Ocean's Touch

by Denise Townsend

  “Will you go with me?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he replied, feeling a complex knot of emotions roiling inside her. He’d have to tease that knot out over the rest of the day.

  “And I have to buy a new dress,” she said, showing him Ladislaw’s card, which she’d kept clenched in her hand almost the entire ride home.

  To her surprise, Dylan’s face lit up. He took a step back and clapped his hands together in joy.

  “We get to go shopping?” he asked with all the enthusiasm of a kid at Christmas.

  She raised her eyebrows, unable to respond. But her brain was whirring.

  Who knew selkies were so metrosexual?

  Chapter Eight

  “Alex sent you?” Wendy asked, cocking her head at Meredith.

  “Yes,” Meredith replied. “I’m…”

  “You’re Meredith Casaubon,” Wendy interrupted, extending her hand. It was petite and immaculately groomed, just like the rest of her. But Wendy’s handshake was also firm and warm, and despite her obviously expensive taste she had the air of someone friendly and open.

  “And I’m Wendy Wheeler,” she said, then added, “I had no idea you were a friend of Alex’s.”

  Meredith couldn’t help but smile at Wendy’s curiosity, which the woman was doing a very poor job of containing.

  “My husband and Alex were…” she paused, trying to think of the correct adjective for Teddy and Alex’s relationship. The two men had always had a great deal of respect for each other’s careers and minds, but absolute disrespect for the other’s chosen lifestyle.

  Rivals? she thought, before dismissing that word as too dramatic. Frenemies?

  “Colleagues,” she said, choosing a more polite, if less honest, truth.

  “I was sorry to hear of your husband’s death,” Wendy said, ratcheting down her curiosity with visible effort. “He was a generous man.”

  Meredith smiled. “Thank you. And yes, he was.”

  “Well,” Wendy said, shifting into sales mode. “What can I help you with today?”

  “I, er, we need something for Alex’s opening tonight,” Meredith said.

  “She needs a new dress,” came Dylan’s smooth, deep voice from behind her. He’d hung back to let Meredith introduce herself to Wendy, but he stepped up as he spoke, extending a hand to Wendy as he did so.

  Wendy’s mouth dropped open at the site of Dylan, who’d clothed himself in a glamour of jeans and a dark woolen sweater that was just tight enough to show off that big body without looking cheap. She only just managed to return his polite greeting without choking on her own tongue. Meredith couldn’t help but smile at the elegant businesswoman’s discomfiture. To be honest, Meredith was glad to see it wasn’t only she whom Dylan impacted so powerfully.

  “I know what I’ll be wearing. But Mer needs something new—something that will show off her beauty,” Dylan finished.

  Meredith gulped. Dylan might be content wearing magic and a smile, but she was hoping to get out of Wendy’s boutique with something a bit more concealing. Perhaps a burka with some tasteful sequins to accent her eye screen.

  Wendy only just managed to tear her eyes away from Dylan and focus back on Meredith.

  “Wonderful,” Wendy said a little breathlessly. “Would you like to start on the inside or the outside?”

  “I’m sorry?” Meredith asked, having no idea what Wendy meant by “inside or outside”.

  Wendy smirked knowingly. “Did Alex tell you anything about my shop?” she asked.

  “No,” Meredith replied. “He just recommended it as a place I might find a dress.”

  “Well, we do something a little special here. We specialize in the full evening’s ensemble. Meaning we try to dress you from the inside out, and from top to bottom.”

  “And what does that mean?” asked Meredith, growing suspicious. She had noticed an awful lot of lingerie on display throughout the store, much of it paired with what looked like a complementary outfit.

  “It means that we sell full looks. So we sell the under things, the outer things, the shoes, and the accessories. That way, ladies don’t have to drive into Portland to shop for the extras. You can find everything you need right here.”

  Meredith frowned. “But I won’t need any…underthings,” she told Wendy quite firmly.

  “Oh yes, she will,” Dylan said with equal force, but also with an undertone of laughter. He also physically switched sides to stand with Wendy.

  Turncoat, Meredith thought, knowing this was not going to be an easy battle.

