Skin Deep

by Marissa Doyle

  She hadn’t listened. Derek had met his new wife-to-be, Chelsee, not long after that conversation. She’d been a part-time aerobics instructor.

  She tiptoed upstairs to change out of her dress and into a t-shirt and old running shorts, got a roll of trash bags from the kitchen cupboard, and flicked on the light of Derek’s old office, determined not to think—just do.

  It felt a little funny to stand in the doorway and look at the enormous desk and leather chairs and tall mahogany bookcases that seemed to scream A Very Successful Man owned them. With the exception of the bookcases and two leather wingbacks, she hated all of it. Nothing could have been more out of place in a seaside home. Kathy had said that her older brother was looking for a new desk for his office and would be happy to take it off her hands. He was welcome to it.

  The bookcases would be easy to clear out. Derek had already taken the few things he’d wanted, and all that was left were knick-knacks and photographs. Most of those she unceremoniously dumped into a trash bag: a picture of Derek with a large dead fish at a fishing derby; a picture of Derek with some sports team owner at a play-off game; a picture of Derek presenting a large check to the Mattaquason Historical Society. A very ugly set of bull and bear bookends. A Tom Brady-autographed New England Patriots football helmet which she set aside to donate to the library’s silent auction fundraiser in July. Dozens of back issues of Barron’s and Fortune, interspersed with the odd copy of Penthouse. A decorative rack of antique golf balls that looked like a row of petrified kiwi fruit.

  After a few minutes of sorting and tossing she realized she was humming. This had definitely been the right thing to do after the evening’s fiasco. She was in control of her life. Taking this room apart proved it.

  She tied up one bag, dragged it to the garage, then looked around the room. Those awful curtains had to go next. She pulled down the heavy maroon paisley chintz panels Derek had chosen and folded them to go to Goodwill. She’d move the bookcases into the great room and paint this room cream and pale sage green, and never let another copy of Fortune into the house again.

  She double-checked the large credenza that concealed file drawers, but Derek had cleaned those out last fall. Good. She didn’t want to have to deal with sending anything to him. So that just left the desk, and presumably he’d cleaned that out too.

  Her presupposition seemed to be correct. The large middle drawer contained a few hundred paper clips—did they breed in drawers left unopened too long?—a letter opener shaped like a nine iron, and Derek’s Waterman pen, which she tossed into the trash with glee. The two top drawers on either side held odd ends of stationery and ancient receipts from the lawn service and trash hauler. The other drawers held an equally uninteresting mix that also went directly into a trash bag.

  Except for the lower right hand drawer.

  Garland pulled out a stack of cardboard boxes and glanced inside the top one. Just more stationery with the Mattaquason address imprinted on it. Derek certainly wouldn’t need that anymore. She started to dump them into a bag then paused. Might as well save the envelopes. She could put new address labels over Derek’s name and use them for bill paying.

  When she opened the last box she saw that the envelopes inside it were already addressed. To Derek, at his office. There were at least two dozen of them, and the top one was postmarked last year, just a few weeks before Derek had moved out. As she stared at the round, immature handwriting on the top envelope, she realized what these were: letters from his girlfriend.

  Sense told her to return the letter to the box and bury the whole thing in the bottom of the recycling bin. Or better yet, burn it. But curiosity won. She pulled the pages—letterhead from the health club where they’d met—out of the topmost envelope and unfolded them.

  And wished she hadn’t. Detailed descriptions of ecstatic, juicy encounters in a broom closet at the health club were more than she could stomach, even if they were funny in a sick sort of way. But then from the bottom of a page she saw her own name leap out at her.

  i just cant wait until you think its time to finally leive garlind and be with me. You poor baby how can you stand it, i know you married her to get your start in business and all and you have been so pashent and put up with so much all these years. Its about time you realy started living and having a real home life with someone who loves you. When you were saying those things about her the other day i felt so bad it must have been just a misrable life for you stuck in that big house with her and her not respecting you and not wanting to give you any children, i will give you as many as you want i love litle babies and want alot of them remember the docter we went to said i would be a baby machine. i’m counting the days until we can be together forever darling sweety so i can take care of you like you diserve.

