From Glowing Embers (14 page)

Gray waited until the meal was half-finished before he broached the subject of the rest of the day. He knew that in order to get Julianna to do what he wanted, timing was all-important.

“We’ve got some time before checkout. Dillon, what are your plans?” He lifted his coffee cup and sipped, looking around the table as he did. His eyes settled on Julianna, who was pushing a half-eaten omelet around her plate.

Dillon shrugged. “There’ll be a shelter somewhere, I reckon.”

“I was hoping you’d help me with something.”

“If I can.”

“I’d like you to help me persuade Julianna to come with Jody and me, and I’d like you to come, too. My friend has plenty of room at her house, and no matter what happens with the storm, we’ll all be safe there.”

Julianna looked up from her plate to find Gray watching her. “You have a friend in Honolulu?”

“I’m supposed to meet her at her house today.”

Julianna understood the situation immediately. If Gray had been planning to stay with a woman, it could only be the woman he was “becoming serious about.” “And you want me to stay in her house?”

His eyes didn’t falter. “That’s right.”

She wanted to tell him exactly what she thought of his offer, but she couldn’t, not with Jody and Dillon at the table. “I believe I’d be more comfortable somewhere else.”

“Where? The shelters are going to be packed solid, and you can’t call anyone you know, because the lines are down.”

“I imagine this hotel will let me stay in the lobby, if nowhere else.”

Dillon destroyed that theory. “I asked. They’ve already promised every inch of space they have.”

“I’ll find a place.”

Gray wasn’t going to back down. Julianna was his wife, even though their marriage had been nothing more than a legality for a decade. He felt responsible for her safety, and he felt a connection to her that hadn’t been destroyed by their years of separation. They would ride out this storm together. “Your place is with me,” he told her.

Surprisingly, Dillon seemed to agree. “Look,” he said, “this is none of my affair, but it seems to me that Gray’s got a point. You can’t be running around in this weather looking for any place that’ll have you. You need to settle in and wait the storm out. We all do.”

Julianna’s eyes flashed to Jody, who was frowning.

“Julianna,” Jody asked, “don’t you like Gray?” Her frown said plainly that if Julianna didn’t like him, Jody might not like him anymore, either.

Julianna realized that the trap was closing around her. “Gray is a nice man.”

“Then why won’t you come with us?’’ Jody stuck her lip out. “Don’t you like me?”

“I like you very much.” Julianna saw that her words weren’t going to reassure Jody. “
Very
much.”

“I thought we were going to be scared together.”

Gray let several seconds tick by before he broke the silence. He leaned back in his chair, but the pose was deceptive. There was nothing relaxed about him. “Dillon, if Julianna doesn’t want to come, you’re still invited.”

“I’ll be staying with Julianna,” Dillon answered.

Julianna saw that her choice was perfectly clear. If she refused to go, not only would Dillon not have a comfortable place to wait out the storm, but Jody would see her refusal as a betrayal. “This was very clever of you,” she said finally, turning back to Gray.

“I want you to come.” His eyes said the rest.
I
was willing to do whatever I had to.

“Why?” she asked softly.

He didn’t dare search deeper than he already had for an answer. Telling himself that she was still his responsibility was as much of the truth as he wanted to know. “There was another storm once,” he said just as softly. “I let you down then. Do you think I could do it again?”

She drew in a sharp breath to tell him how little his guilty conscience mattered to her, but the pain in his eyes stopped the words rising in her throat. “Do you truly believe this can change the past?”

“I’m not asking for a miracle.”

“What
are
you asking for?”

“I’m asking you to come with us. I’m asking you to let me know for sure that you’re safe.”

She knew that if she said yes, that if she spent the next day—or days—with him, they would be prisoners of more than the storm. And yet weren’t they already prisoners of the life they’d shared? Had ten years and thousands of miles changed that? Or had their daughter’s death bound them together in a way that time and distance could never overcome?

“What will your friend say if you descend on her with all of us in tow?” she asked at last.

“She may not even be there, but if she is, she’ll understand.”