  “Wonderful,” Wendy said. “I have some absolutely beautiful basques that came in just today, and with your gorgeous figure…”

  Meredith felt herself turn red. “No, really,” she interrupted. “I’ll be fine. My underwear is perfectly serviceable.”

  Both Wendy and Dylan made a face like Meredith had actually just said, “My underwear is made of cat feces.”

  “Well,” Wendy said, taking Meredith by the elbow to steer her farther into the store. “Let’s try on some dresses, and see just how serviceable your underwear is then.”

  Dylan chuckled evilly, as Meredith shot him a furious glance.

  She was beginning to think she’d been set up.

  “Maybe if I just, um, tuck it in right here…and move the strap so it’s, um…” Meredith pleaded, her fingers tugging furiously at the absolutely impossible, if sensible, white cotton of her bra.

  Wendy shook her head, obviously working very hard to keep her expression professional. “It’s not going to work,” she said. “The bra you’re wearing absolutely ruins the line of your dress. And I can see your, er, underpants clearly outlined.”

  Meredith knew why Wendy had stumbled over the word underpants. The sad fact was that Meredith’s sensible underwear—the pair she wore especially to Wendy’s shop because it was the pair she always wore under dresses—looked like a pair of dungarees when outlined under the lovely fabrics of the dresses she’d tried on.

  Dylan smirked from where he sat in the enormous dressing room, watching her tug at her bra as if she were wrestling with an attacker.

  Meredith shot him a foul look and then took a deep breath. After which, she paused to assess herself in the mirror. She tried to ignore her underwear and her anxiety, and just see herself

  I have to admit, she thought, the dress is gorgeous.

  It was a rich, complex shade of blue-green and made of lovely thick satin that fell over her curves like water. The color brought out the chocolate in her hair and her eyes, and made her pale skin glow with an ethereal sheen. It was a simple surplice cut—an elegant style that perfectly showed off Meredith’s hard-won figure without showing too much. It was, however, low enough in both back and front to make any sort of serviceable underwear impossible.

  Coaxing Meredith into the garment, meanwhile, had taken the sort of effort one usually needs to talk an alcoholic relative into rehab. She’d kept trying, and failing, to find something sensible in Wendy’s shop, ignoring everything Wendy or Dylan had suggested. Finally, they’d manhandled Meredith into a dressing room, where Dylan had stripped her down to her skivvies only to abscond with her clothing. Wendy had then appeared with an armful of dresses, which Dylan had told Meredith she had to try on before she’d get her own clothes back.

  They’d all been horrifyingly thin and revealing to Meredith, even though she could also recognize that she was being ridiculous. In reality, the dresses were elegant and au courant, but that was the problem.

  I don’t wear things like this. She thought fondly of her favorite black dress that covered her from neck to ankle in a swathe of thick black velvet.

  But you should, came that sly voice, inviting her to turn around and look at her backside.

  So she did. And, except for the visible panty lines and the thick cotton strap of her bra bisecting her back, she had to admit she looked good.

  Dylan watched Meredith study herself and saw the moment she stopped thinking of herself as “Me
redith, Teddy’s widow” and began seeing “Meredith, individual”. She’d turned around to check herself out from behind, and the slow smile that spread over her face pleased him.

  Before I leave, he thought, she’ll see herself truly.

  It’s all he wanted for her really. She’d been conditioned by all these different forces to see herself as everyone, and everything, else’s—as Teddy’s, as his estate’s, as his family’s, as his charity’s. But meanwhile, there was Meredith, the woman, who’d nearly been crushed by the weight of all those alien identities. He didn’t want her to forget her dead husband, but he also wanted her to have her own life again.

  And actually live it, he thought, watching as Meredith very slowly raised her arms behind her back to undo her bra strap. Then he watched as she shimmied the bra off from underneath the dress. She dropped it on the floor before looking first at him and then into the mirror. Meredith ran her hands down her arms, then trailed her fingers down her own neck, as if wondering where her turtleneck had gone.

  She took a step back, her hands going to her hips where they smoothed over the lines of her enormous underpants.

