From Glowing Embers (29 page)

“You can make that promise?” For the first time she turned to look at him.

“I can promise I won’t cause any.”

“You don’t have to make anything up to me. You’ve done enough.”

“Have I?” He slid his other arm around her.

She tried to move away again, but there was nowhere to go. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what? This?” Gray drew her head toward his. His fingers wove back and forth through her hair as he kissed her.

Julianna held herself very still, even as a familiar melting sensation began inside her. She didn’t have the physical strength to fight, but of course Gray would never use force.

His lips moved away from hers to explore her chin, her cheeks, sliding at last to an earlobe. He turned her more fully toward him as one hand trailed a path down her side, lightly brushing her breast, the curve of her waist, the fullness of her hip. His fingers slid under her leg, lifting her so she was lying half across him. “Put your arms around me,” he whispered.

She refused and he sighed. “Then I can’t guarantee where you’re going to end up.” His arm tightened around her as he slid backward, taking her with him. In a minute he was lying on the bed, and she was against him. He nudged her onto her back and kept her there as his mouth continued its torment.

“This is how it’s going to be,” he murmured against her cheek. “You and me, giving pleasure, taking pleasure, sharing, Julianna. Sharing...”

She tried to remind herself of the pain they had shared, too, but she had no heart for torturing herself. She couldn’t pretend. She was losing her doubts with each kiss, each caress, until her lips parted and her own hands lifted in response.

Where was the pain? She felt only the sensations they had rekindled on the lanai the morning they talked about Ellie. She had convinced herself that desire was a memory embroidered by time until it was no longer a memory but imagination. How could she have remembered pain so clearly, but denied pleasure?

“I’ll hold you when you’re scared, Julianna. And you can hold me,” he whispered. “We’ll build a life together, make a home, have all the kids you’ve ever wanted. We can have it all, sweetheart, if you’ll just let yourself believe it’s possible.”

For one moment she did believe. She saw a house surrounded by swaying palms and blossoming shrubbery. She saw children, tanned and laughing, running barefoot along a path to a beach. She saw herself with Gray, arm in arm, standing at the doorway, calling goodbyes and love-filled warnings.

Then the picture was gone, and she saw the emptiness of broken promises and dreams destroyed. She saw herself alone in a storm, feeling life slip away. She saw herself waking in a hospital, and she saw herself running, running, just as she had in each of the afternoon’s nightmares.

Running and never, never able to stop.

She pushed Gray away and sat up. “No.” She slid off the bed, and her head throbbed with each heartbeat. “Please. . .”

THERE WAS NO
emotion on his face, as if he had expected this and prepared himself. He sat up slowly. “I’m in for the duration, Julianna.”

She didn’t want to know what he meant. “There’s nothing left of our marriage except bad memories and a piece of paper. Tomorrow I’m going home.”

“Every time you turn around, I’m going to be there,” he said, getting up. He laid his hands on her shoulders. “I’ll be there, and you’ll wish you were stronger, braver, because you’ll want me there, but you’ll be too much of a coward to admit it. Until one day, one day...”

She flinched, but he shook his head as if daring her to deny his words. “Get some sleep, Julianna. Tomorrow you have a decision to make.”

“Tomorrow I’m going home.” she repeated.

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, his lips lingering for a moment. “The real trip home for both of us began in the middle of an airplane aisle four days ago.” His hands dropped to his sides, and he turned. In a moment he was gone, and she was left alone with no one to hear her protests.

FOR YEARS JULIANNA
had tried to duplicate the exact blue-green of the Poipu Beach surf. She envisioned it on the sheerest silk chiffon, a wild splash of color on a sky-blue evening dress of the simplest design. The chiffon would curve and drape with the grace of a
Tahitian pareau,
adorned only by seed pearls as white and sparkling as the Poipu sand at the instant the surf swallowed it in the endless, voracious renewal of the Pacific floor.

She had tried for years, and for years she had been defeated. It was a quest she would never abandon, no matter how small her chance of success.

