From Glowing Embers

by Emilie Richards

  ~ ~ ~

  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.”

  “I guess I hoped when we finally met again, it would be easier.”

  “I wish it were.”

  Holding his clothes, he turned back to her. “I made a mistake. Can you forgive me? Can we move beyond it?”

  She searched his eyes. “Which mistake? This one, or one of your others?”

  Her words washed over him like the rain that still dampened his skin. “You’ve nurtured a lot of bitterness in ten years.”

  “I haven’t wanted to.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Even wet and tired, Gray commanded attention. Julianna wanted to throw his words back in his face, but it wasn’t an easy thing to do. In all the years of their separation, she hadn’t become immune to his warmth. That fact was almost as surprising as his reappearance.

  “Think about it,” he said, briefly resting a hand on her shoulder. Before she could answer, Gray stepped around her and into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him.

  She was tempted to follow him to finish what he had started, but she realized that would be another blind reaction. She didn’t seem capable of much else with Gray.

  Instead she knocked on the door to the bedroom and went in. Jody was sitting on one of the beds, brushing her hair. Julianna sat down on the bed next to hers.

  “You were real wet,” Jody said. “You’re still wet.”

  Julianna had so seldom been around children that she wasn’t sure how to talk to this one. She tried a smile. “The shower helped, though why more water would help beats me.”

  “Are you warm? I saw you shivering before.”

  “Warmer,” Julianna admitted. “I’m not sure I’ll be warm for a long, long time.” She shivered for punctuation.

  “I saw extra blankets in the closet. I checked to see what was in there. I’m going to be a writer, so I always check everything. Sometimes in stories they have bodies in closets.” Jody jumped up. “Do you want one or two?”

  “Bodies or blankets?”

  Jody giggled. “Blankets, silly.”

  Julianna didn’t feel like having a roommate. Solitude was something she understood. Now, however, she was touched by the little girl’s intelligence and thoughtfulness. “One, thanks.”

  Jody stepped back, as if solving a difficult problem. “I’ve got to grow up,” she observed with a child’s candor. “I’m tired of not being able to reach things.”

  Julianna realized the blanket must be on a shelf. “I’ll get it.” She started to rise.

  “I’ll do it! I can stand on that chair.” Before she’d even finished her sentence, Jody was dragging a straight-back chair from the corner to the closet door.

  “Well, thanks for all your trouble,” Julianna said when the blanket had been tucked around her.

  “Your hair’s longer than mine,” Jody observed. “How long did it take to grow that long?”

  “Years. Now, when it gets to the point where I sit on it, I know it’s time for a trim.”

  “Mine’s been growing since first grade.”

  Julianna admired Jody’s shiny brown hair. “It’s very pretty.”

  “Gray said he used to know you.”

  Julianna wasn’t sure how to answer that. “We knew each other a long time ago.”

  “Were you friends?”

  Julianna tried to think of a way to answer that honestly. “Once we were.”

  “Did you have a fight?”

  “In a way.”

  “My mom says I’m too nosy, but she’s a real writer, so she knows I have to find out stuff,” Jody confided. “Do you mind?”

  “How old are you?” Julianna asked, unwillingly fascinated by the little girl.

  “I’m eight, but I’ll be nine soon.”

  “Soon?”

  “Well, I’ll be nine next May,” Jody said with a toss of her head.

  “That’s only eight months away,” Julianna said, trying not to smile.

  “I figure I’ll write my book when I’m ten, eleven at the latest,” Jody said airily. “So I’ve gotta find out everything while I still have time.”

  “I wish I could write.” Julianna rummaged in her overnight bag and found a large comb. She began to pull it through her hair, starting near the ends and working her way up.

  “What do you do?” Jody began to unpack a small suitcase, laying a flowered nightgown on the bed.

  “I design clothing.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Did you make the clothes you were wearing?”

  “That was one of the few things I’ve done in silk. By the time it dries, it’ll probably fit you.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “If it fits,” Julianna said, with a laugh.

  When her hair was untangled, Julianna unzipped a suitcase and slipped into a floor-length muumuu with island scenes in brilliant colors. The scenes flashed across the fabric like a vivid slide show of Hawaiian life, then faded into a black border and upper bodice. It was designed with less fabric than a traditional muumuu, so it hung s
leekly to the floor.

  “Gray said he was going to get us something to eat.” Jody had changed, too. “I’m gonna go see.”

  “I’ll come along.” Julianna followed Jody into the living room, where Dillon and Gray would be sleeping on the sofa bed. Gray was there, but Dillon was still in the shower.

  Gray’s head was against the sofa back, and his eyes were shut. He looked like a man who had recently seen combat.

  Jody was the first to speak. “Did they have any hot dogs?”

  Gray opened his eyes and patted the sofa next to him in invitation. Jody sat down beside him. “Did they?” she repeated.

  “Look, shrimp, the kitchen is overburdened right now. Some of their employees aren’t here because of the storm. But they promised me they’d find you a hot dog somewhere.”

  “With mustard and relish?”

  “I told them that’s the way you like them.” He looked up and caught Julianna watching him. “I didn’t know what anyone else wanted, so I just asked them to bring up enough of whatever’s on hand for three hungry adults.”

