Husbands and Other Strangers
“I don’t know who you are.”
If Gayle was putting him on, Taylor was going to kill her. Slowly.
“You’re not kidding?” Taylor ground out each one of the words slowly, giving her every opportunity to recant. Praying she’d take it.
Why were her brothers doing this to her? “Sam, Jake, what’s going on here?”
Gayle looked from Sam to Jake, then her eyes came to rest on the stranger. Her brothers had played pranks on her before. But this was going a little bit too far.
Gayle gave each of them as much of a piercing, demanding look as she could muster, under the circumstances. “Jake, Sam, one of you tell me. I want to know. Just who is this man?”
HUSBANDS AND OTHER STRANGERS
MARIE FERRARELLA
Books by Marie Ferrarella in Miniseries
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Two Halves of a Whole
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Desperately Seeking Twin Yours Truly
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MARIE FERRARELLA
This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written over 140 books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.
To Charlie, and remembering
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
His hands were gentle, so incredibly gentle. They passed over her body slowly, like a warm spring breeze. The hands of a lover. Caressing her. Stroking her. Making her yearn.
She knew instinctively that they were powerful hands—hands that could have just as easily snapped a neck in two if unrestrained anger had flashed through his veins. Which made it all the more wondrous that he could touch her this way. As if he were worshipping her.
As if he were making love to her with just his hands, just his fingertips.
He was making love to her.
A moan slipped from her lips, as if the pleasure that filled her was just too much to contain, to keep captive within the vessel of her body. It overflowed from every pore.
Drenching her.
Drenching him.
And then his hands were no longer blazing a trail along her skin. His lips were there instead, anointing her body. She could feel herself trembling as his mouth, ever so lightly, skimmed along her flesh, following the very same path that his fingers had traced just a moment ago.
A century ago, when time began.
She couldn’t see him.
Why couldn’t she see him? Why, when every fiber of her being felt him, knew him, wanted him, couldn’t she see his face? No matter how she tried, how she turned, she couldn’t see him. His identity remained hidden from her view.
Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t see. She could only sense him. It was as if something inside of her prevented her from seeing him.
He wasn’t a stranger. How could he be? She knew who he was, at least in her soul. Somehow, deep within the secret recesses of her mind, she had always known, that he would be coming for her. Coming to her. Whoever he was, he was her soul mate, her intended, the one she had been destined for from the very moment destiny began.
Destined to love until the last sands of time blew away into the dark abyss of eternity.
So if her soul knew him so well, why couldn’t she see him?
Gayle Conway strained, trying to turn her head, aching for a chance to get a better view. Any view. Aching to see.
But something was holding her back, restraining her movement. A heavy weight was pressing down on her. And there was such exhaustion consuming her she couldn’t breathe. Still, with her last ounce of strength, she struggled against the iron bands on her arms.
A sense of overwhelming loss edged out the pleasure within her, like a blot of ink staining every square inch of the bright, colorful material it had been spilled on, obliterating it.
He was gone.
Gone as if he were nothing more than smoke, as if he hadn’t existed at all. But he had. She knew he had. He had been as real as she. Now she was left alone, shackled to a hard bed of loneliness.
The moan that came from her lips this time was devoid of pleasure. It was a keening sound, filled with the sorrow of bereavement and loss.
And then something else cut into it. Anot
her sound, another voice.
Something…someone…
Someone was calling to her. Calling her from this oppressive, weighted darkness she was lost in.
The heaviness began to lift. Hands were on her again. But this time they were not gentle hands. Rough hands, trying to snatch at her consciousness. Trying to bring her back around. She could feel hands rubbing her arms, her legs, coaxing the color, the strength back into them. Back into her.
Gayle tried to listen. To recognize. But the voice calling her name belonged to someone she didn’t know. A stranger’s voice.
“Gayle, please wake up. Honey, please, just open your eyes. Just look at me. Please.”
Fingers. Gentle fingers, not running along her body but lacing her fingers with them. More words.
Supplications? Prayers?
