Husbands and Other Strangers Read online

  “I think that blow to the head might have finally succeeded in doing something none of us had ever managed to do. Make you docile,” Sam elaborated when she turned her sea-blue eyes on him quizzically. At the helm, Jake laughed.

  “Fat chance,” Gayle said. Pulling her legs to her, she tried to sit up again.

  Taylor started to stop her. “I told you to lie back.” Why did she always have to be so damn stubborn? If she had a concussion, movement might make it worse. He was prepared to carry her in his arms from the shore to the hospital if he had to. After what he’d just gone through, he’d prefer it that way.

  Rather than lie down, Gayle pulled her arm out of his reach. Who the hell did he think he was? “Why should I listen to you?”

  A grin slicing his face, Jake shook his head, relief flooding him. “She’s ba-ack.”

  Taylor ignored him. His eyes were on Gayle’s. “Because I’m making sense. Now lie back, damn it.” He glanced at the butterfly Band-Aid on her forehead and saw a small, angry red line forming beneath it. “You’re still bleeding.” He looked over his shoulder at his brother-in-law at the helm. “Jake, can’t you make this thing go any faster?”

  The waters were getting choppier. The storm was coming sooner than they’d expected. Jake was already pushing the engine to the limit. “I’m trying,” Jake answered. Frustration outlined his voice. “This isn’t a speedboat.”

  “Try harder,” Taylor snapped. Though he didn’t often lose his temper with people other than Gayle, the near tragedy they had narrowly avoided had turned his patience to the consistency of dried kindling. His temper flared easily.

  Gayle rallied, taking immediate offense. “Hey, stop yelling at my brothers. Just who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “What?” Taylor looked at her incredulously. Now what was she trying to pull?

  The question unsettled her a little as she tried to ignore the vague, irritating feeling that she should know the answer to her own question. Gayle licked her lips, tilting her chin slightly.

  “I said, who are you?”

  Taylor sank down again, his eyes fixed on her face. “What do you mean, who am I?”

  Was he deaf as well as belligerent? “Just what I said.” Gayle slowly repeated the question. “Who are you? Are you a friend of Sam’s?”

  He has no idea what kind of a game she was playing, but because she’d just given him the worst scare of his life, and because he still felt a little shell-shocked, he momentarily played along.

  “Yes, I’m a friend of Sam’s. And a friend of Jake’s, too,” he added for good measure.

  The answer made Gayle frown. She thought she knew most of her brothers’ friends. Certainly the ones they had in common. It was what made them such a close-knit family. But she had absolutely no recollection of the brooding, dark-haired man who seemed to think it his God-given duty to order everyone around.

  The ache in her head grew even as she tried to ignore it. Gayle peered at his face, searching for some sort of recollection. “Then why have I never met you before?”

  Hands on the wheel, Jake turned around. He and Sam exchanged looks. Their unspoken question mirrored each other.

  What the hell was Gayle up to this time?

  Taylor sat back on his heels, studying Gayle’s face. A face he’d long since memorized, every nuance, every fiber. All deeply embedded in his brain.

  “Oh, we’ve met, all right.” The deep voice was pregnant with meaning.

  Gayle shook off the almost hypnotic effect. Met? She sincerely doubted it. She would have remembered a face like that, even if she’d only seen it just in passing: chiseled, stern, perhaps even hard, to the undiscerning eye; an odd collection of planes and angles that somehow arranged themselves to make the man impossibly handsome.

  The total is greater than the sum of the parts, the vague thought echoed through her throbbing head.

  But handsome or not, that didn’t give him a right to lie to her or play a trick at her expense, especially when her brain felt as if it was the consistency of Swiss cheese.

  “No, we haven’t met,” she insisted stubbornly.

  Maybe some other time, when his nerves hadn’t been pulled thinner than the thread used for suturing an internal wound, Taylor would have been willing to play along a little longer. But not now. Not when he’d been to hell and back in what could have been a watery grave for both of them. He wasn’t in the mood for it.