  Garland stared at the page with the lower case “i’s” dotted with little hearts and wondered why all the air had been sucked out of the room, because suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

  “Garland?”

  She realized that she was curled into a little ball on the floor behind Derek’s desk, still clutching the letter. Alasdair stood over her looking puzzled, wrapped in Derek’s kanji robe, and she also realized that he had called her name several times now. She opened her mouth to speak, but all that would come out was a rusty, wordless croak. She looked up at him again and his face blurred and fractured and finally dissolved in a wash of tears.

  * * *

  Alasdair had watched Garland go that evening feeling as if a battle were going on inside him. He knew from the hints she dropped that the healer had hoped to keep her with him late into the evening, which could only mean one thing. The rational side of him had pretended to be pleased—it would be good for Garland to find love in the healer’s arms tonight. He’d felt her bewildered pain ever since he’d told her that he had to leave and it had been almost more than he could endure. But the rest of him had struggled not to keep her from going out to the healer’s car and take her upstairs to make love to her himself. Being ripped at by Mahtahdou and his demons had not hurt more.

  So when he heard the tires of a car and the sound of her key in the door as he lay abed, and a few minutes later her light tread up and then back down the stairs, he decided to stop pretending to sleep. He looked over at Conn, curled up in Garland’s purple shirt and sleeping soundly, then put on his robe and went downstairs after her.

  He found her in the work room that had belonged to her husband. She had taken off the dress she’d worn earlier to dine with the healer and was in skimpy clothes that left her arms and legs bare. He hung back in the dark hall and watched her drop piles of papers into bags and sweep the coverings off the windows. Her movements were brisk and determined but there was a strange, unhappy expression on her face that puzzled him. Alasdair felt a sharp, gloating jab of satisfaction—so the healer hadn’t been able to coax her into his bed after all. It was wrong of him to be so pleased at the fact. It was also impossible not to be.

  Had something happened between them? Was that why she was cleaning this room now—because she was too upset to sleep? Maybe he should go back upstairs now and let her work out her feelings in peace…but no. If Garland was unhappy, he couldn’t desert her. Even if she didn’t know he was there.

  When all the shelves and surfaces were bare she knelt on the floor behind the big desk, sorting through the papers in the drawers and emptying them into the bags. From where he stood he could just see part of her back and shoulders hunched over her work. The clock in the front hall chimed eleven times. Would she stop cleaning when she’d finished the desk and go upstairs to her bed? If so, then he should go back up now so that she didn’t see him. What would she say tomorrow when he asked her how her evening with the healer had been? Should he even ask her, or—

  Garland suddenly vanished, undoubtedly bending over further to pick something up. But after five breaths she hadn’t sat up again. He inched closer to the door, craning to see what she was doing, and heard a strange noise—a thin, high keening
sound coming from behind the desk.

  Before he could stop to think, he was striding into the room just as the sound deepened into a sob. Garland lay curled into herself on the floor, fists pressed into her forehead. Boxes and papers were strewn haphazardly around her, but she seemed to have forgotten they were there.

  “Garland,” he said, and dropped to his knees next to her. He worked his arms under and around her then heaved her rigid form onto his lap.

  “It’s all right, ionmhuinn,” he crooned into her hair, rocking her gently.

  At first she didn’t seem to notice that he held her, or that he was even in the room. But gradually she turned and huddled against him, one hand reaching up to clutch the edge of his robe. Her thin shirt, damp with sweat, had rucked partway up her back and he traced slow circles on her exposed skin with his fingertips, still murmuring to her under his breath as she shook with the force of her sobs. His beautiful Garland—what could have done this to her? His own throat ached as he listened to the pain pouring out of her. If the healer had been the cause of this, that confident grin of his would be permanently missing after he’d gotten his hands on him.

