“Then she’s completely recovered?” Grace asked, in obvious relief.
Gabe nodded. “Her pneumonia has cleared up. Unfortunately, she still needs to be off that sprained ankle for another seven to ten days. So wherever she goes, she’ll have to have someone take care of her.”
“And if Jane Doe can’t arrange that?” Amy asked.
“Then she’ll probably be sent to the county nursing home,” Gabe said. Which was exactly where Jane had not wanted to end up.
“Well, I’ll talk to her again tomorrow morning,” Amy said determinedly, “Maybe we can figure something out.”
“Thanks,” Gabe said, knowing his little sister was nearly as much of a Good Samaritan as he was. “I’d appreciate it.”
Deciding he had been separated from his bride far too long, Gabe made his way toward the deck of Chase’s beach house. Before he was halfway there, Luis, Enrico and Manuel intercepted him. “We’ve got coolers of soft drinks in the back of my SUV,” the burly Manuel said, slapping Gabe on the back. “Why don’t you come and help us carry them in?”
Gabe looked at the three Chavez brothers. Obviously, they had something they wanted to say to him. Out of respect for Maggie and because of the Chavez brothers’ love of his wife, Gabe would hear them out. But he would do so in private.
“We just wanted to say we’re all glad you listened to us and did Maggie right after all,” Luis began enthusiastically as soon as they had rounded the side of the house, en route to where all vehicles were parked.
“We know you weren’t too keen on the idea of marrying her. At least in the beginning,” Enrico added quickly.
“But you did, after we talked to you, and for that we are all grateful,” Manuel concluded sternly. “Maggie most of all.”
Luis nodded and continued with a disapproving frown. “You hurt her before.”
“You cost her a husband and a baby, when you broke up her plans to marry your brother Chase,” Enrico agreed.
“But now you’ve made things right in marrying her and doing whatever it took to make her happy again. And for that,” Manuel said gravely, as he extended his hand, “we all want to congratulate you.”
“Just so you know, I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to make Maggie happy,” Gabe promised soberly. “I figure I owe her that much at least,” he admitted, doing his best to reassure Maggie’s protectors, as the soft thud of footsteps sounded on the concrete behind him.
Realizing they were no longer alone, Gabe turned, saw Maggie standing there, a stricken look on her face. He didn’t need a crystal ball to realize she had heard practically everything that had been said, and misunderstood every single word of it.
“Actually, Gabe,” she said with a haughty look that cut straight through his heart, “you don’t owe me anything at all.”
Chapter Thirteen
Luis, Enrico and Manuel looked just as stunned as Gabe felt as Maggie turned on her heel and stalked away from them.
Able to see they were about to go after her, knowing they would only make things worse with any well-meaning words they might say, Gabe held up a hand to stave them off. “I’ll handle this,” he said.
He lengthened his strides, and caught up with Maggie as she headed around the side of the beach house next door, and down the beach.
“You misunderstood,” he said, as he matched his steps to hers.
“Really,” she mocked him dryly, as she slanted him a glance and kept going, cutting through the waving strands of sea oats and marching across the dunes that separated the homes from the Atlantic Ocean. “I thought I understood you perfectly.” She shook her head in bitter self-admonition as tears gathered in her eyes. “My only regret is it took me so long to realize why you were so willing and eager to help me have a baby in the first place.”
Knowing they’d never get anywhere unless they talked about this openly and honestly, Gabe clamped an arm about her shoulder and stopped her headlong flight. “I would have done it whether Luis, Manuel and Enrico pressured me or not,” he said.
“And why is that, Gabe?” Jerking free of his touch, Maggie spun around to face him. “Because you still felt so guilty about breaking up my marriage to Chase?” she demanded, incensed. “Or because you knew my chance for having a baby at all might well have passed me by?”
The situation was bad, Gabe told himself, but not unsalvageable. And it wouldn’t be unless he lost his head. Patiently, Gabe explained, “You were never meant to marry Chase, because you didn’t love him. And as for the other, you’re not infertile yet.”
