The Dollhouse Society: Margo (6 page)

“You didn’t hurt me,” I told him. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“You are that,” he said softly, kissing my nose and the scar on my cheek.

“I like this side of you,” I told him shyly.

“What side?”

“Your dom side.”

He laughed at that. “Let me take you to bed. I promise I’ll be gentle.”

“Robert,” I told him, wrapping my arms around his neck, “I told you. You can do anything you want to me tonight. Tonight I’m your courtesan.”

***

I woke in the early morning hours, my wrists tied to the rails of Robert’s bed with his necktie while he knelt over me, trailing the long string of black pearls I’d worn the day before between my legs, teasing them over my already come-soaked pussy and up over the peaks of my fully aroused nipples.

“You’re awake,” he said.

I stretched like a cat. “How could I not be?”

He looked tousled but not sleepy.

“Did you sleep at all?” I asked.

“Not really. I hate the idea of wasting this night.”

I smiled. “The night wasn’t wasted.”

The grey light of dawn was peeking through the heavy, luxurious velvet curtains on the windows, but it was still dim, the sun not quite up. It cast rippled shadows over the bed and over my body as Robert traced the cool, hard balls over my lower belly, circled my navel, before tickling them between my legs once more. Finally, he bowed his head and kissed me there, a loving kiss. He kissed my pussy the way he kissed my mouth. “Hungry, pet?”

“After last night? Yes.”

“I love how you’re never afraid to eat in front of me. How about I make us something and we have breakfast in bed?”

I smiled at that and he traced the path of the beads up my body until he reached my face. He took it almost reverently in his hands and kissed me, his tongue dipping briefly into my mouth. “Eggs,” I said between kisses. “And bacon. And pancakes!”

He laughed. “Yes, milady.” And slid off the bed.

“What about my binds?”

He smiled greedily. “I’ll feed you by hand.”

Once he’d gone, I went to work undoing the knot of the tie. Over the years, I’d gotten very good at tying, and untying, knots. Once I was free—it didn’t take more than a few minutes—I grabbed up a robe and got to my feet. The Queen Anne desk was the most logical place to start my investigation. I went over the top and the cubbies first, then checked all the drawers, starting at the pencil drawer and working my way down both sides. I found office supplies, ledgers, notepads, all kinds of junk, until I reached the bottom right-hand drawer.

That’s when I discovered the fireproof metal lock box. I dragged it out and set it on the desktop. It was old and battered—it was obvious that Robert had had it a long time—but not locked. Inside, I found what I was looking for—and dreading. There were a large number of check receipts, the amounts generous and the most recent dated only last week. They were all made out to an Amanda Burkett. As I dug down, I also found a pocket-sized picture of a pretty brunette in her mid-thirties smiling for the camera, and a number of carefully folded watercolor pictures done with a childish enthusiasm. Green grass, a happy couple holding hands amidst scrawled flowers, and a bright yellow sun in the upper right-hand corner.

I looked over each of the drawings even as I felt my heart stutter inside me. Eventually, I returned to the picture of the young woman. Amanda Burkett. The woman he’d never mentioned in any conversation we’d ever had. The checks dated back almost twenty years. Joanne would have known. She would have had to.

I was shaking so badly I could barely throw on my clothes from last night, but somehow I managed. I went out into the apartment, carrying the picture of Amanda with me. I found Robert in the kitchen, dressed in only his pajama bottoms, frying eggs in an iron skillet. When he turned and saw me, his face seemed to freeze and I felt the fission in the air.

I walked up to him and put the photo down on the counter in front of him.

He looked at it and something passed behind his eyes, some darkness. “How did you get this?” he said, a question that surprised me.

“When were you going to tell me about your family?” My voice trembled and I could taste the tears in the back of my throat.

Anger, insult and fear warred for dominance of his face. “
That
is no concern of yours, Margo. You had
no
right snooping in my things.”

“And you had no right making me believe that I was the only one!”

“I
never
cheated on you!”

“But you did lie to me,” I said, choking back the tears. “Did you take that money, too?”

Unexpectedly, he grabbed up the skillet and threw it viciously into the empty sink where it made a bone-shaking clanking noise. “What you did is grounds for dismissal in my company! I’m
still
senior partner here!”

I had never seen Robert, quiet Robert, so angry in my life. He didn’t show this level of outrage even in the courtroom. His anger passed over and through me like a charge of electricity, leaving me shaking in its wake.

So he wasn’t going to explain himself. He was going to turn this all around, the way Brent had. Somehow, in those last months of our marriage, it had become all my fault he was cheating. I was the bitch, the banshee, the Nazi—the enemy. 

Robert and I stared at each other like a couple of irate gunslingers while the eggs continued to sizzle in the skillet and filled the kitchen with their greasy burning. “You don’t have to dismiss me, Robert,” I said with a calmness that shocked and frightened me. “I just quit five minutes ago.”

He changed just then. The anger drained from his face. “Margo, wait…” He reached for my arm.

But I raised my hands in a sign he should back off even as I moved toward the door and finally slammed out of the apartment. To my credit, I made it all the way to the street and inside a cab before I started to fall apart.

***

It didn’t take me very long to clean out my office at Burkett Associates. An hour and a half after I’d begun, I had a single neat box, most of which was made up of office supplies, certificates, diplomas and a few small personal items. Unlike Robert, and even our junior associates, I had never decorated my office or filled it with anything very important. The furnishings and pictures on the walls had all been picked out by the interior designer, and I had never had office toys, inspirational posters or lithographs hung on my walls. I didn’t put pictures on my desk, not even my family. There had been many a time when someone looking for me had had trouble finding my office due to its generic look and feel, its utter neutral emptiness.

