Husbands and Other Strangers

by Marie Ferrarella

  “You don’t remember this?” He asked the question even though he already knew what her answer would be.

  Gayle turned on her heel to face him. “I don’t remember you,” she needlessly reminded him.

  She pressed her lips together, trying desperately to keep the sharp edge of panic from growing into unmanageable proportions the way it had earlier.

  She needed to keep moving. If this man looking at her so intently really was who he said he was, well, he had to prove it to her, to make her remember him. He had all the cards. She had nothing to draw on. No special place to retreat to in order to start all over again, rebuilding memories.

  She had no memories, at least none of him. He had to do something that would change that, not her.

  It suddenly occurred to Gayle that she was lacking the most basic form of information. She tried to remember if one of her brothers had called out to her would-be husband and failed to come up with anything. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Taylor. Taylor Conway.” He shoved his hands into his back pockets. This felt so stupid, introducing himself to his wife of eighteen months.

  “And I’m Gayle Conway?” She rolled the name over on her tongue, testing it out. Tasting it. Listening to the way it sounded. No sense of the familiar came washing over her, yet she did recognize the name as belonging to her.

  “Privately,” he told her. “Professionally you’re still Gayle Elliott. You work at—”

  “KTOC, yes, I know.” She had a very clear image of her small dressing room. Her section of the desk on the set, beneath glaring lights. She loved the life.

  He felt as if a paring knife had slipped in beneath his third rib. And he had to wait awhile before this stopped bothering him so much. Maybe they’d get lucky and she’d regain her memory by then. “You remember your job.”

  “I like referring to it as a career.”

  There were times when she thought it was somehow unethical, being paid for doing something she loved so much. She would have paid the station to allow her to mingle with professional athletes, follow certain teams when they went on the road to play in other cities, reporting it all back to hungry viewers who weren’t as lucky as she was.

  He felt as if something was about to snap inside of him. What if she never remembered him? Never remembered the past eighteen months?

  Taylor grasped her by the shoulders. “Damn it, Gayle, if you’re putting me on—”

  She watched him unflinchingly, the strength of his fingers registering as they pressed hard against her biceps. “Why would I put you on about that?”

  Belatedly he realized he must be holding her too tightly, that he was channeling his frustration through his fingers.

  Taylor dropped his hands to his sides. “You know what I mean.” Taking a breath, he got himself under control again and muttered, “Sorry.” It was the fear that had made him behave this way. Fear of losing what they’d had.

  “That wasn’t easy for you, was it?” When he gave her a slow, puzzled look, she said to clarify, “You don’t like apologizing.”

  Hope sprang up like toast out of an overly eager toaster. “You remembered that?”

  He’d looked so hopeful that she’d almost lied. But this was about getting down to the truth, not lying. “Sorry, no. Instinct,” she explained. “I’m pretty good at reading people.”

  He should have realized it wasn’t going to be that easy. Still, he couldn’t help being resentful. “So how come you erased me out of your book?”

  She began to say “If I did,” but the phrase never left her mouth. Saying that would only be adversarial. By now she knew there was no if. She apparently had erased Taylor. Her brothers wouldn’t have deliberately allowed him to take her “home” to this half-destroyed bomb shelter if she really wasn’t married to him.

  “I don’t know,” she told him honestly. “I don’t know.” Blowing out a breath, Gayle took a whimsical stab at the reason behind the lapse. “Maybe you beat me.”

  Taylor stared at her. “What? No,” he denied vehemently when the full impact of her words registered. “I didn’t beat you. If I’d raised a hand to you, you would have been all over me like a Tasmanian devil.” He realized that she could misinterpret that, as well. “Not that I ever would raise a hand.” And then, because there had been so much between them, he added, “Although, a saint would have trouble living with you at times.”

  Her eyes grew into small slits. “And you’re no saint.”

  There was an argument here, but he couldn’t allow himself to be drawn into it. Couldn’t banter with her for the sake of bantering. She no longer knew him and there was so much she could misunderstand. So he merely said, “No, I’m not.”

  Questions began to form in between the holes of her thoughts. “Did we get along?”

  “Yes,” he said with feeling, then qualified it. “Sometimes.”

  She jumped to the other side, as was her habit. “And sometimes not?”

  He lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. “Like I said, you had your moments.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  There were times when he rose to the bait. Or baited her. “Yeah, me, too.”

  It sounded as if they fought a lot. Which brought her to another conclusion and hopefully the answer she was looking for. “Were we getting a divorce?”

  “No,” he retorted adamantly. “Hell, no. What made you ask that?”

  It was her turn to shrug. When she did so, the strap of her tank top slid off her right shoulder. “Trying to get to the bottom of why my brain pressed the delete button on you.”

  Any other time he might have pushed down the other strap, taking the material all the way down to her waist. But this wasn’t the time to give in to the desires she always aroused within him. He had a feeling that making love with her right now wouldn’t trigger anything except maybe a five-alarm scream.

  So he trod lightly, hoping she’d return to her right mind—and him—soon. “The doctor said there might not be a reason.”

