Her Long-Lost Husband

by Josie Metcalfe

  ‘I’m sure,’ she reassured him, warmed by his obvious concern. ‘Anyway, you probably need to get back to the reception, in case any of the more decrepit aunts and uncles need ferrying about. Don’t worry about us,’ she reassured him. ‘We’ll be fine as long as the paparazzi piranhas don’t find out where we’ve gone.’

  ‘Well, they won’t find out from me,’ he said stoutly as he took charge of the largest case, then grinned back at her over his shoulder as he set off in Gregor’s wake. ‘If anyone should ask me, I can’t tell them what I don’t know. After all, when I dropped the two of you off at the airport, you didn’t tell me where you were going. For all I know, you were going to take advantage of the honeymoon booking.’

  Olivia smiled at the thought of all those journalists milling around the international departure lounge at Heathrow airport, trying to find her. She was just sending up a silent prayer that some film star or pop idol would do something particularly idiotic to take the spotlight off her own life when she turned the corner in the corridor and saw Gregor waiting by the lift.

  Suddenly she remembered that the old-fashioned concertina-style doors weren’t the easiest thing to cope with when you were upright. They would be nearly impossible for someone hampered by a cumbersome wheelchair. She only had to see the exhausted expression on his face to know that Gregor had finally reached the limits of his capabilities, and that was something she’d never seen before.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea before you start your journey back?’ Olivia offered the chauffeur as he stacked the luggage to one side of the creaking cubicle, the turmoil of her thoughts suddenly making her want to cling to this relative stranger to put off the moment that she would be alone with the silent man sharing the limited space in the lift.

  For one awful moment she nearly doubled over with pain at the thought that Gregor only wanted to speak to her to confirm that he wanted to set their divorce in motion. How stupid was it that the simple thought could affect her so strongly? She’d actually believed that she’d moved so far beyond their fractured marriage that she’d been just seconds from making her vows to another man.

  But then, in spite of the fact that she’d been intelligent enough to virtually sail through her medical training, she was obviously crazy enough to harbour more than a lingering regard for the man she’d once loved beyond life itself. In fact, just the thought that this might be the last time she ever saw him…once he obtained her agreement to the legal ending of their vows…made her feel as though a giant hand was clenching tighter and tighter around her heart.

  ‘That’s a very kind thought, miss, but my wife always sends me off with a flask on days when she knows I’m going to be doing a lot of hanging around. Anyway, I don’t like to take the risk of getting a parking ticket out on the road, there. For some reason, those jobsworths in charge of policing the yellow lines seem to make a beeline for any car that’s a bit out of the ordinary…and that swanky limousine is definitely something out of the ordinary.’

  Olivia was absurdly grateful for the man’s conversation, otherwise she was convinced that she and Gregor would have made the journey up to the third floor in complete silence.

  In fact, now that she thought about it, he hadn’t said a single word to her since the decision about their destination had been made.

  ‘Are you sure about that tea?’ she asked when the cases were stacked neatly inside the hallway of the flat, uncomfortably aware just how much she wanted the kindly older man to stay. Suddenly, there was such an uncomfortable tension filling the air between Gregor and herself that every nerve seemed stretched tight enough to vibrate audibly.

  ‘No, thanks, miss. I’ll be off, now, to avoid the traffic.’ He paused for a moment in the doorway, his forehead pleated in a worried frown as he looked from one to the other. ‘Take care of yourselves, and…and good luck, to both of you,’ he blurted, then pulled the door closed hurriedly behind him.

  Olivia shivered, although she wasn’t cold. The click of the door catch echoed around the flat and sounded strangely as if the two of them had just been locked in together, like prison inmates forced to share a cell.

  It was such a crazy idea that she wondered if her brain had been scrambled by the events of the day and their inevitable consequences.

  Logically, she knew that this was nothing more than a flat; the one they’d hunted for and chosen together; the place that had once been their refuge from the world…until the day Gregor had walked out, the way he’d always done at the start of his next deployment, and had disappeared out of her life, presumed dead.

  It always circled back to that, didn’t it; to the glaring fact that Gregor hadn’t died; to the maelstrom of thoughts and feelings that left her unable to voice the questions that most needed answering.

  Had he simply decided not to return? Or was it his injuries that had made him abandon her? She could easily imagine his pride preventing him from coming back if it meant he would be a burden on her.

  Or was it simply that he just didn’t love her any more? Had it only been the fact that she was in danger of committing bigamy that had brought him out of hiding? If so, he could certainly have chosen his moment with a little more consideration for Ash’s and her family’s social standing, to say nothing of her own shock and embarrassment.

  That thought was enough to summon up enough resentment to bolster her to face him, but when she turned, the expression she saw on his face was so desolate that the sharp words she’d been framing caught in her throat and robbed her of the power to speak.

  Silently, he was looking around him, his eyes travelling hungrily over every single item in the room as though he’d actually missed seeing them.

  Suddenly, for the first time since he’d disappeared from her life, she was glad she’d altered so little in what had been their home, rather than feeling half-ashamed that she couldn’t bear to get rid of the things they’d chosen together.

