My Secret Wife

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Gabe kissed his way across her shoulders, before slipping his hands gently beneath her and turning her back over, so they were once again face-to-face. He looked down at her tenderly, making no effort at all to disguise how much he wanted and needed her, still. At least from a physical perspective. “And what point is that?” he asked as he smoothed a gentle hand down her body.

  “That a physical attraction exists between us,” Maggie confessed miserably, ignoring the tingling of her nipples and lower still, the butterflies of desire that began to build once again.

  Before Gabe could reply, his beeper went off. Frowning, Gabe sat up and reached for his clothes, sorting through them until he found the electronic device. He silenced it and brought it back into bed with them, frowning as he read the flashing number on the screen. “It’s the hospital.”

  Saved by the demands of his profession, Maggie thought. She slipped from the bed, grabbed her own clothes and headed for the bathroom.

  By the time she shut the door, he was already on his cell phone. Maggie was grateful for the time to pull herself together. She didn’t want to find herself making this lovemaking session out to be more than it was—a way to make the baby he had promised her without going to a clinic and using a cup and a syringe.

  By the time she emerged from the bathroom, Gabe was slipping on his slacks. The look on his face told her something troubling was going on.

  “Jane Doe’s suddenly taken a turn for the worse,” he said, in answer to her unspoken question.

  Maggie felt her heart go out to Gabe’s patient. “I take it this means you still don’t know who she is,” she said, thinking how awful it must be for the elegant-looking older woman to be stuck in the hospital, all alone.

  His expression both grim and perplexed, Gabe shook his head. “No, and it’s the oddest situation. Aunt Winnifred and Harry went to see her. Jane Doe took one look at them, put the covers over her head and refused to talk to them.”

  Maggie watched as Gabe pulled his short-sleeved polo shirt on over his head. The knit fabric molded to his broad shoulders, muscled pecs and washboard abs. “You’re kidding!”

  “No.” Gabe sighed as he tucked his shirt inside his slacks, and buckled his belt. “But then I guess it’s no surprise,” he admitted with the pragmatism of a physician who had seen and heard it all. “She’s been acting—and talking—kind of kooky ever since she was admitted.”

  Maggie sat on the edge of the bed, while he put on his socks and shoes. “What about the television station?”

  Gabe stood. Pulling a comb from his back pocket, he restored order to the wavy layers of his hair. “They had some calls from people who were concerned, and a fund has been started for her at one of the local banks, and my aunt Winnifred has hired Harlan Decker, a private detective here in Charleston, to see if he can’t help identify her, but thus far no one’s been able to tell us who she is.”

  “That’s awful,” Maggie said. Seeing that Gabe was in a hurry to get going, she accompanied him down the stairs to the foyer.

  “I guess that’s what it’s like when you don’t have a family any longer,” Gabe said.

  Which was, Maggie thought as her sympathy for Jane Doe deepened, exactly why she wanted a child of her own so badly. She wanted to be connected with someone by blood again. She wanted that sense of family. In the meantime, though, maybe it was time she stopped feeling sorry for herself over her predicament and spent a little more time and energy helping others who were worse off than she. “Could I go to the hospital with you?” she asked impulsively. “To see Jane Doe?”

  Gabe hesitated. She could see by the look on his face that he wanted her company. But he also wanted to protect her. “There’s no guaranteeing she’ll want to see you or anyone else,” Gabe warned.

  Maggie wasn’t concerned about herself. “Please,” she said softly, already grabbing her handbag and keys. “Maybe I can help her remember. She must have a home somewhere.”

  JANE DOE was propped up in bed, an oxygen tube going into her nose, when Gabe and Maggie walked into her room. Her wrinkled cheeks were flushed with fever, her eyes a little glazed, but she recognized Gabe immediately. “Why, Dr. Deveraux,” she said, extending her hand as cordially as if they had just arrived for tea. “How nice of you to drop in to call on me.”

