Out of the Ashes

by Emilie Richards

  Alexis's retreat chilled Matthew like the Antarctic wind belting Hanson Bay. For years he had felt only his own isolation. Now, for the first time, he realized he was not alone and never had been. The world had continued to revolve after Jeannie and Todd died. People had laughed and suffered and reached to offer reassurance while he struggled to shut them out. Alexis's suffering had been far worse than his. At least he had known love. She never had.

  With the moonlight bathing her ivory skin, she seemed untouchable—a marble statue that had come briefly to life but now, once again, was cold and still. Cold and still because of the coldness, the stillness inside him. Suddenly he was ashamed. Isolating himself had become a way of life, and now he had hurt someone else—someone who was coming to mean more to him than he wanted to admit. In that moment he wanted only to revive her. And to revive himself.

  He stepped forward, knowing as he did that he was moving from one phase of his life to another. He took another step and slowly lifted his hand. She didn't flinch. "It changes things," he said softly. "I'm not sure how, and I'm not sure why. But it changes things."

  "The very last thing I need is pity."

  "And admiration for your courage? Do you need that?" His hand settled against her cheek and slid into her hair. Her eyelids fluttered shut.

  "No."

  "What do you need?"

  "To be left alone." She shook her head, but his hand stayed in her hair. "Matthew, I'm asking you to go. We're two lost souls. We have nothing to give each other except sorrow. And there's no more room inside me for that."

  "You've said there was room for comfort."

  "Comfort is a drop in the bucket."

  He knew she was right; he knew he should go. Instead his thumb stroked her cheek, then traced the edge of her lashes. They were suspiciously moist. He didn't know what he wanted to give her: pity, admiration, comfort, or something that surpassed all three. He only knew that he couldn't leave her. He moved closer, and his other hand settled in her hair, turning her face to his.

  She didn't open her eyes. He suspected she was waiting for him to hurt her. He knew he was still so confused that he might.

  His lips touched hers. He expected her to pull away, but she didn't. Instead she sighed, warming his lips with her breath. He could feel tension in the muscles of her neck, and he began to stroke it away as he deepened the kiss. He coaxed her to respond with his lips and with the slow massaging of his fingers, but she stood motionless.

  "Alexis," he murmured. "Open for me. Open to me. I'm not going to hurt you." He said the words and prayed they were true.

  She began a protest, but Matthew pulled her closer, silencing her objections. Alexis knew she should struggle. If she did, he would release her. But she didn't want to struggle. She didn't know what she wanted, but it was not to fight with Matthew, not to push him away. And despite what she had told him, it was not to be left alone.

  Tentatively she touched his back, then slid her hands lightly to his shoulders. Her lips parted, and suddenly she couldn't get enough of him. Each texture, each taste, was both familiar and new. Each curve, each angle, was both a homecoming and a revelation.

  His tongue danced with hers as his hips sought to cradle her. She could feel the broad expanse of his chest pressing against her breasts. A rush of heat suffused her body, and she moaned softly, adjusting so that she could feel more of him against her. He was aroused, more than ready to dispense with this preliminary to lovemaking, and the thought that she had been the one to arouse him enhanced her pleasure until it was almost unbearable.

  He shifted his weight, pulling her away from the sill so that he could fit his hands to her hips. Through the thin cotton of her gown, she could feel his long fingers kneading her soft flesh, guiding her against him until it seemed as if they would merge that way and in that moment.

  Three years of silence and sorrow had given birth to a need so strong that for a moment Matthew clutched Alexis, shaken by the demands of his body. In only seconds he had gone from kissing her to needing to possess her. Desire this potent was foreign and frightening. And still he wanted to forget the past had ever existed; he wanted to extinguish all thoughts of the future. He wanted only the present, this woman and himself with nothing between them except the all-consuming need for completion.

