Going Back (27 page)

The men all stood as she entered
the room, and Jay greeted her by name: “Daphne! Come on in, we’re
just about to start.” He waved her over to a vacant chair beside
his at the far end of the table. “You know everyone here, don’t
you?” he asked, then proceeded to introduce her even though she
did, indeed, know everyone. She dutifully shook hands with the
seller’s lawyer, exchanged a few pleasantries with the seller, and
took a deep breath before turning to acknowledge Brad.

He was positioned diagonally across
the long mahogany table from her, dressed in what she’d come to
think of as his house-hunting uniform: a cotton oxford shirt, a
sports jacket and khaki slacks. He offered her an enigmatic smile,
and her own smile lost what little strength it had. The silent pep
talk she’d given herself before leaving her office twenty minutes
ago—that she would have to be immune to Brad’s dazzling looks, that
the night they had spent together was as much history to him as was
the night they’d left the fraternity party together eight years
ago, that he considered her his friend and his real estate agent
and nothing more—none of it had prepared her adequately for the
visceral shock she experienced at seeing him. She disguised her
nervousness by taking a seat and burying her nose in her briefcase,
pretending to search for her folder of documents pertaining to the
sale.

The closing was routine—a review of
the documents, confirmation that each party to the sale had
identical copies, a discussion of terms to make certain that none
of the details was open to misinterpretation. Once the review was
over, Daphne knew that checks were going to be written, including
one made out to Horizons Realty to cover her commission. Until
then, she had little to occupy her attention.

That was unfortunate. She honestly
didn’t want the freedom to contemplate the man seated across the
table from her. Seeing his dark, silky hair as he bowed his head to
peruse one of the documents made her think of how soft and thick
the black tresses had felt between her fingers when she’d held his
head to hers for a kiss. Watching the rolling motion of his
shoulders as he shrugged in answer to a question forced her,
against her will, to remember the smooth, hot expanse of his back.
His open collar button revealed just enough skin to remind her of
how much she had enjoyed kissing him there, how irresistibly sexy
she found his neck.

A few times he raised his head and
caught her staring at him. His shimmering sky-blue eyes filled with
a gentle glow, matched by the friendly warmth of his dimpled smile.
Fondness—that was what she read in his expression. He was fond of
Daphne. He’d settled the score between them back in May. Now,
nearly two months later, he was content to view her as a
pal.

She ought to have been content, as
well. She and Brad had achieved exactly what they’d set out to
do—find him a house to buy and perform minor plastic surgery on an
eight-year-old scar. She ought to be satisfied—and she ought to
learn to live with the fact that the surgery on the old scar had
left her with new scar tissue. If she wasn’t satisfied, well, she
had only herself to blame.

The closing took about an hour.
When it was over, the assembled participants engaged in a dizzying
round of hand-shaking and congratulating. As Daphne packed up her
briefcase, Jay Kreitz asked her whether she’d made any vacation
plans for the summer, and she in turn asked the seller how he liked
his new home in Boston. Daphne had participated in sales in which
the negotiations had been so hostile that, by the time of the
closing, the buyer and seller were no longer speaking to each
other. But no matter how bitter the negotiations, the conclusion of
the sale was always an occasion for ritual politeness—more
hand-shaking than most politicians had to endure during an election
campaign, accompanied by the requisite charming
chit-chat.

After fifteen minutes of chit-chat,
Daphne finally made her escape. She got as far as the parking lot
beside the stucco building before Brad caught up with her. “Hey,
Daff—where are you running off to?” he asked, jogging across the
gravel lot to her car. He was carrying an oversize manila envelope
filled with the documents that made him the legal owner of his new
house. A warm breeze ruffled his hair as he ran.

She could lie and tell him she had
another appointment that afternoon, but that would be cowardly.
Instead, she resurrected her brave smile and ignored his question
altogether. “Welcome to Verona, Brad. I guess you’re an official
Jersey-ite, now.”

He drew to a halt less than a foot
from her. In her high-heel sandals, she stood just a couple of
inches shorter than him, and it took only the slightest adjustment
of her head to meet his gaze. She chastised herself for having
failed to exchange her eyeglasses for sunglasses when she’d left
the air-conditioned office building for the bright late-June
afternoon. Not only was the sun’s glare magnified by the lenses of
her eyeglasses, but their transparency gave Brad an unobstructed
view of her face. She wondered if he could see the anguish in her
eyes, the frustration and disappointment.

“How’ve you been?” he
asked.

