Winter's Daughter (8 page)

"A test of my character?" Dillon said dryly. He touched her shoulder and added softly, "I responded to you yesterday, or had you forgotten? I gave you a flower."

"Yes, but I didn’t know that was
you
."

Her voice was drowned and defenseless. Amazing, the effect it had on him. He found that although he was staring at the pompon on her cap and at the strings of gray hair sneaking into the collar of her drab dress, he was seeing her instead as she’d looked in his office that morning: A slender young woman with summer sunshine in her hair and skin, and winter fires in her eyes.

"Instead, I found out—" Her voice trembled and died.

"I hurt you," Dillon said, running his fingers back and forth across the top of her shoulder. "I didn’t mean to do that. I’m sorry."

"No," she denied, shaking her head. "I suppose it’s ironic, really. Here I was trying to test your character, and I failed my own test. I thought I was so tolerant, so understanding, so aware. And I reacted to you with the same blind fear and prejudice—" She pressed the heels of her hands angrily against her eyes. "Oh,
damn
."

It was strange, Dillon thought. Seeing her so hurt and whipped only made him remember more vividly the way she’d sailed into his office that morning, vibrant and bursting with self–confidence. He’d wanted to give her a little dose of reality, yes, but he hadn’t meant to destroy those things he’d admired so much in her. He suddenly realized he wanted that confidence and enthusiasm back. More than wanting, he
needed
it. He felt an infusion of energy and excitement inside himself. Like a light coming on in his head, he knew he needed this woman’s passion, courage, and dedication working with him and for him on this homeless problem.

He put both hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently. Her body felt tense, rigid, and incredibly vulnerable. "Are you this hard on everybody, or just yourself?"

She shuddered and turned to him, ignoring the tears she’d been trying so hard to hide. "Dillon, there’s no getting around the fact that I reacted with fear, loathing, hostility, prejudice—all the emotions I’ve accused others of. I’ve been—
oh!"

Her eyes widened, and her mouth formed a blurred O of dismay. She squeaked, "Oh, God—" and reached impulsively to touch his temple. The glove on her hand made her pause, before she gave it a look of revulsion and snatched it off. Dillon felt her fingers like the soft cool kiss of silk on his forehead. "I hurt you."

"Yeah, you were trying to, as I recall," he said, smiling. "Look, stop beating yourself to death with your own liberalism. Personally I think you acted with common sense and good judgment—not to mention ingenuity." He brushed away a moist streak on her cheek with the backs of his fingers, then drew his thumb across the bridge of her nose to intercept a fresh tear on the other side. "I’d have been a lot more worried about you if you hadn’t—
oh, my God
!"

For a heartbeat or two all he could do was stare in horror at the piece of her face that had come off in his fingers.

Tannis clapped a hand to her nose. She looked from his face to the scrap of flesh–colored latex dangling from his fingers, and then her composure simply erupted. With laughter bubbling up in her and flowing out of her like a kettle boiling over, she collapsed, howling, onto Dillon’s chest.

Though her laughter was effervescent and joyous and he loved the sound of it, Dillon was too preoccupied to join in. For the time being, all he could do was stand there, gazing helplessly down at the purple pompon quivering just under his nose. The disparity between what she looked like at the moment and what he knew her to be was beginning to get to him.

He didn’t know what to do with his hands. They were flat against her shoulder blades, not quite holding her but not fending her off either. He found it an awkward and ambiguous position, one he wasn’t accustomed to being in. Under the right circumstances, he wasn’t a man to deny an impulse as strong as the one he was experiencing now, which was to wrap his arms around this woman and see if that felt as good as he thought it might. But to add to his inner confusion, it had come belatedly to his notice that the two of them were attracting a good deal of attention from the lunch crowd in the park.

A drunken brawl between two derelicts, it seemed, was a spectacle from which decent people gladly averted their eyes. A tender embrace between two derelicts was something else entirely.

"Uh, Tannis," Dillon said, uneasily patting her back, "don’t you think this looks a little odd?"

She drew back, wiping her eyes, then sniffed and looked around dazedly. "Oh."

"Here—you’d better put this back on." He held up the piece of latex with a thumb and forefinger, controlling laughter only by keeping his voice stern and his features forbidding. "Let’s get out of this circus before we become the main attraction. Is there someplace we can go?"

