From Glowing Embers (30 page)

Julianna felt her heart expand. Had she lied when she’d told herself she was too frightened to dream of this? Everything was too familiar, as if she had rehearsed it for ten years while she waited for him to find her.

Waited for him to find her.
Ten years she had waited for Gray; ten years she had waited for
this
. In all the important ways, her life had stood still.

“Do you believe in fate?” she asked, her words trembling in the air between them.

“I believe in God, and I believe He weeps for us.” He stood in front of her without touching her. “I believe in you.”

She threw her arms around him, and their bodies together were a homecoming. Hungrily she sought his mouth. He settled her closer to him, moving his body against hers in a slow thrusting rhythm that stoked the fire burning inside her, while his hands traveled the length of her back in restless, searching motions.

Gray had remembered the feel of her skin. It was still as fine-textured as satin. His hands glided slowly, relearning the things he had always known, learning the things that had changed. She was a woman now, delicate and small-boned, but womanly in every way. As she clung to him, he felt her tremble, and he began to understand the courage this took. He held her and prayed that somewhere she would find the courage to stay with him forever.

Finally he backed away, grasping both Julianna’s hands to lead her toward the bed. Her eyes didn’t leave his.

“Help me take this slowly.” His hands framed her face. “The last time I wanted a woman this way, it was my wedding night.”

“I’m not sure I can.” She pressed herself close to the heat of his skin. “It’s been that long for me, too.”

He sank to the bed. Groaning, he buried his face in her shoulder and tasted the sweet warmth of her flesh with his tongue and teeth while his hands played over her.

Julianna rested her cheek on Gray’s hair, shuddering as his hands alternately tortured and soothed her. She strained against him until he took her down to the smooth, crisp sheets.

She lay tangled with him, simultaneously aching for completion and patience, for the end and the beginning. His mouth slid lower, kissing the hollow of her neck, the delicate line of her collarbone, before sliding lower again.

His mouth was warm, but she was warmer still, fevered and aching and so ready for his lovemaking that she was no more than a vessel waiting to be filled. He smoothed the taut skin of her abdomen, dropping lower until she lifted one leg over his, coaxing him to come to her.

Instead he shifted so that she was lying on top of him. “Make love to me,” he said, groaning.

She knew his control was almost gone. A new sense of power shot through her. “Soon,” she promised. “Too soon, never soon enough,” she murmured against his chest. She trailed her lips lower.

She rose above him, power and fear warring inside her. He pulled her head to his as she slowly took him inside her.

When he filled her completely Julianna rested against him, her head in the crook of his shoulder. Her heart beat frantically, and the sound of her pleasure was a gasp.

“I...will...never...let...you...go.” He spaced the words as if each one was agonizing.

United in the most primal of ways, she could think of nothing except the utter rightness of this reunion. Her breasts brushed his chest as she began to move, and she slipped her arms beneath him to strengthen their connection.

Power eclipsed fear. She began to soar, her body connected not to the earth but to the sky, the stars, the only man she had ever loved. She stared into silver eyes lit with the molten glow of passion. There was nothing she could do except cry out one final time and die a little in his arms.

JULIANNA WAS SLEEPING.
Gray’s arm was sleeping. One moment they had been cuddled close, and she had been tracing patterns on his chest with her lips. The next moment she had fallen sound asleep.

She felt so good against him, so perfectly at home, that he hadn’t been able to make himself move her off his arm when he’d become aware that the blood was no longer flowing. Now he shifted her just enough to restart his circulation. She slept on, seemingly exhausted.

He had never fully understood all the fierce battles that raged inside Julianna until she had asked him about fate. Now he understood what had made her run, and what was pulling her away from him still. She loved him, but she was terrified to admit it. She had been given so little from life that now she trusted no one and nothing. She kept to herself, an onlooker, an audience to life, so that fate couldn’t hurt her yet again.

