From Glowing Embers (18 page)

Gray lifted his hands to rest them on her shoulders, then stopped himself. He knew she wouldn’t welcome his touch, even for comfort. “Why didn’t you tell me exactly what he was doing? You never told me anything specific.”

She let out her breath slowly. It didn’t help. “At first I just didn’t want you to know the things your own father was capable of. Then I began to see that it didn’t matter, because you wouldn’t have believed me, anyway. You didn’t want to believe me. It made your life too difficult.”

Gray tried to call back the years to see if there was any truth in what she said. “You mattered to me,” he said finally. “I was young and overworked, but I was trying to do what was best for both of us. Maybe I didn’t want to hear the truth, but if you’d told me exactly what was going on, I would have had you out of there in a heartbeat.”

Julianna lifted her chin. “You knew me better than anybody in the world. You should have known I never would have complained without reason.”

“I thought you were lonely. You’d had such a hard time with the pregnancy, and you didn’t have any friends in Granger Junction. I even called your doctor to see what he thought, and he said depression was perfectly natural.”

“Under the circumstances, it certainly was.”

“He told me something else, too. He said you were in real danger of losing the baby, and that you had to have rest and quiet or you would miscarry for sure.”

“The man was a prophet.”

Gray heard the pain in her voice. “I thought that once the baby was born and I was out of school, we’d be able to put everything behind us. I wrote, trying to make you understand.”

“I understood, all right.”

“The day I came home after graduation, I couldn’t think about anything except how angry I was. I’d had such plans. I’d even gotten a friend’s apartment so we could spend a few days alone before we went back to Granger Junction. And then you didn’t show up. At first I wanted to shake you. Then I took one look at you and knew something terrible was wrong.”

Her proud stance altered. Gray saw her sag under the weight of what was to come. “We both know what happened then,” she interrupted. “Please, let’s not go over it now.”

“My words or yours, Julianna,” he went on relentlessly. When she didn’t—or couldn’t—answer, he began to detail their nightmare.

GRAY TOOK THE
stairs of his parents house two at a time. “Julie Ann!” he yelled. “Where the hell are you?” He heard his mother’s shocked gasp behind him, but he was too angry to care. He’d sat through the long, grueling graduation ceremonies, seething over Julie Ann’s absence. He’d spent the next morning throwing clothes into suitcases and books into boxes; then he had driven home at breakneck speed to confront her.

For five months he had worked harder than he’d known it was possible, and for what? For a marriage Julie Ann evidently didn’t give a hoot about. She hadn’t written once; half the time she hadn’t even come to the phone when he’d called. She’d spent the last months sulking because their living arrangement was less than perfect. She had never once tried to understand that he was doing the best he could both for them and their child.

By the time Gray flung his bedroom door open, he was furious. The room was so dark that for a moment he thought he was alone. He found his way to the dresser and flicked on a lamp, and it was then that he saw Julie Ann for the first time in a month. She was sitting in a chair in the corner, her hands folded. His heart lodged in his throat at the sight.

Her delicately boned body was distended and swollen, her complexion a pasty white. Her hair, which she had begun to grow longer for him, hung lifelessly around her face, but her eyes were the greatest shock. Behind her wire-frame glasses, they stared at him as if he were a stranger.

“What are you doing sitting in a dark room?” He punctuated his question by going to the window to open the blinds.

“Is that one of the things I’m not supposed to do?” It was the same voice he remembered and loved, but there was a wistful quality to her question that frightened him.

“You can do what you want, Julie Ann. I just wondered why.”

“In the darkness I can disappear.”

He sat down on the bed opposite her. His anger was gone. This wasn’t a sulking child. Something was terribly wrong. “If you disappear, what will I do?” He reached for her hand.

She looked surprised when he touched her. Her gaze dropped, as if she had to see his hand covering hers to believe it. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”

“Didn’t my parents tell you?”

