From Glowing Embers

  ~ ~ ~

  Julianna slept and woke in cycles for the rest of the day. At dinnertime she got up to eat a cold meal prepared from the ham and sweet potatoes she had cooked the day before. Jody entertained them with plot twists for her novel-in-progress, but the adults were quiet, as if Eve had stripped away small talk and left them with nothing but their thoughts.

  They ate by candlelight, but by the time the meal was nearly over, the electricity came back on, a testament to Honolulu’s ability to cope in an emergency. Outside, the winds had died down to nothing more than occasional, halfhearted gusts, and the rain had stopped altogether. Once she’d struck land Eve had dissipated so quickly that she was no longer a tropical storm. Now she was only a bad memory.

  As they drank their first hot coffee in twenty-four hours, they listened to news broadcasts summing up Eve’s reign of terror. Low-lying areas had been hit hard, and there had been damaging floods, but there was no reported loss of life, due to ample warnings and mass evacuation.

  The floodwaters were already beginning to recede, and most of the roads away from the beaches were clear for travel. Like the majority of the infrequent hurricanes that struck Hawaii, Eve had done enough damage to call attention to herself, but not enough to rate with the typhoons that regularly struck in other parts of the Pacific. In all things, Hawaii was a moderate, gentle place.

  “So planes will start flying tomorrow afternoon.” Dillon set his coffee cup down. “It’ll be first come, first served at the airport. I’m going to get there in the morning after we’ve cleaned up the mess we made here.”

  The telephone interrupted more plans. Paige answered it, coming back a moment later to smile at Jody. “There’s a mommy on the phone,” she told the little girl. “I think she’d like to talk to you.”

  “I can’t believe they’ve not only restored our service, but they’ve already reestablished phone contact with the mainland,” Julianna said, after Gray and Jody had gone to take the call.

  “We live in an age where communication is everything. All kinds of communication,” Paige said pointedly.

  Julianna tried to ignore that message, but Dillon took it up. “Even in a place like Coober Pedy, we’ve got to be all-up straight about what’s going on. Most of the time we do it face-to-face. That’s still the best way, I reckon.”

  Julianna’s head began to throb. That afternoon as she’d repeatedly pulled herself out of the same nightmare, a desperate plan had formed. “When you go to the airport tomorrow, Dillon, I’d like to go with you. Maybe I’ll be able to get a flight to Kauai.”

  There was a silence, then the scrape of a chair. Paige got up and started to clear the table, waving Julianna back to her seat when she stood to help. “I’ll get these. You rest and talk to Dillon.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  “So maybe tomorrow you’ll be back in Coober Pedy digging opals,” Julianna said obediently, turning to face Dillon.

  “What are you doing, Julianna? When I met you, you were running, and you’re running still.” He reached across the table and covered her hand. “Nasty habit, that.”

  “An opal miner as marriage counselor?”

  “I thought I was a friend.”

  She looked at the big hand covering hers. It was callused and scarred, but strength was its most noticeable feature. A strong hand, a strong man. A good man. “Have you ever been afraid?” she asked finally.

  “Not many times. But there was once when I was sure I was going to die. I was afraid then.” He slid his free hand under hers and held it tightly cushioned between both of his, as if he were afraid she would leave before he finished.

  “I was in a cave-in. My partner Jake and I had just started tunneling out the Rainbow Fire, and I’d gone down the shaft to reposition the blower—that’s what we use to suck up dirt as we tunnel. Anyway, I got to the bottom of the hole, and everything just caved in around me. Jake was gone. He’d cautioned me not to go down while he wasn’t there, but I hadn’t listened. All I could see was a thin beam of light reaching down to the free space around my head. I knew as long as I could see the light, there’d be some air, but if I moved and the opening to the top disappeared, I’d smother in a matter of seconds.”

  Julianna couldn’t bear to think about dying that way. She shuddered, and Dillon rubbed her hand in comfort. “Jake’s not a young man, but he’s a bit of a hard case. When he gets tired, he heads for the pub. Bloody fool thinks it’ll cure anything. I stood there, afraid a sneeze would bring down the earth on top of me, and wondered if Jake was on his way back to the mine or standing at the miner’s club chug-a-lugging a Foster’s.”

  “How could you stand it?”

  “I had to trust him. In the end, that was all there was. There was no way I could save myself. I had to trust Jake would rescue me. He did, too, bless his black-hearted soul. He came back, with a Foster’s for both of us, and after he and some other miners got me out, he poured the whole bloody bottle over my head.”

  “What if he hadn’t come back?”

  “But he did.”

  Julianna fell silent. She knew what Dillon was trying to tell her.

  He squeezed her hand once more, then let it fall to the table. “I live alone,” he said, as if he were changing the subject. “I go back to my dugout at night, and I turn on my video recorder. Or if I’m lonely, I go to the pub and talk opals with the other miners, or shoot pool.”

  “I take my work home with me.”

  “Then again, maybe you like being alone.” Dillon leaned back in his chair. “Me, I guess I don’t. I stood in that shaft watching dust fill the air above me, and I wondered why Jake Donovan was the only person in the whole bloody world who was going to wonder where I was. I could have been in that corridor to hell till the heavens opened and the angels sang hosanna, and nobody would have said more than, ‘Dillon Ward must be as dry as a dingo’s tail these days. He’s never at the pub anymore. Guess he’s on the water wagon.’“ He paused. “What would they say about you, Julianna?”

