Her Long-Lost Husband

by Josie Metcalfe

  Olivia heard the sharp hiss of indrawn breath, but it was swiftly silenced as his face settled into an expressionless mask.

  ‘At the moment, not that you’d notice,’ he admitted gruffly, then that stubborn chin stuck out obstinately. ‘But I’ve been working on my upper-body strength, so there aren’t many things I can’t manage, one way or another.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll leave you to it…on the understanding that you won’t be stupid about it. If you do need a hand, all you need to do is call me,’ she said briskly, determined that she wouldn’t reveal even a hint of how much his weakness terrified her, his stark admission about the lack of strength in his legs bringing home to her that she still had absolutely no idea what was wrong with him.

  He silently held up a hand as she turned to leave the room and shrugged out of his jacket and for the first time she was able to get a closer look at some of the more delightful changes that had happened to his body since she’d last seen it.

  He’d always had an impressive physical presence, with broad shoulders narrowing into lean, tight buttocks and long powerful legs, but the sheer muscle bulk that his current situation demanded was almost intimidating without the camouflage of a jacket.

  ‘Livvy? Please…?’ There was the same sort of rough edge to those two words that there would have been if she’d ogled him like that two years ago, but she couldn’t imagine that was the same situation now, not when they were in the bathroom and he was waiting for her to leave.

  Olivia couldn’t meet his eyes as she hurried out of the room, hoping that the warmth in her cheeks wasn’t manifesting itself in a blush. For heaven’s sake, she was a doctor! She discussed her patient’s bodily functions all day, every day, so why was she getting all bent out of shape about them with her husband, of all people?

  She definitely needed something else to concentrate on, and was wondering how easy it would be to get hold of the sort of grab bars Gregor would need to make his life easier. Then she was forced to remind herself that she had absolutely no idea if he was even going to be in the flat long enough to use the bathroom again, let alone staying for long enough to warrant the installation of the sort of aids that would ensure the degree of independence that would be essential to his peace of mind.

  And that just brought her back full circle.

  She’d had some time, now, to be hurt by the idea that he’d cared so little for her feelings that he’d allowed her to believe that he was dead, but the more she thought about the whole situation, at least there was one good thing to come out of it.

  In a blinding flash of self-knowledge she realised that for the last two years she hadn’t really come to terms with the enormity of everything she’d lost.

  Oh, she’d put up a good front, throwing herself heart and soul into her career, but that had just been a way of trying to fill the gaping hole inside her where her love for Gregor and all the plans they’d made for their future had lived.

  She could see, now, that she had virtually put her life on hold, switching off all her emotions because she just couldn’t deal with the pain of so great a loss.

  And for what?

  ‘Livvy?’

  Somehow, the unexpected hint of uncertainty in Gregor’s voice behind her, signalling his silent return to the living room, brought all the ingredients inside her to a rolling boil that only grew hotter when she whirled to face him and saw him sitting there, still essentially the same man she’d loved and married and yet, obviously, so very different.

  ‘Why did you do it, Gregor?’ she demanded hotly, her hands clenched tightly into fists, her nails digging into her palms as she fought the urge to scream at him instead.

  ‘Do what?’ He had the gall to look puzzled and that only stoked her anger.

  ‘Why did you stay away like that…without a word? Why did you let them…the army…lie to me…let me believe you were dead? If you didn’t love me any more…didn’t want to be married any more…wouldn’t it have been kinder…more straightforward…just to tell me…to ask for a divorce, or…or…?’

  It was only when she realised that she couldn’t see him properly any more and that she couldn’t draw in enough breath to utter another word that it dawned on her that, after two long years of holding all the agony in, the floodgates were finally about to burst.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NO! NO tears yet!

  And not in front of Gregor, she told herself fiercely, tightening her fists and blinking hard as she concentrated on the sharp pain as each nail dug into her palm to keep the tears at bay.

  For several interminable seconds they stared at each other, Gregor sitting so still and silent that she wondered if he was even breathing.

  ‘Gregor — ’

  ‘Not yet, Livvy,’ he growled, and it was only then that she realised just how exhausted he was under that thin veneer of invincibility.

  And how much of that was due to pain? she wondered.

  And how much worse was that pain because he refused to allow her to help him?

  Her heart clenched inside, because, no matter how angry she was at the way he’d treated her, this was the man she’d loved more than any other in the world…the man she was afraid she would always love, no matter what might happen to their relationship.

  ‘Has the analgesia started working yet?’ she asked stiffly, taking refuge in the medical background that had initially brought them together. Perhaps if she treated him with the same professional distance as a patient it would make the whole situation easier.

  ‘Not yet,’ he admitted. ‘It seems to take at least twenty minutes before it starts to be effective.’