Prayers. Someone was praying over her. She felt more than heard the words, as if they were being whispered into her subconscious.
Gayle tried hard to open her eyes, but they wouldn’t move. Each lid felt as if it had been sealed permanently shut.
She had to open her eyes to find who’d been loving her. She had to find the man who had so abruptly left her side.
The man she couldn’t see.
Slowly, mercifully, she could feel herself rising from the depths, the almost life-threatening heaviness leaving her. A moment longer and it would be all right. She would be out of this lonely, stark world and reunited with the man whose passion had set her on fire. Already she could feel her body warming again. Warming, as if touched by sunlight.
Sunlight.
It was the sun she felt on her face, on her body. The sun. Nothing more, just the sun.
The realization underlined the emptiness in her soul.
Something moist slid from her lashes and slithered in a zigzag pattern along both cheeks. Gayle opened her eyes and looked up at the concerned ring of faces hovering over her.
It took her a moment before she could focus on them. Sam. Jake. The emptiness within her shifted a little as she recognized the familiar faces of her two older brothers.
And then she saw someone else.
Taylor Conway wasn’t easily given to allowing his emotions to overtake him, but in the past twenty minutes he had unwillingly sped through an entire gamut of emotions. Every one of them had warred for complete possession of him as he had frantically worked over his wife’s body. Equal amounts of CPR and desperation had gone into his attempts to force air into her lungs again. He’d prayed every single prayer he could summon to his numbed brain, making deals with a god he hadn’t, until now, known firsthand.
Anything, as long as Gayle came back to him. He couldn’t lose her like this. No, not in any way at all. He refused to lose her.
Taylor had never tasted real fear before. It was metallic and bitter on the tongue, worse than anything he’d ever sampled. It had almost choked him.
Just the way the sea had almost choked the very life out of Gayle.
But she was alive. Beneath the green bathing suit top her chest was moving ever so slightly. She was breathing, thank God. Taylor was vaguely aware that at this point, he was into God for plenty, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered as long as Gayle was alive.
The next moment she was coughing, the water she’d taken in spilling from her nose and mouth. Taylor felt light-headed, giddy and only half-conscious of the hot tears stinging his eyes as what had almost happened began to take hold, getting a death grip on his mind.
Gayle struggled to sit up. He almost smiled. That was his Gayle. A fighter. She didn’t have enough sense to lie down. Taylor laid a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t try to get up,” His voice threatened to break. Damn, but she had scared the hell out of him.
Taylor quickly looked her over. There was a gash on her forehead just beneath the blond hairline. That would explain why she hadn’t come up. She must have hit her head against the side of the boat when she dove off the sloop into the choppy blue water. The gash was still bleeding. The blood trickled down, a few drops mingling with the ring of water that surrounded her body on the deck.
Now that she was safe, he could feel his temper beginning to rise. But he couldn’t shout at her yet, demanding to know what the hell she’d been thinking of to pull a stunt like that. Not when she was still so pale and weak.
So he bit back the hot words as best he could, turning instead toward his brother-in-law.
“Sam, where the hell is that first-aid kit you keep around here?”
Jake was already ahead of both of them. It was his sloop and his invitation that had brought everyone together in the first place.
“Right here.” Jake knelt beside Taylor, flipping the lock on the dark-blue box. “What do you need?”
“Something to stop the bleeding for now. That gash looks nasty.” Rummaging, Taylor found the last butterfly Band-Aid in the rusted box. He peeled off the wrapper and applied it along with pressure to the cut.
He frowned now. God, but she had scared him. Really scared him. Now that it was over, now that she was lying here on the deck of her brother’s sloop, alive and fully conscious, Taylor was aware of his own racing pulse, his own shaken feelings. If he didn’t love her so much, he would have wrung her fool neck. He might still do it, just on principle.
Shaken, Jake rose to his feet, the first-aid box in his hands. He pushed it toward Sam. “Right.” Sam looked down at his sister dubiously. She still looked really pale. “Is she going to be—”
“I’m okay,” Gayle cut in, waving away the concern buzzing around her like a swarm of bees.