  He groaned, and his hands rose to her shoulders, his thumbs dipping into the scooped neckline of her dressing gown. Her skin was warm and satin sleek, and he could feel her rapidly escalating pulse beating against his fingertips. His mouth left hers to roam across her cheek, stopping at her ear lobe to taste and tantalize, then moving to her throat. She moved against him, throwing her head back to give him access. He heard her soft moan of satisfaction and felt the way her hips swayed against his. Her response inflamed him further, and he delved deeper, caution disappearing on a wave of passion.

  Alexis felt the cool night air against her skin as Matthew began to unbutton her gown. She had wondered for years if she would ever be able to respond to a man after the horrors of life with Charles. She had no time or inclination to wonder now. She could only feel. Feel the memories of that other life fade and disappear, feel Matthew wiping away all traces of the man who had abused her, feel the exhilaration of her sensuality reborn.

  But no matter her delight, she was hesitant to touch him back. On her wedding night she had learned not to initiate and not to respond. Now response was out of her control, as if someone new were inhabiting her body and the woman she had been was gone forever. Still she was afraid that somehow she might anger him and release the same raging beast that had dwelled inside Charles. Her hands ached to stroke his skin; her lips throbbed with the desire to kiss him, to explore the rasp of his cheeks, the smooth skin of his neck. Instead she stood in his arms and felt the fine trembling in his hands as her gown parted.

  "Alexis." He made the word into a prayer, although what he prayed for, he didn't know. He moved just far enough away from her to see the pearly gleam of her breasts dressed only in moonbeams. He cupped one and felt his own callused fingers rasp against her softness.

  She was a lovely woman, but even her beauty hadn't prepared Matthew for the luminescence of moonlight reflecting off rounded breasts. She was the goddess, each man's dream of what a woman will be. Softness and warmth and the ancient promise of fertility.

  Then, as he gazed at her, he had the terrible vision of her softness, her warmth, tormented by the man she had married.

  Alexis watched Matthew's face, not wanting to care if he approved of her, but caring anyway. For a moment she saw something akin to awe, and then, in horror, she saw the dawning of anger. She jerked away, as if he had slapped her. Desire disappeared, washed away by shame. Her hands fell to her sides in defeat, and then swiftly rose to push him away so that she could draw her gown together. She rested the back of her head against the window. "Go home, Matthew."

  Until that moment her life with Charles had been fiction. Matthew had read her book and heard her story, and he had felt the distant fury of a man watching a war on the television news. Now he had held her, kissed her, felt her life pulse against his hand. And as he had gloried in her absolute perfection, he had envisioned Charles Cahill brutalizing her.

  He couldn't tell her, though, because there were no words to capture his rage. And there were no words to capture his confusion. He had wanted her with a single-minded desire that had been so strong he had willingly surrendered to it. As he had kissed her, caressed her, he had known instinctively that with only a little encouragement, Alexis would have surrendered, too. He had needed her. She had needed him.

  Then, in one blinding moment of truth, he had realized that both of them needed so much more.

  "Go home," she repeated, weary to the depths of her soul. She had risked more of herself with Matthew than with any man except Charles. And she had seen anger. He had not hurt her, but the anger had been there. Disappointment, disillusionment, anger. She knew them all well. They were the only emotions she inspired in the men
to whom she tried to give herself.

  He lifted his hand to her cheek again. Alexis didn't mistake the caress for abuse, but for a moment, for the smallest fraction of a second, she looked at him and saw Charles. She saw Charles and all the rejection and pain, the humiliation and terror, of six interminable years of marriage. She lifted her hand, too.

  And she struck him.

  Matthew's head spun with the force of her blow. He heard Alexis's sharp gasp before he faced her again. When he did he saw the horror on her face and the tears welling in her eyes. He swallowed his fury, swallowed his demands for an explanation. As calmly as he could, he reached for her hand. She had made a fist of it to cover her mouth, and he pulled it gently toward him, bringing it to rest against his reddened cheek. He held it there, as if her touch could somehow soothe away his pain.

