San Francisco, Summer 1971 

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath but had to quickly open them again to keep the room from spinning. He gulped down the nausea that was inching its way up his throat as Julia stared at him, her hazel eyes as stormy as a windswept sea.

“Barnabas, are you going to answer me?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t know what to say to her. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, to ask her to stay with him and to reject this job offer so far from home. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for his years of ignorance and callousness and to beg for her forgiveness.

You have forgiven me so often for so many things.

He had said that to her once in a bleak future that the two of them had prevented from ever happening. How bizarre their association had always been. How bizarre and how dangerous, and it had always been his fault that she had been involved. He had dragged her through time and space for years, needing her help to save him and to save his family. She had been true and loyal and had stood with him to face demon and beast. How could he have not known that there was no other woman for him? How could he have not known that no other woman could understand him, what he had been, what he had done, what he had seen?

He wanted to tell her he loved her, but the words would not come. She was so furious with him for following her; how could he make her understand? This was the first time they had been alone since he had understood his feelings for her, and he longed to hold her, to show her how he could love her.

In the end, he decided to tell her exactly what had happened to him.

“Julia, after you left yesterday, I…I heard that song, that one that you used to sing so often.”

Her brow wrinkled just slightly, but she remained silent.

“I believe it is called Somewhere? I heard it, and it made me think about us.”

“Us? When has there ever been an us, Barnabas?” she asked, crossing her arms defiantly across her chest. She knew she was quoting lines from a movie, but she didn’t care. Barnabas had never seen Gone With the Wind, and she had felt for years that she had been playing Rhett Butler to Barnabas’ Scarlett O’Hara.

“There has always been an us, Julia, only I was too stubborn to admit it. As I listened to the words of that song, I began thinking about all that we had been through together and all that you had done for me. And then I thought of all the times you had been lost to me, and I realized that I cannot live without you. The song says that ‘Somewhere, someday, there is a time and place for us.’ I want this to be our time and place, Julia.”

He paused and took a step closer to her. “I’m trying to tell you that I…care for you, Julia.”

He knew his choice of words had been a mistake the moment they left his mouth. Julia’s expression had gone from one of incredulity to one of wry cynicism. The smile now on her face twisted her features into those of a bitter woman whom he did not recognize.

“You care for me, Barnabas? I’m surprised your nose didn’t grow four inches from telling that old lie.”

She watched him blanch at her remark. “I see you understand the reference.”

He nodded solemnly. “I researched the story of Pinocchio after our last conversation on the subject.”

She glared at him for a moment, then slapped her hands against her sides and began pacing the room as if she intended to wear a path into the standard issue hotel carpet. The more she thought about what he had said to her, the more enraged she became.

“How dare you do this to me, Barnabas! How dare you follow me out here and try to get me to go back with you by using my feelings for you. After years of being there for you and then watching you turn to all manner of insipid young things for love, I have finally decided to do what is best for me for a change. Do you think it was easy for me to move on with my life? It was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make. But have you respected it? No, you come here to take me away from an incredible opportunity just so that I will always be nearby in case you need me.”

She stopped her pacing and turned to face him. “And I resent it, Barnabas! I resent it!”

She stood staring at him with her hands balled into tight knots and her slim figure shaking with emotion. His feelings swung like a pendulum between concern for her and his own hurt and despair that she did not believe that he was truly in love with her. If he had not already been nauseous, her angry words would have made him nauseous.

How had they come to this? This was not at all how he had imagined this scene, not at all how he had fantasized about it. His dream of just a few hours ago had portrayed exactly how he had wanted this to play out. In that dream, he had declared his love for her, and she had understood everything and forgiven him. She had fallen into his arms and into his bed.

But reality had turned out to be quite different.

“Julia, forgive me for my poor choice of words. Please allow me to explain. This year…since we returned from the past…Julia, I have missed you desperately. I have felt so …lost without you in my life. I did not totally understand my feelings until you told me that you might be leaving Collinwood, that you might be leaving me. When you said goodbye at the airport, I was so afraid that you were telling me goodbye forever. And then when I heard that song, when I thought about all we had shared….”

He stood for a moment wringing his hands as vigorously as a washwoman huddled over a washtub wringing out her laundry. He risked taking another step closer to her trying to ignore the icy demeanor that she had drawn around herself like a cloak.

