by Kim Alexis
Blinking them away, she looked up at the half moon glowing a vivid yellow in the velvety sky. If she believed in prayer, she would say one for Greg now. Instead, she simply sent out good thoughts as strongly as she could and hoped they’d make their way to him across the dry desert night.
HAND ON THE RAIL, Juliette walked down the stone steps toward the dark, swirling pool. She was afraid her conflict with Didi would rob this experience of any pleasure, but as soon as she eased first one foot, then the other, into the warm embrace of the mineral-rich waters, she let all that go and focused on the here and now. She’d been anticipating this soak in the grotto so thoroughly that neither Didi’s words nor any concerns about her safety could dim the pleasure of the moment. The presence of the roving security guards helped. As they kept watch nearby, she lowered herself the rest of the way and relaxed.
The water was warm but not scalding, its constant 94-degree temperature the perfect compliment to the cool night air of the desert. The ambiance here was peaceful, low key. Inviting. One couple floated near the steps, another sat quietly in their robes in front of the outdoor fireplace. Ignoring them all, Juliette pushed off from the side and allowed herself to relish the warmth, the solitude, and the darkness. Though the grotto was open twenty-four hours a day, no special lights illuminated it at night. Instead, the area was allowed to grow dark and shadowy, which gave the sensation of being alone in a private paradise even when others were nearby. It also made it possible to see the stars, to lie there and look up at the night sky without anything to dim the view.
Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Juliette moved toward the middle of the pool, leaned her head back, and simply floated. As a gentle desert breeze brushed across her cheeks, she closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind—of Raven, of Didi, of the past.
No luck there. Her thoughts were already off and running, and she was helpless to stop them. As she floated in the water, body relaxed, eyes closed, she had no choice but to go with it. Sliding into the memories as easily as she’d slid into this pool, she found herself going back to the day, so many years ago, that changed her life forever.
The day she met Marcus Stone, the one who got away.
Chapter Thirteen
AT JUST TWENTY-FOUR YEARS old Juliette Taylor was one of the highest-paid and most in-demand models in the world. She walked runways for almost every major designer, appeared on the cover of countless magazines, had an exclusive contract with a top-name cosmetic firm. She was a success.
And she couldn’t have been more miserable.
Thinking back, she could still feel the unhappiness of that time, the claustrophobia of her situation. People always thought modeling was such a glamorous profession, but they didn’t know what it did to the models on the inside. Like scooping out a pumpkin, the business slowly scraped away almost every shred of a woman’s worth, her privacy, and her sense of self. In the seven years Juliette’s star rose and her price tag soared, the person she was on the inside had gotten lost somehow, until she no longer knew who she was or what she even wanted in life.
All she knew was that she didn’t want this.
Some of her fellow models seemed as unhappy as she. The most successful among them were also as stuck as she, prisoners of their own success, of their own massive paychecks. She earned more in a week than many people earned in a year. Yet she wanted out. With every fiber of her being, she wanted out. But how could she justify turning her back on that kind of money? The very thought seemed ungrateful at best, insane at worst.
And so she endured. Each day on the job, as she was primped and painted and powdered, she would swallow away her growing discontent and press on. By the time she went on that fateful photo shoot on an island off the Georgia coast, the aching, internal claustrophobia was so strong she feared her heart would burst.
The shoot itself had been grueling, the photographer and the editor constantly butting heads. The photographer had been highly praised by German Vogue, but this was his first big shoot for an American magazine and he was clearly insecure. To Juliette’s experience, unconfident photographers were the worst, because not only did they not know what they wanted, often they didn’t even realize once they had it! They’d just keep shooting, roll after roll after roll, so intent on their creative vision—and so afraid they might fail—that they indulged in complete overkill.
Juliette endured it all in silence, waiting when it was time to wait, lighting up for the camera when it was time to shine, sitting frozen on the sidelines in between lest she smear or smudge or wrinkle someone else’s hard work.
She’d been on plenty of tough shoots before, but that day at the coast was particularly unpleasant. If it wasn’t the sharp seashells cutting into Juliette’s skin, it was the bones of the bodice squeezing her lungs. Worse, a big storm was headed in their direction and the sky grew darker and more ominous by the hour.
At least the rain stayed away. After enduring three hours of hair and makeup and four hours of posing atop a crumbling stone wall at the edge of a churning sea, Juliette had had enough—but every time she thought they were finished, this guy would call for “just one more.”
Then a light box blew. That wasn’t unusual, but it meant a delay while the technicians scrambled to fix it. Juliette was desperate for a break, but in such situations she never knew whether she could shift or not. No one bothered to tell her, because somewhere along the way they’d forgotten that she was a human being. Instead she’d become a canvas on which they were bringing their own creations to life.
But what about her creations, her life? Beyond her beautiful face and figure, did she even have any value at all?
While they continued to bustle around and tend to the broken lighting box, Juliette stood at the center of the scene, like a lone bride atop a cake, big fat tears suddenly welling up in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks. On the inside her tears rose up from great, heaving sobs, but on the outside they were simply drips of salty water that seeped out and down, slowly destroying all that was in their path, like floodwaters pouring through a museum.