  Alexis knew that in the moment it had taken to slap Matthew, her sanity had been questionable. "I'll leave," she said, tears choking her voice. "I'll take Jody and go."

  "No, you won't." Matthew shut his eyes, suddenly more tired than he could ever remember. "You won't leave, and we won't stop seeing each other. I'll look at you, and I'll still see Jeannie, and the bastard who abused you, but it won't stop me from coming here. You'll look at me and you'll see—"

  "A man who touches me and finds me wanting!"

  For a moment he couldn't believe he had heard her right. "Wanting?"

  She tried to jerk her hand away, but he held it tight. "I saw the anger in your eyes, Matthew. I know what it meant. You needed a woman tonight, and you almost convinced yourself you needed me. But I wasn't good enough, was I? I wasn't the woman you needed."

  He had seen no scars as he'd gazed at her moonlit skin. He had felt no scars as he had held the sweet ripeness of her breasts in his hands. But the scars were there, deep and disturbing. He turned his face into her hand and kissed her palm. For a moment he thought he might cry.

  When he could speak, he spoke into her hand, as if he were giving her a gift to hold and examine when he was gone. "I thought you were the most beautiful sight imaginable," he said. "I thought it wasn't possible to want a woman as much as I wanted you. And then I thought about Charles Cahill, and I wanted to kill him for the things he had done to you. Perhaps that makes me no better than him, but there is one difference." He lifted his head and held her eyes with his. "I take no pleasure in destroying a miracle."

  Alexis struggled to believe that he hadn't found her lacking, that he hadn't changed his mind because she was less of a woman than he needed. She struggled to believe that he had cared enough about her to hate the pain she had suffered.

  Matthew could see the struggle in her eyes. "It was only because you are so much a woman that Charles set out to destroy you," he said softly. "And it's only because you're so much a woman that I'm leaving now." He brought her hand to his mouth without taking his eyes from hers and kissed her palm once more, folding her fingers over the kiss.

  Then he was gone. For a long time afterward she stood at the window and held her hand over her heart.

  * * *

  THERE WERE NO more middle of the night encounters, although one morning a week later Alexis awoke to find a bouquet of island wildflowers on the porch. She put them in water, and each time she looked at them she thought of the man who had picked them.

  Life settled into the uneventful routine that she had often longed for. Jody's teacher developed strategies designed to challenge the little girl, and Jody began to enjoy school more. Another little girl in her class invited her to a birthday party sleepover, and Jody spent the week prior to the big night packing and unpacking her overnight bag. Alexis's own life was unmarred by anything more ominous than an occasional spring thunderstorm. Every day she added pages to her novel and took long walks through the property.

  But Matthew and the last words he had spoken to her were never far from her mind.

  On the morning of Jody's sleepover she helped the little girl do a final check of her overnight bag before she zipped it once and for all.

  "And you won't forget to pick me up tomorrow? At four?"

  "When have I ever forgotten to pick you up?" Alexis gave her daughter an impromptu hug. "Besides, I might even be glad to see you by then."

  "You're always glad to see me!" Jody stowed her books under one arm and the overnight bag under the other. "I'm ready."

  "Now you're sure you gave your teacher the note yesterday so that you can ride Annie's bus home with her after school?"

  "I told you already. I gave it to her yesterday morning. Besides, all the girls in the class are going to ride that bus."

  "Annie's mother is a saint."

  "Can I have a sleepover someday?"

  "May I?"

  "You're too old!" Jody giggled. "But can...may I someday? I never had one at home. You never let me."

  Jody had never had a sleepover because Alexis had never been sure it was safe. She had tried to make it up to the little girl by entertaining her friends in public places, but Jody had missed out on one of the pleasures of childhood. Even now, Alexis wasn't certain a sleepover was a good idea. Not yet.

  "We'll see," she hedged. "Right now we've got to get you out to the bus so you can go to this one."