I had never understood that about myself. I liked houseplants and had a dozen of them at home, hanging in my kitchen. I liked Greek and Byzantine architecture and design. I had spent years carefully designing my bedroom until it was picture perfect and ready for my future courtier. But I didn’t apply any of that enthusiasm to my workplace, even though I spent more time here than at home. I thought how Dmitri would likely say I was hiding again, refusing to share myself with the world. And he was probably right.

I took one more look at my poor, spare office, the place I’d occupied for the past six years, then picked up my box.

“Ms. Faulkner?” a voice called from the doorway. I turned and saw Lydia rushing into my office. She stopped when she saw me with my box, then glanced surreptitiously around the darkened office walls. I hadn’t told her or anyone else about my quitting Burkett Associates. “Ms. Faulkner, is everything all right?”

I sighed. “What is it, Lydia?”

“Have you heard? They caught him. They caught Adam. Some agents from the White Collar Crimes division of the FBI are here to take him away right now!”

“What?” I went over to the door and peeked out. Sure enough, I could hear voices from down in the computer pool, a plainclothes agent reading someone his rights. I closed the door and turned to Lydia. “What is this all about?”

“I told you! They caught Adam channeling funds. He and some big network of computer hackers. They were hitting all different firms all over the city. Can you believe that?” She looked by turns horrified and intrigued by it all. “He was transferring company funds and rerouting ISP’s so it looked like someone else was doing it.”

For a moment I was too shocked to say anything, to even react. But then, bit by bit, I started feeling like the biggest fool ever born. I went back to my desk and set the box down, then took a few deep breaths to keep from hyperventilating.

“Are you all right, Ms. Faulkner?” Lydia asked, placing a concerned hand on my shoulder. “Were you leaving us?”

After I got my breathing under control, I patted Lydia’s hand. “No, Lydia, I’m not going anywhere.”
I hope.
I stood up and straightened my skirt and ran a hand over my chignon as I prepared to eat crow for lunch today. I headed for the door but stopped with my hand on the doorknob. “Lydia?”

“Yes, Ms. Faulkner?”

“We’ve known each other for too long. Please start calling me Margo.”

“Yes, Ms. Faulk—Margo.” Lydia beamed me a smile.

***

The FBI agents were just finishing up talking to Robert when I stepped inside his office. I waited patiently until they were done explaining procedure to him, then closed the door and turned to my lover, my courtier, my best friend.

He stood at his big picture window, warming his hands around a cup of tea—the cup I had given him. He looked out over the city, seemingly oblivious to me. I looked over his office, the messy desk, the big patchwork quilt behind a dust shield that Joanne had hung years ago to warm his workspace, the pictures of antique cars on the walls, the sepia photographs of family members that sat comfortably between his law certificates. I saw how comfortable he was with his life and I envied that. I envied
him
.

“I’m sorry I went through your things,” I finally said to break the silence. “It was a shameful thing to do. It was wrong.” I paused and reflected on how easily I’d been sucked into Adam’s story, how easily I’d been suckered in by own feelings of mistrust. A part of me had been prepared for Robert betraying me, and when it didn’t happen, I made it happen anyway. “There’s no excuse for my behavior. You trusted me all along, you gave yourself to me, but I never trusted you. The truth is, I’ve never trusted anyone.”

I waited in silence for him to react. But when he turned to look at me from across the room, his face was set with the most unlikely of emotions. I expected anger, resentment, pain. Instead, all I could see was a soft longing lighting his face and eyes from within. “I think you do have an excuse for your distrust, Margo. I know what happened to you when you were thirteen.”

I felt a jolt at his words. “I don’t understand,” I said, sounding angrier than I wanted to.

“Your friend Dmitri and I share a country club, it turns out.” He smiled at me, sadly, apologetically.

“He wasn’t supposed to tell you any of that,” I hissed. “That’s a violation of patient confidentiality…!”

But he cut me off. “It wasn’t easy, I can assure you. He’s a stubborn bloke, Dmitri. I hounded him for months for the details before he finally broke, but I’m glad he did. I wanted to know, Margo. I
needed
to know.”

I felt so embarrassed, so ashamed, so…unclean. I shivered and turned to leave but he crossed the office too quickly and put his arms around me, hugging me against his body. He kissed my hair and rested his chin atop my bowed head, said, “Margo…my Margo…I promise I will never let anyone ever hurt you again. Do you trust me? Could you learn to trust me?”

I nodded as I fought back tears. “I already to, Robert.”

“Good,” he said as he drew back, plucked the handkerchief from his breast pocket, and gently and thoroughly wiped the wetness from my eyes. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Margo, because I want you to meet Amanda.”

***

The ride up to the Hamptons took a little over two and a half hours in Robert’s jeep. It was an older model, but he had kept it up beautifully and it was in almost pristine condition. During the ride up, Robert regaled me with stories about his childhood, how his parents had instilled in him a “waste not, want not,” philosophy, which explained the jeep. It had been with him almost as long as he’d been in America. I sat in the bucket seat and listened to his beautiful country English accent even as the landscape turned wild and clean just outside the glass.

Eventually we turned off on a gravel road that snaked along until it reached a huge, rambling palatial house set on several cleared acres of forest. I thought at first that it was a B&B until I saw the sign out front that read Brookmont Clinic. The house had been renovated long ago to serve as a private hospital. We turned up the well-paved road and drove toward the meticulous manse on the hill.

After parking, Robert guided me up the wide stone steps to the clinic and held the door for me as we went inside. The halls were bright and cheery, painted in pastels and decorated with colorful watercolor paintings. Nurses in scrubs moved purposefully past up, carrying clipboards or guiding patients. We stopped at the nurses’ station and a pretty black woman in scrubs looked up and said, “Robert! How are you, hon?”