Husbands and Other Strangers Read online

  At least she wasn’t balking anymore at the idea that they were married, Taylor thought. That was something, right?

  “No, no major storm in our lives,” he told her for the umpteenth time as he pushed her drooping sleeve back up onto her shoulder. It would have taken very little for him to skim his fingertips over her skin, but he resisted the temptation. “Just a whole series of tiny ones.” He offered a perfunctory smile, his lips quirking at the corners of his mouth before relaxing again. “Like always.”

  Gayle struggled to stifle a shiver. Her pulse had accelerated. Taylor’s touch had seemed intimate, possessive. She didn’t know why, but the slight gesture produced a wave of heat that traveled all through her. And although she was fiercely independent and guarded her space and her freedom zealously, in her heart of hearts, she felt a sort of deep-seated pleasure spilling throughout her body.

  A second ago he was ready to go out the door and keep his silence. But her thought that they were considering a divorce had his defenses galvanizing.

  “As a matter of fact,” he told her, “today’s the day I proposed to you.”

  She absorbed the words, trying to remember, to desperately summon up something that was in the vaguest way a memory. Nothing. “It is?”

  He nodded. “September third.”

  The man she’d shared living space with for the past two weeks didn’t strike her as the sensitive, sentimental type. More like the type who had trouble remembering when Christmas came each year.

  She stared at him in disbelief. “You remember the day you proposed to me? Most guys don’t remember things like that.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not most guys.” That was what he was trying to get across to her. That she’d shone on everyone else but said yes to him. That made him different from all the other men she’d ever gone out with.

  Yesterday, in a moment of desperation, he’d placed a call to Dr. Sullivan. It had taken some doing, but he finally got to speak directly to the neurosurgeon. The doctor had told him that it wasn’t unusual that she still didn’t remember. He advised him to continue to be patient and to keep surrounding Gayle with familiar things.

  The latter now prompted him to say, “Why don’t we go to the restaurant where I proposed when I get back tonight? Maybe that’ll trigger something for you.” At this point, even though part of him had become resigned to the thought of winning Gayle all over again, he was willing to try just about anything to move the process along.

  She caught her lip between her teeth, thinking. “What time?”

  He saw a but coming and tried to head it off. “Any time you’re free.”

  She flashed an apologetic smile. “That’s just it, I’m not. I mean, I promised to attend this fund-raiser for the club where I used to train. It’s tonight. I said yes weeks ago,” she added.

  The depth of his own patience surprised him as he asked evenly, “Do you have to stay for the whole event?”

  She had planned to, but in light of what he’d just told her, she supposed she owed it to him to alter her agenda.

  “No, I guess I could leave early. I could cite another engagement.” Her mouth curved as she realized what she’d just said. “No pun intended.”

  “Make all the puns you want, as long as we get this straightened out sometime before I start collecting social security checks.” He thought for a second. “I’ll come with you to the fund-raiser. That way, you can spend a little more time at the party and then we can go to the restaurant from there.”

  She looked surprised at his suggestion. “But you don’t like fund-raisers.” The words had come out automatically, before she was even aware that they had occurred to her. Feeling uncomfortable, like being discovered with a smoking gun she wasn’t aware of having picked up, she tacked on, “Do you?”

  “How did you know that?” Trying to contain his excitement and not to jump to any conclusions, he still grabbed her shoulders. His eyes searched hers, looking for a sign, a clue. “Did you remember something?”

  Gayle shrugged out of his hold and spread her hands before her helplessly. “It just came to me. Instinct, I guess.” She looked up at him. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

  No one had ever accused Taylor of being an optimist. He didn’t deserve the label by any stretch of the definition, but right now he clung to this small tidbit she’d unwittingly thrown his way.

  It gave him hope.

  He wanted to get going as it was getting late. Still, he lingered a moment longer. Looking at her a moment longer. Willing her to find her way out of this fog.

  “What time do you have to be at the fund-raiser?” he asked.

  “Six.” Then, before he could ask her what she was doing about her nightly taping, she said, “I’ve got John covering for me at the station. John Alvarez,” she added in case she’d taken too much for granted.

  She kept treating him like a newcomer to her life and it irritated him. Irritated him because he knew her better than anyone, even her brothers.

  “I know who Alvarez is. You’re the one with amnesia,” he reminded her, “not me.”

  “I just don’t know how much you know about my world.”

  “It’s our world,” he told her tersely. “Bits and pieces might be separate, but it’s our world, Gayle, yours and mine.” Impatience filled him as he saw the odd expression on her face. He could almost see her retreating from him, erasing the tiny steps she’d taken forward. “What?” he snapped.

  She lifted her chin defensively, balking at his tone. “You’re making me feel claustrophobic.”

  A feeling of déjà vu passed over him, icy and chilling like the smoke created by dry ice. “You’ll get over it,” he promised her, then added, “you did the first time.”

  To his satisfaction, he saw her eyes widen. Something else you can’t remember, he thought. They’d had this conversation once before, when she’d admitted that she did have feelings for him and that it worried her because she felt she was giving up pieces of herself. He’d answered by saying he didn’t want pieces of her, he wanted all of her. Just as he was giving all of himself to her. Reconciling herself to that had taken Gayle time. But she had.

