From Glowing Embers

by Emilie Richards

  ~ ~ ~

  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.

  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 frame
d 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.