Skin Deep (11 page)

“I don’t think you’re capable of making mistakes, Rob Mowbray.” She caught a glimpse of the label on the bottle. “Oh, my. So what’s the occasion?”

The
pop!
of the cork once more focused the eyes of the entire dining room on them. Rob ignored them and leaned forward, lifting his flute to hers. “Oh, I don’t know. Just because. Because I like champagne. Because I like you.”

For a fleeting second, tears started to her eyes. Just because. She had spent the last fourteen years of her life with a man who viewed everything in life as items on a balance sheet to be totted up as credits and debits. And now she sat across from another man who’d ordered a bottle of hundred-and-fifty-dollar champagne “just because.”

“I like you, too,” she whispered, and touched her glass to his.

He smiled a slow, sweet smile. “I’d hoped you say that.”

A soft wind seemed to blow through the room. Without looking up, Garland was able to guess what it was: the whispers of the other diners, watching them.

“Don’t look now, but I think I saw a camera,” she said, hoping her tone was light.

He glanced around the room. There was an abrupt clatter of cutlery as everyone suddenly remembered the plates of rapidly cooling food in front of them. “You were joking, right?” he asked, smiling uncertainly.

She sat back and took a sip of champagne. “Mostly. Do you think Alasdair and Conn will be okay?”

Rob’s smile faded. “They’re fine. Don’t worry about them.”

Their waiter arrived then to take their orders. Garland was glad for the interruption. Why was she brooding about Alasdair, when Rob was here plying her with Veuve Clicquot Reserve and telling her he liked her a lot? Then again, being part of the evening’s entertainment for everyone else in the restaurant wasn’t helping matters. She felt stiff and uncomfortable suddenly.

Rob cleared his throat. “Speaking of Alasdair, I got hold of the guy I know at the Mattaquason
Mariner
and told him about you. His name is Jim Barnes, and he’s one of the staff writers. One of two.” He smiled wryly.

“You told him about me?” Garland had a flashback of Kathy making her stand on her chair at the Captain’s Bridge.

“You and finding Alasdair and Conn on the beach. Jim was shocked that he hadn’t heard about it. Anyway, he said of course he wanted the story and that he’s free tomorrow morning if that’s all right with you. I’m kind of surprised that they haven’t been sniffing around already—something like this should be big news in off-season Mattaquason. Hell, the middle school spelling bee was on the front page last week.” He shook his head. “The only thing is, I’ve got office hours on alternate Saturdays till twelve-thirty. Do you mind if I’m not there when Barnes comes?”

Here was a chance to recapture the evening’s earlier mood. “Of course I’ll mind,” she said. “But I’ll let you make it up to me.”

Rob’s grin flashed as he refilled their flutes. “I’ll have to see about that.”

* * *

Alasdair had not been happy when Garland said that she was going somewhere with the healer and would be leaving him and Conn alone that evening. Even though she promised she’d lock everything and showed him how to press a button on the “phone” that would make it so that he could talk to her on the tiny one she carried with her, he was still uneasy. He turned every light in the bedroom on, even her special sunshine lights and the tiny lights on her sewing and quilting machines. He thought about taking the coverings off the lamps but wasn’t sure if that would annoy her when she returned.

Conn was not happy either; he’d clung to Garland while the healer checked his wounds and could hardly be convinced to let her go. Alasdair tried yet again to talk to him after she left, to ask what he was feeling and why he was so drawn to her. And as he had every other time, Conn only stared at him in silence. The boy had rarely spoken even before the attack—hiding from Mahtahdou, he’d learned silence early. It was no life for a small child and Alasdair had known that. Several times in the last few seasons he had come close to sending Conn out to foster among the selkies scattered across the waters north of here, but had never had the courage to do so. And his cowardice had nearly killed his son.

Was that why Conn clung to Garland? Because he knew she could protect him when his own father could not? And wasn’t he doing the same thing, hiding behind this human who had no idea of what power she wielded?