Why were they talking about her as if she were in another dimension? She was right here. And she hated being fussed over. At least she thought she hated…yes, she did, she hated having a fuss made over her.
Despite the pounding going on inside of it, her head felt as if it was wrapped in cotton.
Gayle narrowed her eyes as she focused on the man who was rising. “Sam.” She said the name that came to her aloud, exploring it. Her vision and the fog about her brain slowly began to clear. Sam was her brother. One of her brothers. Silly that for a moment she hadn’t remembered. She could just hear what he’d have to say to that if he knew. They both teased her unmercifully as it was.
Sam quickly dropped back to his knees beside her. “What is it, Gayle?”
“Nothing.” It took effort to talk. Her throat felt incredibly raw, as if she’d swallowed then coughed up a seashell. “I just wanted to say your name.”
Sam and Jake exchanged looks. That sounded way too subdued for Gayle, but then, she’d never almost drowned before. Of the three of them, it was Gayle, the youngest and most agile, who could swim like a fish. Gayle on whom their father had pinned all his hopes from the very beginning.
Gayle took a deep breath. It was cut off by a sharp pain in her lungs. Jackknifing up, she began coughing violently. Half the ocean was still sloshing around inside her. Without being fully conscious of who she grabbed, she clutched at a strong arm, leaning against it as the cough racked her.
“Easy.” The same strong hands held her. The hands that had pressed her down before, when she’d struggled so hard to discover the identity of the man who was fading away. The man who’d made love to her. “Don’t try to get up just yet,” the deep voice warned her. “We don’t want you falling over and hitting your head again. I know it’s hard, but even your head has a breaking point.”
The familiarity and humor veiled an undercurrent of concern. She tried to smile at the words and succeeded only marginally.
“She’s not biting your head off. She must have done more damage to her head than we thought,” Jake murmured, then went back to the wheel.
Gayle turned her head and winced as pain accompanied the simple movement. “What happened?” she asked Sam. “What am I doing here?”
“I fished you out,” Taylor answered. “You insisted on diving off the bow of the sloop.” He pointed to where they’d all watched her dive off. It had bee
n on a stupid dare. Taylor had raced over to stop her, but it was too late. “Probably just to annoy me.”
When he’d looked down in time to see her slice cleanly into the water, he’d felt his temper rising at her defiance. But it was admittedly mingled with admiration. He couldn’t help it. The sight of her form affected him that way. She’d always moved like sheer poetry.
At first when she didn’t emerge, he was sure she was doing it just to get back at him for that disagreement they’d had yesterday. Taylor knew she could hold her breath underwater for an inordinate amount of time. Her father, Colonel Lars Elliott, retired, an Olympic gold medalist, had thrown all three of his children into the water long before they could walk, determined to make serious Olympic contenders out of them, just as his father had made of him. More than that, he’d demanded winners. Gayle had been his winner.
But thirty seconds after her dive today, an uneasiness had taken hold of Taylor. Even as Jake and Sam quickly checked the perimeter of the sloop to see if Gayle had come up somewhere away from them, Taylor was diving in to find her. Something told him this wasn’t one of the pranks she was so fond of pulling. This was on the level.
He almost hadn’t found her. By the time he’d brought her up to the surface, it had been at the last possible moment for him. His lungs had been bursting, screaming for air. He could have made it up faster without her, but he would rather have died with her than let Gayle go and risk anything happening to her.
She blinked, her eyes stinging as she looked at the man beside her in wonder. What he said didn’t make sense. “Why would I want to annoy you?”
Taylor rose to his feet, looking down at her. He shook his head and smiled once more. “That’s something I ask myself a lot. My only conclusion is that annoying me seems to be a hobby of yours.”
Gayle frowned as she stared back at him. As if she didn’t know what he was talking about. As if she were looking at him for the first time.
The uneasiness returned, though he couldn’t put a name to it.