  “I’m happy to be here,” Gabe said, smiling, as he gently took her hand and gave it a squeeze. Gabe put his stethoscope in his ears and listened to Jane Doe’s heart and lungs, then checked the numbers on the electronic monitors next to her bed. Finished, he straightened again, asked, “So how are you feeling?”

  “A little sad, actually.”

  “Any particular reason why?” Gabe asked, his dark brow furrowing.

  Jane Doe moved her shoulders in a graceful shrug. “Does a broken heart count?” she asked, even more dispiritedly.

  “Always,” Gabe said gently. He pulled up a chair beside the bed, and asked, in a you-can-tell-me-anything-tone that was as familiar to Maggie as his kisses. “Did you recently lose someone you loved?” Gabe asked, even more kindly.

  Jane Doe turned her head to the side, looked away. “I can’t talk about that with you,” she said as a single tear slipped down her cheek. “You’re a man. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Gabe looked at Maggie. She could tell he wanted her to try. She nodded imperceptibly, then moved around to the other side of the bed. She waited until Jane Doe looked at her. “I’m Maggie. I was here yesterday. Do you mind if I stay with you a while?” she asked considerately.

  Jane Doe studied her warily. “Are you a social worker?”

  Maggie smiled. “No. I’m just a friend of Gabe’s.”

  “All right, then,” Jane Doe said, looking visibly relieved.

  “I’m going to go and see if I can’t hurry the labs with the results of the tests that were taken just a while ago,” Gabe said. He exited the room.

  Maggie smiled at Jane Doe. “Can I get you some ice water?”

  “Please.”

  “I hate for you to be here all alone,” Maggie said sympathetically, as she poured some water from the plastic pitcher into a drinking cup.

  The corners of her lips turning down in discouragement, Jane Doe looked down at the IV lines running into the backs of both her hands. “My time is running out. I can feel it.”

  Maggie put a straw in the cup and helped Jane Doe sit up enough to take a drink. “Oh, I think they can make you well.”

  “I hope so.” The woman looked at Maggie earnestly. “I had so much left to do,” she said emotionally. “I wanted everyone to be happy—as happy as I should have been.”

  Now, maybe they were getting somewhere, Maggie thought. “Who’s everyone?” she asked casually. “Your family?”

  Jane Doe smiled affectionately as she ran her hands restlessly over the snowy white thermal blanket on her bed. “My great-niece and nephews. Even my nephew and the woman he has always loved.”

  Glad to know she had a family somewhere, Maggie leaned forward earnestly. “If you tell me their names or where they live, maybe I can contact them for you.” She so wanted this woman to have the happiness she so obviously deserved.

  Jane Doe’s eyes suddenly sparkled with devilish lights. She became as cagey as could be. “I’d rather talk about you,” she said, suddenly looking and sounding stronger than she had since Maggie had arrived. “Is it my imagination? Or are you in love with that young doctor?”

  GOOD QUESTION, Maggie thought. Prior to their afternoon of wild, uninhibited lovemaking, she would have said absolutely not, that although she was technically still his wife, she wasn’t sure he was even a friend. Or ever would be.

  Now…

  Now, she didn’t know.

  She felt connected to Gabe.

  More connected than she had to any man.

  But whether that was simply because he was the first man—the only man—to ever make love to her, or if there was something more there—something special and unique and everlasting, she did
not know.

  “Because I have to tell you—I was watching him just now—and I think he might be in love with you,” Jane Doe continued in a voice that was not to be denied.

  As the conversation turned to her situation, Maggie felt a self-conscious flush move from her chest and neck into her face. “Gabe is your doctor.”

  “I know. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in him.”

  “Interested how?” Gabe said, coming back into the room, several plastic bags of liquid medicine in hand.

  “I think you should be married and have a baby,” Jane Doe said, making Maggie blush all the more.

  “Actually,” Gabe said, just as enthusiastically, looking directly at Maggie in a way that recalled their passionate lovemaking, the consummation of their marriage and the possibility that they had made a baby that very afternoon, “so do I.”

