Husbands and Other Strangers Read online

  Damn it, he was her husband. He had a right to know this kind of thing.

  An ugly reason reared its head as to why she’d deliberately kept him in the dark, but Taylor refused to entertain it, refused to even recognize it. Because if he did, then he knew it was the beginning of the end for them. For him.

  Accepting the reason would signal the death knell of their marriage far more effectively and quickly than her selective memory loss. He could ride that out. He didn’t think he could ride out discovering that she’d been unfaithful to him.

  Maybe he was even being a fool about that, he thought. Maybe she didn’t even have a memory loss. Maybe all that was just her way of creating a diversion.

  Anger filled in all the available vacant spots inside him.

  He finally found her address book under a pile of computer printouts she’d shoved into her bottom drawer. He flipped through the pages, looking for one phone number in particular.

  When he found it, he called the number, only to be put through to an answering service.

  “No,” he snapped after the woman was finished with the prerehearsed statement. “I do not want to leave a message. This is Taylor Conway and I need to talk to the doctor as soon as possible. It’s about my wife, Gayle Conway.” He stopped, realizing that he had no idea which name Gayle used at the doctor’s office. “Gayle Elliott Conway. This an emergency,” he added.

  The woman’s voice filled with sympathy. “What kind of emergency?”

  “I’d rather tell the doctor,” he answered curtly.

  It was clear that the woman on the other end didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Uttering a sigh, she promised to see what she could do. And then the line went dead.

  As dead as Taylor felt inside.

  He dropped the receiver back into the cradle and continued sitting where he was. Staring at the hospital bill and the code numbers that represented the diagnosis he didn’t want to accept.

  Fragments of conversations he’d had with Gayle, both before she’d left for Phoenix the last time and after she’d returned, played themselves over in his head. She knew how he felt.

  How could she have done this? For any reason?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Along sigh of relief escaped Gayle’s lips the moment she slid in behind the wheel of her sportscar and buckled up.

  Finally!

  After putting her key into the ignition, she turned on the engine and backed out of her designated space in the TV studio’s parking lot. The past twenty-four hours had been interminable, at least three times longer than a normal day.

  The previous night’s tossing and turning hadn’t exactly helped matters. Ordinarily she could drop off the second her head hit the pillow if she was tired. Strange hotel rooms and unfamiliar sleeping accommodations had never troubled her. Because of all the meets she’d competed in around the country and the world, that was the norm for her. Over the years she’d become accustomed to sleeping anywhere at any given time. She’d been known to be refreshed after taking a catnap in an airport.

  But this hotel room had been different. There was more here than just the furniture. A presence of some kind.

  “The Ghost of Christmas Past, right?” she mocked herself aloud.

  Except that it really wasn’t all that funny. Some “thing” had been there in that room, waiting for her to discover it. Waiting for her to remember.

  Like being there before, she thought cryptically. That was just the problem, she still couldn’t remember being there, yet by all accounts she had been. There was no reason for that bellman to lie about seeing her there before, or for Will to make up a story about booking the same room for her. What had happened in that suite that was bothering her so much now?

  She’d kept a pattern all night, falling partially asleep, only to think that there were people in her room, crowding around her bed, talking, sometimes to her, sometimes to each other. And all the while, amid the noise, there were all these bright lights shining down on her.

  Wry amusement had Gayle shaking her head as she turned the car toward the road that eventually fed into her development. If she told that part to anyone, about feeling as if there were people in her room, prodding at her beneath bright lights, they’d probably think she was babbling about being the subject of an alien abduction.

  Damn, but she felt drained now. After her unsettling night, she’d come into the news studio almost completely exhausted.

  Thank God for makeup, she thought. The makeup girl at the station murmured something about the dark circles under her eyes looking like tire tracks. Julia had asked her if she’d partied with the team after the Angels had shut out the Diamondbacks, scoring seven to nothing. To avoid any further speculation on Julia’s part, she’d said yes.

  The truth was that after her interview with the Angels’ newest relief pitcher, and despite an invitation from the team’s manager to go to the party, she’d opted to return to her hotel suite. All she wanted to do was pack her things and go to bed. She’d thought she was going to get a full night’s sleep so she’d be fresh and rested this morning.

  Instead she looked like something the cat had debated dragging in and then passed on.

  Gayle pushed thoughts of her princess-and-the-pea type night out of her mind and concentrated on the present. She was almost home.

  She smiled. She’d started to think of that drafty, hulking structure—which looked as if it was straight out of something that would have enticed the Addams Family—as home. She was making progress in the right direction.

  God knew she was eager to see Taylor. She still didn’t remember being his wife, but she was beginning to understand why she had married the man in the first place. And why she would do it again, if it should ever come to that. Her initial reactions to him—this time around—she qualified, had all but faded into the background. She was beginning to unravel the veiled reasons behind her behavior. Things were finally starting to fall into place for her.

  What she must have done the first time around was to finally get out of her own way. Which meant that she’d made up her mind to stop being suspicious of Taylor.

