From Glowing Embers

  ~ ~ ~

  Julianna was sleeping. Gray’s arm was sleeping. One moment they had been cuddled close, and she had been tracing patterns on his chest with her lips. The next moment she had fallen sound asleep.

  She felt so good against him, so perfectly at home, that he hadn’t been able to make himself move her off his arm when he’d become aware that the blood was no longer flowing. Now he shifted her just enough to restart his circulation. She slept on, seemingly exhausted.

  He had never fully understood all the fierce battles that raged inside Julianna until she had asked him about fate. Now he understood what had made her run, and what was pulling her away from him still. She loved him, but she was terrified to admit it. She had been given so little from life that now she trusted no one and nothing. She kept to herself, an onlooker, an audience to life, so that fate couldn’t hurt her yet again.

  He wanted to wake her, to kiss away the pain of a lifetime and tell her that the battles that so exhausted her weren’t worth fighting. She couldn’t avoid the bad parts of life by refusing to accept the good. She would not have to pay for their lovemaking, just as she would not have to pay for what would come next.

  If she let it.

  Gray’s arms tightened around her. If fate existed, it had brought them together. They could spend the rest of their lives learning how to be happy. He wondered how he was going to convince her.

  Almost an hour later he felt her come awake by degrees. She moved restlessly, but she didn’t move away from him. Instead she fitted her body closer to his, as if she were afraid he would leave. He reassured her, caressing her back, kissing her hair, until she was fully awake.

  “I’d forgotten how nice it was to wake up next to you,” she said shyly.

  “We woke up together very few times. I counted them once.”

  “When?”

  “A couple of years ago.”

  “You thought of me then?”

  “I thought of you.”

  She brushed his cheek with her fingertips. She could tell the time of day by its sandpaper roughness. It was almost time for dinner. “I believe you.”

  She was still sleepy, and he wanted her to be relaxed as he told her what he’d been thinking. “Do you remember when you asked me about fate?”

  Her fingers fluttered to his chest.

  He threaded her fingers through his and brought them to his lips, where he kissed each fingertip.

  “I don’t know why I asked,” she lied.

  “I helped a man restore a house in Washington, D.C., last year. The house was almost two hundred years old, the man was a thousand. He’s Chinese, married to an American woman who was teaching in China when they met. When I asked him about his marriage, he told me that the Chinese have a saying. If two people are put together by God, they will find each other no matter how far apart or how different they may be. He looked at me after he’d said that, and then he told me that most people wouldn’t understand, but he knew that I did.”

  “Gray—”

  “There are some things we’ll never understand,” he went on. “I don’t know why your sister died. I don’t know why you were raised by the parents you were. I don’t even understand why Ellie was taken from us. But I do understand why we found each other ten years ago, and why we found each other again. That part was meant to be. We were meant to be together.”

  Julianna tried to sit up, but Gray held her back.

  “Do you really believe you can get up from here and pretend this didn’t happen?” he asked. “Do you think that by pretending you’ll be safe?”

  “Don’t ruin tonight.”

  He had learned something new about her, but he had learned something about himself, as well. He could not spend another night unsure of their future. “Don’t file for divorce, Julianna. You’ve seen what we still have together. Tell me you’re going to give us a chance.”

  “It can’t work, Gray.”

  He pretended he hadn’t heard. “I can have an office anywhere, even Kauai. I’ll have to travel farther to sites, but we can do some of the traveling together. We’ll have children. We’ll make a home together.”

  “No.” Julianna broke away.

  “Have you run so long you’ve forgotten how to stop?”

  She was almost frantic with her need to be alone. He was offering all the things she wanted, and she didn’t dare claim them. She slid off the bed. He was silent as she dressed, silent when she slammed the door behind her, silent when he slammed his fist against the grass cloth-covered wall.