True Colors (19 page)

Aurora gave Dallas an awkward hug and then headed for her car. As the BMW’s engine roared to life, Winona stood there, too shaken to speak.

Vivi Ann moved toward her, but didn’t let go of Dallas’s hand; it was a reminder that they were a couple now. Together. “How do you want to handle this, Win?” she asked quietly.

“I only told Dad because Luke was beating Dallas up.” Winona heard the crack in her voice and it pissed her off. She sounded weak when she wanted to be strong. “I was trying to
save
Dallas.”

Dallas stepped forward then, as if he belonged there, as if he had a place between the sisters. “You wanted everything she had,” he said.

“That’s not true,” Winona said, but she knew—they all knew—that it was.

“You did me a favor, Win,” Vivi Ann said, “even though you meant to hurt me. The truth is, I don’t care about all that crap now. I’ve found the man I love and we’re on the ranch. Nothing else matters to me.”

She was right. Somehow, impossibly, Vivi Ann had broken all those rules, and a good man’s heart, she’d slept with a stranger and brought him home, and
still
she’d paid no price.
Golden
.

“I know that forgive and forget isn’t your forte,” Vivi Ann said, “but it’s the only way we have now. I can do it. Can you?”

Winona was as backed into the corner as her father had been. There was nothing she could say now except yes. Anything else would make her look petty and spiteful. “Of course,” she said, surging forward to give her sister a lackluster hug. “Forgive and forget.”

Some things couldn’t be forgotten, no matter how hard you tried. Humiliation. Loss. Jealousy. They were buoyant emotions that kept popping to the surface. In the end, you grew too tired to keep them submerged. Winona knew: she’d tried. She kept trying, but sometimes, like tonight, the effort seemed unbearable.

When she heard the doorbell ring, her first thought was:
What if I just don’t answer?

It rang again.

There was nowhere to hide in your own family.

Turning away from the sink, she headed for the door and opened it.

Aurora stood there, dressed and ready to go. She had teased her brown hair into a poufy banana-clipped ponytail and painted her face with layers of color. Shoulder pads emphasized her small waist, which was circled by a wide, rhinestoned leather belt. Her denim dress looked plain by comparison. “Don’t give me that sucked-on-a-lemon look. Let’s go.”

Wordlessly, Winona followed her sister out to the road where her car was parked. Climbing into the Beemer’s backseat, she wished she were anywhere but here. “This is a stupid idea,” she said.

“Your opinion is noted,” Aurora said.

Winona made a great show of sighing and crossing her arms. “Where’s Richard?”

“He’s working late tonight. He’d rather eat his shoe than come with us.”

“I can relate.”

“I’m so not interested in your theatrics.”

They turned into Water’s Edge and drove up to the cabin.

At the front door, they knocked, and in moments Vivi Ann answered.

“Phew,” Aurora said, “they aren’t naked.”

Winona rolled her eyes. “It’s not even dark out.”

“What you know about hot sex is equivalent to what I know about beekeeping,” Aurora said curtly. To Vivi Ann she said, “We’re going to the Outlaw.”

“Of course you are, it’s Friday,” Vivi Ann said.

Dallas rose instantly and moved in behind Vivi Ann, putting his hand possessively around her waist.

Aurora studied him, her eyes narrowing. “Do you love her, Tattoo Boy?”

“It seems I do, Junior League wannabe.”

Aurora smiled at that. “Then take her to the Outlaw. This is how it’s done.”

“She’s right,” Winona said sharply. “The best way to stop the gossip in town is to show them how happy you are.”

Dallas stared at Winona. “You don’t look too happy, Winona. I guess you like the gossip about Vivi.”

“In your vast experience at judging my moods, you mean.”

“I don’t know . . .” Vivi Ann said. “Luke might be there.”

Dallas took her in his arms. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

The softness of his voice surprised Winona. No wonder he’d sucked her sister in. Especially Vivi Ann, who saw the best in everyone.

“You can’t avoid him forever,” Aurora pointed out.

At last, Vivi Ann nodded. “Give us a minute,” she said, taking Dallas’s hand. When they disappeared into the bedroom, Winona said, “If I hear sex, I’m out of here.”

“You would be,” Aurora said with a laugh.

Fifteen minutes later, the Grey sisters and Dallas pulled up to the Outlaw and parked.

They went in one after another. When Dallas came in—last—there was a noticeable ripple in the room. People looked up, drinks paused in midair, conversations halted. Even the drummer missed a beat.

Winona noticed that their friends couldn’t look away from Vivi Ann and Dallas. They came together by the bar, ordering drinks. Once they were served, the four of them turned in unison to face the crowd. In the background, “The Dance” played on the jukebox.

The first person to approach them was Luke.

“Here he comes,” Aurora muttered. “Ex-fiancé at one o’clock.”

“He knows how it’s done, too,” Winona said, forcing herself not to move toward him.

Dallas moved in closer to Vivi Ann, took her hand in his.

“Hey, Vivi,” Luke said.

The bar fell quiet. The only sounds came from the back of the room, where one ball hit another on the pool table.

“I heard you got married,” Luke said woodenly. “Congratulations.”

“I should have been honest with you,” Vivi Ann said to him.

“I wish you had been.”

Winona studied every detail of his face, the way he closed his eyes for just a second before he spoke, the frowning around his mouth. She expected him to say something else, something cutting and cruel—the kind of thing Vivi Ann deserved for what she’d done—but the longer she stared, the deeper she saw. Luke wasn’t angry with Vivi Ann.

He still loved her. Even after all of it.

“I’m truly sorry,” Vivi Ann said.