  He hung the bags on the hooks at the top of the IV pole. “I thought nurses were supposed to do that,” Maggie said, attempting to change the subject.

  Gabe gave her a knowing look but answered her question anyway. “Usually they do, but the nurses are busy, and I wanted to get this started right away, so I’m going to do it.”

  “What kind of medicine are you giving me?” Jane Doe asked curiously.

  “These are both antibiotics to fight the pneumonia you’ve developed,” Gabe said, his concentration on the complicated task at hand.

  “I thought you were already giving me an antibiotic for that,” Jane said.

  Gabe slanted her a brief, reassuring glance as he switched her medicines around. “I’m going to try two different ones. I think they’ll work a little better.”

  “What other medications am I getting?” Jane Doe asked, beginning to look as if she had completely depleted what little energy she had.

  “IV fluids, an anti-inflammatory medicine to help bring down the swelling and speed the healing in your sprained ankle, and medications for pain or to help you sleep, as you need them,” Gabe explained.

  “Speaking of sleep.” Jane Doe closed her eyes. “I’d like to take a nap, now. But you come back and see me, Maggie,” she said, yawning. “You, too, Dr. Deveraux.”

  “WERE YOU ABLE to find out anything?” Gabe asked as soon as he and Maggie walked back out into the hall.

  “Unfortunately, no.” Maggie conceded with a disappointed sigh as she led Gabe to a deserted window at the other end of the hall, where they could talk privately. She settled into the corner and tilted her head up at him. “But she doesn’t really seem all that confused today. I think she knows more about who she is than she is letting on—she’s just not telling us everything.”

  Gabe lounged against the wall, and tucked his thumbs in the belt loops on either side of his fly. He studied her seriously. “What do you mean?”

  In a low, hushed voice, Maggie quickly brought him up to speed. “Well, she talked about not having much time left, and wanting to see her extended family—a nephew and the woman he loved, and some great nephews and a niece—happy.”

  Gabe’s brow furrowed. He leaned closer yet. “Did she mention any names?”

  “No. But that—along with her ‘broken heart’—made me wonder. Do you think it’s possible her family recently put her in a nursing home.”

  “I’d think the nursing home would have reported her missing.”

  He had a point, Maggie thought. She pursed her lips together thoughtfully. “Well, what if the family was about to do that, and Jane Doe didn’t want to go? So she ran away, and ended up here in Charleston. She could have just been seeing the sights in the historic district, or taking her daily constitutional when she fell. It’s a lovely place, and very safe, even late at night. A lot of the downtown hotels are within walking distance of Gathering Street, for someone who’s in decent physical shape. And it looks as if prior to her fall, Jane Doe was.”

  Gabe ran a hand beneath his jaw, his fingers caressing the beginnings of five o’clock stubble that made him look even more ruggedly handsome than usual. “I hadn’t thought about that,” he said, his eyes darkening.

  Maggie’s theory picked up speed. “Maybe Jane Doe’s afraid if she goes back to her family or lets them know what has happened, her family will use her fall and/or declining health and advancing age to force her into a retirement home, whether she wants to go or not.”

  Gabe compressed his lips, and regarded Maggie thoughtfully. “Do you think we should start a statewide search?”

  Maggie shook her head—the last thing she wanted to do was hurt that nice woman. “I think we should let Jane get well before we pressure her any more about her identity. Maybe in the meantime, she’ll get to know us a little better and trust us enough to confide in us.”

  “All right,” Gabe said quietly. “I’ll tell the news stations to call off the dogs, so to speak, for a few days.”

  “Thank you.” Maggie breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t know how or why she had become Jane Doe’s chief advocate. Maggie only knew in some way she couldn’t explain that her happiness, and Gabe’s, were intricately connected with Jane’s.

  “But in the meantime, you’ve got to try and keep making a connection with her,” Gabe continued in a stern tone as he and Maggie walked back down the hall, toward the elevators. “Because if we don’t know who she is when she is ready to be released from the hospital, Jane Doe probably will end up in a nursing home, and one not of her choosing, at that.”