  ‘How long have you been on it? Long enough for your body to become accustomed to it…to need the dose increased?’ She shuddered at the thought that whatever was wrong with him might need even stronger painkillers than the ones he was taking. He’d blamed his current condition on the contortions he’d been put through at the hospital, but if there was some serious underlying problem…one that was only going to worsen with time…

  ‘I’ve only been on these for the last couple of days, and if it hadn’t been for the taxi journey and hauling myself in and out of the car, I’d been hoping I might be able to start easing off on them, but then I forgot to take a dose today and…’ He shrugged rather than complete the sentence and when she found her attention drawn inexorably to the powerful swells of muscle outlined to perfection by the light shining through the thin cotton of his shirt, she had to drag herself away before she made a complete fool of herself.

  Suddenly needing the activity to keep her hands busy and her eyes away from him, she hurried across to transfer the bowls of soup to the microwave long enough to heat them up again.

  How crazy was it that, even when she was so angry with him…so hurt by the cavalier way he’d abandoned her…all she wanted to do was reach out to touch him…needing to put her hands on his shoulders…to feel their width and test their reassuringly solid power, to cradle the familiar shape of his head between her palms and trace each one of his features to confirm what her eyes were telling her — that her beloved Gregor really was alive in front of her.

  ‘Here. The warm liquid might help to speed the absorption of the drugs into your system,’ she said prosaically, torn between her unquenchable urge to take care of him and her need for answers.

  It took a moment before he brought the first spoonful to his mouth and Olivia wondered if he was feeling the same clenched ache of stress in his belly that was robbing her of any appetite. Then the taste must have hit his taste-buds because, with a soft murmur of pleasure, he took a larger second mouthful and then a third.

  ‘You always did make fantastic soups,’ he murmured as he reached for one of the home-made rolls and broke off a mouthful. ‘And I’d forgotten how good these are…how much better than bought bread.’

  The unexpected compliments spread a warm glow through her and suddenly she discovered that her own appetite had returned, too.

  It was on
ly when they both sat back with their bowls scraped clean that the tension returned, and this time Olivia didn’t bother to try to dispel it by starting to clear the table.

  ‘No more evasion, Gregor. No more delaying tactics,’ she said seriously, even though her heart felt as if it was trying to beat its way out through her throat. ‘I deserve some straight answers, so, where have you been for the last two years?’

  ‘In hell,’ he said, so fiercely that she blinked.

  She nearly scoffed at the facile answer, but then she caught a glimpse of the shadows in his eyes and paused a moment to take a closer look.

  A swift cataloguing of his white-knuckled fists and the tension in his face told her that he was telling her nothing less than he believed to be true, and knowing that he wasn’t a man given to exaggeration, she could well believe it, too.

  ‘Where was this hell…or would you have to kill me if you told me?’ she added, resurrecting the joke that had been batted backwards and forwards between them ever since he’d explained about his years of commitment to the army in return for their sponsorship through medical school.

  ‘How much were you told?’ he asked, and she was struck by the same urge to scream that hit her every time he got that wary look. But where was the sense in trying to take her frustration out on him? If he wasn’t allowed to tell her where he’d been, she was just going to have to accept that there was a good reason for it.

  ‘Not much,’ she said tightly. ‘Just that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time when there was an explosion, and that, because of the situation at the time, they’d been unable to retrieve your body to bring it back for burial.’

  Her throat ached with the memory that she hadn’t even been able to have a proper funeral for him; that there had been nothing and nowhere for her to focus her loss…other than a formal memorial service attended by a succession of smartly-uniformed well-wishers with chests full of medals. ‘They didn’t tell me anything more than that. Apparently, they never do tell you any more than they absolutely have to, even though it should be the family’s right to know how and where they lost their loved one.’

  ‘It isn’t always possible,’ he pointed out, far too calmly for her liking. ‘Telling families the details might make things easier for those left behind, but if it compromises the safety of those still in the field…of your colleagues…’

  ‘But you weren’t supposed to be “in the field”, for heaven’s sake!’ she exclaimed hotly. ‘You’re a qualified doctor, and your posting was to a field hospital where you’d be in charge of patching-up the injured so they could be shipped out to a proper hospital.’

  Again, she felt the scalding press of frustrated tears that had been dammed up too long, and had to draw in a deep breath and bite her lips together to prevent the tell-tale drops from starting.

  What had made the whole situation so much worse to bear was that it was supposed to have been his final deployment before he would be free to leave the army, his service commitment finally completed. She’d been so looking forward to the two of them being able to start their married life properly at last, to be able to choose where they went, and when, for the first time on holiday since they’d met. They’d even begun, tentatively, to talk about starting a family…

  ‘In conflict situations, circumstances can change very quickly,’ he explained patiently, not for the first time, dragging her away from pointless painful re-runs of what might have been. ‘Sometimes the place where it was thought safe to set up the casualty unit can, in a very few hours, suddenly be right in the middle of the front line.’

  She could tell he was choosing his words with care, but even so, the mental images of Gregor stabilising postoperative patients in safety one minute only to have shells exploding all around him the next was one that had given her nightmares ever since she’d realised just what his job entailed.

  Each time he went off for a new posting she’d had to resign herself to night after night of broken sleep until he returned to her in one piece, but the nightmares had only become unbearable when she’d been told he’d died, so that even exhaustion hadn’t been able to guarantee her a good night’s sleep.