Her sister kept talking, piling meaningless words on top of each other, while everyone else listened and smiled and accepted. It turned to a roar of white noise in Winona’s head, so loud she couldn’t hear anything beyond the beating of her own heart. She was so caught up in her own thoughts, her own bitter disappointment (what about karma? what about paying for your sins?), that she hardly noticed when it was over.

The music came back on. People moved onto the dance floor.

She blinked and looked around for Luke.

Dallas was watching her and something in those eerie pale gray eyes made her uncomfortable. He let go of Vivi Ann’s hand and moved toward her. Winona noticed the sexy, loose-hipped way he walked and recognized the motive behind it. Not that it would ever work on her.

“Poor Luke,” Dallas said in a silky voice that made her nervous. “I’ll bet he needs a shoulder to cry on.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know you,” he answered, smiling now.

Winona thought then:
He’s dangerous
. And Vivi Ann had brought him into their family. It proved to Winona that she’d been right to try to protect Vivi Ann from this man. “You’d better not hurt her,” she said. “I’ll be watching you.”

“She might forget what you did, Winona, but I haven’t. You betrayed her, pure and simple. So you remember this: I’ll be watching
you
. She might forgive. I won’t.”

Winona sat in her car, parked outside the police station.

She shouldn’t go in. She knew that. Some things were better left unknown.

If only she were the kind of person who could ignore information. But such feigned ignorance was impossible for her to achieve.

Once an idea got in her head she was like a crocodile death-rolling its prey. And suddenly she was worried that Dallas was actually dangerous.

She got out of the car and walked toward the station, opening the door. Inside, the place was empty but for a few uniformed officers walking from one office to another.

At the receptionist’s desk, Helen looked up from filing her hot-pink nails. “Hey, Winona.”

“Hey. Is Sheriff Bailor in? I’d like to see him.”

“Course he’s in. You’ve got an appointment, dontcha? He’s in his office. Go on back.”

Winona walked down the busy hallway and found Sheriff Albert Bailor in his office, eating a breakfast sandwich.

“Hey, Winona,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Have a seat.”

She didn’t bother with small talk. It was a skill she’d never really mastered anyway. “I need to do a background criminal check on someone.”

“This the Indian?”

“Yes.”

“I had the same questions myself when Vivi married him. To be honest, I expected you in here before now.” He left the room and came back a few moments later with a file, which he set down on his desk. “I’ll be right back. Nature calls.”

As soon as he was gone, Winona opened the file.

Dallas Raintree, DOB 5/05/65
.

She scanned through his criminal record, reading charges, arrests, and convictions. There were almost a dozen theft or possessing stolen goods charges, two assault charges that were pled down, an assault and battery conviction, and a couple of weapons charges. A notation was made that his juvenile record was sealed per court order and that he had, on several occasions, been ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluations. It appeared that he’d been a juvenile the first time such a recommendation was made.

“Holy shit,” Winona said.

“Holy shit is right,” Al said, coming back into the office, closing the glass-topped door behind him.

Winona looked up at him. “What does all this mean?”

Al sat down at his desk. “I read it as your brother-in-law is a man with a bad temper and not much respect for the law. And somethin’ bad happened when he was a kid. There are a lot of psychiatrists’ reports in there. More’n a few think he’s unstable.” He leaned back. “Rumor is that you’re the one who hired him. I would have expected you to do a background check.”

She gritted her teeth. “What can I do now?”

“Now?” Al shrugged. “He’s married to your sister, Win. There’s nothing to be done now.”

“Is he dangerous?”

Al looked at her. “Under the right circumstances, we all are. You just keep your eye on him.”

“I will,” Winona promised.

In late November, an icy wind blew across the Canal, whipping the normally calm waters into a whitecapped frenzy. Waves smacked against the cement and stone bulkheads along the shore; foamy water sloshed onto the well-tended yards, turning the green grass brown. All at once, the birds disappeared, taking their early morning song and afternoon chatter with them. Bare trees shivered in the cold, their last multihued leaves plucked away by the wind. Those same leaves now lay in slimy, blackening piles in the ditches on the sides of the road.

As if a memo had been sent to the trendy East Side, the tourists stopped coming. No boats dotted the Canal, no motors were heard purring in the afternoons. Instead, the portable docks were pulled ashore for the season and the permanent ones were shut down, their water spigots covered and turned off. All up and down the shoreline, barbecues were hauled off the decks and placed in garages for the winter months; planters full of precious, fragile flowers were taken in, too. Without sunlight, everything looked washed out, especially when it was raining, and it was almost always raining. Not hard, pounding storms, rather a steady, thready mist. On the day after Thanksgiving, the Bits and Spurs 4-H Club members and their families gathered at Water’s Edge to make wreaths. It had been a tradition for years. Vivi Ann had always been a part of it, first as her mom’s helper, then as a 4-H member, and now as the leader.

The event went from morning to night, and to be honest, she had never enjoyed it more than this year, and when it was all over and the day was done, she and Dallas walked up the spongy road to their cabin. “I saw you talking to Myrtle Michaelian,” Vivi Ann said.

“She held on to her purse the whole time. I think she was worried I’d steal it.”

Smiling, she opened the door and went inside.

The cabin smelled like Christmas. Dallas had set up a small, perfect tree in the corner near the fireplace and draped several of the leftover boughs along the mantel. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

Vivi Ann was surprised by him yet again. All her life men had lined up to give her things; they’d wowed her with presents wrapped by sales-people and paid for by credit cards. But this, a simple, sparsely decorated tree, meant more to her than any of that because she knew her husband didn’t care about Christmas. He’d done this for her because
she
cared.

“That friend of yours—Trayna at the drugstore—helped me pick out ornaments.”

Vivi Ann laughed at the image of scary-looking Dallas following Trayna around, picking out angels and elves. She loved him so much she couldn’t stand it.

“What’s so funny? Did I do something wrong?”