Husbands and Other Strangers Read online

  Taylor lay back down in his sleeping bag. He laced his fingers together and tried to assume a calm pose, willing himself to sleep.

  Who the hell was he kidding? he thought three minutes later. He was wired and wide-awake, ready to jump-start his plan. But he knew he wouldn’t exactly make any points with her if he turned up at the door at two in the morning.

  With a sigh that went down to his very toes, Taylor unzipped the rest of his sleeping bag and got up. He might as well do something productive as he waited for dawn to come.

  Twelve hours later found him showered, shaved, changed and walking through the rear of the studio where the Channel Eight local news was taped each day. Just his luck, he ran into several people he recognized, who also recognized him. He was forced to nod a silent greeting at all of them.

  He knew them by sight if not by name—he’d never been very good with names—because Gayle had introduced them all at one time. They were all part of what she referred to as the Channel Eight “family.”

  Did the “family” know? he wondered. As he passed by one of the sound men, he saw the man looking at him. Was that a knowing look or just a curious one?

  Damn it, he felt like a fool, but it was too late to turn back now.

  The questions continued nagging at him. Had Gayle told people about her accident? About conveniently cutting him out of her memory bank?

  “Nice bouquet,” a redheaded woman in rimless glasses told him. “She’ll love ’em.”

  God, he hoped so.

  As he approached her dressing room, Taylor felt increasingly uneasy. The desire to take flight played tug-of-war with his determination to see this through.

  Determination won by a small margin. He’d always been a private person. Living with Gayle had changed all that. There was always someone to take their picture at any of the events they attended. He’d never been happy about that, but he’d done it for her.

  Just as she’d put up with camping for him, he reminded himself.

  His hand tightened on the flowers he was holding.

  If he wanted to continue living with Gayle, he was going to have to let a lot of things ride for the time being.

  Gayle took the tiny microphone off of her blouse and removed the earpiece she’d been hooked up to during the broadcast. She’d just finished taping the afternoon installment of the sports news and wasn’t needed back until the early evening. Putting both pieces of equipment down on the desk, she said a couple of words to Paul Hunter, the man who did the traffic report, and stepped off the dais.

  “Want to get something to eat?” Paul asked eagerly. “No, thanks, I’ve got a few things to catch up on.”

  Paul nodded. “See you later, then.” As the newest member of their “family,” Paul was still trying to find his way.

  Aren’t we all? she thought cryptically.

  About to go to her dressing room, she stopped dead. The man in her wedding photographs was coming toward her. What was he doing here?

  She felt her heart flutter and told herself she was getting light-headed because she hadn’t eaten. When Taylor stormed out last night, he’d mysteriously taken her appetite with him. She’d had a less than restful night and this morning Julia had commented that for once, she had need of her art to erase the dark circles from beneath Gayle’s eyes.

  Damn it, he was all right. He’d made her worry for nothing. Even though she couldn’t remember him in her life, she didn’t want anything happening to him because of her, and she didn’t know if he was capable of doing something drastic.

  But now that she saw he was in one piece, she felt her anger flaring. After he’d walked out last night, she wasn’t sure where they stood. Or even if they stood anywhere at all.

  Yet even as her heart did a strange little somersault at the sight of him, Gayle could feel herself stiffening inside. Like a warrior about to do battle. She had no explanation for it. God, she wished there was some magic wand that could be waved over her brain and make it come back to normal.

  “What’s that?” She nodded at his hand.

  Taylor glanced at his offering. It was a last-minute thought, pulled up from the garden of the house he was working on. There was no harm in uprooting the flowers, since the owners wanted the garden paved over and covered with stamped, colored concrete.

  “Flowers.”

  “I know they’re flowers,” she said impatiently. “What are they doing in your hand?”

  “Currently?” He studied them for a moment. “Wilting.” Taylor thrust the small bouquet toward her. “They’re your favorite. White daisies.”

  She took them with both hands, trying not to let the gesture touch her. “Yes, I know.”

  “Right.” Taylor shoved his hands into his pockets. It was on the tip of his tongue to say something about how she seemed to remember everything but him, but there was no point to it. His job was to create a place for himself in her world. “I was thinking maybe if you’re free, we could have lunch.”

  Shifting the bouquet over to one hand, Gayle looked at her watch. “It’s after two.”

  Taylor dug in, suddenly feeling that if he didn’t make some kind of connection, some kind of breakthrough soon, he might never be able to. He needed to make just one step forward, just one.

  “A late lunch. An early dinner. Something on a plate, doesn’t matter what we call it. Just come out with me.”

  She looked down at the bouquet for a second. She’d always loved daisies. They were so light, so free. “I have to get back by four-thirty.”

  “Is that a no?”

  “No.” She let a smile curve her lips. “That’s a time limit.”

  Taylor smiled for the first time in almost three days. “Okay, then. I can work with that.” About to take her hand, he stopped. “Do you mind?”

  His thoughtfulness surprised her. And pleased her. “No,” she said quietly, “I don’t mind.”

  She told herself it was only static electricity that shot through her when they touched.