  “Six,” he repeated.

  “Six.”

  “I’ll be home by five,” he told her as he finally made it across the threshold.

  He wasn’t home by five. Or five-fifteen, or five-thirty.

  At 5:31, Taylor burst in through the front door, moving at the speed of a freight train with a full head of steam and doing his best to keep a frayed temper under wraps. Nothing more he hated than being late, even if an act of God was responsible.

  And then he saw Gayle at the foot of the stairs. And stopped dead in his tracks.

  She was wearing a floor-length, Kelly-green gown spun out of what looked like a shimmery spider’s web. The all-but-translucent material adhered to her body like a second skin.

  His palms suddenly itched. “I think I’m jealous of a bolt of cloth.”

  The look in his eyes as they washed over her stripped her of the impatient anger that had been building steadily with the passing of each minute. She tried to summon a little of it back. But her temper was brittle.

  “Where were you?” she demanded. “I was about to leave.”

  The fund-raiser. Luigi’s. His mind came back online. He made for the staircase.

  “Three minutes,” he tossed over his shoulder, stripping off his shirt as he ran up the stairs two at a time. “All I need is three minutes.”

  Gathering up the hem of her gown, Gayle followed him up the stairs. “I should have left ten minutes ago.” She heard him opening the closet in her bedroom.

  Their bedroom, she amended silently. His clothes were hanging on the right side of the walk-in closet she discovered he’d created for her. That she couldn’t remember any of them was something she was getting accustomed to, even though it still chafed her.

  “Where is this thing, anyway?” he asked.

  She walked in just in time to s
ee him kicking off his shoes and then shucking his jeans. He wore no socks and seemed to favor briefs that were just that, brief.

  Very.

  Damn.

  “Gayle?” he asked, looking up in her direction when she made no reply to his question.

  She found out something just then. She found out that it was hard to answer when your tongue was suddenly sealed to the roof of your mouth because all traces of moisture had evaporated. Taylor’s everyday clothes hadn’t exactly been baggy, and his jeans had a nice way of adhering to his slim hips, but she had no idea that he had a body that would make art students and women under the age of ninety weep for joy.

  Taylor’s body was hard, muscular and taut, with a small waist and a butt she had a feeling she could bounce quarters off of. It made her want to go looking for her change purse.

  “Newport,” she managed to say, dragging her eyes away. Unfortunately she dragged them right to the wardrobe door, whose mirror reflected Taylor’s image right back at her. It took a great deal of effort for her to form words. “It’s in Newport Beach.”

  “You’re the guest speaker, right?” he asked, dragging on his best pair of slacks.

  He was aware that she was watching his every move, watching as the material slipped over his thighs and hips before he buttoned then zipped up the slacks. The look in her eyes pleased him. Again he told himself they were making progress. Something was going to make her come around to him. He just hoped he could hold out until it happened, because as things stood, angry or not, happy or not, all he wanted to do was take Gayle into his arms and make love with her. The hardest thing in the world was missing someone who was standing right in front of you.

  It took effort for her to pull her thoughts together. They kept spilling out like peas that had been gathered up in an apron with a gaping hole in the bottom.

  “What?” She blinked, focusing. The sentence he’d just uttered played back in her head. Something about a guest speaker. Her. She was the guest speaker. “Oh, right. Right,” she repeated with feeling.

  Reaching into the closet again, Taylor took out a long-sleeved light-blue shirt. Interpreting the look on her face correctly, he suppressed a grin. Barely.

  Soon, he promised himself.

  “Well, they’re not going to start it without you, are they?”

  She watched as his fingers worked their way down the front of his shirt, closing buttons as they went.

  “No.” The word came out as a sigh. Then, suddenly aware of the way that had sounded, Gayle cleared her throat and repeated “No” more forcefully.

  Mercifully, he was covered again, she thought. Now all she had to do was block the image of an almost-naked Taylor out of her brain.

  After quickly pulling on a pair of black socks to complement his gray slacks, Taylor grabbed a pair of newly polished black shoes and a navy-blue sports jacket.

  “Ready,” he declared. He nodded toward the bedroom doorway. “Go on, go.”

  She felt like she was being herded out of the room and down the stairs. Given her present state of mind, she really couldn’t take umbrage over that. She was behaving like some dumb sheep.

  “I’m assuming that you’re going to drive,” Taylor said as he followed her down the stairs. Reaching the last step, he dropped his shoes on the floor and stepped into them.

  He shoved his arms through the sleeves of his jacket as she turned to look at him. She wanted to be angry, to get embroiled in an argument that would wind up creating some kind of fiery force field around her head. She had to extinguish the image that had branded itself into her brain.

  With effort she did her best to pick a fight. “If you were going to be late, why didn’t you call?” she demanded.

  Leaning in front of her, he opened the front door before she had the chance. He stepped back and let her go first.

  “I didn’t know I was going to be late until I was stuck in traffic.” And it had been one hell of a traffic jam. A ten-minute drive turned out to be an endurance test for patience.