The makeup girl spotted it first. She’d been standing about ten feet away, chatting with an editorial assistant, when she glanced at Juliette and realized what was happening. Quickly but discreetly, she went to the supermodel’s side, powder puff and Q-tips in hand, and tried to repair the damage. She was a nice girl, but the kindness in her voice only made matters worse. Afraid of breaking into audible sobs at any moment, Juliette finally excused herself and stepped away from the scene.
She used a phone in the hotel lobby to call her booker. Didi Finkleton was the best in the business, the one Juliette leaned on when things got tough. The conversation they had that day was one they’d repeated a dozen times before, with the supermodel saying she couldn’t do this anymore—not today but any day—and Didi urging her to hang in there “for five more years, just five more years.”
She might as well have been asking for five hundred.
“You’ll age out around twenty-nine or thirty anyway,” Didi cajoled her over the long-distance line. “Nobody will want you then and you can go on with your life. But for now, can’t you just milk this? How many women would give their right arm to be in your shoes?”
This time even a call with Didi hadn’t made Juliette feel better. When she stepped back outside, almost everyone in the group turned her way, impatience etched in their grim expressions. She knew she was creating a problem, but she couldn’t help it. Everything inside of her simply screamed to break free. Lightning had begun to flash in the distance, but the turmoil in the sky couldn’t begin to match that in her heart.
Once again the makeup girl rushed to her side, taking her by the hand and saying under her breath, “I know this has been a tough one for you, but we’re almost done. We have to be, or we’ll miss our flight out.” She led Juliette back into place, again fixed the damage to her makeup, and then gave her an encouraging pat on the arm and a final “Hang in there” before stepping
away.
Juliette felt more like she was hanging on than hanging in—by a thread, by her fingernails, by sheer force of will. But she was a pro, and so as the photographer began snapping away, she gave it her all, even as the thunder grew louder and the flashes got closer.
For the final five minutes of the shoot, though there was still no rain, the lightning felt like it was practically on top of them, thunder booming closer and closer. Juliette was terrified, but the photographer was energized, acting as if the dramatic sky was a backdrop created just for him.
Finally the editor called a halt to the shoot, not because the model atop the stone wall was in danger, but because they needed to get going if they wanted to reach the airport in time. As Juliette changed back into her own clothes, the others packed up their tons of gear and loaded it into the charter boat. The crossing was so rough, the waves so high, that by the time they reached the mainland, half of them were pale and sweating and on the verge of losing their lunch.
The first drops didn’t hit the rented van until they were almost to the airport, but when it finally came, it came hard. The sky exploded with a flash of lightning, and drops became sheets of driving rain. The wind whipped at trees, bending them low. Once inside they checked their bags and hurried toward their gate but had barely made it through the main lobby when the announcement came from overhead that all flights had been grounded.
Juliette remained silent through it all. It was as though she was seeing things from a distance, like her mind and her body were no longer connected. Despite the others’ anxious phone calls to the home office and angry threats made to airport personnel, in the end it all came down to the fact that no matter how important they thought they were or how urgent their business back in New York, the storm was in charge now and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about that except sit and wait until it was safe to fly again.
Finally accepting the inevitable, the photographer and his assistants commandeered an entire corner of the airport lobby, taking the equipment that had been too precious to check as baggage and plopping it along the floor like a barricade. Then they spread themselves out inside their little fort and tried to drift off to sleep.
She had no interest in joining them. Nor did she feel like being with the editor and her small entourage who staked claim to a table in an airport coffee shop and leaned their heads in a tight circle to whisper.
Juliette wanted to be alone. After a bit of exploring, she finally found the perfect place, a small alcove that faced a large bank of windows and was hidden behind a divider wall. As she settled into the tight space and drew her knees to her chest, two questions kept rolling around in her mind: How much longer can I do this, and what do I really want out of life anyway?
Even now, as she continued to float in the warm grotto under the sparkling desert sky, Juliette could remember that moment from all those years ago as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.
The defeat that had pounded in her heart.
The claustrophobia that pressed in on her lungs.
The ache deep in her gut that told her she couldn’t go on like this any longer.
Way back then she had closed her eyes and whispered a frantic, desperate prayer, asking God to show her a way out of her misery.
Little had she known, He was about to answer that prayer.
MARCUS LOVED TO FLY, and this trip to the spa with his mother was no exception. His apprehension evaporated after takeoff, and he’d been glued to what he could see of the scenery ever since. He would’ve enjoyed this trip so much more in the daylight, but at least he’d have that opportunity when they returned home on Monday. Day or night, he just loved that feeling of soaring high above the ground toward a new destination.
His mother had read for a while but eventually drifted off. Now, judging by the evenness of her breathing and the tilt of her head in the borrowed neck pillow, she was sound asleep. Good. He exhaled slowly, glad to see her catching some Zs in transit.