  Chapter Eight

  “So what’s the occasion?”

  Gayle had to raise her voice a little in order to be heard once they were seated. She’d opted to go to the restaurant she frequented most often. It was convenient because it was located a block and a half from the studio, and the food was decent enough.

  Obviously, a lot of other people felt the same way. Although the lunch crunch was almost over, Monroe’s was still doing a brisk amount of business. Three-quarters of the tables were filled with people who either worked somewhere in the immediate area or had shopped till they dropped.

  Taylor looked at her. In general, he found a lot of Gayle’s questions to be enigmatic, but now that she thought they were strangers, he felt really lost, without a compass to guide him.

  “What do you mean?”

  Gayle opened the menu just to see if anything new had been added. The owner operated on the principle that if it worked, don’t fix it, and for the most part the selections on the menu worked.

  “The flowers you brought,” she prompted.

  He began to wonder if maybe the scans done at the hospital had missed something. Was her short-term memory going, too?

  Taylor didn’t bother opening the menu. Instead he tucked it off to the side. “I thought we already had this conversation.”

  She paused to smile at the approaching waitress. They knew her here and treated her as if she were family rather than a celebrity. She liked that. “No, it stopped somewhere around when you said they were wilting. The next thing you said were that they were my favorites.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll have the Black Forest ham sandwich on rye. Mustard, no mayo. Lettuce, green pepper. Diet cola,” she told the waitress who made a couple of squiggles on her pad, then turned toward Taylor.

  “Same,” he echoed, surrendering his menu to the young woman.

  “But why did you bring them?” Gayle pressed, the moment the waitress retreated. “The flowers,” she repeated in case he’d lost
the thread amid the din and the sandwich order.

  Gayle’s question took Taylor back to the early days of their relationship, before trust had entered the picture. He’d almost forgotten this habit of hers. Gayle used to view almost everything remotely personal as suspicious. He supposed that was her defense mechanism.

  People were always trying to curry her favor in exchange for a favor in return. And, if he correctly recalled some of the stories she later confided to him, Gayle felt that almost each and every time her father was nice to her, he was trying to get her to agree to something she’d already turned down. Like another competition, or a product endorsement she’d taken a pass on. Until shortly after the last Olympics, her father had not only been her coach but her manager, as well. She’d declared her independence from the colonel just shortly before they began going out together.

  For a while Taylor got the feeling that by being with him Gayle was afraid she’d jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. It had taken a great deal of patience on his part to convince her that not only was he not interested in her money, he wanted to use only his when it came to buying things for them. As far as he was concerned, she could bank hers or use it for charity. He was the breadwinner. She’d balked, then agreed.

  The waitress materialized with their sodas, then, flashing a smile, retreated again.

  He countered her question with a question. “Why does anyone bring flowers to a woman?”

  Her eyes met his. “To get something.”

  He thought for a moment before giving her a response. “I suppose, in a way, you’re right.”

  He saw her stiffen ever so slightly. Someone else might have missed that, but he was keenly aware of every nuance, every gesture that went into making Gayle the woman she was. “And what is it that you want to get?”

  He could have cut the suspicion emanating from her with a knife. “Into your favor.”

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder. It was a movement she did when she felt as if she’d pinned someone down. “And into other places?”

  There was no point in denying that. It was his ultimate goal. To have her as his wife again. “Eventually. When you remember me.”

  “And if I don’t?” she asked. “If my memory of you never comes back, what then?”

  He snapped off a piece of the garlic breadstick he snared from the small basket in the middle of the table and took a bite before answering. “Then I’m going to make you want to remember me.”

  The guy was good-looking. More than good-looking, and she had to admit a current buzzed between them. But she absolutely hated egotists. She found it hard to believe that she’d actually married one.

  “Pretty confident in yourself, aren’t you?”

  His eyes held hers for a long moment. So long that she felt something scrambling in her stomach, and she was fairly certain it wasn’t hunger pangs. At least, not for food.

  His voice was low, seductive, as he leaned forward and said, “Let’s just say that in this one instance, I believe in history repeating itself.”

  She did what she could to cut him dead. The smile on her lips was icy. “And you swept me off my feet the first time around, right?”

  Taylor laughed shortly. Despite the surrounding din, the sound seeped into her bones.

  “Nobody sweeps you off your feet, Gayle. But I did manage to lift you off the ground a couple of inches.” Was that humor he saw flirting with the corners of her mouth? Or was it just that sly, cynical look that sometimes came over her face? At the outset it was hard to tell. He was rooting for the former. “No more than you did me,” he added.

  Gayle stared at him, his meaning momentarily lost on her. She sincerely doubted he was saying what it sounded like he was saying. “No more than I did you, what?”

  Taylor took a breath. It wasn’t easy for him to make these kinds of personal admissions. He wasn’t the kind to put his feelings into words, or bare his soul. He’d always been pretty closemouthed. But he knew that if he continued that way, he stood to lose the reason he had any feelings at all.

  “Dissolve the ground beneath my feet.” He paused for a second, a soldier attempting to regroup after his buddies had disappeared on him. “I thought we could start from scratch.”

