so-called husband had a steel pole stuck up a place that should never be visited.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he told her. With that Taylor pushed the curtain aside and walked out of her space.

He found Sam and Jake waiting for him in the hall where they’d talked to Peter.

Sam pretended to look him over carefully. “Well, no wounds,” he observed. “That’s a positive sign. Is Gayle coming around?” Taking a look at Taylor’s face, Sam saw the answer to his question. Disappointment followed. “Guess not.”

Taylor was struggling to take this newest development in stride, the way he had everything else that involved Gayle. “The woman’s got the disposition of a wounded warthog.”

Jake laughed. “Then she is coming around,” he commented dryly. And then he looked at his brother-in-law. “Look, Tay, maybe Sam or I should take her in for a couple of weeks. I mean, if she doesn’t remember you’re married—”

Taylor cut him off. “She’s going to remember, Jake. She’ll see something, hear something, it’ll trigger a memory and we can go from there. I’ve got to be there for that. Got to give her every opportunity to remember me. To remember us.” He struggled to keep the hopelessness from absorbing him. “Maybe I’ll show Gayle the wedding pictures.”

“Might just do the trick,” Sam agreed cheerfully, a strained smile pasted on his lips.

“You’re a lousy actor, Sam,” Taylor told him. “But thanks for trying.”

He realized that Sam was no longer listening to him. Instead he was looking at something over his shoulder. Taylor turned around and saw that Gayle had emerged from out of the curtained area, wearing a white pair of impossibly short shorts and a white-and-pink-checkered blouse that tied above her midriff.

Her hair had long since dried and was hanging about her face and shoulders in tiny curls. She’d always told him that she hated the way that looked. He thought she looked beautiful.

Except for the hairstyle, she looked exactly the way she had when she’d stepped onto Sam’s sloop this morning.

And yet she was different. She wasn’t his Gayle anymore.

But she would be, he vowed. She would be.

“God, I look like Orphan Annie,” she complained, spiking her fingers through her hair and trying to pull it straight. It was an exercise in futility.

“Orphan Annie she remembers,” Taylor muttered under his breath.

But Gayle heard him. “Sure, I used to read the comic strip every day when I was a kid,” she said as she moved closer to Jake and away from him.

Closer to what was familiar. Away from what was not.

Chapter Four

“Well, this place isn’t going to win the Good Housekeeping award anytime soon.”

Gayle stood in the doorway of the house her “husband” claimed to be theirs. A distant feeling of déjà vu whispered through her, but then in the next moment it was gone.

She didn’t recognize the house, and she had a feeling she would have, given its unique state.

Gayle remained where she was, holding on to the doorknob. Not wanting to let go.

Not wanting to take a step farther into this house she didn’t recognize, into this life she didn’t know with a man who was a stranger to her.

Stalling, she looked around. A clear plastic tarp hung from the ceiling to the ground and furniture clustered together in the middle of the room like marooned survivors of a shipwreck. The furniture, a sofa, love seat, coffee table and two side tables were covered with more plastic tarp.

The wall to her left had holes in it, courtesy of the sledgehammer leaning against it. Sanders, saws and a variety of equipment she didn’t readily recognize were scattered throughout the area she assumed had once been a living room. Here and there, hints of olive-green wallpaper still clung for dear life to the walls that remained intact.

It looked like the center of her worst nightmare. She lived here?

Taylor slowly pocketed his key. He couldn’t close the door because she was still blocking the sill. His eyes never left her face as he waited and prayed for some ray of recognition to cross it. All he saw was startled wonder.