She smiled a little, and it was the strangest smile he had ever seen. “Your father told me you’d be home later this week.”

“You must have misunderstood him.”

She raised her eyes to his, and he was shaken by the sadness in them. “Of course,” she murmured. “I misunderstood.”

“Why didn’t you come to my graduation?”

“I wasn’t well enough.”

He nodded. “What does the doctor say?”

“He doesn’t talk much to me. He talks to your parents.”

“My father told me you’d had a few setbacks, but that you were coming along fine. He said he tried to talk you into coming to graduation.”

For the first time Gray saw a spark of life in her eyes. “Your father is a liar,” she said, pulling her hand away from his. “Among other things. He told me he didn’t want me there, and that you didn’t, either.”

Gray felt his anger returning. “My father’s given you a home,” he reminded her. “If it weren’t for my father, I wouldn’t have my degree now, and I wouldn’t be able to support you and the baby in any kind of comfort!”

She shut her eyes, and when she opened them, they were carefully blank. She didn’t answer.

Gray forced himself to speak calmly. “I don’t want to fight about my father. I don’t want to fight about anything.”

“That would be easiest,” she agreed.

“I had an apartment for us in Oxford for a few days. I thought we needed some time alone.” He paused. “We won’t have any time alone again for a long time after the baby comes.”

“The baby’s not due for two months. After we find a place to live, we’ll have that time.”

He was hurt by the lack of enthusiasm in her voice. She was simply stating the facts. He got to his feet. “I wasn’t planning to find another place to live. My parents told me that we can stay here as long as we want. My father’s offered me a job in his office.”

“I won’t live here, and I won’t let them raise my child.”

He didn’t understand the last part of her statement, but the first part was perfectly clear. “You won’t even talk about it?”

“I won’t live here.”

He wanted to yell at her, to break through the barriers she’d erected, but he knew if he did, his parents would hear every word. He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Let’s go for a drive.”

“I’m not feeling well.”

“One minute you tell me you don’t want to stay here, and the next I can’t get you to leave.”

She stood, too, and she clasped her swollen belly as if to protect it. “Where did you want to go?”

She looked so defenseless that his anger turned into frustration. He had to find a way to get through to her. The pregnancy had drained everything good out of her, leaving her filled with fears and suspicions. He wanted the old Julie Ann back, and he knew the one place that might help revive her.

“Let’s go down to the beach house. We’ll stay a couple of days. You can lie out in the sun, and I’ll take care of you. It’ll be good for both of us.”

“The beach house?”

He smiled and reached over to touch her cheek. “Yeah, remember? We spent our wedding night there.”

She flinched.

He jerked his hand back. “Fine. Forget I asked.” He turned to leave, but her voice stopped him.

“Gray?”

He faced her again. “Yeah?”

“I’ll go.”

He wanted to tell her that he didn’t want to go anymore, that her disinterest had killed his pleasure in being alone with her, but her eyes were so sad he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her any more.

The drive down to Granger Inlet was silent. Julie Ann looked out the window as if she was counting every passing mile. Gray concentrated on his driving, trying not to think about the problems between them. He still had faith they could fix whatever was wrong. If he could just be alone with Julie Ann for a few days, he knew he could get through to her.

They stopped once, for groceries, and it was dark by the time they drove up to the beach house. Sometime during the last few miles Julie Ann had fallen asleep, and when Gray turned off the engine she didn’t wake up. He got out and came around to help her, stooping after he’d opened her door to caress her cheek. “Julie Ann,” he called softly. “Wake up, sweetheart.”

When her eyes opened she smiled at him, reaching out as if for a hug, but at the last moment—as if she had finally woken up—she stopped, and her hands dropped into her lap.

Gray stepped back to give her room to get out, but not before he’d realized just how much he longed to have her love and trust again. He had missed her these last months, missed her more than he’d expected and in ways that surprised him. He had wished many times that the circumstances of their marriage were different, but never once, through all the difficult times away from her, had he wished that they hadn’t gotten married.