  ‘Can…?’ She had to pause to clear her throat before she could continue, emotion suddenly clogging her throat. ‘Can I get you anything, Gregor? When did you last eat?’

  For a moment, it didn’t matter why he’d stayed away; why he’d left her believing that he was dead. All she could think was that he looked so ill that all she wanted to do was wrap him in her arms and take care of him until he was well again.

  ‘I need some water to take my tablets…please.’ There was a reedy note of desperation in his voice that made her medically-tuned antennae vibrate a warning. Gregor hated taking any sort of medication. He wasn’t the kind of man to give in to any kind of weakness, if he could help it, so whatever had put him in the wheelchair and left him this eager to take pills must be serious.

  ‘Water,’ she repeated blankly, feeling more and more sick as the possible diagnoses running through her head grew more and more dire.

  By the time she returned with a brimming glass he had a container of prescription drugs in his hand but seemed almost incapable of dealing with the child-proof cap.

  Silently she held out the glass, forcing him to take it so that he couldn’t avoid letting her deal with the container.

  ‘How many?’ she asked, her tension increasing exponentially when she read the label and saw just how heavy-duty the painkillers were.

  ‘Two,’ he said gruffly, and her concern rose still higher when she saw how eagerly he swallowed them down.

  ‘You should have something to eat with those, unless you want them to make holes in your stomach lining. What would you like — soup and toast, or something more substantial?’

  Not that she could remember what was left in her freezer. She’d been working right up to the last minute, yesterday, her shift in A and E running over…the way it usually did…and just hadn’t had the time to do anything more than bequeath the perishables from her fridge to one of the neighbours. As for organising to put the flat on the market… Somehow, in spite of her mother’s frequent reminders, she just hadn’t been able to force herself to come to terms with the
idea of selling it yet.

  ‘Livvy…when are you going to stand still long enough to draw breath?’ Gregor said softly, and stopped her in her tracks, her scurrying thoughts scattered to the four winds.

  How many times had he said exactly those words to her during her training, only to steal what little breath she had with the sweetest, most caring of kisses?

  Not that his kisses had stayed sweet and caring; at least, not for long when the emotions between them had ignited into the sort of inferno that had vaporised the rest of the world and left the two of them as the sole survivors in a new and magical land.

  ‘Gregor…’ Did her voice sound as shaky as it felt as she turned to face him?

  His colour was no better…well, it wouldn’t be. The tablets hadn’t had time to be absorbed into his system yet. And his hair was too long…much longer than the length he preferred it, to keep the tendency to curl under control. And were those grey hairs gleaming at his temples? There certainly hadn’t been any there the last time she’d seen him.

  And his eyes…

  Those liquid-silver depths had always held secrets, but that was hardly surprising, considering the things he’d gone through as a child and those he dealt with on a daily basis with each deployment to one of the world’s trouble spots. Only, now there was something else…a glimpse into something that sent a shiver through her before he deliberately blinked and shut her out.

  ‘Are you going to sit down and talk with me?’ he asked, and there was a definite challenge in his words; a challenge that, after two years of thinking he was dead, she suddenly found herself resisting.

  ‘I’ll sit down and talk when I’ve made us both something to eat,’ she announced firmly as she turned back towards the kitchen. ‘I haven’t eaten since stupid-o’clock this morning, and you look as if you haven’t eaten since some time in the last millennium, to say nothing of needing to take something with those drugs.’

  And those drugs and his need to take them were going to be one of the first things on the agenda when they started talking, she decided as her medical brain started working again. That strength of prescription was usually only administered to in-patients under medical supervision, often in the first few hours or days post-operatively…or to patients in the final stages of terminal cancer, a vicious little voice reminded her, even though she tried to refuse to listen.

  She could almost hear Gregor fuming behind her as she retrieved some home-made soup from the freezer and transferred it to the microwave, and for the first time that day she actually felt like chuckling aloud.

  In the two years since he’d disappeared, she’d found herself mentally putting him on a pedestal, ignoring his all-too-human flaws to remember only the many good points in his character. It was so good to have the fact that he’d never been a saintly person brought home to her like this.

  He never had liked being thwarted. Once he’d decided on a course of action, each separate sphere within his military and his medical training had ensured that he would do his utmost to achieve his goal. For just a moment, it felt as if there was a degree of poetic justice in that she finally had the power to exert her will.

  Of course, that thought immediately made her feel guilty, because what sort of a person was she to take pleasure in the fact that something awful…injury?…illness?…had rendered him all-but powerless like this?

  Just the thought that she might be so…so petty made her feel ashamed of herself and as she picked up the tray laden with two steaming bowls of soup and a plate of crusty rolls she deliberately pinned a smile on her face.

  ‘Lunch is served,’ she said, then pulled a face. ‘Although whether you can call it lunch at this time…’

  ‘Actually…’ Gregor halted uncomfortably and she noticed with escalating concern that his cheeks looked warmer than before.

