From Glowing Embers (15 page)

He cupped her face in his hands and bent to touch his lips to hers. “I’m going to try and make you happy, too.”

“You already have.”

“Don’t settle for so little. I can do even better.” He brushed his lips against hers once, then again, pulling her closer as he did. She could feel the strength and security of his arms around her, and the enticing pressure of his body against hers. She stroked her hands up the front of his coat and clasped them around the back of his neck, straining to deepen the kiss until they were both breathless.

“Can you do even better than that?” she asked when he finally broke away.

“Would you like to see?”

“Yes.”

“Then come with me.”

Without warning, she was afraid. Julie Ann Mason had lived in a world of sadness relieved only by her dreams. Now a better life was at her fingertips, but nothing in her past could assure her that any of it would last. She hadn’t been born for this kind of happiness.

Gray seemed to read the fear in her eyes. “Don’t be afraid, Julie Ann.”

She nodded, but she didn’t follow when he turned toward the beach house.

“Are you coming?” he asked, turning his head to look at her with eyes that saw everything.

She was mute, torn between her longing to believe in their future and her fear.

“Take your time,” he said, turning away. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

She watched him walk along the shoreline, his back straight, his head thrown back against the rising winter wind. She took a tentative step toward him, but the wind seemed to hold her in place. She could move forward and claim what Gray had offered, or she could hang back and be a victim of her past.

“Gray, wait.”

The wind blew her words away. Julie Ann’s hands came up as if to challenge the forces that kept them apart, but they fell into empty space. Nothing was keeping them apart except her doubts.

Then she was running, calling his name so he could hear her.

“Gray?”

He waited, but he didn’t face her.

“Gray, I love you!”

This time he turned, holding out his arms. Fiercely she circled her arms around his waist and buried her head against his shoulder. “I love you,” she repeated. “I love you.”

In those seconds as he held her close, and in the long night ahead, Julie Ann began to believe that both love and happiness were only as far away as the man she had married.

TEN YEARS LATER,
in a hotel dining room thousands of miles away from Granger Inlet, Julianna wondered how she could ever have believed something so impossible.

“SO YOU’LL COME
, too?” Gray snapped the lock on his suitcase and straightened to face Dillon.

“Might as well watch two storms gather force as one.”

Gray knew the other man was referring to his relationship with Julianna. He wanted to refute the analogy, but unfortunately it was too true. He wondered which storm would unleash its full power first.

The door opened, and Julianna came into the suite. She avoided his eyes, stepping around him to go into the bedroom to join Jody. Gray wondered what she had been thinking as she finished her breakfast alone. Her tormented expression was a clue. He thrust his suitcase in the corner by the door and wondered if facing their past was going to be worth the pain for either of them.

Everyone was ready when the phone rang to announce the arrival of the van. Gray had tipped their driver well the day before and asked him to return for them this morning. Now the man stood with his umbrella poised over the side door as, one by one, they ran under the hotel archway and climbed into the van.

“Deja vu.” Julianna checked Jody’s seat belt to be sure it was tight enough before she sat beside her. “Do you really think he’s going to be able to get through?” She leaned forward to get Gray’s attention, speaking to him for the first time since breakfast.

“I asked him. He said, ‘Little rain, little wind, no big deal.’“ He smiled reassuringly.

“Is it far?”

“Apparently not.”

She was curious why he didn’t seem to know for sure. “You’ve never been there?”

“This is my first trip to the islands.”

The driver got in and slammed the door behind him. In a moment they were moving slowly through the rain-deluged streets.

Gray knew that Julianna wouldn’t ask any more questions, but he also knew she must be wondering about the woman she might soon be meeting. “Paige’s father owns property all over the world. She acts as manager for him. The house we’re going to is just one of his holdings. She’s coming here to assess it for possible sale.”

“Paige?”

He was surprised by her tone of voice. She sounded startled. “Paige Duvall. I’ve known her for years.”

“I know.”