  Not that she would have felt he was after her money or trying to carve out a piece of the limelight for himself because he was marrying a celebrity. She’d only had to spend a minimum of time around the man to realize that thoughts like that never entered Taylor’s mind. Those suspicions belonged to her father. The colonel had never thought any man was capable of wanting her for herself, only for what she could do for him. He’d drummed that into her head over and over again, almost as much as he’d drilled her about swimming techniques. He always said she had to be careful because there were men who wanted to take advantage of her.

  Had she not had her unique personality, Gayle was fairly confident that the colonel would have caused some very serious, albeit completely unintentional, damage to her self-esteem.

  However it was the concern the colonel didn’t voice out loud that had been the primary deterrent to her forming any long, lasting relationships. Her father didn’t want her involved with a man because he didn’t want any other man exercising control over her.

  There, at least, they were in semiagreement, Gayle thought. She didn’t want any man thinking he could tell her what to do, either. So even the smallest hint of that had her moving in the opposite direction. If her path crossed that of any strong male, she was instantly on her guard, wary of any undue influence.

  And yet, men who gave in to her, men she could steamroll over, didn’t hold her interest for any length of time. They bored her. There was no chemistry, no spark. It seemed, from all indications, that she was doomed not to have any kind of meaningful relationship with any men other than her brothers.

  Gayle smiled to herself. She supposed that gave her something in common with Kate, the shrew in Shakespeare’s play. And while she didn’t view herself as being tamed by Taylor, like the heroine within the play’s play she only gave that impression when the occasion suited her.
In a way it was a variation of the old saying, “You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

  And Taylor Conway was definitely a honey, if a somewhat stoic one, she thought. He was a man of integrity who wanted no free tickets in life, no free rides. He paid his own way. His pride demanded it. You had to respect a man like that. That he also set the sheets on fire was an added bonus.

  Despite the fact that she’d left the studio bone tired, Gayle could still feel her body quickening as she turned down a familiar street. Less than half a mile to go.

  She mentally crossed her fingers that Taylor’s dark green truck was in the driveway.

  After her flight got in at John Wayne Airport, she’d taken a cab to the studio, sat in on the editing of her interview with the relief pitcher, done her score highlights for the afternoon and early evening shows, and left the rest of it all up to the station’s other sportscaster, John Alvarez. Everything had been accomplished at almost fast-forward speed. She couldn’t wait to get home.

  Taking a sharp turn to the right, she pulled up into the driveway.

  She was home.

  And so was he, she thought in triumph as she looked at his truck. The engine was still making those soft, popping, cool-down noises, so Taylor must have just gotten here himself.

  Gayle could feel her body priming. Anticipating.

  Getting out of the car, she didn’t even bother to take out her overnight bag. It would keep. All she intended to be wearing tonight was Taylor.

  Unlocking the front door, she called out, “Taylor, I’m home.”

  The words had a familiar ring to them. She’d done this before, called out his name as she’d entered the house. Maybe the night she’d spent in the eerie hotel suite was indirectly making things come back to her. She certainly hoped so.

  “Taylor?” she called again when there was no answer. “Where are you?”

  Standing right inside the doorway, she could see into three of the rooms. The truck was in the driveway and there were lights on in the house. He had to be here.

  Taylor felt his entire body tense at the sound of her voice.

  He’d been waiting for her to come home ever since last night. Over the past twenty-four hours, he’d run the gamut of emotions, going from furious to confused to heartbroken and back again in no particular order but with almost breathtaking speed.

  Emotions still ran through him, moving like crazed rabbits fleeing an oncoming predator. And blanketing them was this overwhelming sense of betrayal. He had loved this woman and lived with her for more than a year and a half and apparently didn’t know her at all. Because the Gayle he thought he knew wouldn’t have done this. At least, not without talking to him first.

  He’d finally gotten through to her doctor last night, but when he’d asked his question, the woman had cited doctor-patient confidentiality. She couldn’t tell him anything. Her hands were tied, she’d said.

  There’d been sympathy in the doctor’s voice, but he didn’t want sympathy; he wanted answers. And by not saying anything to him, Dr. Roberts wound up confirming his suspicions just the same. Because if what he’d asked her about Gayle had been off base, she would have said as much. Doctors were freer to comment on wrong guesses than on correct ones because in that case it would be giving nothing away.

  When he’d hung up, barely murmuring goodbye, he felt as if his soul had suddenly become ground zero for an all-consuming forest fire. Everything, everything felt dead inside.

  He’d gone to work, forced himself to go through the motions, hoping to somehow find a way to deal with this sense of betrayal. To somehow find a way to forgive Gayle.

  In his heart, because he loved her, he knew he would have forgiven her anything. If only she’d come to him. But she hadn’t. And then the accident had wiped him out of her mind. What did that say? That he was less than nothing to her? That all there was between them was fantastic sex and nothing more?

  It wasn’t enough, not for him.

  His body felt like lead now as he walked toward the front of the house. Toward her. The woman he no longer knew.

