The Getaway Bride

She sighed, as though exasperated by his obtuseness. “I...don’t...know,” she said, speaking as though to a slow child.

Gabe thought suddenly of Blake’s half-serious speculation that Page was mentally ill. Gabe hadn’t wanted to believe it—and neither had Blake—but now he was beginning to wonder. Was she suffering from delusions? Paranoia? Did her bizarre behavior indicate that she had totally lost touch with reality?

Page was watching his face, her eyes sad. “You don’t believe me.”

He thought of Detective Pratt’s suspicious death. The photographs in Page’s suitcase. She hadn’t taken the most recent one of him—he had proof that she’d been in Des Moines when it was snapped. So who had taken it? And why did Page have it hidden in her bag?

Frustration welled inside him. He was tired, hungry and confused. He hadn’t eaten anything since the omelet he’d prepared some nine hours earlier, and now evening was creeping through the woods, scattering ominous shadows among the dense trees. Page jumped and looked around nervously when a night bird suddenly called from close by. She acted as though she fully expected an attack at any moment.

“I think we’d better go back inside,” he said wearily. “I want you to start from the beginning.”

Looking as though she’d rather commit hara-kiri, Page nodded, her eyes downcast.

“And by the way...” Gabe added conversationally, keeping one hand firmly on her arm. “If you try to run again, I’m tying you to that chair. Is that clear?”

She gave him a resentful look in answer.

Satisfied that he’d made his point, Gabe led her to the cabin.

GABE directed Page to sit on the couch, and then he reached for the photographs he’d dropped haphazardly when he’d realized what she was doing in the bedroom earlier. He tossed them onto the coffee table in front of her. “I assume these have something to do with this wild tale you’ve been telling me?”

She glanced at the photos, and then quickly away, as though she couldn’t bear to look at them for long. “Yes.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “All right. From the beginning.”

She frowned. “Must you loom over me? Sit down.”

Though tempted to remind her that she was in no position to be snapping orders, he pulled one of the armchairs closer to the couch and settled onto it “I’m sitting. Now talk.”

She combed her fingers through her tousled auburn hair and drew a deep breath. It still rattled him to see the blue eyes he’d remembered so clearly looking back at him. As long as she’d worn the dark contacts, he could almost convince himself that she wasn’t his Page, but a near stranger. A woman who couldn’t hurt him the way his wife had.

&nbs

p; Now, except for her hair color, she looked very much as she had when he’d first fallen in love with her. And it was eating him alive.

“Two days before that beam almost hit you,” Page said quietly, “I received a phone call. I’d just gotten home from school, and you weren’t due home for another hour or so. I didn’t recognize the man’s voice, and he wouldn’t give me his name. But he called me by mine.”

“What did he say?”

He saw her swallow. “He said I shouldn’t have married you,” she answered unsteadily. “He said I’d made a very big mistake. He said I didn’t deserve a family and that he was going to make sure I would be as alone as he was.”

“You never told me about it” It still hurt him to realize she’d kept so much from him.

She shook her head. “I assumed it was just a crank call. I hung up on him, and he didn’t call back, so I thought it was over. I was going to tell you, but—well, you came home in such a good mood. It was our two-week anniversary and you brought me candy. You were still feeling guilty because there wasn’t time or money for a real honeymoon—not that I cared about that. We were so happy. I didn’t want to ruin our evening.”

Her words were like slivers of glass in his heart. He remembered that night. Remembered how young and besotted he’d been, how foolishly smug about his marriage to the woman he adored.

“It was our three-week anniversary the day you left me,” he murmured, hardly aware that he spoke aloud. “I brought you flowers then.”

She flinched. “I’m—”

She stopped and cleared her throat, then took another deep, unsteady breath. “When I got home from work the day I...I left, I got the mail as usual. There was an envelope addressed to Page Shelby Conroy. No return address. When I opened the envelope, I found two photographs. Nothing more.”

She leaned forward and plucked two photos from the stack, pushing them toward Gabe. One of them was of the woman holding a baby. The other was of Gabe on a job site. “Those are the ones,” she said.

Gabe pushed his emotions aside and studied the photos, trying to concentrate on the unfolding story. “Who is she?” he asked, motioning toward the woman with the baby.

“Jessie Carpenter. She was a very close friend of mine from college in Alabama—the only one who supported me during the ordeal there that I told you about. She’s holding her youngest child, Amelia, who was born a couple of months before I met you. Jessie sent me pictures when Amelia was born, but I couldn’t understand why this one was enclosed with a snapshot of you.”