  He reached out to touch her shoulder. “Gayle, I don’t feel like playing games.”

  She shrugged him off again. What made him think he could just touch her like that? As if he had a right to? Why weren’t her brothers protesting?

  Weakness passed over her, bringing with it a volley of heat that drenched her in perspiration. Gayle would have drawn herself into a ball if she could, locking out everything. For a moment she had to struggle just to hang on to consciousness again. But she refused to surrender.

  Gayle gritted her teeth together against it, against the probing fingers of pain.

  “Good, because neither do I.” Her eyes became dark penetrating slits of blue green as she looked at this man pushing his way into her life. “My head feels like it’s coming apart.” She held it as if she were afraid that it would. “So, are you going to tell me your name or not?”

  Concern returned like a clap of thunder. Sam sat down in front of his sister. He fanned out the fingers of one hand before her face, ignoring her question to Taylor. “Gayle, how many fingers am I holding up now?”

  The sharp headache sapped any patience she might have had to spare.

  “Three.” Gayle closed her hand over Sam’s and pushed it aside. “We all know it’s as high as you can count. I don’t want to play count-the-fingers with you, Sam. I want someone to tell me who this man is and why he’s trying to boss everyone around.”

  Despite the tension in the air, his sister’s comment made Jake laugh. “Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.” His dark eyes darted toward his brother-in-law. Taylor’s face did look pretty strained. Both he and Sam had often marveled how Taylor could have lived with their sister for the past eighteen months and still remained sane. “Not that I mean to imply you’re a kettle…” His voice trailed off, having nowhere to go.

  Fear began to rear its head again, bringing with it an uneasiness that nibbled away at Taylor. Jake’s comment didn’t even register. Taylor stared at Gayle, at the woman he had ultimately loved more than the allure of the free life he had abandoned for her.

  “You don’t know who I am.” It sounded absurd even to say out loud. After what they had shared, he would have said that the pyramids would have become mounds of sand and blown away before she forgot him, or he her. This had to be some kind of game, a cruel prank to get back at him for the argument and God only knew what.

  “Yes,” Gayle replied. But before he breathed a sigh of relief in misunderstanding, her next words took it away from him—and cleared up the minor confusion while ushering in a complete new truckload. “I don’t know who you are.”

  If she was putting him on, he was going to kill her. Slowly.

  “You’re not kidding?” He ground out each one of the words slowly, giving her every opportunity to recant. Praying she’d take it.

  Because something deep inside her was suddenly afraid, afraid of what she couldn’t begin to understand, Gayle clung to temper.

  “I’m bleeding. Why would I be kidding?” Why were her brothers doing this to her? Why were they putting her through this charade at a time like this? She looked from one to the other, silently asking them to stop. “Sam, Jake, what’s going on here? And how did I get here, on the boat, anyway?”

  The three men looked at one another, not knowing whether they were all victims of an elaborate hoax and being played for fools—Gayle wasn’t above that—or if they should be seriously worried.

  Gayle drew herself up to her knees, swaying just a little. “I said, what’s going on here?” She glanced from Sam to Jake, then her eyes came to
rest on the stranger. Her brothers had played pranks on her before. It was a way of letting off steam that was a holdover from their childhood, when their father’s rigorous training would get to them. But this was going a little bit too far now.

  “Jake, Sam, one of you tell me. I want to know. Just who is this man?”

  Chapter Two

  Jake was the oldest, and as such, he was apt to take things more seriously than his siblings. He looked at the woman he was fond of calling his baby sister, although it was not quite six years that separated them. There were times when Gayle had trouble knowing when to stop. He had no problem stepping in when it came to that.

  “Okay, Gayle, quit fooling around now. You’ve had your joke and scared the hell out of the rest of us, including your husband.”

  All she heard was one word. One frightening word. Was she going crazy? Or were they? Knowing her brothers, it was them. And she didn’t appreciate being the butt of the joke.

  “Husband.” Gayle looked around angrily, deliberately not focusing on the stranger at her left. “What husband?” she demanded.

