Chasing a Brighter Blue, page 8
“Like now, even at the wedding?”
“Yes. When you own three hotels, there’s always an excuse to be made as to why you must visit one or the other. The current excuse is a problem in Aspen.”
“Does he have a mistress?”
Shelby hesitated. Was she really having this discussion with Reagan? Should she be having this discussion with anyone outside the family? Reagan apparently sensed her hesitation.
“What? Too personal?”
She shrugged. “Stephanie and I were just talking about that. Even though we suspect that maybe he does, it’s not any of our business.”
“It’s not any of your business or you really don’t want to know?”
Shelby sighed. “Both, I suppose.”
Chapter Thirteen
Reagan laughed as Shelby handed her the bottle of sangria wine. “You found a bottle of my favorite, huh?”
Shelby smiled. “It’s not a hot summer day but it’ll have to do.”
Reagan fingered the corkscrew, watching as Shelby unpacked the picnic basket. When she’d asked for a tour of the park, she hadn’t anticipated all this. She was pleasantly surprised that Shelby wanted to spend this much time with her. She knew she hadn’t been the best of company on some of their outings. She turned the corkscrew over and inserted in, turning it quickly and pulling out the cork.
“You know your way around a wine bottle,” Shelby said.
“Because I can open a bottle of wine doesn’t mean I like the stuff.”
“I know. I’m not really a wine drinker either, which is surprising. As my mother said, they have quite a collection of wine and I grew up drinking it.”
“Gin and tonic more your style?”
Shelby nodded. “When I’m stressed…gin and tonic. When I’m relaxed and mellow…a nice brandy will do.”
Reagan met her gaze. “I don’t recall you having a brandy even once.”
“You’re right.” Then she smiled. “But I am relaxed now so the sangria will have to suffice.”
Reagan nodded. “So, what do we have here?”
“Not quite sure,” Shelby said. She opened one of the containers, finding a nice, thick sandwich, cut in half. “Appears to be roast beef.” She opened another and found turkey. “Do you have a preference?”
“How about half of each,” Reagan suggested.
“Deal.” Shelby pulled out two small bags of chips. “It’s like a real picnic,” she said, sliding one bag across the picnic table toward her.
“It was nice of you to do all of this,” Reagan said.
“Too pretty a day to be indoors,” Shelby said as she pulled out two wineglasses.
Reagan filled both of them, sliding one in front of Shelby. Then she picked up the thick roast beef sandwich and inspected it. The beef was covered with onions and some sort of white sauce. Horseradish? The bread was smeared with brown mustard. She closed it back up and took a bite, moaning at the taste.
“Really good. Spicy.”
“The turkey is good too,” Shelby said. “It’s got a cucumber-cilantro mayo on it. They make it fresh in the restaurant.”
“This has a nice horseradish sauce,” she said as she took another bite.
They ate in silence for a moment, and she could feel Shelby watching her. She finally met her gaze with an arched eyebrow.
Shelby smiled slightly, then wiped her mouth before speaking. “We’ve talked about me. What about you?”
“What about me? You want to know about growing up on a farm?” she asked.
“I imagine it would be fun,” Shelby said.
“Not so much. Lots of work. And as a kid, you don’t think of the animals as a food source, they’re pets. So when one of them disappears and ends up on the dinner table, it would be quite traumatic.”
“Oh. I didn’t think of that,” Shelby said. “What kind of farm?”
“Corn and wheat. We kept a few cows and chickens. Those were for us to eat, not sell.” She shook her head. “I learned pretty quickly to stop naming them. In fact, I stopped eating meat at home, knowing it was one of my friends.” She looked at Shelby. “I didn’t have a lot of real friends,” she explained. “I preferred the company of farm animals to the kids at school.”
Shelby took a sip of wine. “When did you know you were gay?”
Reagan smiled. “You think that’s why I avoided friends? Because I was gay?”
“Some do.”
“Did you?” Reagan asked.