"I thought we were going to have lunch. I’m starving."

"I brought lunch. At least, I had it with me when I arrived. I’m not sure what I did with it when you, uh—"

"You brought lunch?"

"Well, yeah. I figured we couldn’t go to a decent restaurant with me looking like this. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time we were going to be a matched set. I stopped by a deli and picked up a couple of subs. I hope that’s all right."

Tannis sighed. "Sounds wonderful." And she smiled that radiant, sunshine smile.

Dillon felt a familiar burst of warmth in his belly. He coughed and mumbled, "I think I probably dropped the sack back there with your coat."

As he went jogging off to retrieve it, he was thinking incredulously,
I’m losing my mind. She looks like a molting pigeon. Can I possibly desire her?

Amazingly the bag of submarine sandwiches and potato salad was still on the grass where he’d dropped it, with Tannis’s coat on top of it. He was inspecting the condition of the sandwiches, when she came up, shuffling again, since she’d stopped on the way to put on her shoes.

"How are they?" She was looking at the sandwiches with undisguised hunger.

"Bruised but edible," Dillon pronounced, grimacing as he looked around. "Do you know someplace where we can go? Someplace a little less public?"

"I know a nice park bench." Tannis paused in the process of enveloping herself once more in her coat to give him an impish grin. "Nobody will pay any attention to us—bums are supposed to sit around on park benches."

As she listened to Dillon’s chuckle of appreciation and watched the familiar grooves bracket his smile, Tannis felt a small explosion inside her, which wasn’t unusual since she experienced life as a series of explosions—explosions of anger, enthusiasm, grief, joy, love. But this one was different, something she’d never felt before—a sweet, gentle awakening, like a flower’s opening captured by the miracle of time–lapse photography.

How did I miss it, she wondered, stealing glances at him as they walked.
How could I not have known who he was?

She should have recognized him the moment she’d walked into his office. He had such strong, distinctive features—those eyes, that hooked nose and angular chin. And he hadn’t done anything to alter them, as she had her own with cheek pads and latex. He’d fooled her with nothing but a baseball cap, a quarter–inch of stubble—which she now noticed was only a shadow––a handkerchief, and some old clothes, while she, with all her makeup skills, hadn’t fooled him for a minute.

"What?" he asked, catching her looking at him.

She shook her head. "Nothing." His eyes rested on her for a few moments while his smile slipped awry. She had to avert her eyes as warmth flooded into her cheeks.

It was more than clothing and a little growth of beard, she decided. It was a whole attitude, a way of moving, standing, speaking; facial expressions, a certain look in the eyes. He’d cultivated a different personality, so completely different it even altered his physical appearance. And yet, he wore both identities so comfortably, each one had seemed absolutely believable and real.

As if, she thought, they were both a part of him—two sides of the same coin. The light and dark sides of Dillon James.

"Here’s one," Tannis said as she picked out a bench in the warm sunshine overlooking a bed of pansies. As she sat, she peeled back her coat, then took off her gloves and stuffed them into one of her pockets.

"Why do you wear those?" Dillon asked, sitting beside her. "I’ve wondered."

Without a word Tannis held out her hands. Smooth, slender,
young
hands.

Dillon nodded. "Ah, I see. Dead giveaways." He held out one of the subs.

"Mmf," Tannis said, holding up a hand. "Wait a minute."

"So that’s how you do that." Dillon watched with narrow–eyed interest as she removed the padding from inside her cheeks. "Amazing what a difference it makes."

"Not enough of a difference, apparently." His scrutiny was making her heart malfunction again, flushing more of that excess heat into her cheeks.

"Not enough? Why? You mean because I recognized you?"

She shrugged. "You did—instantly."

"Not quite instantly." His smile hovered. "Don’t let that worry you. I was trained to be observant."

"Oh?" she asked, interested. She’d been taught to observe people, too, or thought she had. "Why?"

His smile vanished; his features seemed to sharpen and solidify, like a picture coming into focus. For a moment, then, Tannis saw the derelict’s face again. The dark side…

With a curious lack of expression Dillon said, "I used to be a cop."

"A cop," Tannis said. "Oh, boy." She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. "Where, here?"