Somewhere along the path of their precarious relationship, he had given her his heart.

“I THINK I
realized then that I loved you, although the word love probably didn’t occur to me,” Gray told Julianna. She was still facing away from him, gazing into the Hawaiian night, and she held herself stiffly, afraid she might inadvertently touch him.

“Why are you telling me this now? Do you think it changes anything that happened?” Julianna tried to draw farther away, but there was no place to go.

“We’ve got to be completely honest.”

“You didn’t love me! Maybe you’ve tried to convince yourself that what you felt back then was love, but it wasn’t. Maybe you felt pity, maybe you felt responsible for getting me pregnant, but that was it.”

“I loved you, and you loved me.”

She swallowed twice, trying to deny the truth of the last, but she couldn’t. She
had
loved him. And all his betrayals had been that much worse because she had. “I loved you, but I was a fool.”

“When did you stop loving me? Was it before I graduated? Because by the time I came home for good and we went to the beach house, I was sure you hated me.”

“I didn’t hate you then,” she said before she could stop herself.

“Tell me, then,” he insisted softly. “Tell me how it was for you. I have to understand.”

JULIE ANN FOLLOWED
Gray into the beach house. He had refused to let her carry anything, insisting that she go right upstairs and lie down. She reclined on the sofa while he unpacked groceries and clothes, sitting up only when he set a glass of milk on the table in front of her.

“There’s more where that came from,” he told her as she finished the last sip.

“You mean you brought a cow with us?”

He laughed. “How about something to eat?”

“I don’t think so.” She lay back down again.

“You know, if you can make jokes, you can also smile.” Gray sat on the edge of the sofa, facing her. He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes.

She wondered how long it had been since she’d had anything to smile about. Even though life had always been a serious proposition, somehow she had managed to look on the bright side. If there was no bright side, she had been able to look forward to a time when things would be better. In the last months there had been no bright side and no real hope for the future. The very best she could expect would be a clean escape from Granger Junction with her baby. That thought, as sad as it was, was the only thing that had kept her going.

But it couldn’t make her smile.

Gray continued to stroke her hair. “I know it’s been rough, sweetheart, but it’s been rough for me, too.”

If he knew how rough life had been for her, then he was as sadistic as his father for making her endure it. Julie Ann didn’t want to believe that Gray knew what she’d endured, but it was hard to believe otherwise. He was the son of the man who had tormented her. He had grown up in that house. How could he not know what his father was capable of?

She tested him. “If you know how rough it’s been, Gray, then you can’t really want me to continue living with your parents.”

“This isn’t the best time to talk about that. Let’s take it easy for a few days before we make any plans.”

Julie Ann closed her eyes, trying to shut him out. She felt Gray get up and move away, and she fell asleep soon after. She awoke to find a simple dinner of cheese and fruit on the table in front of her. Gray was nowhere to be seen.

She forced herself to eat a few bites of cheese and a handful of grapes. No matter how she felt, she knew she had a baby to nourish. When Gray didn’t reappear, she walked through the house looking for him. She finally spotted him through the front bedroom window. He was down at the beach, sitting on the sand.

What was he thinking? Was he sorry he’d trapped himself into spending time alone with her? Was he wondering how he was going to broach the subject of a divorce?

She had resisted Judge Sheridan’s prediction as long as she could, but slowly she had come to believe it was true. She wasn’t sure Gray had told his father as much, but she imagined divorce was on Gray’s mind. What better solution for their mutual unhappiness? He had felt a responsibility for her and for her baby, both of which he had fulfilled by marrying her. Once the baby was born, he could pay her off with an adequate divorce settlement and raise the child himself.

But she wasn’t going to let him. She loved the child inside her with a passion she had only, until now, reserved for the child’s father. If she couldn’t have Gray, she would have his baby. She would find a way to give her child everything it needed, but most of all, she would give it all the love that no one else had ever wanted.