Alana by Monica Barrie Page B

reflected on the whitewashed roof of the gazebo. The longer Alana looked out at the clear and quiet night, the more she wanted to walk outside in the softly scented air. She listened intently for sounds in the rest of the house, but all was silent. By now, Lorelei and the others would be asleep.
    Feeling suddenly trapped within her room, Alana decided to try to calm her troubled thoughts by taking a short walk. It was impulsive, she knew, but if she went to the gazebo she was certain no one would see her.
    ~~~~~
    Rafe sat on the veranda smoking a cheroot. He was a fool, on a fool’s errand, he told himself as he blew a stream of smoke skyward. From the moment he had left the prison camp with Jason, the course of his life had changed.
    Jason. Rafe was worried about his friend. In the beginning, all he had worried about was keeping Jason alive. Now that Jason was as healthy as he would ever be, Rafe was concerned about how the man would live the rest of his life. At his worst, he was a demanding, self-pitying person filled with hatred that struck out in random directions. At rare times the bright, articulate man who Jason had once been, escaped from the barriers he had erected. The problem was that those times were becoming less and less frequent.
    What will happen when they marry ? Rafe asked himself pointlessly. He knew there was no answer, not for him, for Alana, or even for Jason. Only time held the answer–and Rafe’s time with Alana was almost at an end.
    The thought of losing her was unbearable. Standing swiftly, Rafe tossed the cigar away and walked to the steps leading from the veranda.
    He paused only when he reached the start of the garden path, then he walked aimlessly forward, letting his feet choose the direction he would follow.
    As it happened, he took the far left path, the one that circled the entire garden. While he walked, he did his best to let the night sounds soothe his nerves. He refused to think of Alana and instead thought about San Francisco and what awaited his return.
    When he had embarked on his ill-fated voyage, he had left his sister in charge of the shipping company. At the time, Elizabeth–a bright, intelligent woman who had learned the shipping business at the same time as he–had been twenty-three.
    Rafe knew that the family business was in competent hands, but a gnawing worry had always interfered with that thought. None of the letters he wrote while in prison had ever been answered. He had figured that the mails hardly ever got through–if the prison guards had allowed the letters out in the first place, which they always assured him they did.
    Who was behind his arrest? Rafe wondered for the ten-thousandth time. Who had arranged for his death, and why? What had happened after he “died”?
    Stop ! he ordered himself. His circular thinking was futile. Nothing would be settled until he arrived in San Francisco and went to his offices.
    Rafe paused in his stroll to look up at the moon. Only a few clouds rode the sky, shining silver-white as they passed beneath the glowing crescent. He gazed at the stars for a moment before again following the pathway without caring where it led. He did not realize he had reached the white-roofed gazebo until he almost walked into it.
    With the awareness of where he was, he saw a ghostly white shape sitting within the lattice walls, illuminated by the rays of the moon.
    “Alana,” he whispered.
    ~~~~~
    Alana lost herself to the night, concentrating on the sounds of nature that filled the sweetly scented air. Gone were her thoughts of the future and of the years ahead that she would spend with Jason. Vanished too were thoughts of the wanton desire that Rafe brought out in her.
    Memories of better times helped to ease her torment, but she could not bear to linger upon them. Shifting on the divan, Alana smiled as she remembered those early summer nights when, as a child, she had begged and cajoled Lorelei to let her sleep on this very divan instead of in