From Glowing Embers (8 page)

“If that’s all we needed to do to settle things, I would have done it years ago.”

“You should have.”

“Come with me, Julianna.”

“No!” Before he could argue further, she turned and fled toward the exit.

Gray tried to follow her, but Dillon barred his way.

“Don’t make it worse, mate,” Dillon told him. “You’ve given her a shock. Give her a chance to think about it.”

“What’s she to you?” Gray demanded.

“Just a woman who needs a friend.”

“She’s scared to death of storms.”

“Then don’t go chasing her into this one.” Dillon motioned toward the carousel. “I’m going to find her and get her over to that hotel. Are those her bags on the floor?” He watched as Gray nodded, then stooped to pick them up and add them to his. “See what else comes through with her name on it and take it to your hotel, would you? I’ll see if I can get her over there tomorrow morning after she’s had time to think.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Dillon shrugged.

Gray hesitated, still weighing the possibility of going after Julianna. Then he nodded. There was really very little he could do, short of dragging her caveman-style to his hotel. She had defeated him. Again. “Please go find her. She’s in no shape to be out there by herself.”

“I’ll take care of her.”

Gray watched the other man head for the exit and wondered how something that he had planned with only the best of intentions could have turned out to be so unbearably painful for everyone concerned.

GRAY COLLECTED HIS
suitcases and one more piece of Julianna’s. Ironically, they had chosen luggage from the same designer, differing only in their choices of color. Except for memories, their taste in travel gear was possibly the only thing they shared.

He wondered if he would see Julianna again. He believed that Dillon would make an effort to get her to come to his hotel tomorrow; he just didn’t know if anyone’s effort would be good enough. Once she was over the shock of their confrontation, would she be able to put her bitterness aside long enough to settle things between them? He seriously doubted it. And, God knows, they didn’t need more bitterness.

Despite what he’d told her on the plane, he wouldn’t follow her to Kauai. He had come to resolve their past, to wish her well, and to say goodbye. Now he knew that only the last would be welcomed. She would probably initiate the final goodbye—a divorce—before he even got back to the mainland.

“I’m back, Gray.”

Gray turned to see Jody skipping toward him from the direction of the rest room. “Where are we going to wait for my mommy?”

The message he had intercepted at the information desk seemed to burn a hole in Gray’s pocket. “I’ve got bad news,” he said, preparing her for the worst. “Your mom’s flight was canceled. She won’t be getting in tonight.”

Jody looked incredulous. “She’s supposed to be here!”

“It’s a long swim from Vancouver,” he explained patiently.

Jody didn’t look as if she was sure she should laugh or cry. “But she said she’d be here.”

“She didn’t have any choice.” Gray put his arm around the little girl in an impromptu hug. “You’re going to stay with me until she can get a plane in.”

“But there’s going to be a hurricane! A lady in the rest room said so!”

“What’s wrong, shrimp?” Gray ruffled Jody’s hair. “Don’t tell me you don’t like rain.”

“I don’t want to go with you.” Jody sniffed and hid her face against his side.

“I know you’re tired,” Gray told her. “It’s not a great time for a new adventure, but it can’t be helped.”

Gray was sorry for the little girl, but he wasn’t sorry he was going to have to take care of her a little longer. He needed the diversion. This was one night he didn’t want to spend in a lonely hotel suite. He squatted down to reach Jody’s eye level. “Listen, how about a room at a fancy hotel?”

“I want my mommy!’’

“It’s on Waikiki. You’ve heard of Waikiki, haven’t you?”

“It’s a beach,” she said, pouting, but unable to resist displaying her knowledge.

Gray nodded. “I’ve got a suite there tonight, and I’d be very happy if you’d share it with me.”

She nodded slightly, resigned, but not pleased.

Gray stood, ruffling Jody’s hair again. “I really wasn’t looking forward to spending the night there by myself. The Prince is a block off the beach, so they’re not expecting any problems from the...” He suddenly remembered he was talking to a child. “All the rain,” he finished lamely.

“Do they have a swimming pool?”

“If they don’t, we can just hold you out the window and you can get as wet as you want.”