He wanted to wake her, to kiss away the pain of a lifetime and tell her that the battles that so exhausted her weren’t worth fighting. She couldn’t avoid the bad parts of life by refusing to accept the good. She would not have to pay for their lovemaking, just as she would not have to pay for what would come next.

If she let it.

Gray’s arms tightened around her. If fate existed, it had brought them together. They could spend the rest of their lives learning how to be happy. He wondered how he was going to convince her.

Almost an hour later he felt her come awake by degrees. She moved restlessly, but she didn’t move away from him. Instead she fitted her body closer to his, as if she were afraid he would leave. He reassured her, caressing her back, kissing her hair, until she was fully awake.

“I’d forgotten how nice it was to wake up next to you,” she said shyly.

“We woke up together very few times. I counted them once.”

“When?”

“A couple of years ago.”

“You thought of me then?”

“I thought of you.”

She brushed his cheek with her fingertips. She could tell the time of day by its sandpaper roughness. It was almost time for dinner. “I believe you.”

She was still sleepy, and he wanted her to be relaxed as he told her what he’d been thinking. “Do you remember when you asked me about fate?”

Her fingers fluttered to his chest.

He threaded her fingers through his and brought them to his lips, where he kissed each fingertip.

“I don’t know why I asked,” she lied.

“I helped a man restore a house in Washington, D.C., last year. The house was almost two hundred years old, the man was a thousand. He’s Chinese, married to an American woman who was teaching in China when they met. When I asked him about his marriage, he told me that the Chinese have a saying. If two people are put together by God, they will find each other no matter how far apart or how different they may be. He looked at me after he’d said that, and then he told me that most people wouldn’t understand, but he knew that I did.”

“Gray—”

“There are some things we’ll never understand,” he went on. “I don’t know why your sister died. I don’t know why you were raised by the parents you were. I don’t even understand why Ellie was taken from us. But I do understand why we found each other ten years ago, and why we found each other again. That part was meant to be. We were meant to be together.”

Julianna tried to sit up, but Gray held her back.

“Do you really believe you can get up from here and pretend this didn’t happen?” he asked. “Do you think that by pretending you’ll be safe?”

“Don’t ruin tonight.”

He had learned something new about her, but he had learned something about himself, as well. He could not spend another night unsure of their future. “Don’t file for divorce, Julianna. You’ve seen what we still have together. Tell me you’re going to give us a chance.”

“It can’t work, Gray.”

He pretended he hadn’t heard. “I can have an office anywhere, even Kauai. I’ll have to travel farther to sites, but we can do some of the traveling together. We’ll have children. We’ll make a home together.”

“No.” Julianna broke away.

“Have you run so long you’ve forgotten how to stop?”

She was almost frantic with her need to be alone. He was offering all the things she wanted, and she didn’t dare claim them. She slid off the bed. He was silent as she dressed, silent when she slammed the door behind her, silent when he slammed his fist against the grass cloth-covered wall.

JULIANNA HAD WALKED
along the Poipu coast for miles before she realized it would soon be dark. Although she was exhausted, she quickened her steps, turning back toward home. Surprisingly, the beach was almost empty.

An uprooted palm lay across the sunset-drenched sands in front of her. A man sat on the palm watching her. As she drew nearer, he pushed himself upright to start toward her. Silver eyes gleamed in the wildly colored light.

She heard Gray’s words of a week before as if he were speaking them again.
Every time you turn around, I’m going to be there. 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.

She wondered how he had known what she hadn’t.

“I was waiting to see if you were going to notice it was getting dark,” Gray said casually.

Julianna smiled at him, but her lips trembled. “I’ve never paid much attention where I’m going when I run away.”

“One thing was different this time, anyway. You were easy to keep track of.”

“Have you been following me the whole time?”

He nodded.

“I think I knew.”

Gray took her hand, and they walked in silence across the lengthening shadows of the palm-shaded beach.