  That wasn’t very encouraging, she thought. Gayle moved away from the wall. It reminded her too much of what her brain felt like. “Then we’re at less than square one.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “I don’t know about that. You’re here.”

  That wasn’t saying very much, she thought as she looked around. Although, she could have forced one of her brothers to take her in, she supposed. Why hadn’t she? She wasn’t really sure.

  “In a war zone,” she observed.

  Because each project was a labor of love for him, especially this one, he took offense. “It’s not as bad as all that.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, “we could be living outdoors and it could be the rainy season.”

  Okay, there was a glimmer of a grin there, he was sure of it. Some of her humor was surfacing. He took heart in that.

  “You actually liked helping me,” he told her. Placing his hand on her shoulder, Taylor brought her over to the largest gaping hole in the wall. “See that?”

  She’d have to be blind not to, she thought. “What about it?”

  “You did that,” he told her. She looked at him in disbelief. “You called it therapeutic. Said it helped you get rid of your aggression. Want to try doing it now? You always had a lot to spare.”

  Was that criticism, she wondered. Or was he daring her? Never one to let a challenge go unanswered, she picked up the sledgehammer. The weight surprised her. “Heavy.”

  “You swung it like a pro. All that upper-body strength you developed as a swimmer,” he explained, telling her what she had once told him when he’d marveled at the way she wielded the hammer.

  Another woman would have claimed it was too heavy to use, but Gayle always saw things like that as a challenge. He’d never met anyone who loved being challenged as much as she did.

  He was counting on that now, hoping she would view reconstructing the pieces of her life with him as a challenge.

  Hefting the hammer, Gayle too
k one long, measured swing, making contact with the wall. A shower of plaster, ugly wallpaper and plywood went flying in all directions. A sense of exhilaration blasted through her.

  “You’re right,” she declared, bracing to take another swing, “this does feel good.”

  But as she began to swing the sledgehammer, Taylor grabbed the hammer’s wooden shank and stopped her.

  She glanced at him defiantly, still holding the hammer with both hands. “What?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t tire yourself out right now.” His eyes skimmed over the bandage on her forehead. “You did get that head injury.”

  “Oh, that.” Reluctantly Gayle relinquished the hammer. She slid her fingertips gingerly over the bandaged area and raised her eyes to his. “Think this was the part that remembered you?”

  He had no idea how the mind worked or, even if he did, how hers worked. She had always been a mystery to him, but he had just begun finally learning. He didn’t want to give all that progress up.

  “I’d like to think I had more than a microchip-size hold on your life.” He leaned the sledgehammer in the same spot against the wall, then looked at her. “Are you hungry?”

  Gayle paused to think. Until now she hadn’t thought in terms of food. She’d been too consumed trying to straighten out the tangled mess her life had suddenly become. But it looked as if there were no easy solutions. She hated that.

  “I guess. Maybe just an apple.”

  At least that hadn’t changed, he thought. Gayle had always liked to eat healthy. That was her father’s influence. The choices were almost too healthy for his tastes.

  But there were occasional pizza breakdowns, and he lived for that.

  He decided to give it a shot now. “How about a pizza?” he suggested. “I can order in.”

  About to say no, Gayle changed her mind and shrugged. “Okay.” Maybe if that was what they normally did, it might seem familiar enough to her to cause her to start to remember.

  She watched as Taylor dialed a number he seemed to have committed to memory. Did they eat like this often? Did it annoy him that she couldn’t cook?

  The man was incredibly sexy and good-looking. Why was there no memory of him? Why had only he and this house vanished from her mind and nothing else?

  Suddenly needing to test herself, Gayle began to pull random bits and pieces out of the air. Her social security number. The address of her father’s house. The date she won her first swim meet. Each and every one of them returned to her with ease.

  Why not him?

  There had to be a reason. There just had to be.

  It felt almost like a first date.

  That same uneasy awkwardness shimmered between them. The awkwardness of two strangers exploring each other, trying to decide if this was a colossal mistake or the beginning of something really good.

  Except that a lot was at stake here, Gayle reminded herself as she finished what had to be her final piece of pizza. Only two pieces were left in the box. Far smaller than Taylor, she had consumed as much food as he had.

  In the background, a popular police drama was just wrapping up an episode on the TV. For the sake of spending the evening in so-called familiar surroundings, she had feigned interest in the program, although her interest had waned once she’d guessed the killer’s identity and the reason behind his crime spree.

  She wished she could come up just as easily with the reason behind her brain’s vanishing act when it came to Taylor.

  He picked up a napkin and wiped the grease from his fingers. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “Just thinking.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  Was this some kind of male suppression on his part? She certainly didn’t have a handle on who he was yet. He seemed nice enough. But that wasn’t enough for a marriage, was it? “I shouldn’t think?”

  “Shouldn’t try so hard to remember,” he clarified. “Let it come.”

  “You’re awfully calm for a man whose wife doesn’t remember him.”

  He smiled. At least she wasn’t denying that any longer—that she was his wife. He took that as a sign of progress. “You should see my insides.”

  She glanced toward the screen. The program had been one of those that took pleasure in taking the viewer on a visual, internal tour of every organ the deceased possessed.

