From Glowing Embers by Emilie Richards Page B

clues had all been there. The young designer who was known only as Julianna was a Mississippi woman who had fallen in love with the islands and now made her home there. Paige had only glimpsed her, but her curiosity had been piqued by the vague resemblance to a picture Gray had once shown her.
    The information had been one more long shot to follow up on. Through the years there had been other long shots, and Gray might not have followed up on this one if it had been difficult. But it was easy to pick up a phone, call the department store in New Orleans and request their promotional material on the Julianna Islandwear Corporation.
    He had opened up the manila envelope, and there had been Julie Ann, hair drawn back from her face, a slight smile on her lips, staring back at him from a softly focused studio portrait on a brochure being distributed in better stores all over the United States.
    After that, it had been simple to find out about her. And it had been equally simple to get a copy of her schedule, even to the extent of finding out the exact flight she would be taking back to Hawaii. It hadn’t been simple, however, to decide what to do with the information.
    Since Gray had seen Julianna, he hadn’t once thought about the reason why he had decided to confront her personally. Now he did. Paige Duvall had a part in this, too. Paige was an old friend who had recently become something more. It was time for Gray to think about his future, time to start building something solid and sure and comfortable.
    Paige would be meeting him in Honolulu tomorrow. Gray shut his eyes and wondered why he felt no pleasure. His past was sitting in the next cabin of the airplane; his future would be waiting for him tomorrow in Hawaii.
    And he was suspended somewhere in the middle. Alone, just as he had been for ten long years.
    * * *
    JULIANNA EXPECTED GRAY to be waiting in his seat when she passed through his cabin to exit the plane. To her relief, however, he was gone. She didn’t doubt that he would confront her again, but she was glad it wasn’t going to be here. She nodded politely to the flight attendants standing at the door before she stepped down on the jetway and followed the carpeted ramp into the airport.
    The first thing she noticed was the absence of voices. The Honolulu airport was always a jumble of people, a cacophony of sound, no matter what time of day or night. This evening there were few people milling about, because no other planes were landing. The noise of tourist throngs had been replaced by the loud roar of the wind outside the glass-walled corridors. Julianna could see sheets of rain whipping against the glass. The downpour was so heavy that she couldn’t see far enough to tell if the streets were flooding, but she imagined they were. Where could the water run off to at this rate?
    “This is no place to spend the night.”
    Julianna nodded at Dillon, who was walking beside her toward the baggage claim. “With all this glass, it’s not safe in this kind of a storm.”
    “Do
you have a place you can go?”
    She had been asking herself the same question since they had landed. She wanted a room with no windows and a bed to cry on, but she hadn’t been able to think of any place at all.
    “When I’m on Oahu,” she explained, “I stay in a condo near my factory. But it’s on the windward coast. I’d never get there in this.”
    “Have you got friends you can ring?”
    “Nobody within an easy cab ride. And nobody I’d want to call to come and get me. I think I’m going to get a hotel room.”
    “If you can.”
    She turned worried eyes on him. “Do you think there’ll be a problem?”
    “Well, I’m no expert, but if this turns into a cyclone like the flight attendants were saying—”
    “Cyclone!”
    Dillon shrugged. “Cyclone. Typhoon. What do you call it? Hurricane?”
    “Hurricane.” Julianna stopped. “What do you mean, hurricane?”
    Dillon put his hand on her shoulder and moved her out of