  She gave him a quizzical look, not seeing the problem. “So?”

  Her car was in the driveway. He’d parked his at the curb, to give her a wide berth. There were times when she didn’t just turn corners, she took them. Literally. Clipping off edges of things as she passed.

  Walking ahead of her, he reached the driver’s side first and opened the door for her. “I couldn’t call,” he told her. “I had no phone.”

  For a second she’d thought he had changed his mind and was racing her for the driver’s side. Feeling slightly foolish, she released a long breath, got in and buckled up as he closed the door for her.

  She looked at him as he got in on his side. “Don’t you own a cell phone?”

  Taylor pulled his seat belt around, locking it into place. “Yeah. Forgot to charge it.”

  The only time he used a phone on a regular basis was to call the various suppliers he dealt with. Most of that could be accomplished before he went to work, since the places he called all opened early. He saw no reason to carry around a cell phone. As far as he was concerned, the shrill ring cutting into your life was a clear invasion of privacy. Gayle, on the other hand, lived by the phone. She had two of them in her purse, in case one died or malfunctioned.

  “Sorry,” he apologized again. “I wasn’t counting on a three-car pileup happening on the freeway today.”

  She dismissed his apology with a wave of her hand before turning on the ignition.

  “Doesn’t matter now,” she told him. With a quick, sudden jerk, she gunned the car out of the driveway and onto the street. “If we hurry, we can still make it on time.”

  And hurry they did. The whole way.

  Because he was trying to win her over, Taylor didn’t talk to her the way he normally might. Instead he did his best to hold his tongue. He tried not to look at the speedometer as she weaved from one lane to the next. She took advantage of every empty space, stuffing her sports car into it before changing lanes again.

  When she took the downside of a hill as if she was piloting the first car of a roller coaster, Taylor just couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

  “You know, just because they put the number 120 on the speedometer doesn’t mean that you should try to hit that speed.”

  She glanced at the rearview mirror to make sure no police vehicles were in the vicinity. She continued at her present speed. Traffic was fairly light and they were making great time.

  Her eyes shifted to his for a split second. “I didn’t take you for someone who exaggerated.”

  He pointed to the road, silently indicating he wanted her to look there and not at him. “I’m not exaggerating. Pilots on runways just before take off go slower than you’re going now.”

  She laughed at the comparison as she changed lanes. “Afraid to die?”

  His hand tightened on dashboard. From his vantage point, he gauged that she’d just avoided becoming one with the car that was now behind them, by less than a fraction of an inch.

  “No, I’m afraid of living mangled and having to have an airbag surgically removed from my chest.”

  Biting off a choice word, Gayle nonetheless eased the pressure she was exerting on the accelerator. The speedometer gave up ten miles on the gauge. She glanced toward it, then him. “Satisfied?”

  “Getting there,” he told her.

  Did he want them to crawl? Keeping the retort to herself, she eased up a little more on the accelerator. “Now?”

  “Now,” he told her with a smile.

  Her attention lingered on the smile a shade too long. The next second, looking back at the road again, she exclaimed, “Damn.”

  Instantly alert, he looked for an accident about to happen. To them. But there was no immediate danger of a collision in sight. He looked back at Gayle. “What’s the matter?”

  She merged into the left lane. The sign ahead told her that U-turns were forbidden. Just her luck. “I just passed the turnoff.”

  Taylor didn’t say anything
. He was too busy trying to suppress the grin that so badly wanted to spread out over his features.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gayle didn’t remember.

  She didn’t remember the restaurant when they finally managed to leave the fund-raiser at Luigi’s in Newport Beach and make their way to it. Didn’t remember the table for two by the window that looked out on the Pacific Ocean as beams of moonlight winked in and out along the surface of the dark waters.

  Didn’t remember him proposing to her.

  Taylor found it difficult not to take it personally.

  She remembered old movies, details about people she worked with, the ingredients in the one meal she could cook without having all the smoke alarms suddenly screech a warning.

  But she didn’t remember him.

  Why?

  The question echoed in Taylor’s mind as they drove home, just as it had ricocheted through his mind over and over again ever since this whole surreal charade had started.

  Taylor all but jammed his key into the front door, unlocking it. He was having a tough time controlling his disappointment. It had cloaked itself in anger, which he was trying very hard not to take out on her.

  “I’m sorry,” Gayle said quietly as she walked into the house just ahead of him.

  She was subdued in comparison to earlier this evening. At the fund-raiser, she was bubblier than a newly opened bottle of champagne, talking to everyone who had come up to her. She worked the room like a pro, trying to secure more pledges for the club.

  Even a club outranked him, Taylor had thought glumly.

  At the restaurant, she’d been sunny, employing what he’d come to think of as her “public personality.” It was something her father had ingrained in her. The public was never to see her as anything but upbeat.

  But now as they entered the house, without the need to play to any audience, she’d suddenly turned quiet on him. It was as if someone had turned the volume down both on her voice and her personality.

  She almost looked vulnerable, he thought. Almost but not quite.

  “Sorry about what?” he asked, locking the door behind them.