She speared him with a censuring, holier-than-thou gaze. “You’re sure about that?” she countered sarcastically.
His manner as calm and deliberate as hers was overwrought and emotional, Gabe said, “Call it instinct, but yes, I think you’ll have a baby. Probably sooner than you think.”
Maggie looked more hurt than ever, but no more ready to reconcile with him. “That would be a big relief to you, wouldn’t it?” she guessed sadly.
“Try joy,” he suggested, advancing on her, not stopping until they were nose to nose, “and yes it would be a very happy occasion for me. For us.” He cupped her shoulders gently with his hands, looked down into her face. “I want to have a child with you, Maggie. I want to have a real marriage with you.” He paused, swallowed around his guilt. “A baby won’t erase everything bad that’s happened in the past.” Like the pain he had caused Maggie, when he had initially pursued and then deserted her. “But it will bring us both a great deal of joy in the future. It’ll help us make a fresh start, just like this marriage will.”
“Well, thanks,” Maggie said, standing as still and unresponsive as a statue in his arms, “but I don’t want to be the recipient of a mercy marriage any more than I want to continue to indulge in lovemaking as an act of kindness.”
More frustrated than he could ever recall being in his life, Gabe let her go, stepped back. He shoved his hands through his hair. “There was nothing kind about what I did for you in the bedroom, Maggie. Don’t you get that? It was selfish from the get-go.”
Bright spots of color appeared in her cheeks. “Because you lusted after me.”
“Yes.” Gabe saw no reason to sugar-coat that. “From the very first moment I saw you, I knew I wanted you to be mine and no one else’s. I just didn’t let myself think I could have you for a while. But once the family strife involving your broken engagement to Chase was cleared up, once you had recovered and were no longer on the rebound, I knew the field was wide open again.”
“And yet,” Maggie stared at him angrily, “even after Chase gave us his blessing, you didn’t come after me.”
Gabe shrugged, not sure he could explain that to anyone’s satisfaction. He had just known it wasn’t the right time. Not then. “Things were awkward initially. You were on edge every time you were around me. To be honest, I wasn’t sure we would be able to get past that, but we did.” To the point he had been fairly certain she was falling as deeply for him as he was for her. But now, seeing the bitterness in her eyes, hearing the rejection in her low tone, he wondered if that were true.
Maggie threw up her hands, paced a short distance away, before turning back to face him. “The point is, Gabe, if I hadn’t called you that day a few weeks ago and asked you for advice on my medical problems, you never would have stopped by my beach house, and talked to me, and you certainly never would have kissed me again.”
Gabe remembered that day. She had been so distressed. Crying. He’d had no choice but to take her in his arms, and try and calm her down, and once he had, well—the urge to kiss her had been as strong as the need to take air into his lungs. Unfortunately, at the very moment he had kissed her, they’d heard a car driving by, and had looked up and seen Chase. And the anger on Chase’s face, and the guilt he and Maggie had both felt at that point, had driven him and Maggie apart once again and kept them apart for several more weeks. But now Chase was happily married to Bridgett, the Deveraux family had put aside their dis
cord over the way Maggie Callaway had once come between Gabe and Chase, and, as far as Gabe and everyone else who knew them was concerned, there was no reason for him and Maggie ever to be apart again.
Figuring Maggie was not very likely to see it that way at the moment, however, Gabe decided to save them both some grief and take a less direct approach. “Next thing I know you’ll be saying I asked Penny Stringfield to find a way to get herself blackmailed and start a fire in my kitchen just so I’d have an excuse to spend more time with you.” Why did it matter anyway, how and why and when they had gotten together, as long as they were together, anyway?
Maggie released a pent-up breath. “You’re missing the point,” she told him in a low, upset voice.
Gabe searched her face, and found only anguish in her pretty green eyes. “And that point would be?” he ground out the words between his teeth.