  The house seemed emptier than usual when Alexis came back from dropping Jody at the bus stop. Without the promise of the little girl's return that afternoon, the day seemed forty hours long, and the evening promised to be longer. She forced herself to write, even though she had nothing she wanted to say, but by three o'clock, she knew her efforts were hopeless. She had squeezed out two agonizing pages that would probably have to be rewritten. Flicking off the computer, she went to see what she could make herself for an early dinner, since she hadn't bothered with lunch.

  She settled for a ham sandwich and a glass of milk, taking them out to the front porch, where she could see the distant surf lapping at the white sand beach. It wasn't as lonely outside. There were silver gulls circling Hanson Bay, and a lone osprey who repeatedly poised and dove into the water with the regular rhythm of the waves.

  Then there was the koala sitting snugly in the branches of the eucalyptus tree that was closest to the house.

  For a moment Alexis wasn't sure that the koala was real. From the porch it looked almost as if the little animal were a shadow created by leaves and slanting sunrays. She frowned and set her dishes down, then walked to the steps for a better look. The tree was twenty yards from the house, a lone survivor of what must once have been a grove. Directly beyond it the scenery changed to the sea coast heath and mallee scrub that were most common on this part of the Bartow property. The tree was an unlikely roost for a koala. But it was a roost nonetheless.

  "Well, where on earth did you come from?" Alexis wouldn't have been so surprised if she'd seen another koala in the grove closer to the road that ran to Flinders Chase. The injured koala that Jody had found under the scrub bordering the porch had fallen from a higher perch somewhere and, in his shock and pain, sought protection in the bushes. But Alexis had never expected to see another this close to the house.

  The koala swayed, proving once and for all that he wasn't a shadow. Alexis wondered what he would do and where he would go if she approached him. She decided to find out. She was standing directly under the tree when he finally moved. He lumbered down to a lower branch as if to get a better look at her.

  "Now who's on display here?" she asked, delighted by his antics.

  The koala snorted, as if in answer.

  "Jody should be here. She'd probably know what you were saying." Alexis shaded her eyes, peering up at her new friend. It was only then that she saw the scar on the koala's shoulder. It was barely visible, but the fur had been shaved around it, and even though it was growing back, the patch stood out. The new friend was an old friend. This was the koala Matthew had rescued the day they had met. "You've come back," she said. "That took faith, didn't it?"

  The koala just stared.

  Alexis wished she could tell the
little animal to go back to Flinders Chase. He wasn't safe here, but apparently he was willing to take the chance just to establish himself in new territory. She wondered if she should call Matthew. In the two weeks since she had seen him, she had searched for excuses to talk to him. The koala was certainly an excuse, but not one she wanted to use. She knew Matthew would take him back to the park, and just as surely she knew that she didn't want him to. She understood the koala's need for freedom. She understood it only too well.

  Surely there would be no danger from poachers this close to the house, and Jody would be delighted tomorrow to find her friend was back.

  Alexis said goodbye, then went back to the porch to finish her sandwich.

  Afternoon and evening melted one into the other. She took the long, leisurely hike along the beach that she had promised herself since coming to the island, stopping to examine each piece of driftwood, each adaptable plant that clung tenaciously to the bits of soil in rock crevices, each sea creature trapped in the tidal pools until the tides turned once more. Until she had come to the island, she hadn't understood the lure of nature. Now the island was teaching her. She understood why Matthew spent his life preserving a small piece of wilderness, and for the first time she realized that the island was no longer just a place to escape Charles, but a living piece of natural history, a link in a chain that had begun millennia ago.

  She was falling in love with Kangaroo Island. And she was dangerously close to falling in love with the man who was its embodiment.

  She didn't want to love either the island or the man. Her life had to be lived one day at a time, one moment at a time. Constant vigilance was the only way she had survived so far, and it might be the only way she would continue to.

  If she risked love, it should be for an uncomplicated place and an uncomplicated man. Neither Kangaroo Island nor Matthew fit that description. Especially Matthew.