“For a time, yes. I was afraid they would find out and shun me so it was easier to shun them first,” she said. “I didn’t tell a soul until I was in college.”
“I’m guessing your mother didn’t take it well,” Reagan said.
“That’s an understatement,” Shelby said. “But we were talking about you, not me.”
Reagan nibbled on a chip, remembering the conversation with her mother like it was yesterday.
“I was young. Tenth grade,” she said. “I had a huge crush on Tammy Melton. She played basketball. So I tried out for the team too.” She laughed. “And I sucked. So Tammy offered to coach me.”
“Ah…Tammy had a crush too,” Shelby guessed.
“Yep.”
“She was your first?”
Reagan sighed. “She was my first kiss. And my first make-out session.” Then she shook her head. “But she freaked out when it got a little heated. She called me a freak and a pervert,” she said.
“Oh, you’re kidding me. The little bitch.”
Reagan laughed. “That she was. I think she assumed I would tell everyone what we’d been doing, so she got it out first. She said I’d forced her and…well, it wasn’t a real fun time for me.”
Shelby reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry. Kids can be cruel.”
“Don’t I know,” she said. “I went home and locked myself in my room and cried like a baby,” she admitted. “Of course, my mother knew why. One of the other mothers called her to let her know what had happened.” She smiled. “And she was so great. She brought dinner into my room, just for the two of us. And we talked. And I told her what had really happened.”
“She already suspected you were gay?”
Reagan nodded. “Yes. So she wasn’t shocked by it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she was happy about it, but she wasn’t shocked. And she didn’t go crazy over it or anything. And she told me she loved me and that mean people like Tammy didn’t deserve my tears.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet.”
“Yeah. But school wasn’t a whole lot of fun for a while after that,” she said. “Not a lot of them wanted to hang out with me, if you know what I mean.”
“Did you and Tammy ever talk about it?”
“Oh, she avoided me for the next year, at least. Then one day out of the blue, she came up to me and wanted to apologize.” Reagan shook her head. “I wanted to tell her to go to hell.” She shrugged. “But I no longer had a crush on her and it didn’t matter to me one way or the other. I knew what I was, who I was. And I knew she was struggling with it.”
“Was her apology before or after Becky McFarlane?” Shelby asked.
Reagan smiled. “After. But then I left for college and didn’t go back. Well, other than to the farm now and then. I haven’t seen anyone I went to high school with since the day we graduated.”
Shelby finished her turkey and picked up the roast beef half. “So how was college?”
“Fun. Made a few friends.”
“And your choice of a career?” Shelby asked.
Reagan realized she had spent almost the entire day without the heavy weight of Richard’s death hanging over her. And all it took was an innocent question from Shelby to bring it back. Shelby seemed to sense this as, again, her hand reached across the table and found hers.
“You can’t carry that guilt forever, Reagan. You have to let it go,” Shelby said gently.
“Am I that easy to read?”
“To me you are. Your eyes have been clear today, not shadowed. Not until I asked that one simple question,” Shelby said. “So answer it.”
Reagan closed her eyes for a moment, chasing away images she wanted to forget. She opened them again, then nodded.
“I needed a one-hour course to meet my financial aid requirements,” she said. “A friend talked me into taking a photography class. I fell in love with it.”
Shelby took a sip of her wine, but her eyes never left Reagan’s.
“Do you want to talk some more about…about what happened?”
Reagan shrugged. “Not much more to say. But I think it did help to talk about it,” she said. “I feel better today.” She tapped her head. “Up here.”
“I know it’s none of my business, Reagan, but I really think you should talk to a professional.”
Reagan shook her head. “I’m afraid they’ll want me to take a look at the images on my camera. Some sort of closure or something. And I don’t think I can do that. Not yet.”
Shelby rested her chin in her palm, her eyes thoughtful as she watched her. “I didn’t know Richard, of course, or know anything about him…but he assembled this team, right?”
