~ ~ ~
Julianna had walked along the Poipu coast for miles before she realized it would soon be dark. Although she was exhausted, she quickened her steps, turning back toward home. Surprisingly, the beach was almost empty.
An uprooted palm lay across the sunset-drenched sands in front of her. A man sat on the palm watching her. As she drew nearer, he pushed himself upright to start toward her. Silver eyes gleamed in the wildly colored light.
She heard Gray’s words of a week before as if he were speaking them again. Every time you turn around, I’m going to be there. I’ll be there, and you’ll wish you were stronger, braver, because you’ll want me there, but you’ll be too much of a coward to admit it.
She wondered how he had known what she hadn’t.
“I was waiting to see if you were going to notice it was getting dark,” Gray said casually.
Julianna smiled at him, but her lips trembled. “I’ve never paid much attention where I’m going when I run away.”
“One thing was different this time, anyway. You were easy to keep track of.”
“Have you been following me the whole time?”
He nodded.
“I think I knew.”
Gray took her hand, and they walked in silence across the lengthening shadows of the palm-shaded beach.
They stopped half a mile from her house, on a point looking down the coast. Gray left her on the sand, returning in a moment with a fragrant white plumeria blossom that had hung from a heavily-laden bush. He wove it into a lock of hair behind her ear. “The left ear for a married woman, I’m told.”
She nodded, touched by both the simple gesture and his voice.
“Will you think of me sometimes?” he asked.
“Yes.” Julianna shut her eyes as his lips brushed hers. Then he straightened.
“If you ever need me, I’ll be on the first plane back.” He turned and started down the beach.
“Gray?”
He kept walking.
“Gray, where are you going?”
He stopped, but he didn’t face her. “Home.”
“Do you have a flight out tonight?”
“I’m going to the airport to see if I can get one.”
She took a step toward him, then another. “Why?”
He didn’t answer.
“One minute you talk about forever, the next you can hardly wait to go!”
“‘Forever’ was before I understood how scared you really are.”
“Stay till tomorrow,” she reasoned. “Stay with me tonight. We have tonight.”
He turned back, and searched her face, as if memorizing her features. “I’m not that strong,” he said, turning away. “This time I’m going to do the running.”
Julianna watched through tear-filled eyes as Gray started back down the beach. The warm breeze kissed her hair and lifted the hem of her skirt. The tantalizing smells of someone’s dinner drifted through the air from a nearby cottage and mixed with the scent of plumeria. Tears fell, one, then another. When the third had dried, she peered into the darkness searching for him, but he had disappeared around the point.
In four days she had found Gray, then lost him again. His reappearance now had been a miracle and, like all miracles, he had brought the gifts of comfort, of knowledge, of healing. She had taken them all and given him nothing except an hour in her arms.
“Gray!”
Julianna knew he wouldn’t answer, but she sent his name up to the skies anyway, a plea, a command, a tirade against the force that had brought them together only to separate them once more.
There was no answer from the skies. Because, of course, it hadn’t been fate. Julianna had created her own destiny. She was so terrified of happiness that she had destroyed it before it could fully be hers. She was worse than a coward, she was a fool.
A fool.
Julianna took a step down the beach, then another. The breeze cooled her cheeks as she began to run. “Gray!”
She twisted her ankle in the soft sand, but she ran until she was on the deserted beach in front of her house. Gray’s car was still parked outside, and for a moment she couldn’t figure out where he was. Then she saw him against the dense shrubbery lining the lane. She called to him.
He turned and came to her, standing silently on the beach, his back to the gently breaking surf.
She covered her fear with anger. “You come back into my life after ten years, and then you expect me to forget everything that happened between us?”
“Not forget, move beyond.”
“I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved.”
“You’re about to lose somebody else.”
“I didn’t say I loved you!”
Eyes blazing, he moved closer. “You did, but say it again.” His hands settled on her shoulders.
“I’m afraid.” She swallowed hard, for her voice had broken on the words, words he already knew.