  Just how ill was he? Was his heightened colour just the result of the tablets taking away his pain or was his temperature rising?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ She tried to be as dispassionately concerned as if he were just another of her patients, but this was Gregor, and she could never be dispassionate about him. ‘Are you feeling worse? Do you need more tablets or — ?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ he dismissed quickly, but if anything his cheeks grew darker. ‘It’s just…well…before I put any more liquid into the system, I need to empty some out, so…’

  Olivia almost laughed with relief that the problem was nothing more serious than that.

  ‘That’s no trouble,’ she said airily with a glance towards the bathroom, glad, now that they hadn’t had the money to do anything more than polish the existing wide-plank floorboards throughout the flat when they’d first bought it. Carpets would have made everything so much more difficult. ‘Will you be able to manage, or…?’ Remembering his insistence on getting himself in and out of the limousine made her hesitate to offer help.

  ‘I don’t even know whether I’ll be able to get the chair in the room, let alone transfer myself onto — ’He stopped abruptly when she chuckled, his expression darkening and those mobile lips flattening into a tight white line.

  ‘Before you get on your high horse, thinking I’m mocking you, follow me and you’ll see why I’m laughing,’ she said, and set off across the room.

  There were several silent seconds before she heard the muted squeak of the rubber tyres on the polished wood that told her he was following.

  ‘Ta-da!’ she said as she opened the bathroom door with a flourish to reveal the bright spacious room equipped with gleaming white chinaware.

  The two of them had been planning the renovation of this room two years ago, just before he’d left for that last deployment, and she’d never thought she’d have the chance to show him how well it had turned out.

  ‘You had it done!’ he exclaimed with a gleam of pleasure in his eyes. ‘It must have cost you a fortune to get it looking this good.’

  ‘Actually, I did quite a bit of it myself,’ she admitted, remembering how good it had felt to wield the sledgehammer while she’d demolished the wall that had separated the toilet into its own narrow little room. Sometimes it had seemed as if the sort of sheer hard physical labour that this project had involved had been the only way she’d been able to cope with the devastation of knowing that she would never see Gregor again, to say nothing of the fact that it had exhausted her enough to let her sleep without resorting to drugs. ‘What do you think?’

  He rolled himself into the room and as he swivelled to take in everything that had changed since he’d last been there, she saw the moment when he caught sight of the walk-in shower.

  He laughed up at her with a new gleam in his eyes. ‘You swore you’d be able to fit that in if it was the last thing you did!’ he exclaimed with a flash of his old self that made her ache for all the time they’d lost; time that they could never regain.

  ‘Well, you must admit that old shower dangling over the bath never did work very well, and this way I get to have my long lazy bath in peace — ’

  She stopped abruptly, silently cursing her tongue for running away with her when she remembered the way that argument had ended; hoping that, in the last two years, Gregor would have forgotten.

  His raised a dark eyebrow and the pointed glance at the shower that was definitely big enough for two to share told her that she wasn’t that lucky.

  ‘So…about the toilet…’ She was definitely flustered by the graphic pictures inside her head; the ones in which she was sharing the top-of-the-line enclosure with Gregor and showering together wasn’t what they were concentrating on.

  ‘Yes. The toilet,’ he echoed, but the expression on his face told her that he didn’t need to be able to read her mind to know exactly what she’d been imagining because his thoughts had travelled the same steamy route.

  It was several long seconds before he finally turned to examine the equipment in question and she was so rattled by the emotions he’d stirred inside her that she launched into speech.

&nb
sp; ‘At least you can get to it now, but you probably won’t be able to use it unaided without grab bars of some sort, so if you tell me what you want me to do so you can — ’

  ‘No!’ he snapped, leaving her speechless as she took in the expression that darkened his face. ‘I don’t need help.’

  ‘But you — ’

  ‘This is just temporary,’ he interrupted fiercely, and she realised just how badly she’d stepped on his toes by automatically assuming he would need her help. It would have been far more productive — and far kinder on his intense independence — if she’d asked him whether he wanted her help.

  ‘How temporary?’ Perhaps she could use the opening he’d provided to get some of the answers she wanted.

  ‘I’ve recently been through hours of orthopaedic and neurological testing and you know as well as I do that they have to take everything to the limit.’

  ‘So, you’re suffering from the next-day backlash with pain and loss of mobility?’ He hadn’t told her as much as she wanted to know, but at least the door had opened a tiny crack with the knowledge that those two departments had been involved.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said with barely a flicker, but she’d seen the way his eyes had momentarily dropped down and to the left, so she knew that he wasn’t being entirely truthful. She was still going to have to do some probing before he gave her the whole story.

  ‘So,’ he continued, his attempt at appearing totally in control of the situation marred, somewhat, by the strain that seemed to draw the skin too tightly over his face, ‘although I might curse and groan about it, I can manage perfectly well by myself if I put one hand on the side of the basin and the other on the radiator.’

  She knew it was pointless to try to persuade him to accept her help, even if she stressed that it was only until the after-effects of all that testing had gone, but there was something she really needed to know and the only way to find out was to ask. ‘Are your legs weight-bearing at all?’