Maggie shrugged her slender shoulders as if it didn’t really matter to her either way. “That our getting together was as much accident as anything else.”
“It was fate,” Gabe disagreed strongly. Irritated she could be so quick to pretend their relationship was just another not-so-important event in their lives, he crossed his arms in front of him and regarded her in mounting frustration. “And that’s the way these things happen,” he explained grumpily. “It’s the way everyone gets together, in crazy, convoluted ways that don’t bear analyzing.”
She shot him a deeply skeptical glance and took another step away from him. “You’re sure I wasn’t just another in a very long line of good deeds?”
Frustrated to find his common-sense words had had zero effect on her, Gabe jammed his hands on his hips and demanded impatiently, “What are you talking about?”
“I know how you operate, Gabe, and so do you. You see someone in trouble, you help them, regardless of the cost to yourself, and then you move on to the next person you need to assist.”
It was Gabe’s turn to shrug. “I’ve never denied that.” Helping people gave him immense satisfaction in both his professional and personal lives. It was also a way to make up for any past sins.
Maggie’s eyes filled with overwhelming sadness, and her face twisted with pain. “Only in our case, you upped it another notch, thanks to the well-meaning but misguided pressuring of Enrico, Manuel and Luis, and you not only helped me find a doctor to diagnose my problem, you married me and tried to give me the baby I wanted so badly.”
“We both want a baby,” Gabe said sternly, flabbergasted that she could think he was so shallow and short-sighted. “And this is different from every other Good Samaritan action I have ever undertaken.” It was different than any romance he had ever had!
“No, Gabe, it’s not,” Maggie said, the tears she’d been holding back spilling over and running down her face, “and that’s why I’m ending this farce of a marriage after all.” She put up her hands to keep him from taking her in his arms again, and deliberately backed away, her look warning him not to even try and touch her. “Because sooner or later you are going to realize you’ve completed your good deed with me, the pleasure we felt today will fade, and you’ll want to do what you always want to do when you’ve completed your act of chivalry, and move on.” Her voice broke, and pain spilled through them both, as Maggie concluded hoarsely, “And I don’t want to be around when you do.”
GABE RETURNED to the party alone, and made a bee-line straight for his parents. “I’ve got to go to the hospital,” he said.
“What?” Grace did a double take and nearly dropped the serving platter she was setting out on the picnic table on the deck.
“The party is in your honor, son,” Tom reminded him.
“I know, but there’s a patient I’ve got to see,” Gabe fibbed.
Grace’s eyes narrowed in maternal concern. “Where’s Maggie?” she asked.
Gabe lifted a hand, turned and walked off, declining to answer a question he had no answer for. “I’ll talk to you all later,” he said. He didn’t have to turn around. He could imagine the not-so-surprised-after-all looks on his parents’ faces. They had probably expected a romantic reversal like this all along. The only real surprise was that he hadn’t.
He’d never had any luck interesting Maggie in being with him over the long haul. He didn’t know why he’d ever thought now would be any different, even if she was still wearing his wedding ring on her finger. She probably just wasn’t the marrying kind. Hence, her breakup with Chase before their wedding, her breakup with him after theirs. All along she had been looking for an excuse to maintain her independence while still getting the baby she wanted. And, that being the case, Gabe decided grimly, he should go where he had a real chance of making a positive difference in someone’s life. Not somewhere he was simply a means to an end. So he headed to the place he always went when he needed to do some good—the hospital.
“Hey, Gabe!” Penny Stringfield greeted him cheerfully twenty minutes later, as he stepped onto the fourth floor. Looking happier and more relaxed than she had in weeks, the petite nurse hurried over to him. “I can’t thank you enough for what you did this morning,” she said.
Gabe paused, almost afraid to hope he had been successful in his late-morning visit to her estranged husband, given the way things had been going for him. “Lane called you?”
Penny nodded, and confirmed, “Right after you went to see him at the TV station. He asked me to lunch and we talked, and the bottom line is, we’re going to see a marriage counselor and try again.”