  “Okay,” Meredith said, as if rallying herself before turning to Wendy. “What have you got that’s not sensible?”

  Dylan only barely managed not to cheer.

  Meredith stepped gingerly from the car, her hired driver helping her before he passed her hand to Dylan. She used her other to clutch her long coat tighter around her.

  The truth was, now that they were away from her bedroom, Meredith felt naked. Alone with Dylan in her house, she’d loved getting ready. She’d shaved her legs and arranged her hair and makeup with more care than she’d taken in years. Then she’d gone into her bedroom, where Dylan had been waiting with her clothes.

  Her selkie lover had helped her into the gorgeous lingerie she’d bought—the black, thigh-high stockings with their lace tops; the scandalously tiny thong panties made of satin and the same lace as the stocking tops; and, finally, the matching satin-and-lace garter belt to which his nimble fingers attached the stockings.

  The only item that went untouched was the bottle of rich, expensive erotic oil that Wendy had gifted the couple. Not that Dylan didn’t already have plans for that oil, but those plans would have to wait.

  In the end, both Wendy and Dylan had agreed that Meredith didn’t need a bra with the dress. In a daze at the shop, Meredith had agreed. And when Dylan had helped drape the dress down her body, her nipples had hardened like pearls at the feel of the soft, cool satin against her skin.

  She’d felt like a goddess when he’d turned her around to look at herself in the mirror. But now, outside of her bedroom and outside of the car, she felt exposed and vulnerable.

  “You look gorgeous,” Dylan said, wanting to ameliorate the anxiety he could feel emanating from her in waves.

  Meredith’s eyes were huge in her face. “Are you sure it’s not too much?”

  “It’s more than you’re used to,” he said, acknowledging her bravery in trying a style so different from that which she’d grown accustomed. “But it’s by no means too much. It’s going to be perfect, you’ll see.”

  Meredith nodded, but her fingers still clutched Dylan’s as they walked toward Alex’s front door, and then through.

  Dylan, meanwhile, wondered at the other emotion he could feel. It lurked underneath her nervousness, and it surprised him. For Meredith was genuinely terrified of the party and of making any sort of grand entrance. Yet there it was—an absolutely contradictory emotion floating, luminescent underneath the fear.

  The emotion was anticipation. And Dylan wondered what lay behind those massive entry doors that had Meredith so very, very eager.

  “The new medium?” said a curiously distant voice.

  “What?” Alex managed to mumble, his mouth gone dry and the rest of his attention riveted on his front door.

  “You were telling us about your new medium,” repeated the voice patiently.

  But Alex was already walking away, unable to think or see past the vision stepping shyly as a doe over his threshold. She clutched her coat around her, appearing reluctant to take it off and hand it to the uniformed girl asking for it. But when she final slipped off the long, dark evening coat, a flood of lust coursed through Alex’s body.

  Meredith? he wondered, almost incapable of believing that the vision in front of him was the woman commonly known as “Teddy Casaubon’s widow”. This woman was all long limbs and pale flesh, set off by a perfectly cut, perfectly teal dress.

  She looked around with wide eyes, scanning the crowd as if afraid they’d turn on her. And when those wide eyes met his, Alex knew it was Meredith. Even across the expanse of his massive foyer, where he was making his guests linger with champagne and canapés before he threw open the doors to the rooms he used as his personal galleries, he recognized those eyes. Their intensity, their liquid beauty—they could only belong to Meredith.

  Alex made his way through the crowd, trying to remember to be polite to everyone who wanted his attention but finding it difficult. There was only one person there in whose attention he was interested.

  Meredith, meanwhile, was trying to keep calm. She recognized only a few faces in this crowd, and they were the merest of acquaintances. The majority of the guests, she assumed, were out-of-towners flown in especially for Alex’s opening. Dylan had slipped away to help the girl with their coats and to find them champagne—she craved a drop of liquid courage. But once her selkie lover had left her side, Meredith only felt more conspicuous and embarrassed.

  This was a mistake, she thought, looking around rather desperately for someone—anyone—with whom to talk.