  He wasn’t sure how much time passed until her sobs gradually subsided, leaving her limp against him, her face cemented by tears to the bare skin of his throat. He knew what he should do now: pat her shoulder and ask if she was all right, then gently put her off his lap and get her some water to drink and a wet cloth to wash her tears away. And he would do all those things in a few minutes. But this would be his last—his only—chance to hold her close to him, to smooth his face against her hair, to breathe in the scent of her. Once he let her out of his arms, the barriers would come up again between them. Was he wrong to want to delay that for just a few more minutes?

  He had stopped rocking, but still stroked slow circles on the skin of her back and side. In the nighttime silence of the house, with his eyes closed, touch and scent suddenly seemed much bigger, more engrossing. Her skin was so soft under his hand…and her hair under his cheek was smooth and so redolent of her and—

  She let go of his robe and slid her hand up his bare chest to his shoulder, then slowly down again, but tentatively, as if she were afraid he might protest, and he realized she too knew that if they let go, the moment would pass and they would never touch again.

  “Alasdair,” she whispered, and he shivered as he felt her warm breath against the side of his throat. “Don’t you dare let me go.”

  And then she reached up to turn his face to hers and kissed him.

  He closed his eyes, the better to savor her. It would only be this once that he would feel the warm sweetness of her mouth—just once, in case he never knew love again. He tilted her back in his arms and kissed the last tears from her eyes, then found her mouth again and kissed her there too, not gently any more. If the healer had kissed her tonight he would wipe the touch of his lips from hers and make it so she would remember only his mouth on hers, his hands on her smooth warm skin—

  Except that she was teasing him with her tongue so he groaned and could only kiss her deeper, and her hands were touching him, leaving trails of fire across his skin, and he knew that the tables had turned. As long as he lived it would only be her mouth that he wanted to taste, her body he wanted to touch and stroke and feel under him, around him. When her hand slid down his chest again and didn’t stop at the belt loosely tied around his waist he knew he was lost, and could have wept for joy.

  Her fingertips just brushed his hardening length, hesitating, questioning. He answered her unspoken question with a sudden, convulsive movement, sliding her onto the floor and stretching out over her. “A chiall mo chridhe,” he whispered. His darling one. His. He kissed her and managed to remove all her clothes but the garment she wore over her breasts. Its resistance made him growl in frustration. He wanted her breasts now.

  She laughed softly and arched against him, reaching beneath her, and then it was loose and he almost yanked it down her arms before tenderly cupping one rose-tipped breast, then the other. “So soft,” he murmured, brushing his tongue over them.

  She inhaled sharply through parted lips. “Ohh...don’t stop.”

  “I’ve only just started,” he whispered, and slid one hand down her warm belly to part her thighs.

  * * *

  “Did I seduce you, or you me?” Garland said, nuzzling his ear. “If it was me, I suppose I should be ashamed of myself.”

  But he could hear the smile in her voice, and the small motion she made with her hips against him was more shameless than ashamed. He met her motion with one of his own so that her breath caught in a moan—oh, gods, the feel of her enfolding him!—then kissed her hard.

  “I asked you to—no, I was begging you to, in my mind.” He shifted his weight onto his forearms so that he could look down at her. “You were more honest than I was. I thought I could pretend I didn’t want you.”

  “No, I wasn’t. I thought I could pretend I wanted someone else.” For a few seconds her eyes dimmed. “But it didn’t work.”

  The healer. Alasdair could think of him now without a jealous burn in the pit of his stomach. “I am sorry for him,” he said. “But not very much.”

  She laughed and arched up to kiss him, and he knew that she belonged to him as much as he did to her. The thought was both exhilarating and terrifying. But he wouldn’t—couldn’t—think now. Not when she was cradling him between her long, lovely legs, moving against him just like that…

  “Alasdair,” she murmured into his mouth a few moments later. “You know that we could go up to my room and do this a lot more comfortably.”