Today she sat on the deserted beach across the lane from her house on the Poipu coast and compared fabric samples with the ocean in front of her. Even as she held up each sample, the surf altered subtly until she wasn’t sure if human eyes were capable of isolating one color that epitomized the changing liquid landscape.

In the week since she had flown to Kauai from Honolulu, she had chosen nothing but impossible quests for herself. She had spent days working on designs for fabrics that didn’t exist, or that existed in such small quantities that she would have to pay a king’s ransom for them. She had designed clothes that no one could afford, clothes that no one would need, clothes whose purpose had nothing to do with the colors and styles she chose.

She had committed her useless dreams to paper and, in the commitment, some of them had taken wings. They would be the basis for her newest collection. Others she had taken back inside herself to the place where impossible dreams live and grow.

The same place where her dream of a life with Gray was living and growing until she thought it might strangle her.

The morning after the hurricane’s demise she had left for Kauai. She’d cried when she said goodbye to Dillon. He had held her in his arms and stroked her hair, murmuring reminders of mine shafts and trust, loneliness and the solitary moan of the wind. Then he had gone, and she’d felt a space in her life where he had been.

Even more surprising were the tears she cried saying goodbye to Paige. Paige cried, too, and that was the most surprising thing of all. Their friendship was as unlikely as Eve’s return, but it existed anyway, a tribute to irony.

She drove to the airport with Gray and Jody, the silence broken only by Jody’s excited chatter. She watched as a slender blond woman with a lovely smile hurried through the crowded airport corridor to claim the daughter she so obviously adored. She felt Jody’s little arms around her neck one last time and then watched her disappear into the crowd with her mother.

Finally she said goodbye to Gray.

For the first time she had understood why ten years ago she’d left Granger Junction without a word. Their goodbye had been beyond bearing.

Now a week had passed. Other weeks would, too. From experience, she knew she would survive each of them, but somehow it was small comfort.

The late afternoon sun washed cleanly over the pristine beach, and Julianna stood, gathering fabric samples and sketches to stuff in her bag. For a week she had worked frantically, blocking feelings with color and pattern, as she had done as a child. But she was no longer a child, and her pain was not a child’s. When she could block it no longer she would be helpless in its path, just as she’d been helpless against Eve. Then she had needed Gray. Now she needed him more.

Only now he was on the other side of the Pacific. And she was alone on Kauai, missing him, wanting him, remembering...

She crossed the lane to her house and forced herself to think of blue-green surf and sparkling sand. But there were silver-gray eyes gleaming in the secret place where dreams grow.

FOR A WOMAN
who claimed she wanted nothing of the past in her life, Julianna had chosen a strange place to live. Gray parked his rental car and stood in front of the house bearing the address he knew to be hers.

The house reminded him of nothing so much as the house on Granger Inlet. It was of the same weathered board siding, and it was elevated, although not as high as the Mississippi house had been. Banana trees and bougainvillea replaced oleanders and pampas grass, but the spacious lanai running the length of the front was reminiscent of the screened porch at the inlet. It had the same casual air of summertime adventures and family memories.

Gray knew enough of Julianna’s success to guess that she could have chosen something more elegant. He also knew enough to understand why she hadn’t. Once she had told him she wanted to live on a beach; once she had believed the beach house on Granger Inlet was paradise. He was warmed by the knowledge that, despite everything that had happened there, she had chosen a place so like it as her own.

A week had not been long enough.

Gray gazed up at the lanai and wondered why he hadn’t been able to curb his desire to see her any longer than this.

As he had watched her jet disappear, he had told himself to give her breathing space. Too much had happened in four days. She needed time to put her feelings in perspective.

A week hadn’t been long enough, but it had been all he could endure. Gray shoved his hands in his pockets and started up the wood-chip walkway to the steps leading to the front lanai. Once there he paused, but the time for second thoughts had come and gone.

Julianna was in the back of the house when she heard knocking. Visitors were rare, because even the people she called friends knew how jealously she guarded her privacy. Sometimes, though, the wife of a local farmer would bring her fresh produce at suppertime. Now she hurried through the house, glad for even this mundane break in her solitude.