Now
he
was startled. During the brief time they had lived as husband and wife he had never introduced Julie Ann to Paige. All his friendships had fallen by the wayside. There had been too much to concentrate on: his studies; his failing marriage; his growing sense of frustration. “How do you know about Paige?” he asked. “I don’t think the two of you ever met.”

She smiled without warmth. “Your father made sure I knew about her.”

Gray wanted to question Julianna further, but he knew he had to wait for a better time. He started to turn away, but she stopped him. “Is Paige the woman you might marry?”

He nodded briefly, perplexed by the deepening of her humorless smile.

“I’ll bet the judge is overjoyed.”

“Paige may not even be there. She’s been in Europe, but last time I spoke to her, she was supposed to arrive this morning. Unless she took an earlier flight, she probably won’t be able to get here until the hurr—storm blows over.”

Now Julianna thought she understood Gray’s generosity in inviting her to come along. Apparently there wasn’t much chance that his wife and his lover would meet. “Do you have a key?”

“I can get us in.”

The van stalled twice, once at a traffic light that had short-circuited into a permanent red and once in the middle of an intersection. There was little traffic on the roads. An occasional police car or delivery truck braved the rain, but the rest of the island’s occupants seemed content to hole up in whatever niche they had found.

The van inched along Kalakaua Avenue past Kapiolani Park and on to Diamond Head Road. Julianna had traveled this way often enough to know the views that would have awaited them if the rain hadn’t washed away all color and form. She pictured the turquoise ocean with its purple coves, disturbed now by the constant harassment of the wind. She thought of her own cottage on Kauai and wondered how it would fare.

“We get there soon,” the driver told Gray.

Gray stared through the opaque veil of rain, willing his eyes to distinguish the shapes of houses. The road they were on hugged what seemed to be the edge of a cliff. He said a silent prayer that Paige’s house was down a side road away from the ocean. If it wasn’t, the wind would be an overwhelming force if Eve struck the island.

To his relief, the driver crept to a halt, then made a left turn and followed another road away from the coast. He stopped a minute later. “Here.”

Gray got a glimpse of blond brick and dark wood. And glass—much more glass than he had hoped to see. Trees were bending in the wind, along with a confusion of shrubs and vines that seemed barely able to hold their own in the torrential downpour. Over the moaning of the wind he could hear the maniacal clanging of wind chimes beating against the side of the house.

“I’m going to see if I can get us inside,” Gray told the others.

“Care for some help?” Dillon asked.

Gray shot him a reluctant grin. “Know how to pick a lock?”

Both men refused the driver’s umbrella; they were wearing casual clothes and knew they were destined to be soaked in seconds with or without any “protection.” By the time they got to the front porch, their prediction had come true.

Gray listened to the peals of the doorbell echo through the silent house. “No one’s home,” he told Dillon. He slipped a credit card out of his wallet and inserted it along the side of the ornately carved wooden door. With a minimal amount of coaxing, the knob turned and the door swung open. “Remind me to talk to Paige about security if she ever gets here.”

They found an umbrella in a stand by the front door and unfurled it for the trip back to the van. Gray took Jody, while the driver wrestled with their luggage. Julianna was last to make the trip. It wasn’t until they were halfway down the path that Gray looked up to see the familiar figure of a woman standing on the front porch.

“Gray!”

He watched the slim woman launch herself into the rain, her short dark hair and thin dress instantly plastered to her olive skin. Paige was in his arms in a second. “I was in the back of the house. I thought I was going to have to ride this out alone!” She clasped her hands around his waist.

Gray put one arm around Paige and held her still. He felt rather than saw Julianna leave the shelter of the umbrella and make her own way to the house.

PAIGE DUVALL WAS
one of the most beautiful women Julianna had ever seen—and she had become used to beautiful women in her years in the fashion industry. Even with her black hair dripping water and her clothes clinging to her slender body, Paige had a sophisticated allure that had defied Mother Nature’s attempts to destroy it.