  And that’s when she saw Alex.

  His tall form was making its way to her, his eyes latched on hers. The fierce look in those always-intense green orbs riveted her to the spot. And yet, from the heat flushing through her body, she was equally aware of her own visceral hunger for Alex’s beautiful, arrogant body.

  Who, exactly, is the predator? she wondered, her belly squeezed tight with what she now admitted to herself was desire.

  Meredith’s drew herself up as she took a deep breath, stepping forward to meet the only man who made her forget absolutely everything else.

  Including the selkie, Dylan, who watched from the shadows as the woman whose body he’d devoured earlier that day stepped eagerly into the arms of another man.

  Chapter Nine

  Meredith tried to keep the hug she gave Alex casual, but she knew her hands lingered overlong on his upper arms. Similarly, while Alex’s lips seemed quick to find her cheek, they were equally long in leaving her smooth skin.

  “You came,” Alex said a little breathlessly.

  “I promised I would,” Meredith replied.

  “And you look gorgeous.” Alex‘s voice was overly husky with those words, and he cleared his throat self-consciously.

  “Thank you. And I mean that. Your friend Wendy worked magic,” Meredith said, looking down and blushing.

  “You were always beautiful, Meredith,” Alex said. “Now you just look beautiful in a different way.”

  “Please, call me Merry,” Meredith said without thinking. When Alex looked inordinately pleased at her words, she didn’t bother to ask herself why she’d made the strange request.

  “Merry, it is. I didn’t know you went by a nickname?” Alex half stated, half asked.

  “I haven’t,” she said. “Not for a while. But I used to.”

  “Well, it’s as lovely a name as you are in that dress,” Alex said, falling back on his natural charm to cover the discomfiture he felt around Meredith.

  No, not Meredith, he thought. She’s Merry.

  Meredith smiled, but it was a frank smile that acknowledged she knew he was playing “Charming Alex,” and that, while she appreciated the attempt, he didn’t need to do so with her.

  Such smiles were why Alex had always liked Meredith. It could be exhausting being Alexander Ladislaw, some
thing which she seemed to understand. They’d always been able to interact without the social tap dancing everyone else expected of him.

  “You really do look amazing,” he said in a voice that was less slick and more honest. She bowed her head graciously at his compliment, before smiling up at him.

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” she said.

  “I’m thrilled you came. I wondered if you would.”

  “I told you. I promised.”

  “I hope you’re not here just because of that. I hope you want to be here.”

  “Yes,” Meredith replied, smiling. “I very much want to be here. You know how I love art, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing yours. I’ve heard nothing but great things about your exhibitions.”

  “You studied art history, didn’t you?” Alex asked.

  “Yes,” Meredith said, “for my BA and for my doctorate. That’s how I met Teddy.”

  “I remember. That’s what we talked about at your engagement party. You told me you wanted to open a gallery.”

  Meredith blushed at Alex’s reminding her of her naïve dreams. “Yes, well, that was a long time ago.”

  “In the grand scheme of things, not that long,” Alex said, wanting to push her. “And I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on dreams.”

  Meredith frowned. “No, but…”

  “Champagne?” Alex asked, interrupting Meredith before she could go off on some long-winded excuse about why she lived like a spinster hermit. A master strategist, Alex’s elegant mind was unconsciously planting seeds in Meredith’s imagination that he couldn’t allow her to stomp on. As often happened when he was hatching a new scheme, Alex wasn’t consciously plotting. Rather, he could see the hint of something big and bold on the horizon, but he wasn’t sure quite what it was yet. So he went along with his brain, allowing its cunning to guide him.

  But Alexander had to acknowledge that seeing Meredith tonight had tipped something for him. Suddenly, he knew how much he wanted her, always had wanted her. He’d avoided it for as long as he possibly could, in what he hoped had been time for Teddy’s ghostly hold on Meredith to weaken. Like any skilled hunter, he knew to wait till his prey was ready. She’d been entirely closed off before—trapped in her world of guilt, misery, and obeisance to Teddy’s unreasonable deathbed demands. Alex had recognized her intractability and had waited.