  She nodded. “Thanks. I haven’t had much to eat today.” She realized how revealing that was. “I don’t like airline food,” she added, even though she knew Gray probably guessed that the airline had nothing to do with her loss of appetite.

  “Me, either,” he said, not looking away.

  “You used to eat everything in reach.”

  He seemed surprised she would casually mention the past. “I was always trying to set a good example for you.”

  Unwillingly, she remembered the first months of her pregnancy and Gray’s efforts to make sure she ate right. She had tried. He had tried. By then it had seemed that trying was the only thing they could do together. Trying to adjust to being husband and wife. Trying not to let each other know how miserable they were. Trying not to fight.

  Strangely enough, because of her bitterness in the intervening years, she hadn’t thought about the ways Gray had tried to be a good husband. Perhaps it had been too painful to remember him that way.

  His eyes still held hers, and, as if he had read her thoughts, they grew sad. “Trying to do the right thing was never enough, was it?”

  “I guess not.”

  Jody shifted uncomfortably. She wasn’t a child who wanted to be shut out of a conversation, and Gray realized just how personal this conversation had gotten. He and Julianna were incapable of idle chatter.

  A knock at the door broke the tension. Gray tipped the harried young man who had brought them a miniature banquet, and the adults, joined by Dillon, distributed food, making sure Jody got her hot dog first.

  The only audible sound as they ate the first part of their meal was the wind and rain rushing past their windows. Gray’s suite was on the top floor, and although he had closed the drapes as soon as they’d arrived, the presence of the storm was still only too obvious.

  “The man who delivered our food said the storm is stalled off the coast. There’s no way of predicting exactly what it’ll do.” Gray reached for another roll to go along with his salad.

  Julianna noticed the way he said storm instead of hurricane. She wondered who he was protecting. Jody, certainly, but her, as well? “Maybe it will stall permanently.”

  “She’s been a beaut, but I won’t shed a tear if she blows herself out and disappears into the ocean,” Dillon said, leaning back against a floor cushion with a satisfied sigh.

  “Got a tight schedule?” Gray asked him.

  “Got a mine that wants mining,” Dillon answered. “In Coober Pedy.”

  “Australia?”

  “South Australia. How about you? Were you moving on?”

  Gray wondered if he was imagining the intensely alert eyes in the seemingly relaxed face. He decided he wasn’t. Julianna had found a protector. He wondered if Dillon was already smitten with her, or if he was just heading in that direction. He wondered how many other men had suffered the same fate in the last ten years.

  “I’m staying here for a while,” he said. He watched Dillon register his answer.

  “What about Jody?” Julianna asked.

  “Jody’s mom is coming to get her as soon as she can get a plane,” Gray explained.

  “Then we’re going to Australia. I’m going to pet a kangaroo,” Jody told them.

  “Ever ride one?” Dillon asked. At the shake of the little girl’s head, he launched into a story about an Australian jackeroo in the outback who was so nearsighted he couldn’t tell the difference between a horse and a kangaroo, so he rode a kangaroo to muster cattle until his best friend pointed it out to him.

  “ ‘S’truth,’ the jackeroo told his friend. That explains why I never could learn to post his blooming trot!”’

  The little girl squealed with laughter, and Julianna and Gray clapped.

  “That was your good-night story,” Gray told Jody. “I’m afraid it’s been a long day, and it’s late by mainland time.”

  Jody made a face, but she got up obediently. “I’m kind of big to kiss good-night, but I don’t mind if you want to,” she said, going first to Gray.

  He hugged her, kissing her cheek tenderly. Then she came to Julianna. “You can, too,” she said magnanimously.

  Julianna felt her breath catch in her throat. She leaned over and brushed her lips across Jody’s petal-soft cheek. The little girl went on to Dillon, who gave her an encouraging hug.

  “I’m gonna write this whole day down. Tomorrow,” Jody added before she disappeared into the bedroom.

  Dillon rose and stretched. “I think I’ll take a stroll.”

  “Where can you stroll to in this weather?” Julianna asked, trying to recover her equilibrium.

  He grinned and ran a hand through his brown curls. “I thought I’d nip into the pub downstairs. My shout if you come.”

  “Shout?” Julianna asked, raising one eyebrow.

  “I’ll buy,” he translated.

  She was tempted for a moment. If she spent the evening downstairs in the bar with Dillon, she wouldn’t have to face being alone with Gray. Neither would she be fit company for Dillon, however. The day had exhausted her.

  “Thanks, but I’m going to bed.”

  “Gray?” Dillon asked.

  “It’s been a long day for me, too,” Gray said.

  Dillon reached for his hat, then thought better of it when water dripped off the brim. “Good-oh,” he said, picking up a key.

  Julianna listened to the sound of the door closing behind him and willed herself to stand. She and Gray were alone, and the past was sitting between them as if it had occurred just moments ago, instead of a decade. She knew that if she stayed, they would talk about it. And how could talking help? Still, she couldn’t move.

  “Despite what you’re thinking, I didn’t come to Hawaii to torture you with old memories.”