  “That’s enough, Gayle.” Jake was using his police-detective voice. It masked his growing uneasiness. Gayle wasn’t normally such a good actress.

  “My sentiments exactly,” she retorted, getting to her feet. The pounding in her head increased twofold, ushering in a dizziness that threatened to make her pass out. She mentally clung to her surroundings as she sank onto one of the four seats on the deck. “Now quit fooling around, guys.” She put her hand to her head, as if that could somehow contain the headache that was consuming her. “I don’t feel right.”

  Doggedly refusing to step back, Taylor took a closer look at the woman who had been the bane of his existence as well as the center of his universe for the last eighteen months.

  What he saw worried him.

  He wasn’t comfortable in this frame of mind. Marriage had never been in the cards for him as far as he was concerned. Never close to either of his parents, he hadn’t wanted a family of his own.

  Independent, handy, Taylor had stubbornly made his own way ever since he’d graduated from high school. He returned to college only when he felt that it might give him a leg up in the field that he’d finally chosen for himself: restoring, recreating or just plain overhauling houses that had long since seen their zenith. He took sows’ ears and albatrosses, turning them into things of modern beauty and functionality.

  Blessed with vision, Taylor considered himself both a craftsman and an artist with a keen eye for detail. He liked working with his hands as well as his mind. Liked partying hard, too, when the occasion called for it. And always, always moving on whenever the next project called. Moving on alone.

  Until he’d met Gayle Elliott.

  It was, appropriately enough, at a party thrown by Rico Cimmaron, a professional football player. The party was at Rico’s house, a building Taylor had renovated for a sinfully exorbitant amount of money. Rico had said as much when he’d introduced him to the small, slender and incredibly sexy woman he was currently dating.

  Looking back, Taylor thought everyone should have a moment where the rest of the world faded away as the focus zoomed in on one perfect individual. The way he found himself focusing on Rico’s date. Gayle Elliott. He quickly discovered that the golden blonde with the sea-green eyes had an attitude that both pushed him away and reeled him in. By the end of the party, he knew that Gayle was funny, outgoing, witty and as combative as hell when she thought she was right.

  He also quickly saw that she was accustomed to being the center of attention, just like Rico. For all intents and purposes, they looked like a golden couple. He didn’t let that stand in his way.

  Like Rico, she was a name in the world of sports. His knowledge of that world was cursory, but someone at the party obligingly filled him in about Gayle. She’d earned not one but nine gold medals over the course of the last three Summer Olympics, winning her first gold medal at the age of sixteen. After she’d announced her retirement at the close of the Olympic Games, Gayle turned her attention and all her incredible energy and exuberance to sports commentating.

  Her enthusiasm for all sports made her a natural. So did her looks. She quickly found herself courted by a number of local news stations around the country. She chose to remain in Bedford because it was her hometown and took the offer from a Los Angeles affiliated station.

  Ratings went up and her temporary stint turned into a permanent spot. John Alvarez, the man she’d subbed for, found himself moved to the morning broadcast.

  It was to Gayle’s credit that Alvarez bore her no resentment. Taylor saw that men of all ages fell all over themselves in their attempt to be around Gayle and garner her favor. Which was precisely why he’d initially held back. That and because she was dating a former client.

  He realized his reticence was what had attracted her to him in the first place. In his estimation, the pert, sassy and somewhat opinionated woman wanted to leave no man unconquered. He admitted to Sam, although not to her, that Gayle won him over fast enough. And it was difficult to keep his feelings to himself.

  They’d had one hell of a courtship. He liked to think of it as two forces of nature coming together. There was no other explanation why a five-foot-three woman had suddenly taken such a dominant position in his life, when, from an early age on, he’d had his pick of any woman he wanted and had wanted none for the duration.

  The way he’d wanted Gayle.

  From the very beginning Gayle had turned his life upside down.

  And had nearly brought it to a screeching stop just now, when he’d believed for several horrible moments that the waters through which she’d always negotiated her way like a mermaid had suddenly and finally claimed her.