  To her bed. They could make love again and fall asleep in each other’s arms, and he could waken in the morning and see her face next to his, just as he’d longed to do—

  No. No thoughts of morning. Not now. “Yes. Let’s go.”

  They checked on the peacefully snoring Conn, and then Garland led him into her room and shut the door behind her. He watched while she lit a pair of candles on a bureau, then turned to him and took his hands.

  “Make love to me again,” she said softly, pulling him to the bed. Her skin gleamed golden in the candlelight, and her beautiful round breasts under his hands were so soft and inviting, drawing him in, and as he touched her she made little wordless sounds of pleasure that drove him wild with need. He could never have enough of her, not if he lived till the seas went dry.

  “Why do you cry?” he asked afterward, brushing a tear from the corner of her eye with his thumb.

  She reached up to touch his face. “Because I’m so happy. This is…I didn’t know it would be like this.” Her smile turned impish. “If I had, I might have done it a lot sooner.”

  “How much sooner?” He bent and nibbled the edge of her ear. “When did you decide you desired me?” He knew he shouldn’t be playing this game, but he couldn’t stop.

  “Honestly? As soon as I saw you on the beach. But then I got wrapped up in taking care of you and Conn, so I pretended to myself that I didn’t. And then there was Rob.” She sighed.

  Alasdair rolled onto his back and pulled her to lie against him, head pillowed on his shoulder. “Was he why you cried earlier?” he asked.

  “Rob? Oh, no. Well, he had a little to do with it, but not really.” She sighed, and he knew his guess that something unpleasant had passed between them was correct.

  “Then what was it?”

  “He never loved me, you know,” she said quietly. “My husband, I mean. I didn’t know that. It was all right there in a letter I found when I was cleaning out his desk. That’s what made me cry.”

  Alasdair kissed her forehead. “Then he was a greater fool than I’d thought. But he’s gone now. He can’t trouble your life any more.”

  She was shaking her head. “You don’t understand. I know marriages fall apart because people fall in love then eventually figure out that they’re wrong for each other. I could handle that. But Derek never loved me at all. He was…he was using me. I never to
ld you about how Derek and I met, did I?”

  Using her. He shifted uneasily and said, “No. You don’t have to.”

  “But I want to. I need to get this out.” She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at him. “He was one of my father’s students. My father was a business management professor at the university where Derek was a scholarship student. He was also the head of the business liaison office that placed students in internships and jobs as part of their degree work—because of that, he knew absolutely everybody that mattered in the business world in Boston. We had CEOs and CFOs and presidents over for dinner or drinks all the time.”

  He nodded. Many of her words made no sense to him, but the basic meaning was clear. Her father had been a powerful man.

  “My dad loved Derek, you know. He thought he was one of the best and brightest he’d ever taught. I met Derek when I came home from college one weekend and he was invited for dinner. I was dazzled, of course—this handsome junior being so attentive to humble little freshman me. And Dad was dazzled too—he started regarding Derek as the son he hadn’t had. Derek and I started dating in November of my freshman year when I was home for Thanksgiving, and for the next three years he was absolutely devoted. He finished his BA but stayed at the university to get his MBA, and we graduated the same year. I’d planned to go on to graduate school but that summer he asked me to marry him. He needed me, he said. I really thought he loved me.” She paused, then added quietly, “I know I loved him.”

  “What happened then?”

  “My dad was thrilled. So happy to be able to introduce his go-getter of a son-in-law to all his CEO friends. I don’t think Derek ever had to write up a resume. He had his choice of positions.”

  She took a deep breath and went on. “I was devastated by not being able to give him children. Maybe if we’d had them things would have been different—I would have been busy with them, and Derek would have had his work. Lots of people live those sort of parallel lives. Then about three years ago Dad had a stroke. I think in his way Derek did love my father, because he’d never really had one—his father left when he was just a toddler. It wasn’t till after Dad had a second stroke and died that I think Derek started seriously looking at other women. He would never have tried to leave me while Dad was alive.”