Skin Deep by Marissa Doyle Read Free Book Online Page A

for applause. Rob, on the other hand, moved with an easy grace that she found beguiling.
    She smiled her thanks when he handed her a glass. He’d changed out of the slightly scruffy sweats he’d arrived in this morning and was wearing a navy blue cashmere sweater and khaki pants. Yum. She couldn’t help wondering if he’d somehow divined that she was a sucker for a man in a cashmere sweater.
    “So.” Rob nodded toward the stairs. “How’re our patients?”
    “The little boy is still asleep. Alasdair slept a good part of the day as well. I gave him toast and tea just before you came.” She chuckled and shook her head. “It was the weirdest thing—almost as if he’d never had toast before, or had forgotten what it tasted like. He told me very seriously that it tasted like the air off the land in summer, when the sun shines on it and warms the grasses.”
    Rob smiled too but didn’t appear very amused. “I don’t like the sound of that. Memories of basic things like taste and smell don’t typically get lost in trauma-related amnesia. I have to wonder if his injuries aren’t worse than I’d thought.”
    “He also made me eat some too—not because he thought it was poisoned or anything. He just said that he did not eat while others watched hungry. I tried to explain that I’d be eating later, but he just looked stern, so I ate it. He’s—I don’t know. I don’t get the feeling there’s much wrong with him physically, apart from those awful cuts. Mostly he seems…sad. Like he’s missing something.” Like somebody who’d lost something precious, something he’d never be able to regain. Had she worn a similar expression when she’d first learned that Derek was cheating on her?
    Rob picked up his bag. “The stroganoff needs about fifteen minutes to warm up. That’ll give me a chance to check on them. Coming?”
    Alasdair pulled himself up, wincing, when they came in. Garland saw the wariness in his eyes fade as he saw her enter behind Rob. Why was he so anxious? Rob had been more than gentle with him that morning. He responded in monosyllables to Rob’s questions and let him examine and re-bandage his wounds, then watched closely while Rob surveyed Conn.
    “Has he even moved?” he asked, frowning.
    She came round the other side of the bed and knelt next to it. “No. Not that I’ve noticed. He did wet the bed, though I don’t think he stirred while I cleaned him up.”
    “That’s a good sign—at least he doesn’t seem to be dehydrated—though I’m sorry you had to do that.” He pulled out his flashlight and peeled back one of the child’s eyelids. “I don’t think he’s concussed,” he murmured. “But sleeping this long—”
    “It is good that he sleeps,” Alasdair said from his bed. “Would it be better for him to be awake and in pain?”
    “I could give him something for the pain. Did he take any of the meds I left you?” He jerked his head back at Alasdair.
    “No. He said that if it hurt, it meant he was still alive.”
    Rob grunted. Garland didn’t comment further. Derek had kept a supply of prescription-strength ibuprofen around, in case of grievous injury like, say, a hangnail. It was refreshing to deal with someone a little less hypochondriacal.
    Rob worked in silence after that, changing the bandages on Conn’s wounds and treating the smaller ones with more topical antibiotic. She was again struck by the graceful economy of his movements. He loved being a doctor and healing people, didn’t he? It was clear in his smallest action. There were people like him who were born to heal others. She looked back at Conn. It seemed that there might also be people out there who were born to hurt others.
    The boy shifted and frowned, as if he had caught her thought.
    “Easy, there,” Rob murmured, pausing and glancing at his face. She reached out and took the boy’s hand. He sighed and relaxed.
    Rob pressed his lips together and went back to work.
     
    * * *
     
    Garland had