She giggled. “Can I call my mommy?”

“As soon as we get there.”

“Okay.”

Gray rented a luggage cart and piled it high for the trip outside to find a taxi. Rain sheeted across the road ringing the airport, and the tropical foliage planted in small oasis-like gardens on either side of it bent in the fury of the wind.

Not surprisingly, there were no cabs. In fact, it was impossible not to notice just how abandoned the airport had become. He had been so preoccupied, he hadn’t considered that getting to the Prince Kuhio might be difficult. “I’m sure a cab’s going to come along, but it may take a few minutes,” he told Jody. “Let’s wait inside.”

“I want to watch the rain,” she protested.

“As long as we stay under cover, we should be all right.”

They waited in silence. Just as Gray was about to go inside and start calling cab companies himself, a van rounded the corner and stopped in front of them. Gray opened the door. “Can you get us to the Prince Kuhio on Waikiki?” he asked the driver, a man with a silver crew cut and a warm smile.

“Roads closed. Roads flood. I get anyway.”

Gray nodded, slamming the door and opening the one behind it for Jody. The driver came around to the back of the van, and together he and Gray threw the luggage in. Even though the roadway was covered by an overhang, both men were wet from windblown rain when they had finished.

“We were about to give up on finding a ride,” Gray told the driver when he was inside, sitting beside him, and the van was sloshing along the airport road.

“Cab stop, but van go. Cab flood. Not so high.”

Gray peered through the windshield. He hoped the man knew exactly where he was going, because the rain was so dense that it would take more than the ordinary five senses to ensure a successful trip.

“Do you think it’s gotten to hurricane status yet?” Gray asked softly enough that Jody wouldn’t hear above the rain.

“Hurricane now. Sit off coast like sneaky cat.”

“Will my mommy be able to get a plane tomorrow?” Jody asked, leaning forward in her seat.

“Honolulu’s called the crossroads of the Pacific,” Gray reassured her. “Planes will start flying again just as soon as the storm passes.” He turned and gave her an encouraging smile. “I’ve got a friend with a house near Diamond Head. You can go there with me tomorrow and wait until your mom comes.”

“She’s coming tomorrow,” Jody said.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he said, though he wasn’t sure at all.

The streets were almost deserted. From what Gray could see, the islanders had holed up for the duration of the storm. Only an occasional car braved the flooding roads, and Gray imagined they were filled with people who were trying to get to shelter. He wondered if Julianna and Dillon had made it to their hotel.

His thoughts were interrupted by an unbroken stream of melodic phrases so fluent and rapid that Gray decided the van driver must be a professional orator in his native language.

“Trouble,” the driver said succinctly in English.

“What’s wrong?”

“Cab trouble.” The driver began to inch over to the side of the road.

At first Gray thought their van was having difficulty getting through the streets. Then, in between the rapid beating of the windshield wipers, he saw a taxi nose down in the roadside ditch, front wheels and fender lost to view.

“Cabdriver in hurry.”

Gray imagined he was right. Anyone would be in a hurry to get off these roads. The cabbie had probably gone too fast and lost control. “Are you going to stop and help?”

The driver nodded, parking ten yards behind the wreck. When he started to get out, Gray opened his door, too. “Not necessary,” the driver told Gray.

“I want to.”

The man nodded again and jumped down into the water at his feet. Gray followed.

He had never been outside in rain like this. Blinding in its intensity, it felt like solid sheets of water pouring over him. He was soaked immediately. The only compensation was that as yet there was no thunder or lightning, but he doubted that would last.

The cabdriver rolled down his window when they approached. He was holding a handkerchief to his head as if he’d been cut. “Boy, am I glad to see you. I thought I was going to float away.”

Gray peered in. The cab was empty, except for the driver. “You didn’t have any passengers?”

“They took off a minute ago.” He pointed down the road. “My radio went out when we crashed, so I couldn’t call in our location. They started getting worried when no cars came by. I told them to wait, but the man wanted to go for help, and the lady was scared to wait here, so she went with him.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine. I cracked my head on the steering wheel, but not hard enough to black out. I decided to wait here, unless the water in this ditch got any higher.” He pointed to the temporary river surging past the cab’s tires.