  “Taylor?” Gayle called out again, beginning to get worried. Where was he? She didn’t hear any pulsating noise, so he wasn’t running any tools that could be blocking out the sound of her voice.

  After tossing her purse onto the table, her keys landing on top, she started toward the stairs. Maybe he was in their bedroom and didn’t hear her.

  But then she saw him coming toward her from the rear of the house. She could feel the smile blossoming on her face, feel it from the inside as well as on her lips. She hadn’t realized until this second how much she’d really missed him.

  How much she was looking forward to tonight.

  “There you are.” She moved toward him, her arms out. All she wanted to do was hug him and be hugged by him. “I was beginning to think you wanted to play hide-and-seek.”

  “No,” he told her, his voice deadly still. “I don’t want to play at all.”

  She stopped just short of touching Taylor. Her arms dropped to her sides as she stared at him. From out of nowhere, fear came galloping up on a black charger, its hooves beating an erratic tattoo in her chest. Every nerve in her body tightened.

  She could almost feel the skin on her scalp tingling. In a very bad way.

  Gayle searched his face for a clue and found none. Only that he was shutting her out. Why? She’d been away for only one day, what had gone on here in that time?

  Her head began to ache.

  “Taylor?” she said slowly, trying desperately to smile, to tell herself that everything was all right. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  His eyes were frosted as they looked at her. “You tell me.”

  Like someone trapped in the throes of an ongoing nightmare, Gayle shook her head in what felt like slow motion. She didn’t know how much more of this confusion she could take.

  Was this some kind of psychological game he was playing with her? Had she just dropped her guard only to fall for someone who was emotionally abusive?

  No, he wasn’t like that. She would have bet her life on that. There had to be some kind of logical explanation why he’d gone from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” She tried to soften her voice, to sound as if she wasn’t worried, only curious. “Taylor, what’s going on?”

  Maybe he should just walk out now, before his temper erupted. Before he shouted at her, demanding to know how she could have just thoughtlessly thrown away a life like this.

  But he didn’t go. He stayed there, right where he was. Maybe, against all odds and reason, there was a tiny shred of him that hoped she could still save the situation. Still make it right somehow by giving him a reason that made sense. Though he couldn’t see his way clear as to what that reason could be.

  Struggling to keep everything bottled up, Taylor pulled out the bill he’d stuffed into his back pocket, shook it open and held it out to her. “Does this look familiar to you?”

  Gayle stared at the sheet blankly, but made no move to take it in her hand. Afraid that if she did it would cause something awful to happen.

  What was it he was accusing her of? And why had he convicted her without a trial? She raised her chin defiantly. Anything she had felt for him only moments ago iced over.

  “No,” she answered crisply. “Why should it?”

  “Let me give you a hint.” He watched her face, waiting for a crack in her veneer. She was good, he thought. She was acting as if she didn’t know what he was talking about. But she did. Too many things fell together for this to be some kind of gross mistake. “It’s a bill. From the hospital.”

  Why was he carrying on about that? It didn’t make any sense. “So Blair Memorial mailed the bill to us instead of sending it to the insurance company. So what? These things probably happen a lot.”

  “Not Blair Memorial,” he corrected, pointing to the top of the page where the hospital’s address was written. “Phoenix General.”
r />   “Phoenix General?” she echoed incredulously. What was he talking about? “I never went to Phoenix General.” But even as she made the denial, some nebulous feeling uncoiled in her brain. She resisted, inwardly afraid even as she retained her bravado. “There has to be some mistake.”

  If she only knew how much he wished he could believe that. But it was too late. He’d verified the bill this morning by calling the billing department at Phoenix General.

  “No mistake, Gayle, you were there.” He saw the confusion in her eyes. Give it up, Gayle. I found you out. Found out your secret. “They’ve got all your information right. Your name, your birthday, our address.” He indicated each line as he spoke. “The timing is right, too. It was while you were there on the last road trip with the Angels.”

  She stared at the sheet like someone in a trance. “I don’t remember.”

  Because his heart was still breaking, he shouted at her. “Gayle, that’s getting old. You remember everything, but me—and now this. It’s too convenient, don’t you think?”

  Gayle grabbed the page from him, almost tearing it. She scanned it quickly, but her brain was under siege. It took her several seconds to separate the lines and focus on the individual charges.

  What jumped out at her was that there was a charge for the use of the emergency room and for outpatient surgical supplies.

  She’d had surgery performed on her.

  Gayle looked up at him, a helplessness pulling her under for the third time. Nothing was making sense. “This is like a nightmare. I swear I don’t— What are these numbers?” Suddenly seeing them, she pointed to the digits that came after “Dx.”

  He took a breath, afraid his voice would crack. “That’s your diagnosis.”

  He sounded so odd, so distant. She’d never heard him like this. Something inside of her scrambled for high ground, for safety. But there was none. She searched for anger to draw on, but even that was deserting her. “What does it say I had?”

  His eyes narrowed. He hated this. They were supposed to be a couple, a team of two, not opponents. But she had done that to them.