Later, in white linen pants teamed with a blood-red silk blouse, and with her stylishly cut hair dry and falling precisely as it must have the last time she walked out of her stylist’s salon, she had been almost too perfect to believe. Julianna hadn’t felt intimidated by another woman’s beauty in too many years to count. She thought she held her own, in most company, but one look at Paige had erased that thought from her mind.

She hadn’t seen intimidation in Paige’s eyes when they’d been introduced. She had seen surprise but nothing more before Paige’s perfect manners—which matched her perfect face and body—had taken over. Paige had tried to make her welcome, even as she had firmly planted herself at Gray’s side.

If Paige had been momentarily surprised that her fiancé’s wife was going to be visiting, she hadn’t allowed it to fluster her. She had calmly taken stock of the situation, added up beds and social conventions, and told the men to put Julianna’s and Jody’s suitcases in her own bedroom. She had taken one of the smaller guest rooms and given Gray and Dillon the other.

Still, it had been perfectly clear to Julianna that before she had been confronted with guests, Paige had intended a far different sleeping arrangement.

Now, as Julianna unpacked a suitcase, she wondered what explanation Gray was giving Paige for her presence. How was he going to explain that he had not only offered the sanctuary of Paige’s house to his long-lost wife, but he had also manipulated the situation so that Julianna had been forced to accept?

Lifting her head at a knock on the door, she watched as Paige came in and shut the door behind her. “May I get you anything else?” Paige asked. “Do you need more hangers?”

“Thanks, but I don’t expect to be here long. Just until the storm passes.”

“That may be a while.”

Julianna met Paige’s eyes squarely. “I’ll be honest. I can’t think of any way to say this that doesn’t sound rude, but I don’t want to be here any more than I’m sure you want me to be. I’ll be leaving just as soon as I can find a place to go and a way to get there.”

Paige sat down on the edge of the double bed and stretched her legs in front of her with lazy grace. “Then since we’re being honest, I’ll take a turn. I’m not thrilled you’re here, but I’d be less thrilled if you left and Granger spent the next few days worrying about you. Worrying about you is a habit he needs to forget.”

Julianna was surprised there seemed to be no malice in Paige’s words. Paige reminded her of a sleek, indolent cat who passively watches the world go by, reaching out only occasionally—and with lightning speed—to grab what she wants, but otherwise biding her time with a tolerant, all-seeing smile. Julianna wished she could dislike her, but so far, there was nothing to dislike.

“Gray doesn’t need to worry about me—and neither do you,” Julianna added pointedly.

“I’ve found it doesn’t pay to worry, anyway.” Paige smoothed her hand down a dress Julianna had draped over the bed. “I was at your show in New Orleans. I bought two of your dresses. This reminds me of one of them.” She stood, shaking back a length of hair that brushed her cheek. “Please make yourself at home, and let me know if you need anything.”

Julianna couldn’t let Paige’s bombshell drop without further explanation. “You were at my show? Did you know who I was?”

“I guessed. Granger was in Washington, but when he returned, I told him my suspicions. From there, it wasn’t hard to verify who you really were.”

Julianna had wondered how Gray had found her. She was surprised to learn it had been through Paige. “How did you make the connection? We never met. You’d never even seen me.”

“Granger has a picture of you.” Paige stopped, as if she wished she hadn’t revealed that. Shrugging, she went on. “You’ve changed, of course, but I thought there was enough of a resemblance to have it checked out, especially when one of your models told me you were from Mississippi.”

Apparently, Paige had gone to some trouble to discover her identity. Julianna wondered why. She didn’t realize she had spoken the question out loud until Paige answered.

“Granger’s caught in a time warp. You’re the only one who can help him out of it.”

“What makes you think I want to?”

“You owe it to him.”

“I could tell you a few things about debts.”

“Don’t tell me, tell Granger.” Paige turned to the door, but not before Julianna saw some emotion darken her huge, almond eyes. “Tell Granger and set him free, Julianna. He deserves at least that much. And so do you.”

“Bloody oath!”

Gray laughed at the latest entry in Dillon’s string of curses, regretting his action an instant later when he swallowed rain hurled at him by a furious gust of wind.