  His nerves were stretched to the very limit. Crouching beside her chair, Taylor took hold of his wife’s shoulders, pinning her against the teak back. Anger flashed across her face as she attempted to shrug him off. And failed.

  She was weak, Taylor thought with concern. If she wasn’t, Gayle could have easily worked her way out of his grasp. She had an exorbitant amount of upper body strength.

  “You don’t remember me,” he said, stunned by her statement.

  What if it was true? a nagging voice whispered inside his head. What if, for some awful reason, she couldn’t remember him?

  Gayle exhaled a ragged breath. What was going on here? And why did she feel as if someone had just shot holes through her every thought? She couldn’t remember how she got to this deck. Or even to Sam’s boat. She tried to think back to the last thing she could clearly remember. Everything felt murky in her head, as if it was submerged in a tank overgrown with algae.

  Panic fueled impatience. She stared at the man crowding her. “No, I don’t remember you. Why would I lie?” she demanded.

  “Because you’re good at it. Not lying,” Taylor amended, “just at being stubborn. At playing pranks. And being a pain in the butt,” he added, his own temper just about snapping. One minute he was afraid she was dead, now she was pretending not to recognize him. His emotions couldn’t handle this uneven roller-coaster ride. “This isn’t funny, Gayle.”

  Anger was her only defense. Her face was deadly serious as she looked at this stranger who was intruding into her life with lead-soled combat boots.

  “No,” Gayle agreed vehemently, “it’s not.” She looked to her brothers for help. Why were they humoring this character? Why weren’t they coming to her defense? Fun was fun, but this was beginning to be cruel.

  “Gayle, you’ve had your fun—” Sam began, only to be waved back into silence by Taylor.

  “I’ve known her to get pretty elaborate with her jokes, but even Gayle couldn’t fake that kind of pallor,” he pointed out.

  She looked as white as a sheet, he thought with mounting anxiety. And there was something in her eyes that had him coming to the unwelcome realization that his wife wasn’t kidding around.

  She didn’t remember him.


  Moving closer, Jake looked at his brother-in-law. “You think she might have amnesia?”

  Taylor rose to his feet. Before he could reply, Sam snorted in disgust. “Amnesia,” he repeated, scoffing at the notion. “You don’t just forget one person if you have amnesia. It’s not selective.”

  Gayle tugged on the leg of Sam’s bathing suit. “Hey, guys, I’m right here. Don’t talk about me as if I were some inanimate object.”

  Her tone was angry, but inside she was beginning to give way to fear. A large, overwhelming, all-encompassing fear because this was beginning to feel strange.

  What made matters worse, tipping the scales in Sam and Jake’s favor, was that her brain really did feel as if there were holes running all through it.

  She clenched her hands in her lap. No, not possible, she thought. Things like this didn’t happen. Not to her. Okay, so she couldn’t remember the events of this morning. Couldn’t remember how she came to be here, but those were just a few random events. And there were all those facts and figures crowding her brain. It was only natural to forget a few things along the way.

  Besides, Sam was right. You didn’t just forget a whole person, at least not a significant one and husbands definitely came under the heading of significant people. How could she forget a husband and nothing else?

  This had to be a prank. And once she got them to admit it, she was going to make them all pay for it. Sam and Jake and especially the man with the superserious expression.

  “We need to take her to the E.R.,” the man was now saying to her brothers, talking again as if she had no more mind than the red cushion against the chair. But at least he was making sense. It was the first thing out of his mouth she agreed with. A doctor would take care of the cut on her forehead, give her something for this awful headache and tell these bozos to quit yanking her chain like this.

  “Boat’s already turned around,” Sam assured him. The next moment he returned to the helm and the wheel he’d left on automatic pilot.

  “Good,” Gayle declared in a voice she prayed didn’t sound as shaky as she felt. “The faster we get this squared away, the better.” With superhuman will, she forced herself up to her feet again, then mentally defied that woozy feeling to return. For the moment it seemed to remain at bay, hovering just outside the perimeters of her consciousness.