Gabe’s shoulders relaxed. “I’m glad,” he told Penny sincerely. Gabe had hoped Lane would listen to what he had to say on the importance of allowing each other to make mistakes—apparently, Lane had.
“We wouldn’t be reconciling if you hadn’t stepped in the way you did,” Penny said softly, her gratitude shining on her face.
“I was happy to help,” Gabe retorted quietly. Although, Gabe thought, with no small trace of irony, now that he had helped Lane and Penny put their marriage back together, it was his own that was falling apart.
Penny studied him. “What’s wrong, Gabe?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve known you for a long time. Usually, when one of your good deeds reaps positive benefits,” Penny continued thoughtfully, “you look like you’re on top of the world, or something. But this time, you don’t look all that elated.”
Maybe because, Gabe thought, he had finally realized that he needed to do more than solve other peoples’ problems. He needed to start working on his own. But that was hard to do, when Maggie wouldn’t listen to what he had to say, or cut him the least bit of slack. Like his parents before him, Gabe thought bitterly, Maggie was all too willing to just call the relationship quits, rather than struggle to work things out.
“But then,” Penny continued slowly, still sizing him up cautiously, “maybe you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Actually,” Gabe said, “I don’t.” Not with anyone but Maggie. Sighing, he thanked Penny for her concern, assured her that he was definitely going to be fine—as soon as he did something worthwhile for someone else, that was—and continued on down the hall.
“I didn’t expect to see you at the hospital on a Saturday night,” Jane Doe said, when Gabe walked into her hospital room. “Especially since you were supposed to be at a family party tonight, weren’t you?”
Gabe wished he could run into just one female tonight who wasn’t interested in sizing up his emotional well-being. “How did you know that?” he casually asked his patient.
“Your sister Amy was in here earlier. She said your whole family was going to celebrate your new marriage.”
“Well, I’m not here to talk about that,” Gabe said gruffly, as he paused to look over Jane Doe’s chart. “I’m here to talk about what is going to happen when you’re released from the hospital tomorrow afternoon.”
Gabe didn’t want to transfer Jane Doe to the county nursing home, but unless the genteel lady started cooperating with them, or agreed to h
is suggested solution, he might have no choice.
Jane flashed him an elegant little smile. “I already know what I want to do,” she said, folding her hands in front of her.
This was a good sign, Gabe thought, impressed. Prior to this, all Jane Doe had wanted to do was stay in the hospital—indefinitely.
“I want to go home with you,” Jane said.
Gabe did his best to contain his shock. “I’m not your family, Jane,” he reminded her gently. “I’m your doctor.”
“I know. But you’re also a very nice man. And I have no place to go.”
It would be so easy, Gabe thought, to do this for Jane Doe. Take her in. Let her stay at his place, at least for a few days, while they hired private detective Harlan Decker to help them discover who Jane Doe really was, and if indeed she did have a family of her very own. Playing the part of the Good Samaritan—in combination with his work at the hospital—would take up all his energies, monopolize his spare time. It would help him forget about Maggie and the mess he had obviously made of their relationship once again.
But if he did that, Gabe knew he would be running away from the best thing that had ever happened in his life.
So, as much as he wanted to help Jane Doe, he knew he was going to have to decline.
“Actually,” he said kindly, “we’ve had two other offers of help for you. One is from my sister Amy. But I think you would actually be better off with my aunt Winnifred. She has a much larger place, and a butler—Harry—who lives in, in addition to other staff who come in to clean and cook daily.”
Gabe expected an argument from Jane Doe—after all, she had put the covers over her head the first time Winnifred had tried to visit her, and feigned sleep every other time Winnifred tried to help.
Instead, Jane Doe smiled—almost approvingly. “I suppose it really wouldn’t be fair to ask a newlywed to have a houseguest underfoot, now would it?” Jane said.
My Secret Wife Page 17