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