Julianna doubted that very much. What woman would be understanding about her lover’s wife coming to visit? She wondered what kind of woman Gray had chosen. Julie Ann Mason had been thrust on him, but now he had chosen someone of his own free will.

She felt an unreasonable, unfathomable flash of jealousy.

“Please come.” Gray reached across the table and touched her hand. The touch was meant to be reassuring, nothing more, but it lingered on her skin.

For the first time since she had seen Gray on the plane, she wanted to finish what he had started. She didn’t know how it would happen, but what was between them had to be resolved if she was ever to be whole again. “All right,” she said. “I’ll come, too. It sounds like it will be better for everyone.”

Jody had watched the exchange, her smooth forehead wrinkled in concern. “Why are you both so sad?”

Julianna didn’t know how to respond. Gray held her gaze as he spoke for them both. “Sometimes things just don’t turn out like they’re supposed to, Jody. Then, when people think about what they’d hoped would happen, well, it can make them sad.”

“What was supposed to happen?” Jody asked.

“I’ll tell you what’s supposed to happen,” Dillon interrupted, pushing his chair back. “You’re supposed to show me how to play the video games in the arcade up by the pool. I can’t get the hang of them by myself.”

Julianna watched Dillon escort a chattering Jody from the dining room. “What
was
supposed to happen?” she asked Gray, her eyes still on the doorway even after the others had disappeared into the lobby. “When you married me ten years ago, what did you hope would happen?”

“Don’t you know?”

She turned back to him. “No.”

“In spite of everything, I’d hoped we’d make each other happy.”

“We never really had a chance, did we?”

“Do you remember our wedding night?”

Like Ellie’s death, their wedding night was a memory too painful to bear close scrutiny. “I’ve tried not to.”

“We had a chance.” Gray dropped his napkin on his plate and stood. “But maybe it’s been easier for both of us to believe that we didn’t.”

Julianna watched him weave his way through the crowded dining room. Despite her best efforts to keep the past where it belonged, she wondered if he was right.

“UNTIL DEATH DO
us part.” Gray clasped the gold chain of the necklace he had bought for Julie Ann, ignoring the disapproving trifocaled gaze of the justice of the peace. Julie Ann could see that the old man would have much preferred the standard gold ring.

“Then with the power invested in me by the state of Alabama, I hereby pronounce you husband and wife.” The old man peeked over his glasses. “You may kiss the bride.”

Julie Ann watched Gray bend toward her. She closed her eyes as his lips met hers, but not before she recognized the look of shock on his face. She was sure it matched her own. She was a married woman. It didn’t seem possible.

They signed the license and shook hands with the J.P. and his wife, but it wasn’t until they were in Gray’s car driving in the direction of the interstate that would take them back to Mississippi that the enormity of the step she had just taken hit Julie Ann.

“How are you feeling?” Gray asked.

She wanted to detail her confusion, her doubts, but she knew he was talking about something more concrete. When she’d awakened for the second time that morning she had found Gray gone. For a moment she’d wondered if she had only dreamed that he had come for her. Then the front door had opened and Gray had been there again. He had been at the corner service station calling obstetricians, and he had made an emergency appointment for her with one of Jackson’s best, bypassing the public health clinic where she had been treated up to that point.

The doctor had taken one look at her and prescribed medication for her nausea, vitamins for her anemia and four hours of bed rest every day. For starters.

She had taken the medication immediately, and by the time they got to Alabama—the closest state with no waiting period—it had begun to help. When they stopped for lunch it was the first time in weeks Julie Ann had been able to eat and retain a small meal. She wondered, though, how much of it was the drug and how much of it was Gray’s support. From the moment she had walked into her living room and seen him standing there, she had no longer been alone.

She had needed him so much, but had she done the right thing?

“Sweetheart, you look like you’re going to jump out the window. Calm down.” Gray reached over and put his hand on the nape of her neck. His long fingers began to ease the tension in her muscles as he spoke. “Short of divorce, there’s no way to change what we’ve done today.”

“What have we done?”

“What we had to do.”