  “No, thanks, I think I’ve seen enough insides for one night.” She paused, chewing on a new thought.

  He could swear he could see the wheels turning in her head. “What?”

  She raised her eyes to his. “Were we…you know…happy?”

  He’d expected a more-intimate question. Maybe it had been and she’d lost her nerve at the last moment. No, he decided, Gayle didn’t lose her nerve. She charged headlong into any battle, any situation.

  He looked at her for a long moment, trying to summon the woman he loved to the surface. And failing. “We had our moments.”

  That sounded rather sad and lonely. “Just moments?”

  He laughed. “Sometimes longer than that. We fought,” he admitted. “We made up.” There was fondness in his voice as he recalled some of their more aggressive times. She made love like a wild woman, bringing out the full spectrum of passion from him. “That’s what made it all worth it. The making up.”

  His eyes held hers. And then he reached for her.

  The second he did, Gayle slid back as far as she could on the sofa. Her eyes were accusing. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Trying to get my wife back. “I just thought of a way to jog your memory.”

  The next moment Gayle popped up to her feet, a jack-in-the-box exploding out of its confining tin container. There was no mistaking the look in her eyes.

  “I just bet you did. Well, you can just hold on to that thought, buster—and not me. Am I making myself clear?” There was just no way she intended to make love with a complete stranger, no matter who the hell he said he was supposed to be or how damn good-looking he was. That just wasn’t her.

  On his feet, as well, Taylor dragged a hand through his jet-black hair, reining in the temper that only Gayle knew how to ignite. This was going to take a lot more patience than he’d anticipated.

  Trouble was, he wasn’t all that sure if he was up to it.

  Chapter Five

  He knew the anger he felt was largely unreasonable. This was a medical matter and nothing personal.

  But it was hard not to take it personally when his wife, the woman he’d loved and let into the most private parts of his world—places no one else had ever been admitted to—kept rejecting him. Kept looking at him as if he were a stranger.

  He did the best he could. “I know logic was never exactly your long suit, Gayle, but we did have a physical relationship.”

  “That was when I knew who you were,” she retorted, frustration heating her reaction.

  More than anything she hated not being in control, and if she couldn’t remember him when he had supposedly been such an integral part of her life, then she wasn’t in control, not even of her own mind and thoughts.

  Taylor seized her response, cutting her off before she said something to negate the point he was trying to drive home.

  “Exactly. And I just thought that kissing me might help you remember.”

  The crack about logic not being her long suit still had her bristling. “Remember what? That you’re sarcastic?”

  “No,” he snapped, “that you loved me.”

  The phrase materialized in her mind’s eye like a giant billboard. That you loved me. Had she? Until this morning’s mishap, had she loved this man? A lot or a little? God, but she wished she had a grasp on that, at least a slight toehold.

  She pressed her lips together, trying to sort out her feelings, which kept insisting on running helter-skelter, here and there, eluding organization. She felt some of her annoyance fading. He wanted to kiss her. To try to jar her memory.

  It might be worth a try. Besides, the man was as good-looking
as they came. As long as he didn’t try to take things any further than a kiss, it might even be fun. After all, she wasn’t a nun.

  Gayle raised and lowered her shoulders with studied carelessness. “I suppose that makes some kind of sense.”

  This she hadn’t forgotten how to do, to counter every word, every move from him with one of her own. Life with her at times was like an endless tennis game. He had to be on his toes constantly, never quite knowing when the next lob would land the ball.

  “It makes perfect sense.”

  Gayle gave him a lofty look. “Nothing is perfect,” she countered.

  His eyes narrowed. Was she playing some kind of game? He just didn’t know. “Living with you these past eighteen months made that pretty clear.”

  That stung. “If you’re going to kiss me, then get it over with.”

  His temper made another reappearance. She made it sound like some kind of odious test she was forced to endure, he thought. “This isn’t exactly in the same category as a root canal.”

  “How would I know that?”

  Taylor knew he could answer her, could make some kind of retort to her challenge, but all that was going to be just a waste of breath and time. She’d just say something else and they’d go on thrusting and parrying indefinitely. Besides, if they continued this way much longer, the tender feelings he was hoping would come through wouldn’t be there. She had a knack of making him reach his flashpoint in an incredibly short amount of time.

  Struggling not to strangle her wasn’t exactly the right frame of mind he needed in order to kiss her in a way that jarred the very foundations of her world. Or, at the very least, swept away the cobwebs from that part of her brain that seemed to have receded.

  So instead of saying another word to her, Taylor hooked his arm around Gayle’s waist, pulled her to him and, cupping the back of her head, brought his mouth down on hers.

  Caught by surprise, she squirmed a little, wedging her hands against his chest. Had she pushed with any kind of strength or perceptible feeling, he would have immediately released her.

  But she didn’t.

  As he put his heart and soul into the kiss, deepening it, Taylor became vaguely aware of Gayle’s hands sliding almost bonelessly down the length of his pectorals. The very next second she was cleaving to him, her hands going around his neck as his blood was starting to rush in his veins.