  She listened to the way the now dearly familiar accent made music of her name. She wasn’t angry that he was daring to challenge her. Dillon had become a friend, just as, remarkably, Paige had become a friend, too. With that friendship had come certain rights. And certain insights.

  “I was terrified of Eve, but that was nothing compared to what I’m feeling now,” she said softly. “Can you understand, Dillon?”

  “I can, but I can better understand the way it feels to stand in a mine shaft and listen to the wind moan, knowing it moans for you alone.”

  She lifted her eyes to his. She had never known that green could be such a warm color; she had never seen more empathy. “Being with another person is no guarantee the wind will moan for them, too.”

  “Never talk to a miner about guarantees.”

  “I can’t stay with Gray when I don’t know what I feel.”

  “You told him you loved him.” Dillon sat quietly, apparently so satisfied with the effect of his words that he had no wish to say anything further.

  Paige, who had come back into the room, had a different idea. “Granger carried you into the house, and you opened your eyes,” she said from the doorway. “And you told him you loved him.”

  “I didn’t know what I was saying.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying now,” Paige corrected her.

  “Does everybody in this house think they know me better than I know myself?”

  “My mommy’s coming to get me tomorrow!” Jody yelled from the opposite doorway.

  Julianna looked up and saw Gray watching her. She wondered how much he had heard.

  “Jody’s mother has a flight arriving tomorrow at two,” he told them, his eyes still on Julianna. “I’ll be taking her to the airport.”

  “I’ll be going with you,” she said, her head thundering. She stood, but for a moment she wasn’t sure she was going to make it back to bed. “I’d like to see Jody off. Then I’m going to catch a flight home.” She
tried to smile. “You’ve had too much to put up with, Paige. You don’t need any more company.”

  She was at the door to her bedroom before she realized she wasn’t alone. Gray’s voice came from behind her.

  “So you’re leaving tomorrow.”

  She wasn’t ready for this. “I haven’t been home in months.”

  “Then a few more days won’t hurt.”

  “I want to go home.” Julianna went into the bedroom, knowing Gray would follow her.

  He did, and the door closed behind him. “What are you afraid of?”

  “You specialize in questions with no answers, don’t you?”

  “I specialize in finding out the truth.”

  “Your father was right about you. You should have been a lawyer.” Julianna sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands.

  “He wasn’t right about me, not in any way. You still don’t believe that, do you?”

  “Your father has nothing to do with this.”

  “You’ve forgiven and forgotten? Then you’re ready to move on.”

  “No, I’m ready to go home.”

  She felt the bed sag under Gray’s weight. She slid closer to the headboard.

  “Home?” Gray lifted Julianna’s heavy mass of hair and began to gently massage her neck.

  “Please don’t touch me, Gray.”

  “I could swear you like it.”

  “Please. . .”

  His fingers stilled, then began an even gentler caress. “I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. I want you, but I’m afraid.”

  There was nothing else he could have said to cut through her defenses. “There...was...so...much...pain,” she said, halting between words.

  “There won’t be this time.”

  “You can make that promise?” For the first time she turned to look at him.

  “I can promise I won’t cause any.”

  “You don’t have to make anything up to me. You’ve done enough.”

  “Have I?” He slid his other arm around her.

  She tried to move away again, but there was nowhere to go. “Don’t do this.”

  “Do what? This?” Gray drew her head toward his. His fingers wove back and forth through her hair as he kissed her.

  Julianna held herself very still, even as a familiar melting sensation began inside her. She didn’t have the physical strength to fight, but of course Gray would never use force.

  His lips moved away from hers to explore her chin, her cheeks, sliding at last to an earlobe. He turned her more fully toward him as one hand trailed a path down her side, lightly brushing her breast, the curve of her waist, the fullness of her hip. His fingers slid under her leg, lifting her so she was lying half across him. “Put your arms around me,” he whispered.

  She refused and he sighed. “Then I can’t guarantee where you’re going to end up.” His arm tightened around her as he slid backward, taking her with him. In a minute he was lying on the bed, and she was against him. He nudged her onto her back and kept her there as his mouth continued its torment.

  “This is how it’s going to be,” he murmured against her cheek. “You and me, giving pleasure, taking pleasure, sharing, Julianna. Sharing...”

  She tried to remind herself of the pain they had shared, too, but she had no heart for torturing herself. She couldn’t pretend. She was losing her doubts with each kiss, each caress, until her lips parted and her own hands lifted in response.

  Where was the pain? She felt only the sensations they had rekindled on the lanai the morning they talked about Ellie. She had convinced herself that desire was a memory embroidered by time until it was no longer a memory but imagination. How could she have remembered pain so clearly, but denied pleasure?

  “I’ll hold you when you’re scared, Julianna. And you can hold me,” he whispered. “We’ll build a life together, make a home, have all the kids you’ve ever wanted. We can have it all, sweetheart, if you’ll just let yourself believe it’s possible.”

  For one moment she did believe. She saw a house surrounded by swaying palms and blossoming shrubbery. She saw children, tanned and laughing, running barefoot along a path to a beach. She saw herself with Gray, arm in arm, standing at the doorway, calling goodbyes and love-filled warnings.

  Then the picture was gone, and she saw the emptiness of broken promises and dreams destroyed. She saw herself alone in a storm, feeling life slip away. She saw herself waking in a hospital, and she saw herself running, running, just as she had in each of the afternoon’s nightmares.

  Running and never, never able to stop.

  She pushed Gray away and sat up. “No.” She slid off the bed, and her head throbbed with each heartbeat. “Please. . .”