She knew he was right, but she didn’t like having it put so bluntly. Both of them deserved so much more. She worried out loud. “Your father said he’d cut you off with nothing if you married me.”

“Let him.”

“I don’t think I can face him tonight, or your mother, either.”

“You don’t have to.”

Julie Ann tried to smile. “It’s a little cold for me to stay in the car while you tell your parents.”

His fingers threaded up into her hair, and he tugged gently before he moved his hand back to the steering wheel. “We’re not going to Granger Junction. I’ll talk to my parents tomorrow, but this night’s going to be ours.”

She hardly knew what to say. Tentatively she rested her fingers on his cheek. “I’m glad.”

Before she could pull her hand away, he turned his head and kissed her fingertips. “You know, you could have done a lot worse than marry me.”

“I could have done a lot better than to force you into it.”

“Nobody forced me. Don’t ever say that again.”

“We’re married because I’m pregnant.”

“We’re married because two months ago we expressed feelings we had for each other, and they resulted in a baby. If the feelings hadn’t been there then, the baby wouldn’t be here now.”

Something warm and wonderful began to grow inside her, where even now their child was growing. “What a nice way to think of it,” she said, her voice huskier than usual. “I want this baby. I don’t want to think of her as a mistake.”

“Her?” He reached down and put his hand on Julie Ann’s abdomen. “Him.”

His hand was spreading the warmth that had filled her at his words. Gray had slept beside her through the remainder of the early morning, but she hadn’t felt well enough to encourage more, and he hadn’t seemed interested, anyway. Now she realized that tonight was their wedding night.

He seemed to read her mind. “Your job right now is to make sure our little her or him grows strong and healthy. We’ve got to get you well, and that means you’re going to rest and eat. Period.”

“Period?”

He grinned. “No hanky-panky.”

“Define hanky-panky.”

“Hanky-panky: that activity which a new husband wants to indulge in frequently with his new wife.”

She chuckled, holding his hand against her when he started to move it. “Would you like to hear my definition?”

“I can’t wait.”

“Hanky-panky: that activity which the obstetrician advised the new wife to indulge in if she felt like it.” She could feel her cheeks heat as she said the words.

His hand slipped several inches. “Shall I define goody-goody?”

“As in someone too nice to be true?”

“As in that’s the best news I’ve had since you told me you’d marry me.”

She laughed, amazed that they could be having fun together in spite of everything. In the last two months she’d begun to believe that Gray was not the person he had seemed. Now she knew better. All the feelings she had worked so hard to repress flooded through her. She loved him as she loved the child inside her. If love could make a marriage work, they were off to a good start.

The remainder of the trip passed in a blur of shared laughter and conversation. They stopped for dinner, and Julie Ann downed half a hamburger under Gray’s watchful eye. Then they resumed their drive toward the coast, arriving at the beach house by moonlight.

“Do you feel well enough to take a walk before we go inside?” He came around to open Julie Ann’s door and held out his hand.

The fresh, cool air was just what she needed after the long ride. Slipping her hand in his, she stood and let him lead her toward the beach, absorbing the beauty of the night. Feathery-plumed pampas grass and bush oleander lined their path until they stepped over a ridge and onto the brown sand beyond. The water lapping at their feet reflected a sky lit with stars; a pelican stood at attention on a pier ten feet out from the water, as if he alone guarded the inlet.

Gray’s hand tightened around Julie Ann’s, and she realized that she had just sighed. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She was all right for the first time since she had begun to suspect she was pregnant. She was with Gray.

“I’m going to try very hard,” she told him.

“Try?”

“I want you to be happy.”

He stopped and put his hands on her shoulders, then moved closer until they were only inches apart. “Why? What have I done to make you care whether I’m happy or not? Don’t be grateful to me because I married you, Julie Ann. You deserve more than I’ll ever be able to give you.”

She could read sincerity in his eyes. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, but she couldn’t make herself say the words. “No one ever cared about me before,” she said instead. “Not my mother, not my father. You’re the only person in my life who ever thought I deserved anything. If I want to make you happy, isn’t that okay?”