Reagan nodded. “Yes. Mostly colleagues he’d worked with before on other projects,” she said.
“Do you think he felt responsible for their safety?”
“Of course. It was his project.”
Shelby nodded. “So then maybe Richard wasn’t trying to save George, but rather he was trying to protect his team.”
It wasn’t something she had considered before. “I don’t know. It all happened so fast. I’m shooting…the guy with the bomb, he looks like anyone else. He’s dressed in traditional garments.” She closed her eyes for a moment, seeing it again in her mind. “When he grabbed George, his top—I think they call it a perahan—came up on the side, I could see the bomb strapped to his waist,” she said. “But I was shooting George.” She opened her eyes, meeting Shelby’s. “I keep shooting but I’m thinking, Jesus Christ, that’s a bomb…but I keep shooting. The next thing I know, Richard is in my frame and it registers that it’s Richard…but I keep shooting.” She paused. “And the bomb goes off. And I see what happens. I get blown back by the blast and instinctively I shield my camera, I guess, because it wasn’t damaged at all.”
“And then what?” Shelby asked gently.
“And then chaos…crying…screaming…people running.”
“What did you do?”
“I don’t…I don’t remember, really,” she said. “I remember looking around and it was like everything was happening in slow motion. And I remember thinking, you’ve got your camera, you should be using it to capture the scene. That was my job.” Reagan shook her head. “But I couldn’t.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Bentley was injured, bleeding badly. I went to him first. He was in shock. Hell, I guess we all were.”
“So why do you blame yourself, Reagan?”
“I should have done something,” she said.
Shelby was watching her intently, so much so that Reagan had to pull her eyes away, afraid of what she might find there.
“You say you don’t want to pick up a camera,” Shelby said. “But is it because of the images that are on it…or is it because you blame the camera somehow?”
A simple observation, but it hit home nonetheless. She nodded. “If I hadn’t been holding the camera, if I hadn’t been shooting George, then maybe I could have done something. Or at the very least, stopped Richard.” She closed up the container on the turkey sandwich, unable to finish it. “I have no idea what I’m going to do now,” she said. “I only know I can’t go back to what I was doing. There was always too much pain and suffering…too much tragedy. Darkness, never light,” she murmured.
“So maybe you need to change your subject matter,” Shelby suggested. “Instead of chasing wars and tragedies…maybe you should chase smiles and happiness.”
Reagan looked at her doubtfully. “What? Like a wedding photographer or something?”
Shelby smiled. “That would be a good start. Or kids’ birthday parties. Or parades. Or—”
Reagan laughed. “Okay, I get it. Smiles and happiness.” She paused and looked around. “Or maybe I should be chasing mountains and sunshine. It certainly makes me feel good to be out here.” She met Shelby’s gaze. “Or maybe it’s you that makes me feel good.”
Shelby smiled sweetly at her. “Maybe both.”
Chapter Fourteen
Shelby shook her head. “There’s nothing going on,” she insisted.
“Then why have you been sneaking off with her?”
“Steph, I have not been sneaking off. She asked me to show her the park, so I did.”
“And a picnic lunch?”
Shelby raised her eyebrows.
“Bruce told me.”
“It was a beautiful day.” She sat down on the sofa and kicked off her boots. “Besides, you wanted us to be friends, didn’t you?”
“I wanted you to be friends so you could find out what was going on with her, that’s all.” Stephanie sat down beside her. “So? What have you found out?”
Shelby debated whether to tell Stephanie or not. If she told Stephanie, then she’d tell Josh, who would then tell his parents. She didn’t think Reagan would appreciate that. “I think…that she’s going to be fine,” she said instead.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if she wants anyone to know, she’ll tell them. It’s not my place.”
“But she told you?”
Shelby nodded. “Yes. We’ve talked about it a couple of times now and I think she’s going to be okay. She needs some time.”
Stephanie eyed her suspiciously. “So why did she tell you and not her family?”
