From Glowing Embers

Chapter 18

  For years Julianna had tried to duplicate the exact blue-green of the Poipu Beach surf. She envisioned it on the sheerest silk chiffon, a wild splash of color on a sky-blue evening dress of the simplest design. The chiffon would curve and drape with the grace of a Tahitian pareau, adorned only by seed pearls as white and sparkling as the Poipu sand at the instant the surf swallowed it in the endless, voracious renewal of the Pacific floor.

  She had tried for years, and for years she had been defeated. It was a quest she would never abandon, no matter how small her chance of success.

  Today she sat on the deserted beach across the lane from her house on the Poipu coast and compared fabric samples with the ocean in front of her. Even as she held up each sample, the surf altered subtly until she wasn’t sure if human eyes were capable of isolating one color that epitomized the changing liquid landscape.

  In the week since she had flown to Kauai from Honolulu, she had chosen nothing but impossible quests for herself. She had spent days working on designs for fabrics that didn’t exist, or that existed in such small quantities that she would have to pay a king’s ransom for them. She had designed clothes that no one could afford, clothes that no one would need, clothes whose purpose had nothing to do with the colors and styles she chose.

  She had committed her useless dreams to paper and, in the commitment, some of them had taken wings. They would be the basis for her newest collection. Others she had taken back inside herself to the place where impossible dreams live and grow.

  The same place where her dream of a life with Gray was living and growing until she thought it might strangle her.

  The morning after the hurricane’s demise she had left for Kauai. She’d cried when she said goodbye to Dillon. He had held her in his arms and stroked her hair, murmuring reminders of mine shafts and trust, loneliness and the solitary moan of the wind. Then he had gone, and she’d felt a space in her life where he had been.

  Even more surprising were the tears she cried saying goodbye to Paige. Paige cried, too, and that was the most surprising thing of all. Their friendship was as unlikely as Eve’s return, but it existed anyway, a tribute to irony.

  She drove to the airport with Gray and Jody, the silence broken only by Jody’s excited chatter. She watched as a slender blond woman with a lovely smile hurried through the crowded airport corridor to claim the daughter she so obviously adored. She felt Jody’s little arms around her neck one last time and then watched her disappear into the crowd with her mother.

  Finally she said goodbye to Gray.

  For the first time she had understood why ten years ago she’d left Granger Junction without a word. Their goodbye had been beyond bearing.

  Now a week had passed. Other weeks would, too. From experience, she knew she would survive each of them, but somehow it was small comfort.

  The late afternoon sun washed cleanly over the pristine beach, and Julianna stood, gathering fabric samples and sketches to stuff in her bag. For a week she had worked frantically, blocking feelings with color and pattern, as she had done as a child. But she was no longer a child, and her pain was not a child’s. When she could block it no longer she would be helpless in its path, just as she’d been helpless against Eve. Then she had needed Gray. Now she needed him more.

  Only now he was on the other side of the Pacific. And she was alone on Kauai, missing him, wanting him, remembering...

  She crossed the lane to her house and forced herself to think of blue-green surf and sparkling sand. But there were silver-gray eyes gleaming in the secret place where dreams grow.