He shifted in his bed, straining to look out the narrow gap between the coverings on the window. With all the lights in the room on it was hard to see anything in the darkness outside, and the various hums and rumbles that a human house made drowned any sounds as well. He glanced over at Conn and saw that he slept, clinging to the stuffed figure with large ears Garland had sewn for him from some soft brown cloth. Good.

He put aside the covering on his bed and set his feet on the floor. They throbbed and shot needles of pain up his calves as they always did when he’d tried to walk this week, but he knew about living with pain. Carefully, so that he did not stumble and fall and wake Conn, he shuffled over to the window where Garland had placed a chair and knelt stiffly on it, then peered around the edge of the curtain, cupping his hand to block out the light. He might not be in any shape to defend himself or his son, but he could at least keep vigil until Garland returned.

Outside, a fog had begun to roll in off the water. Alasdair stared at it suspiciously; it was early in the season for fog though the day had been warm. It crept in long tendrils up from the beach, feeling its way along the ground, and he stiffened. Though there was not much wind tonight, what little there was blew off the land, toward the sea. Nevertheless the fog progressed steadily against it, creeping crab-like toward the houses along the shore. As it swirled it seemed to shimmer with a faint, sickly-green phosphorescence.

The back of Alasdair’s neck prickled as if the cold mist had touched it.

He squinted into the darkness and saw the mist pause, then race up the beach toward the house nearest Garland’s. For a moment the house was obscured, and he heard a strange tinkling, crashing noise come from it. The sound happened several times more, then stopped.

Alasdair turned away from the window and tottered over to Garland’s work table, where the cloth picture she’d made waited to be completed with more stitching. He snatched it up and moved as quickly as his feet would let him to Conn’s bed. He draped it over him, then staggered back to the window and peered outside again.

There was nothing to see. Fog swirled over the clear material of the window, casting a faint greenish glow. It seemed to be probing it, as if trying to get inside, and he realized what the sound he’d heard from the other house had been. The fog had smashed the windows, and he could guess why.

It was looking for something.

He clutched Garland’s robe tighter at his throat and watched in horrified fascination as the fog thickened into an opaque mass and pressed against the window. The frame creaked in protest, but the glass did not break. He heard a flurry of sounds from around the house and knew that the fog assailed the other windows and doors, but no crashes followed. For some reason, the fog could not penetrate Garland’s house.

It drew back a little and hovered outside the window. Was it thinking about what to do? Did it even think? Could it harm him and Conn if it managed to break the window? Or was it just a scout, searching blindly and reporting back to its master when it found something suspicious…like a house that it could not enter?

The fog thickened and assaulted the windows again. Alasdair was sure he could see the glass deforming under its pressure, but it held firm. Were they of better quality than the glass in other houses or was something else keeping it out? He couldn’t be sure, but he could guess. This was the dwelling of a magic wielder. Nothing could enter it without her permission.

He smiled grimly and settled himself more comfortably in the chair to watch the fog curl uncertainly around the house. It had to be something of Mahtahdou’s who was master of the insubstantial and ghostly, of images and shadows. Let it search all night if it wanted. It would never find him. And when Garland came home—

He sat up quickly, ignoring the pain in his sides. Lir’s breath! Garland was out somewhere in this. It could not touch her house, but to be out there in the very thick of it, surrounded by Mahtahdou’s foul air…

He looked at Conn, still sleeping peacefully under Garland’s cloth picture. Then, step by painful step, he left the room and inched his way down the stairs to the front door. Garland had saved him. The least he could do was try to help her.

* * *

To Garland’s relief, the rest of their dinner went smoothly. Since they showed no signs of doing anything more titillating than talking a great deal, the other diners finally seemed to forget they were there. Garland kept her concern for Alasdair under control though she very nearly called him from her cell phone in the ladies’ room. The food was delicious, far better now than in summer when the chefs were more rushed. Likewise, the noise level was more tolerable and the service friendlier and more relaxed.