He nodded, releasing her. An evening breeze stirred the air and whistled softly through the palm trees. “I love Julie Ann Mason Sheridan,” he shouted. There was a sudden eerie stillness, as if someone, somewhere, was listening. Even the night birds stopped singing. “And she loves me. So help me God, if we’re never allowed to have any happiness, then strike me dead right now!”
There was another split second of silence, and then, in the distance, a gull cawed for his dinner, voices drifted across the water from a boat coming in to dock, and the wind began again, rustling the palm fronds in an ancient whispered melody.
Julianna felt something break free inside her. Her fear wasn’t that simple—it could never be that simple—but it wasn’t much more complicated than that, either. Life would go on whether she loved Gray or not. The only way she could assure herself of losing him was if she didn’t speak the most important words of her life—and speak them now.
“I love you,” she said haltingly. She swallowed and said the words louder. “Damn it, Gray, I love you. I love you!” she shouted.
She was in his arms in a second. “It’s going to be all right. We’re going to make it,” he promised. “We’re going to make it.”
Strangely enough, she believed that this time it was true. She lifted her tearstained face and found his lips with hers.
THE END
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Author's Note
I'm delighted to share one of my favorite romance series with you. From Glowing Embers is the first of a four book series that I titled Tales of the Pacific (because James Mitchener had already nailed Tales of the South Pacific.) The books were first published in paperback, and now as ebooks. The series came to life after I traveled to each of the four different settings on a family trip down under—with a nice long weekend in Hawaii--just me, my husband and our four children ages four to fourteen for six months. What an extended holiday that was.
By the time I came home again I was bursting with ideas and research information and ready to do something with both. Somewhere along the way--probably the night I was sleeping in a real opal mine in Coober Pedy, Australia--I decided that an opal looked like rainbow fire. Of course I knew immediately that Rainbow Fire had to be a book title.
But if I had fire, didn't I also need embers, smoke and ashes? Of course I did. And as had happened before and since, I created titles before I created stories. Authors are like that.
From Glowing Embers was the initial book, to be followed by others and eventually a departure from pure romance into women's fiction, which I write today.
Are women's fiction and romance all that different? As you read this novel you'll see the elements I continue to share with my readers. This is a book about a woman in crisis, a woman running from herself and from a man in her past, a woman who has been hurt but now must reclaim her courage and that ultimate audacity: love.
Reading back through the book I was immediately involved in the
life of the Mississippi waif Julie Ann Mason, now the mysterious and aloof Julianna, Hawaiian fashion designer. I felt her joy when a young man she loved seemed to love her back, and her grief when their life together disintegrated. I cheered for Gray Sheridan, a man who became so much more than his wealthy, influential parents had dreamed for him, but in the process lost the woman he loved.
I wanted them to get back together. I needed it to happen.
If you've finished the book, you'll know the outcome. You will also know lots about Paige, Dillon, wunderkind Jody and (almost) Jody's mother, Alexis. You may wonder, as I did, what happened to them after the hurricane that changes all their lives.
Wonder no more. Smoke Screen moves the series to New Zealand where Paige Duvall mulls over the unexpected changes in her future in a cottage at the edge of boiling mud pools and geysers. Rainbow Fire takes the story to Coober Pedy, South Australia, where opal miner Dillon meets his match in black belt Kelsey Donovan and struggles to discover who nearly killed her father. And finally you'll get to know Alexis Whitham, Jody's mother, who escapes to Australia only to fall in love with a man with wounds as deep as her own. Along the way you'll catch up with previous characters. I love it when that happens.
I almost forgot the best part. All four of these books have been made into movies in Germany, where they've aired in the prime Sunday night slot on ZDF. I was even invited to go to New Zealand to watch another of my novels being filmed and later to Germany to help promote the movie based on Rainbow Fire. Who knew when Julie Ann and Gray appeared to me and began to tell their story, that they would live on in film and I would have so much fun watching it happen?
Happy Reading!
Emilie
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Interest piqued for the rest of the Tales of the Pacific series? Here's more about the others, and excerpts, too.