“Julia, when I realized how I felt, when I realized that I loved you, I was completely overcome. I don’t understand why I did not recognize my feelings before. There has always been a time and place for us – if only I had been wise enough to know that. And since I became aware of my true feelings, I have been terrified that you would decide to leave me just when I have come to my senses.

“Don’t you see, Julia, I had to come here. I had to come and confess my feelings for you. Please believe me.”

She stood before him now as still as a statue, her posture rigid and her eyes like chips of green ice. Her stance confirmed his greatest fear: she did not believe him.

“How can you expect me to trust you, Barnabas? Have you forgotten the number of times I have seen you fall in and out of love? And now, just because I am considering a new life, you decide that you are in love with me. Well, you can fool yourself all you like, Barnabas – maybe you really do think you finally return my feelings – but I don’t buy it for one minute. You just want me back under your control. You just don’t want to be alone.”

The emotions that surged through her made her as restless as a zoo animal, and she began her pacing once again.

“Julia-”

She whirled on him before he could say another word. “And even if I did believe you and went back to Collinwood with you, how long would it be before some pretty young face turned your head?”

He went to her and managed to cage her, capturing her arms in his strong hands to still her. “Julia, I promise you that there will never be anyone else for me,” he said desperately. “The love I feel for you is genuine. Now that I know how I truly feel, I could never love another.”

She wrenched free from his grasp with a snarl. “Go home, Barnabas. Please go home and leave me alone! I have my own life to live now. You are going to have to learn to live yours – and without me in it.”

He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. Surely, she couldn’t mean what she had just said to him.

“But Julia,” he pleaded, “ I love you!”

The green of her eyes had darkened until they almost glinted black. “That is your misfortune.”

There. She had said it. She had practiced Rhett Butler’s line for a long time but had never expected she would ever have the opportunity to say it. And it felt good to say it; it felt liberating to say it out loud – out loud to him.

Her words hit him like the aftershock of an earthquake. He physically reeled back from her, the shock and hurt stamped plainly on his face. He grabbed hold of the chair next to him for support as his tired and weakened body struggled to keep him on his feet.

Watching his reaction, Julia felt immense satisfaction course through her. She had hurt him. Finally, she had hurt him. She had never thought anything she could ever say could hurt him the way in which she had been hurt. She wondered if she actually wanted him to say his next line in this torrid little drama, to ask her where he should go, what he should do without her? Could she really utter the final words to him?

Frankly, my dear…

But she did not have to make the decision because Barnabas said nothing. He only continued to grip the chair and to stare at her in disbelief. His gaze was so intense, so unblinking, that Julia began to feel uncomfortable.

“Go home, Barnabas,” she said again, this time to break the unbearable silence.

Still, he said nothing for another very long minute before finally gathering himself and turning to leave. Motion was difficult; his heart was punctured, wounded beyond repair so that it could no longer harbor the hope that he had kept locked inside of it. That hope now seeped out of him in a sickening rush. Hope…

He stopped and reached into his pocket for the talisman he had kept there, the symbol of hope he had held onto. Turning back to her, he held out his hand, and she saw with astonishment that it cradled her missing glove. She watched in surprise as he closed his hand tightly around it for a moment and shut his sad, dark eyes.

“I found this after you left,” he finally said, laying it almost reverently on the bed. “I brought it here to …reunite it with its…mate.”

It was her turn to stare. He had brought her missing glove all the way here from Maine? Why?

But before she could ask, he was gone, and the door was closing softly behind him until it clicked shut with a sad finality.

Julia Hoffman walked slowly over to the bed in a daze and picked up the lonely glove. She carefully smoothed out each finger before suddenly crumpling it into a ball with a cry of anguish. She sank onto the bed, still clutching the glove as she brought both hands to her mouth to muffle the sobs she could not stop.

And the glove that had held her scent for Barnabas now carried only his scent, his essence for Julia.

*~*~*

Once outside of her room, Barnabas’ emotions and physical state caught up with him. He leaned heavily against her door to keep from collapsing as his head swam and his knees buckled from lack of sleep and from too much Scotch on an empty stomach.

His head was muddled, his ears were ringing, but he thought he heard a plaintive sound echoing through the closed door as he stood slumped against it. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he heard the sound of a woman crying.

Part Thirteen