Shelby smiled. “We bonded. Like you suggested.”
“Oh, my God. You do like her,” Stephanie teased. “I knew it. I told Josh there was something going on with you two. You can tell by the way you look at each other.”
“There is nothing going on,” she said again. “Now, what has Mother got planned for dinner?” she asked, changing the subject. “And is it something I can get out of?”
“I must have been out of my mind when I agreed to all this,” Stephanie said with a wave of her hand. “She’s got the seafood extravaganza on the menu tonight.”
Shelby bit her lip. Seafood was her favorite, especially when it involved shrimp. It was going to be hard to pass it up. “Only Mother would do seafood at Christmas in Colorado. Where? Here?”
“Yes. They’re sectioning off part of the restaurant.”
“Well, I guess I’ll have to suffer through it. You know me and seafood.”
Stephanie laughed. “Yes, I knew I could count on you. Tomorrow is spa day. I’m really looking forward to that. Josh and I are going to do a mud bath and a couples massage,” she said.
“Spa day? Okay. I guess I’m going to have to go to that too,” she said.
“Thought you would.” She paused. “Have you heard from Dad?”
Shelby shook her head. “No. Why?”
“I asked Mother if she knew when he was coming up again. She said she didn’t have any idea, and Shelby, she didn’t even try to make up an excuse or anything. You know how she normally says that he’s got this or that going on and how he’s so busy. Well, she said nothing like that.”
Shelby shook her head. “No. I know that look, and no, I am not going to talk to her.”
“You’re the oldest. She might need someone to talk to.”
“So? You’re closer to her than I am. You talk to her.”
“No way. How about you talk to Dad?”
“Stephanie, do we really want to know what’s going on? I mean really?” she asked, echoing Reagan’s earlier remark.
“Yes, I do. I don’t want to bury my head in the sand and act like everything is rosy. Because it’s not.” She grabbed Shelby’s arm. “It’s my wedding and he’s not even here.”
“Your wedding is not until next Friday,” Shelby reminded her. “I’m fairly certain he’ll be here by the weekend.”
“The ballroom dance is Monday. He better be here by then. He’s supposed to do the first dance with me.”
Shelby rubbed her forehead. “I had forgotten the big dance Mother had planned. I hope enough guests are here by then.”
“I think the weekend is when most everyone is coming,” Stephanie said. “Did you hear Mother wants to move the Christmas tree from the lobby to the ballroom? How is that even possible?”
“It’s not. And I forgot I promised Bruce I would speak to her about it.” Now she rubbed her temple, hoping to ward off her fast-approaching headache. The relaxed feeling she’d had after spending time with Reagan in the park was fading fast.
“And one other thing…she’s back on the bridesmaid dresses.”
“Great. You’re really full of good news, aren’t you?”
“Well, I told her that I was perfectly fine with Reagan wearing a tux and so is Josh,” Stephanie said. “Mother wouldn’t hear of it. She said if Reagan won’t wear a dress, she would not be a part of the wedding party.”
“Jesus Christ, Steph, is it her wedding or yours?”
Stephanie laughed. “Well, it’s hers, obviously.”
“It’s not funny,” she said. “She’s obsessed with this. It’s like it’s life or death to her. She’s surely not enjoying herself.”
“I know. But you can’t do anything but laugh.”
“How many times have you thought about eloping?”
Stephanie’s expression turned serious. “Counting twice today? About fifty.”
“Oh, Steph…why did you let her talk you into all of this?”
“Come on, you know Mother. This is her big splash.”
“And when are all of her friends coming?”
“Monday for the dance, I think,” Stephanie said. “Of course, some of them won’t stay for the wedding on Friday. They’ve got their own Christmas obligations.” She sighed. “That’s one reason I wanted a Christmas wedding,” she said. “I thought it would only be us. Just the family. Mine and Josh’s. A small, intimate Christmas wedding. That’s what I wanted.”