  GABE AND MAGGIE were heading out of the hospital when they ran into Penny Stringfield in the parking lot. The pretty nurse had a manila envelope with her name on it clutched to her chest and it was clear she had been crying. “Uh-oh,” Gabe said.

  “Maybe you should go talk to her,” Maggie suggested.

  “Not without you,” Gabe said firmly, taking Maggie’s hand.

  Before Maggie could do more than utter a protest, they were standing next to Penny who was attempting—unsuccessfully, it seemed—to unlock the door to her car. “What’s going on?” Gabe asked in the low tone of a caring friend and co-worker.

  Penny ducked her head, her eyes full of shame. “I can’t talk about this with Maggie here,” she sniffed.

  “Sure you can,” Gabe said, encouraging her. When Penny said nothing, he touched her shoulder and forced her to look at him. “Listen to me, Penny. You can trust Maggie, the same way you can trust me. And we both want to help you.”

  Her hands shaking so badly she could hardly hold on to her keys or the envelope, Penny looked at Maggie for confirmation.

  Maggie promised quietly but firmly, “Whatever you say to us will be held in strictest confidence.”

  “Okay, but not here.” Penny sobbed all the harder. “We’ll have to go to my motel room. I can’t chance anyone overhearing us.”

  Gabe declared Penny not fit to drive, and ushered both women into his car. Maggie sat in the front. Penny slumped in the back, not speaking, still crying. Fifteen minutes later, they were in a small motel room in the suburbs. Maggie and Gabe sat down in the two straight-backed chairs on either side of the small round table next to the window, and Penny sank down on one of the double beds. She handed Gabe and Maggie the envelope. “This came for me at work today.”

  Inside were black-and-white photographs of Penny and a man, kissing and embracing. Maggie knew they hadn’t been taken recently—Penny’s hair was past her shoulders now, in the photos she was wearing it in a short style that barely touched her ears.

  Gabe looked up, amazed. “You’re being blackmailed?”

  Penny nodded, and cried all the harder. “I nearly had an affair the second year I was married to Lane. Fortunately, I came to my senses after just one clandestine meeting and a few kisses. I told Walker it was a mistake, and refused to see him again. I thought that was the end of it until a few weeks ago, when I started getting these phone calls.”

  Gabe’s jaw tightened with displeasure. “From Walker?”

  “Yes.” Penny rubbed her red, swollen eyes. “He said he had never gotten over
the way I had dumped him, and he was going to make me pay.”

  What a nightmare, Maggie thought, her heart going out to Penny.

  “Did you give him money?” Gabe demanded.

  Penny took another deep, hiccuping breath. “Five hundred dollars. Twice. That was all I had in my savings.”

  “But he wanted more,” Maggie guessed, rummaging in her purse until she found some tissues. She handed them to Penny, who accepted them gratefully.

  “Yes.” Penny wiped the tears from her face and blew her nose. “And that’s why I left Lane. I didn’t want him to be hurt by any of this, and I knew he would be—terribly—if he found out, so I moved out. I hoped that if my marriage was already ‘over’ Walker would realize it wouldn’t do any good to blackmail me any more, and move on.”

  “Only he hasn’t moved on,” Gabe guessed.

  “Merely upped the stakes,” Maggie added.

  Penny nodded, looking even more devastated. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “That’s easy. You have to tell Lane the truth,” Gabe said sternly.

  “But then he’ll know that I almost had an affair,” Penny cried.

  “He’ll also know that you were set up from the get-go,” Maggie said practically, pointing to the photos. “Otherwise, Walker wouldn’t have any evidence to blackmail you with now.”

  Gabe concurred with Maggie. “Lane’ll be hurt. He may even be angry. But I also know he loves you, Penny, and wants to know the reason you’ve been acting the way you have,” Gabe continued firmly.