  He looked damn uncomfortable. Suddenly she wasn’t any longer. She was enjoying herself. Gayle leaned her chin on the palm of her propped-up hand and looked at him. “And just what is it you’d be scratching?”

  To the untrained ear, she might have sounded seductive. But he knew better. Knew her inside and out and yet she still managed to surprise him on more than just a few occasions.

  I miss you, damn it. Come back to me, Gayle.

  “Stop being so damn suspicious, Gayle,” he said aloud. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying my best here to court you.”

  “Court me.” She repeated the term incredulously. “I don’t know you—”

  How many times were they going to rehash this? “That’s just the problem.”

  Gayle continued as if he hadn’t interrupted her. He’d missed her meaning entirely. “But you don’t strike me as the kind of man who normally uses the word court. If ever,” she added.

  Damn it, how did this always happen? How did she manage to twist things around so that he lost sight of his original meaning, his original goal? Did she take delight in confounding him like this, even if she couldn’t remember him?

  “Maybe it’s because I don’t know what other word to use.” Realizing that he was very close to shouting, Taylor made an effort to lower his voice. Taking a second to regain control over his close-to-frayed temper, he decided he might as well tell her everything. It was better that way. Safer. Gayle had an uncanny knack of finding things out, anyway. “Besides, it was Sam’s word.”

  The waitress returned again, this time with their food. She quickly placed a plate before each of them, then hurried off to another couple that had just been seated. “And why would my five-alarm brother be saying the word court around you?”

  It probably would have gone better for him if he took credit for the idea. But he’d never believed in lies, even ones that placed him in a better light. Lies were far too difficult to keep track of. He had no idea how Sam managed to juggle as many as he did.

  “Because that was what he suggested I do with you.” Then, because she seemed so eager to believe the worst, he said cryptically, “Me, I’d just as soon tie you up, throw you over my shoulder and take you off to some secluded lair until you finally came to your senses.”

  Gayle looked down at the sandwich she was holding. Absorbed in the image he’d just created, she’d all but squeezed it flat in the middle. She made a conscious effort to relax her fingers, at the same time eyeing him darkly. “Now that sounds like you.”

  He figured he’d put up with just about enough. She was far too willing to cast him in the role of a Neanderthal, and he resented it. “How would you know?”

  How would she know? The question echoed in her brain like a bell sounded at vespers. She had no answer for that, at least, not for herself. But she wasn’t about to let him know that. If you didn’t have all the answers, people tried to give you theirs, and suddenly you were no more than an extension of them.

  The way the colonel had always fought to make her an extension of himself. Had she not been blessed with a will of iron, she would have long ago been plowed under by the very father who loved her.

  Gayle shrugged nonchalantly. “Instinct.”

  He came very close to throwing up his hands and just walking out of the restaurant. But walking away meant he’d be alone. Without her. And he’d already danced that dance. He was in this for the long haul, ready to do whatever it took. He’d had a life with Gayle and without Gayle—and with was definitely better.

  “Gayle, I’m trying here. Work with me.”

  What had her marriage been like? Had he made her surrender pieces of herself without realizing it until it was too late? Was that why she couldn’t remember him? There had t
o be a reason. There had to be. But if that was the reason, she knew he wouldn’t tell her. She was on her own here.

  Gayle looked at him for a long moment. “And what’s in it for me?”

  He wanted to shout at her that she’d asked an absurd question. But he knew her, knew the old Gayle before she’d become his Gayle. And the old Gayle thought that way. Because she was afraid of being caught off guard. Afraid of being vulnerable.

  “At the risk of sounding vain…me,” he answered. “And our marriage.”

  Okay, she would put the question to him just to see what his answer would be. Not that she expected him to be honest, but it might be entertaining to watch him squirm. “If our marriage was so special, why did I forget it? Why did I forget you?”

  “That’s something we need to find out.” Taylor placed his hand over hers, then turned it over and held it for a moment. He had to admit he was a little surprised as well as gratified that she didn’t pull away. “We can’t do it if you keep fighting me at every turn.”

  The smile that emerged on her lips was soft.

  A little bit of hope burrowed through his heart.

  “I can’t help it,” she told him. “It’s what I do.”

  It was a moment, a tiny moment, but he cherished it. “I know. But maybe if you fight just a little less, we might get somewhere.”

  Under the pretext of getting back to eating her lunch, she separated her hand from his.

  “Okay.” And then, just as she bit into her sandwich, a question occurred to her. She raised her eyes to his. “Does this mean that you’re moving back in?”

  “I didn’t exactly move out. All I had were the clothes on my back,” he reminded her. “But yes, I’m back in.”

  She chewed on his answer as she ate her lunch. “All right,” she agreed gamely, her stomach unaccountably fluttering. “But the tape stays up.”

  Every time he thought he was making the slightest bit of headway, she’d turn around and come up with a way to negate it. “Gayle…”

  Raising an index finger in the air, she didn’t let him finish his protest. “If you were ‘courting’ me,” Gayle said, struggling to suppress a laugh, “you’d be living in your own apartment.”