  Julianna knew Gray wasn’t reading her mind. She could well believe that her feelings showed plainly on her face. She didn’t have the strength to disguise them. “Why did you come, then?”

  He shrugged to give himself time. His reasons for coming were blurred now. He wondered if he had ever understood them clearly. “I came because I wanted to be sure you were all right. I wanted to see for myself that you were.”

  She didn’t challenge him. She knew there had been other reasons, too, and she was sure she would hear them eventually. Apparently he was going to take them one at a time. “Is your mind at rest now?”

  “You’re a successful woman.”

  “You didn’t expect that, did you?”

  He wanted to protest, but he couldn’t. “I don’t know what I expected. I knew you were a survivor. I knew the kind of courage you had, and the intelligence. But you left Granger Junction with nothing except the clothes on your back and what was left of the money you’d saved all those years for college. You didn’t even have a high school diploma.”

  “Eventually I got my G.E.D., but you don’t need a high school diploma for the kinds of jobs I took. There’s al
ways work if you’re not choosy.”

  “You could rise above anything, couldn’t you?”

  “If you’d really thought about it, you would have known that.”

  Gray leaned forward, tension in the lines of his body. “I did think about it. Don’t patronize me, Julianna. Do you think I just forgot about you?”

  She chose her words carefully, excising the ones that were purposely meant to hurt him. The ones that were left were little better.

  “I think,” she said slowly, “that you felt responsible for me and for what happened. But when we were married, I don’t think you ever once saw me for the person I really was.”

  “You’ve forgotten a lot of our past, then.”

  She went on as if he hadn’t interrupted. “If, in all these years, you thought about what I might have become, you pictured me like my mother or my sister. Deep down, you never believed I’d be anything except poor white trash.”

  “Would I have married you if I’d believed that?”

  “When it comes right down to it, Gray, you’re a Mississippi Sheridan. That speaks for itself.”

  Silver eyes flashed in a face that had suddenly gone pale with anger. “The beautiful lady has developed the tongue of a viper.”

  “Two more things you didn’t expect.”

  “You’re right. I never expected either,” he agreed. “But I’d trade the outwardly beautiful Julianna for Julie Ann. She was beautiful on the inside.”

  “I imagine you would. Sometimes I would, too. But Julie Ann’s been dead for a long time.” She closed her eyes and realized just how tired she was.

  “I’m married to a stranger.”

  “How could you have thought otherwise?” She opened her eyes and got to her feet. Without thinking of the consequences, she moved to the window and drew the drapes to look down at the scene below. She tried to swallow her fear. Rain slashed against buildings, blown by the wind. In the distance, golden streaks of lightning jolted the barely discernible line where the sea and night sky met. “Why didn’t you divorce me?”

  Gray saw her wince at a crack of thunder. He was too angry to care. “I thought about it a hundred times. There just didn’t seem to be any reason to make it legal. You were gone. We didn’t have to live together as husband and wife.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “What would you like me to say? That I was in mourning for you? That I prayed you’d come back so we could make a fresh start?”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  “There was just no reason to go through the mess a divorce would have been.” He got up and came to stand beside her.

  “I imagine being married to a nonresident wife had some advantages.”

  He didn’t pretend. “It did.”

  “And in all these years, you never met anyone you wanted to marry? You never got tempted to give up the charade of being a married man?”

  “I didn’t want a serious relationship.”

  She nodded. “So in some ways it was an ideal situation.”

  He laughed mirthlessly. “I’d never call it ideal. Let’s just say that it had its compensations.”

  “And now?”

  He was still angry, but even in his anger, he didn’t want to say the next words without looking her in the eyes. He put his hand on her shoulder and forced her to turn to him.

  “Now there is someone I’m becoming serious about. I want a divorce.”

  She added more unsorted feelings to the jumble inside her. She shrugged one shoulder, but he didn’t remove his hand. She felt the connection to him through her whole body. The incongruity was a bad joke. Her husband had just asked her for a divorce, and at the very moment when she was aware of him in a way she had never wanted to be again.

  She tried to summon up more anger. “You came all this way to tell me? Ten years and thousands of miles, Gray? Your attorney could have sent me a letter years ago.”

  “You didn’t leave a forwarding address.”

  “Funny thing, though, you found me when you needed to, didn’t you?”

  “I found you through a fluke. And coming to you directly seemed like the right thing to do. I want to clear up one part of my life before I start another.”

  “Some things can’t be cleared up.” Her attempt at more anger failed. She heard the sadness in her voice. “Do you want me to tell you I don’t hate you? I can’t tell you that any more than I can tell you I do.”

  “What can you tell me?” His fingers relaxed, and he moved his hand to her cheek, touching it briefly. His anger was gone, too, replaced by an ache he had brought on himself.

  “I don’t know. It’s been ten years, but it seems like yesterday.”

  “Does it help to know I feel that way, too?”

  She shook her head.

  “I want peace between us,” he said.

  She stepped back, afraid he might touch her again.

  “Julianna?”

  “I wish I could give it to you,” she said, smiling sadly. “But the truth is, Gray, there are some things even a Sheridan can’t have.”