“You come now.” The van driver opened the back door of the cab and motioned for the cabbie to crawl over the seat and exit through the back. The cabbie accomplished it with a maximum of effort and help.

“Let’s see if we can find your passengers,” Gray said when the man was settled in the back seat of the van. “I hope somebody has picked them up by now.”

“No cars.” The van driver started the engine and pulled carefully back onto the street.

“Surely the police must patrol the streets at a time like this.”

“Lot of streets.”

The passengers hadn’t made it far. Several blocks away, Gray spotted them cutting across a parking lot. He would have missed them, except that the bright floral print of the woman’s blouse was a beacon in the downpour. The print was one he would never forget. The woman was Julianna.

Gray opened the door and jumped out into the storm. Calling Julianna’s name, he sprinted through the lot as the driver leaned on his horn to signal them. He was almost on them before they turned around, and he registered their surprise as they did.

“We’ve got your driver in the van over there. Come on,” he shouted.

He had expected an argument, or at least a perfunctory protest. Instead the relief on Julianna’s face spoke for itself. She was wearing Dillon’s hat to keep the rain off her face, but she was thoroughly soaked anyway. The lightweight fabric of her skirt and blouse clung to her like another skin; her hair hung straight and wet to her waist.

In the distance they heard the first boom of thunder, and she gasped. Dillon took her arm, and they started toward the van.

JULIANNA STOOD UNDER
the stinging spray of the shower and lathered her hair with shampoo. She longed to stay there for a long time, to ignore all her problems until the water ran cold— and in a hotel the size of the Prince Kuhio, that could take days. Instead she finished quickly and turned off the shower. Dillon and Gray were still wet and cold and needed to have their turns.

Wrapping a towel around her head and one of the complimentary terry-cloth robes around her body, she stepped out, ready to cross the short hallway into the bedroom she would be sharing with Jody, whom she’d been introduced to in the van. Gray was standing by the bathroom door, rummaging through his suitcase in the closet for clothes to change into. She considered pushing past him, but no matter what the peculiar circumstances that had brought them together in this suite, she was still his guest.

She owed him courtesy, if nothing else. When her confrontation with Gray was over and they had gone their separate ways, she didn’t want to remember that she had acted like a child. She didn’t want Gray to remember her that way, either. She wanted him to see her for the woman she was.

She hadn’t had time to piece together all her feelings, but one of them was distress at her own behavior. She had reacted badly. Now it was time to act.

She unwrapped her hair and began to run the towel over it. “It looks like we’re going to have that talk whether I want to or not.”

“I just brought you here to get you out of the storm.” He breathed in the lemon fragrance of the shampoo she had used and watched as she stroked the towel over her hair. Her slender body was completely enveloped in the robe, but there was an intimacy about standing in the hallway together, within touching distance, that disconcerted him. He didn’t want to notice the flush of her cheeks, the familiar blue of her eyes, the way the neckline of the robe exposed just the tiniest glimpse of smooth, golden skin. He didn’t want to feel the things he was feeling.

“I appreciate it.”

At first Gray wasn’t sure he had heard her right. She had said little in the van when he’d insisted she and Dillon come with him to his suite. He imagined that if he hadn’t included Dillon, she would have refused, but as it was, she hadn’t. Since arriving, he had been waiting for her to regain her equilibrium and rail at him for bringing her here. He hadn’t expected a thank-you.

“I’m glad you decided to come.” He turned back to the closet, still disconcerted. His feelings were too powerful to be appropriate. She had said a simple thank-you, a thank-you she owed him.

Julianna spoke to his back. “Apparently you had some time to prepare before you saw me on the plane. I didn’t.”

He wondered if her words were an apology or an explanation. “I know. I’m sorry it happened this way. I didn’t realize...” His voice trailed off.

“Didn’t realize how much damage had been done? How much pain was still there?” She tried to keep her voice even, but she didn’t succeed. “You wouldn’t have.”