  ‘So, is that what happened to you — to your back?’ she asked, suddenly almost hopeful that a traumatic injury was the reason why he was confined to the wheelchair rather than a fatal illness. ‘Does it all date from the accident two years ago?’

  ‘Apparently,’ he said with a grimace. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember…what, exactly? The circumstances that put you in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or the accident itself?’ She knew that traumatic amnesia was relatively common; that many people never remembered the events leading up to life-threatening accidents, even if the memory loss was only of the few seconds surrounding the impact.

  ‘None of it,’ he admitted grimly, staring blankly out towards the park where the fading day was wreathing mist around the trees. ‘The first memory I have is very hazy…so hazy that I’m not even sure that it is a memory. Perhaps I’m picturing it because I’ve been told about it…’ His forehead pleated in concentration, his unfairly long eyelashes casting shadows over the sharp angles and flat planes of cheekbones that were far more prominent than the last time she’d seen him. Was that because he’d lost so much weight or because his injuries caused him so much pain?

  ‘There was a child…’ he said haltingly, ‘several children…young children, but especially one…a little girl with big dark eyes and curly hair.’ His own dark eyes were wide but obviously focused only on the images he was seeing inside his head. ‘She was patting my face, very gently, and telling me it was time to wake up.’

  ‘And then?’ Olivia hardly dared to speak, afraid that the interruption would make him realise he was telling her more than he should.

  ‘The next thing I remember is being surrounded by men in heavy muddy boots, all of them shouting at each other over the top of me and waving guns around.’ He gave a wintry smile. ‘Apparently, I tugged on the trouser-leg of one of them and told him they were making my head ache.’

  That startled a chuckle out of her. The fact that he was sometimes sent to some of the most dangerous places on the globe had always terrified her, but there had always been something that was just so…so competent about him that she could easily picture him surrounded by the toughest of the tough and asking them to keep the noise down.

  Whatever else she might criticise about him, he’d never been short of courage, which made his absence from her life all the more incomprehensible, given the fact that he hadn’t died after all. So surely, if he hadn’t wanted to be married to her any more, he would have found some straightforward way to tell her. Wouldn’t he?

  Before she could frame that thought into a question, she was interrupted by the strident martial tones of ‘The Ride of the Valkyrie’ on her mobile phone.

  ‘Ignore it,’ Gregor urged as she reached for it, but the action was automatic after so many years on call; she could no more ignore a ringing phone than she could take off and fly around the room.

  Besides, she didn’t need to look at the number on the caller display to know who was calling, not after assigning such an appropriate ring tone to the person trying to reach her.

  ‘It’s my mother,’ she muttered, hesitating. She really didn’t want to answer because she could already guess the content of the conversation — it was all too predictable, unlike the far more important one she’d been having with Gregor.

  ‘I suppose you’ll have to answer it, then. She’ll only keep ringing until you do,’ he said in a resigned tone, then manoeuvred his chair away from the table as though to give her some semblance of privacy.

  ‘Olivia!’ He might as well have saved himself the trouble, she thought as her mother’s cut-glass accent resounded through the flat, her abiding distrust of the latest technology apparently making her believe that the smaller the phone, the louder she had to shout to be heard.

  ‘Yes,
Mother,’ she said, then held the phone at arm’s length for the sake of her eardrums.

  ‘Where are you?’ her mother demanded. ‘Parker came back with some nonsense about dropping you off at the airport.’

  For just a second her eyes met Gregor’s and they shared a guilty grin, but she had no idea that she was going to perpetuate the myth until she actually heard the words emerging from her own mouth.

  ‘You only just rang me in time,’ she said, her brain rapidly juggling phrases that would get the message across without telling a deliberate lie. ‘All phones have to be turned off before take-off. Apparently, it’s so that they don’t make the fuel tanks explode or interfere with the electronic guidance systems or something. I’ll call you when I get the chance.’

  Well, airlines did insist that all electronic gadgetry was switched off, and if she and Gregor had been on board a flight about to take off…

  ‘Olivia! Don’t you dare turn this phone off! There are things we need to discuss, meetings we need to organise with the solicitors before you — ’

  Olivia pressed the button to end the call then immediately turned the phone completely off and, in spite of a shiver of guilt, suddenly felt as if someone had just lifted an enormous weight off her shoulders.

  ‘Any bets on how many messages she’ll leave before you switch it back on?’ Gregor asked wryly.

  ‘Probably more than eleven,’ she retorted, and they shared another fleeting grin at the shared memory of the exact number of messages they’d come back to after their twenty-four-hour honeymoon. The final message had actually threatened Gregor with a nationwide manhunt for kidnap if he didn’t return Olivia to her family immediately.

  ‘Even though we were both well over the age of consent,’ he murmured, demonstrating that he hadn’t lost the knack of being able to follow her train of thought.

  As if that would ever make a difference to her mother, Olivia mused. She could imagine the woman still thinking that she had the right to order her daughter about and organise her life for the next thirty years, at least. The small matter that Olivia had held down a highly qualified responsible career for several years and even the undisputable fact of a marriage hadn’t stopped her, so far.