Husbands and Other Strangers. Marie Ferrarella
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“Now you see, there’s your problem, Taylor. You can’t think of this negatively. You’ve got to believe. Believe that it’s going to be all right. Before you know it, Gayle’s going to be back to normal.” Although the smile remained, there was an enormous depth of feeling behind every word.
“Yeah, and then before you know it, you’ll find yourself missing her not knowing you,” Sam speculated.
“Yeah,” Taylor bit off.
How many times over the course of the last eighteen months, at the height of one of their “disagreements,” had he wished he’d never met her? The woman seemed to go out of her way to drive him insane. And yet…
And yet he knew that life before Gayle had been nothing more than an existence, marked by pockets of work he was really proud of and interludes with women that left him feeling empty and somehow lacking. Until Gayle, he hadn’t realized exactly what it was that had been lacking. After Gayle came into his life, rolling in like a tempestuous storm, he knew that what had been lacking was color, vibrancy and a zest that had him greeting each day with the enthusiasm of an adventurer poised to take the first step into the greatest adventure of his life.
That was what living with Gayle was like, a constant adventure. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always, always stimulating.
There was no way he was going to give that up. No way he was going to give her up.
Okay, he thought. This was going to be just another adventure in a long series of adventures. A little strange, but then, life with Gayle had never exactly been what one would call normal.
As long as he kept his eye fixed on the light at the end of the tunnel—as long as he kept telling himself the light was there even when he couldn’t see it—he could get through this.
“The doctor said Gayle could go home,” Taylor said aloud, more to himself than to Sam and Jake.
Jake nodded, as if to say that this was a good next step. “Then let’s go get our girl,” he said.
Taylor returned the nod, grateful for his brother-in-law’s support. He knew that he could count on both Jake and Sam. Not just because Gayle was their sister, but because he was part of the family. There were times when he caught himself thinking how odd that felt. Eighteen months and he was still adjusting to the idea that he had more than himself to lean on. That he wasn’t alone anymore. It was a fringe benefit for getting involved with Gayle.
Flanked by Jake and Sam, Taylor entered the curtained area, ready to pick up the fight where they had left off. Gayle had called him a liar just before the nurse had drawn the curtain around the gurney so that she could change into a hospital gown.
Words melted from his tongue and his head the moment he looked at the woman who no longer remembered that she was his wife. He couldn’t recall ever seeing Gayle looking so small, so vulnerable as she did lying in that bed—and yet so defensive at the same time.
She was probably scared. But then, who wouldn’t be, in her position? Part of her memory had been whisked away like a so-called alien abduction. That would have rattled anyone. And although she was outgoing, Gayle had never been what he would have called the blindly trusting type.
Which was why she’d been so suspicious of him. Why she was still suspicious of him, if that look in her eyes was any indication of the state of her mind.
This was going to take a hell of a lot of patience, he warned himself. More than he’d ever had to dig up before. Taylor really hoped he was up to it.
You have to be up to it, he upbraided himself. The prize was far too precious. And he had no intention of losing it.
“The doctor said you could go home now,” Taylor told her.
Gayle deliberately looked toward her brothers. The less encouragement she gave this poor joke of theirs, the better. Not that she wouldn’t have been interested in spending some time with this guy her brothers had dug up. The man had definite potential, especially around the mouth and eyes.
His dark-blue eyes looked as if they’d been the inspiration that had led someone to coin the phrase about eyes being the windows of the soul. His looked as if they were almost bottomless. And his mouth—there was something incredibly sensual about his mouth even though, so far, she’d only seen it looking unhappy.
Or maybe her reaction to him was because his mouth was pulled back into a frown.
This wasn’t the time. She was letting her mind wander, taking her thoughts on a wild and very obviously purposeless chase.
She had to keep her mind on her goal. Getting out of here.
“Good,” she declared.
Gayle began to look around the small enclosure for her clothes. And then another thought struck her. With a sense of foreboding, she had the uneasy feeling that she wasn’t going to like the answer to her question.
Anticipating what he thought was Gayle’s next move, Taylor bent down and removed the plastic shopping bag tucked just above the wheels of the gurney. When the nurse on duty had brought Gayle her one-size-fits-all hospital gown, she’d placed Gayle’s bathing suit, as well as the shorts and tank top Jake had thought to bring with them, into the bag.
“Looking for these?” He held up the bag.
She took the bag from him mechanically, mumbling a thanks she was hardly aware of uttering. Gayle looked at Jake. There was only one way to find this out, and she might as well get it over with.
“Um, Jake, I can’t remember.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth and then forged ahead. “Where do I live?”
Taylor didn’t wait for Jake to answer. “With me,” he told Gayle. “You live with me.”
She hadn’t been prepared for the intense wave of panic that washed over her. It all but robbed her of her breath. “No, I don’t,” she insisted.
“Yes,” Jake said to her, quietly but firmly, “you do.”
Sam was right there to back him up. “He’s right, you do.”
She wanted to scream “No.” To shout that the joke was over. But beneath it all was the strong, underlying fear that they weren’t playing a trick on her. That for whatever reason, part of her memory was gone.
“Guys, you’re scaring me.”
“No more than you’re scaring us,” Taylor told her evenly.
She looked from one face to another, ending up with the man she wanted to believe was an impostor. Her eyes reverted back to Jake. Her throat suddenly felt dry, and her head began to spin again. She fought to keep from getting dizzy.
“Really?” she asked Jake, her voice hardly above a whisper. She stared into her older brother’s eyes, certain that if he was lying to her—the way she was fervently praying he was—she could tell. She could always tell when Jake was lying. He squinted.
“Really.”
Jake wasn’t squinting.
Shaken down to her very core, she sighed.
“Then why can’t I remember?” she demanded, looking at Jake. Ever since she’d taken her first step, she’d fought to be independent, to be taken seriously on her own merit. But right at this moment, she wanted her big brother to take care of her. To make things right. “Why can’t I remember anything about him?”
Jake ached for her as he struggled to make sense of all this. He took Gayle’s hand in his. “We don’t know, Gayle.”
“The doctor said he doesn’t even know,” Sam chimed in, as if that could somehow make her feel better. That she wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand.
“Guys, could you leave us alone for a minute?” Taylor asked his brothers-in-law.
Panic returned, as raw and nearly as unmanageable as it had been that very