Turning, he leaned his forehead against the cold window of the airplane and looked down at the dark earth below. As he did, his mind went to what lay ahead—or, rather, who lay ahead: Juliette Taylor, a woman he’d known briefly yet who’d had a tremendous impact on his entire life.
Though he didn’t often stroll down memory lane, he let his thoughts wander there now. Soaring westward thirty thousand feet in the sky, the lights of some city twinkling on the distant horizon, he allowed himself to think back—twenty-five years back—to the day they first met.
The day that changed his life forever.
Marcus had been twenty-eight years old at the time, working for an engineering firm in Atlanta. After having spent his first few years after grad school in the employ of Uncle Sam, he’d thought that joining a private firm might be a better way to go. But he’d been wrong. After eighteen months on the job, he had grown cynical and disillusioned. He’d also learned to hate compromise.
As an engineer Marcus knew that every construction project involved concurrent but often competing desires for beauty, functionality, safety, reparability, sustainability, environmental sensitivity, and more, all within the confines of certain cost restrictions. As one of his old professors used to say, “Engineering is always about choice, and the sad truth is that you can’t have it all. The key is to find the right balance.” Marcus understood that. Though his own personal priority had always been safety, he often made concessions if they didn’t endanger life or limb outright.
The problem wasn’t that type of compromise. It was the kind of compromise his employer’s firm shouldn’t have been making, like the use of substandard concrete. Inadequate ventilation. Insufficient wiring. Sometimes Marcus would sit in on a meeting and wonder if he was the only one in the whole firm who really understood the safety implications of the decisions being made. What he saw as unethical, his superiors called “pragmatic.” What he said was unconscionable, they considered “realistic.” Again and again he’d butted heads all the way up to the big boss, a man whose eyes stayed so glued to the bottom line that he refused to see all but the most dire warnings of catastrophe.
At that time Midtown Atlanta was on the verge of a growth boom—not out but up—and the firm was positioned to become an integral part of the city’s burgeoning high-rise construction industry. That was one of the reasons, in fact, that Marcus had sought a position there in the first place, because safety was his specialty, and he knew that the higher the building, the greater the problem of protecting its occupants in case of emergency. Measures that would work for five stories weren’t sufficient for twenty-five—from evacuation routes to fire-response tactics to earthquake stability and more. Marcus had come into the job hoping to use his talents, his education, and his experience to meet such challenges. Instead, with every project that involved the wrong kinds of compromises, he felt himself growing more and more frustrated and disturbed.
Then came that fateful trip to the coast, to the site of a new condominium complex that would cover one hundred acres of prime Georgia oceanfront real estate. His firm had been hired to evaluate the design for structural reliability and make any necessary recommendations prior to construction. That part of the job was finished, now all that was needed was a representative to attend the ground-breaking ceremony and perhaps sit in on a meeting afterward to answer questions and see to any final engineering details.
The only reason Marcus had ended up serving as that representative was because the coworker who should’ve done it had busted up his knee during a basketball pickup game the week before and was still recovering from surgery. Marcus hadn’t known much about the project when he was first approached, but his boss said that didn’t really matter, that his presence there would be a mere formality. “The structure’s only three stories high,” the man had added with a smirk. “Are we safe to assume you won’t drum up any new safety crusades while you’re there?”
Marcus was getting used to the sarcasm. In the past month he’d endured several rounds of battl
es over the plans for what would become Atlanta’s first fifty-story building. After all that, a mindless trip to the coast to represent the firm at a little groundbreaking ceremony sounded like a welcome escape.
As the whole thing would take place on a Friday, it also sounded like the makings of a nice, long weekend and a good opportunity to get in a few rounds of golf. Marcus agreed to go in his coworker’s stead and promptly booked himself a room and a tee time out on Hilton Head for afterward.
As the date drew nearer, the only dark cloud on the horizon was an actual dark cloud, so to speak, a tropical storm headed in the general direction of the Georgia coast. Marcus thought the ceremony might be postponed because of it, but in the days before the trip, the squall began to lessen in intensity.
Plans remained in effect, so that morning Marcus left early for the four-hour drive to the coast. When he reached his destination with plenty of time to spare, he settled down in a comfortable coffee shop to review the project notes and blueprints and other papers and bring himself up to speed as much as possible on the condos, in case he had to field any questions. Reviewing the paperwork, it had been easy to go through the list of recommendations that had been made by his firm and see which ones had been addressed and how.
At first the reports were fairly rudimentary, with small adjustments here and there to the design and the construction materials. Some of their recommendations—like pre-coating all exposed metal with a tin and zinc alloy to prevent corrosion from the salt air—had been accepted. Some had been modified, and others had been rejected outright, which wasn’t unusual. The problem here, Marcus realized once he had finished his review, wasn’t the suggestions that had been rejected or the compromises that had been reached; overall, there seemed to have been a pretty fair meeting of the minds when it had come to hammering out the final plan. Instead, at issue was a roofing problem that had never been addressed in the first place.