“I can begin to see why the year-round population has such a love-hate relationship with the summer people,” Garland commented as they walked back to Rob’s car. It was a warm evening for March. She lifted her head and took a deep breath of the soft, moist air. A faint mist swirled in the glare of the parking lot’s lights.

“It’s true. They bring lots of money, but they bring themselves too. Most businesses on Cape Cod earn three-quarters of their income between mid-June and early September. But we get the best to ourselves during spring and fall. There’s nothing more beautiful than September in Mattaquason. I can’t wait to show you.” He smiled that slow smile again as he opened the car door for her, and Garland felt a flutter of anticipation.

The mist thickened into fog as they rolled out of downtown and toward Eldredge Point. Her house shimmered as Rob pulled into her driveway, every window spilling light into the moist night air so that it looked like it had a halo.

“I promised Alasdair I’d leave all the lights on,” she explained. How had he and Conn done without her? Had they gone to sleep the way she’d told them to?

“Oh. Well.” Rob put the car into park and turned to her, his face half-lit from the bright post lights on either side of the front walk. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

“Thank you, Rob. It—” She suddenly felt tongue-tied.

He made a small move toward her—just a small one—and she realized he was letting her decide if she wanted to kiss him goodnight.

Of course she did. Why else had she ordered sesame-crusted tuna instead of garlicky shrimp scampi at dinner? She leaned toward him, and his hand reached up to cradle her cheek. His quick kiss the other day had been a promissory note for this one, she knew. It was going to be good.

It was good. Rob’s lips took hers gently but eagerly, with just enough heat to let her know what he wanted from her some day. Garland closed her eyes, waiting for the warm glow of anticipation in her midsection to build into excitement.

But nothing happened.

“Wow,” Rob murmured a few minutes later, coming up for air. “That was even better than I’d dreamed it would be.”

She smiled self-consciously. “Had you been dreaming about it?”

“All week.” He ran a finger down her cheek. “Can I do that one more time, and then I’ll be a good boy and go home?”

Garland lifted her face to his again. Surely this time the spark would ignite inside her. Though he kissed her as well as she’d ever been kissed—certainly better than Derek—there was something missing. She broke the kiss suddenly.

“Garland…” Rob dropped kisses on her eyelids, her cheeks, her jaw, then rested his cheek against hers. She reached up to stroke his hair. But her internal thermostat never as much as flickered.

He turned his face to kiss her hand. “I’m sorry. Was that too much, too soon?”

Relief flooded her. That had to be it. She wasn’t responding to him the way she ought to, the way she wanted to, because she wasn’t ready yet. Surely that was why kissing him had been nice, but had somehow felt wrong? “Maybe. I liked it, but—”

“But you’re still a little tender as far as the heart goes. I understand, Garland.”

“I’m sorry, Rob, I really am.”

“Sorry for what? I shouldn’t have rushed things. I didn’t lie, back at the restaurant. I do like you. A lot. Maybe more than a lot. But it is early days yet, isn’t it? You’ve just moved here, after all, and you’re just getting used to being a single woman again.” He kissed her again, quick and gentle like the other day. “I’ll be over tomorrow to see how it went with Jim Barnes, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you for a lovely evening. It was wonderful—all of it.” Garland smiled into his eyes as she reached for the door, then climbed out into the swirling fog. Rob waited while she unlocked the  door and went inside. She heard the crunch of his tires on the crushed shell driveway as he drove away.

* * *

A new sound—not breaking glass but a scratchy, grinding noise—brought Alasdair to his feet from where he perched on the bottom stair. Another sound, this time from the door itself, made him tense. Then the door opened and Garland stepped inside. She didn’t look harried or frightened, as if she’d been fleeing or fighting anything. Instead, her face looked thoughtful and maybe even slightly sad. She did something to the metal doorknob, then turned and saw him.