They stopped half a mile from her house, on a point looking down the coast. Gray left her on the sand, returning in a moment with a fragrant white plumeria blossom that had hung from a heavily-laden bush. He wove it into a lock of hair behind her ear. “The left ear for a married woman, I’m told.”

She nodded, touched by both the simple gesture and his voice.

“Will you think of me sometimes?” he asked.

“Yes.” Julianna shut her eyes as his lips brushed hers. Then he straightened.

“If you ever need me, I’ll be on the first plane back.” He turned and started down the beach.

“Gray?”

He kept walking.

“Gray, where are you going?”

He stopped, but he didn’t face her. “Home.”

“Do you have a flight out tonight?”

“I’m going to the airport to see if I can get one.”

She took a step toward him, then another. “Why?”

He didn’t answer.

“One minute you talk about forever, the next you can hardly wait to go!”

“‘Forever’ was before I understood how scared you really are.”

“Stay till tomorrow,” she reasoned. “Stay with me tonight. We have tonight.”

He turned back, and searched her face, as if memorizing her features. “I’m not that strong,” he said, turning away. “This time I’m going to do the running.”

Julianna watched through tear-filled eyes as Gray started back down the beach. The warm breeze kissed her hair and lifted the hem of her skirt. The tantalizing smells of someone’s dinner drifted through the air from a nearby cottage and mixed with the scent of plumeria. Tears fell, one, then another. When the third had dried, she peered into the darkness searching for him, but he had disappeared around the point.

In four days she had found Gray, then lost him again. His reappearance now had been a miracle and, like all miracles, he had brought the gifts of comfort, of knowledge, of healing. She had taken them all and given him nothing except an hour in her arms.

“Gray!”

Julianna knew he wouldn’t answer, but she sent his name up to the skies anyway, a plea, a command, a tirade against the force that had brought them together only to separate them once more.

There was no answer from the skies. Because, of course, it hadn’t been fate. Julianna had created her own destiny. She was so terrified of happiness that she had destroyed it before it could fully be hers. She was worse than a coward, she was a fool.

A fool.

Julianna took a step down the beach, then another. The breeze cooled her cheeks as she began to run. “Gray!”

She twisted her ankle in the soft sand, but she ran until she was on the deserted beach in front of her house. Gray’s car was still parked outside, and for a moment she couldn’t figure out where he was. Then she saw him against the dense shrubbery lining the lane. She called to him.

He turned and came to her, standing silently on the beach, his back to the gently breaking surf.

She covered her fear with anger. “You come back into my life after ten years, and then you expect me to forget everything that happened between us?”

“Not forget, move beyond.”

“I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved.”

“You’re about to lose somebody else.”

“I didn’t say I loved you!”

Eyes blazing, he moved closer. “You did, but say it again.” His hands settled on her shoulders.

“I’m afraid.” She swallowed hard, for her voice had broken on the words, words he already knew.

He nodded, releasing her. An evening breeze stirred the air and whistled softly through the palm trees. “I love Julie Ann Mason Sheridan,” he shouted. There was a sudden eerie stillness, as if someone, somewhere, was listening. Even the night birds stopped singing. “And she loves me. So help me God, if we’re never allowed to have any happiness, then strike
me
dead right now!”

There was another split second of silence, and then, in the distance, a gull cawed for his dinner, voices drifted across the water from a boat coming in to dock, and the wind began again, rustling the palm fronds in an ancient whispered melody.

Julianna felt something break free inside her. Her fear wasn’t that simple—it could never be that simple—but it wasn’t much more complicated than that, either. Life would go on whether she loved Gray or not. The only way she could assure herself of losing him was if she didn’t speak the most important words of her life—and speak them now.

“I love you,” she said haltingly. She swallowed and said the words louder. “Damn it, Gray, I love you. I love you!” she shouted.

She was in his arms in a second. “It’s going to be all right. We’re going to make it,” he promised. “We’re going to make it.”