“Gray!” She opened the front door and stared at him. For a moment she wondered if he had sprung full-blown from her imagination.

Her hair was loose and in disarray, her feet bare, her eyes wide and vulnerable. For a moment Gray wondered if Julie Ann had sprung full-blown from his memories. “I missed you,” he said, moving one step closer.

“Did you?” She straightened a little.

“I told you I wasn’t going to give up.”

“And I told you that you should.”

“I don’t always do what I’m told.”

She was filled with such a flood of longing she knew she wasn’t going to be able to withstand it. She made one feeble effort. “I can’t make a commitment,” she said softly.

“I haven’t asked you for anything yet.”

She wondered how much happiness she could claim for her own without risking disaster. The Fates gave with one hand and took with the other, but didn’t they sometimes turn their heads? Didn’t they sometimes yawn and look away?

Could she risk reaching for something she wanted?

“Yet?” she repeated.

He smiled, warmth lighting his eyes. “Shouldn’t we worry about one thing at a time?”

What was she risking? Her happiness? She wasn’t happy. Her heart? It had been broken years before. Her life? No matter how strong her sense of destiny, she knew she wouldn’t be struck dead for spending a night in Gray’s arms. The risk was opening herself to a lifetime of risk.

The warmth in Gray’s eyes became a challenge. “Are you going to invite me in, Julianna?” he asked.

She was wasting time rationalizing something that needed no rationalization. She wanted Gray. She had ached for him with a desire that even her best defenses couldn’t surmount. He wanted her. They were still husband and wife. They could spend this night together, keeping their private demons at bay, or they could spend it alone, wishing they were in each other’s arms. The choice was hers.

“You’re being very cool about this,” she said, lifting her chin. “Do you think I don’t see what’s going on?”

“What I see is you standing in the doorway. Still.”

“One night won’t change anything.”

He lifted a brow. “No?”

She felt the dizzying sensation of his arms around her. She bent like a willow branch into the curve of his body, holding nothing back; he held nothing back except the open front door. When they finally broke apart, it slammed behind him as he moved into the hallway.

“I didn’t plan it quite this way,” he murmured. “I thought I’d show more finesse.”

This time her arms came around him first.

They broke apart only long enough for Julianna to lead Gray down the hallway. At her bedroom he kicked the door shut behind him. He turned to her, settling his hands on her hips and drawing her close enough to feel the strength of his desire. “I have dreamed of this,” he said, emphasizing each word, “until sleep was a torment.”

She knew about dreams. She shut her eyes as his hands went to her hair. He lifted the enameled combs that held it back from her face and watched as it fell in dark waves past her shoulders. Then his hands slipped between them to unbutton her blouse. “How did you know I’d let this happen?” she asked breathlessly. The blouse slid off her shoulders.

“I had to believe you would or I would have gone crazy.” Gray smoothed his hands along her spine, stopping to unhook her bra. He lifted it over her arms, and the scrap of white lace fell to the floor between them.

“Only this one night.” She didn’t have to elaborate; she knew Gray understood. She began to unbutton his shirt with trembling fingers.

His hands cupped her breasts as she worked, and she shut her eyes as the sensations flooded her body. She worked by touch alone, smoothing her hands over his chest when the shirt was finally on the floor. Then she opened her eyes. “You’re not the same,” she whispered. And he wasn’t. His chest was broader, more muscular. His shoulders were broader, too, as if they had carried more weight, lifted more burdens.

“But we’re not the people we were.”

She pressed her body close to his, stretching a little at the lightness of her breasts against his bare chest, moving closer. She told him something she had learned in the last week. “I’ve been wrong. Julie Ann is still inside me.”

“I loved her. I love you more.” As she leaned against him, Gray slipped her skirt over her hips until she was clad only in a half-slip and lace-edged panties. Then those were on the floor, too, and he stepped away to admire her naked body as his own clothes fell to the floor.