He shook his head. "Los Angeles. Vice, mostly." He flicked the brim of his baseball cap and laughed, but his laughter had a dry and hollow sound, like an old newspaper blowing down an empty street. "I’ve spent a lot of time in getups like this, working undercover on downtown streets."

Tannis had a very graphic imagination. The series of images it projected in her mind took away her appetite. Staring down at the sandwich in her hands, she swallowed and murmured, "I guess by comparison Los Padres must seem—"

"Like a nursery school playground," Dillon confirmed flatly, looking at her, then away.

Tannis knew then that she’d been right; Dillon James knew the darkness well. He’d lived in it. And it had left its mark.

She heard the husky whisper of a sigh as Dillon shook off the shadows, pulling the cap from his head and raking his fingers through his hair, trying to catch whatever breeze might be passing. His hair looked clean, and captured the sun in reddish highlights. As she watched him, Tannis felt the fingers of her right hand curl with an unexpected but undeniable desire to comb through his hair, smooth it away from his forehead. Discomfited, she looked at the offending hand with reproach and rubbed it against her thigh.

When he was finished with his sandwich, Dillon stretched and draped his arms across the top of the park bench. As he lifted his hand to give the pompon on Tannis’s cap a lazy tug, his smile appeared like the sun from behind a windblown cloud. "This must be hot. Why don’t you take it off?"

Tannis clapped her hand over the cap and shook her head. Swallowing a bite of her own sandwich suddenly became very difficult. "I’d have to take the wig off too."

"Well? Why not?"

She looked at him, unable to explain to herself or him why the act of taking off her wig in front of him seemed so frighteningly intimate. Improvising, she said, "Somebody might see me."

"Ah. The street people, you mean." Dillon frowned and sat forward, clasping his hands together between his knees. In an abrupt change of mood he asked bluntly, "Tannis, how long have you been living on the streets without backup?"

"Backup?" She smiled at the term. "Now you sound like a cop. Oh, wow, do you have any idea how foolish I feel? Accusing you of observing from your ivory tower, challenging you to come down and see how things really are" — she lifted two fingers on each hand, enclosing her words in mocking quotes—" when all the time—"

"It wasn’t my intention to make you feel foolish," Dillon said, clipping his words impatiently. "And you haven’t answered my question."

He looked so grim that Tannis drew away from him a little. Uncertain, not quite sure what he was getting at, she murmured, "Uh, well, I started staying out right after Thanksgiving—but I went home to my folks for Christmas."

"You went home for Christmas." Dillon dropped his head into his hands, rubbing his eyes as if looking at her had become a strain. He muttered something under his breath, but all Tannis could make of it was the word lucky. He turned to give her a long, grave stare. "Hasn’t anyone ever told you that what you’re doing is dangerous?"

"Oh, sure." Tannis nodded. "Everybody has—more than once."

"Everybody?"

"Well, everybody who knows about what I’m doing. My sister and brother–in–law. Gunner, and now you."

"But you didn’t believe them?"

"Of course I believed them."

"No," Dillon said very quietly, "I really don’t think you did. I don’t think you realize that for every hard luck case and quaint character you’ve met on the street there’s probably a dozen representatives of every kind of sociopathology imaginable. I’m talking about people who live in a world populated by demons, people without even the tiniest scrap of conscience, people who’ve fried their brains on drugs you’ve probably never heard of. I still don’t think you have a clue, Tannis, not even after the scare I gave you."

"I’m a psychologist," she said evenly. "I’m not as innocent of the human condition as you seem to think I am. And anyway—" she straightened her back and looked pointedly at the squiggle of dried blood on his temple "—I think I’m capable of defending myself."

Dillon snorted.

Tannis stood up and dropped the uneaten half of her submarine sandwich back into the bag. Fighting to control her temper, she shoved the sleeves of her sweater above her elbows, paced a few steps, then turned to look down at him, hugging herself. "You know," she said quietly, "you could probably screw this up for me if you wanted to. You probably have the authority to keep me from completing my research, or at the very least, to make it difficult for me. But this means a lot to me, and if you keep me from doing my research here, I’ll just have to go somewhere else. I chose this town because my sister lives here, but there are other places that will do as well." She paused. "I can always go to L.A."