He had asked her that same
question, with the same phrasing, every time he’d spoken to her in
the past month. The last time they’d talked had been eight days
ago, when Daphne had told him the closing had been scheduled and
Brad had informed her that he’d be starting his cross-country drive
the following day. They’d discussed his estimated date of arrival,
the schedules he’d drawn up with the movers, his plan to spend a
night or two at a nearby hotel until the closing, and Daphne’s
willingness to contact the local gas and the cable companies on his
behalf. When Daphne was ready to conclude the call, Brad had always
said, “So how’ve you been?”

She’d always responded, “Fine,
Brad.” A good, noncommittal answer. She decided to use it again.
“Fine, Brad. How was your trip east?”

“Exhausting,” he told her, laying
his envelope on the roof of her car and sliding off his blazer. He
unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and rolled up his sleeves, then
unfastened the second button below his collar.

Objectively, Daphne knew his
actions were an effort to remain cool in the summery afternoon
heat. But she couldn’t stifle an irrational voice inside her,
complaining that Brad had opened his buttons merely to aggravate
her with tantalizing glimpses of his body. Her gaze riveted itself
to the strong column of his neck and she swallowed.

“When did you get in?” she asked,
eager to keep the conversation alive so she wouldn’t have a chance
to think about how attractive she found him.

“Yesterday. I would have called
you, but I got to the hotel late, and by the time I grabbed a bite
to eat and all...” He drifted off, evidently aware of how feeble an
excuse that was. “Anyway, I knew I’d be seeing you today.” His gaze
ran the length of her, pausing at her ankles. Then he raised his
eyes, grinned sheepishly and shrugged.

It was a
surprisingly eloquent gesture. He seemed to be saying,
I know, Daff, we fouled up again and I’m
sorry.
Daphne wanted to assure him that she
was sorry, too, sorry she hadn’t been able to take their night of
passion in stride as they’d both sworn they would, sorry she was
allowing her emotions to screw up their friendship. But given the
way she felt, she suspected that it would require at least eight
more years before she’d be able to engage in another heartfelt
discussion with Brad about their stupidity in sleeping
together.

“How are your finances?” he asked.
He seemed aware that his question might be misconstrued, because he
quickly clarified: “Have you figured out a way to pay for your
share of the partnership yet?”

“I took a loan,” she told him,
wishing she didn’t sound so despondent. The excitement of becoming
a partner in her company had disappeared the day she’d signed the
bank papers. A few good years of commissions and she’d be out of
debt, but in the meantime she’d have to live her life so frugally
that her greatest luxury would be her monthly twelve-dollar salads
with Andrea and Phyllis in New York City.

“That’s great,” Brad said with
artificial enthusiasm. “I’m glad you were able to work it
out.”

“I haven’t worked anything out,”
she retorted. “I’m over my head in debt at the moment. I don’t
consider it great at all.”

“Look, Daff...” Perhaps he could
sense her discomfort; perhaps he even shared it. “You know, I—when
you walked into the room before, and you—I mean, I—” He faltered,
glanced over his shoulder at the building behind him, and then
turned back to Daphne. His smile had lessened, and it was shadowed
with a poignancy Daphne was unable to interpret. “You’re looking
well,” he said.

The only honest way to compliment a
woman who never looked pretty was to tell her she looked well.
Health, after all, was supposed to be more important than beauty.
“Thanks,” she muttered.

“I mean it,” he swore. “It’s a nice
dress.”

The dress she was wearing wasn’t
worth commenting on, she thought with an almost spiteful
peevishness. In fact, it wasn’t a dress at all. It was a straight
below-the-knees skirt of forest green knit and a tan jersey with
matching green trim and decorative gold buttons around the
neckline, and when Daphne had put it on that morning she’d thought
it made her look a little like a toy soldier. However, she kept her
opinion to herself and said, “Thank you.”

“Are you busy?” he asked, his voice
underlined with a strange urgency.

“Now?”

“This evening,” he said. He seemed
to be on the verge of taking her hand, but he switched directions
in mid-move and grabbed his envelope from the roof of her car,
instead. “I was thinking, maybe we could...”

“Have dinner?” she completed his
dangling sentence. Her pulse quickened slightly, but she warned
herself not to become too optimistic. Even if she had dinner with
Brad, it wouldn’t constitute a real date. It wouldn’t be as if he
were trying to win her heart.

“Have sex,” he said quietly. He
raised his eyes to the sky and laughed, as if he couldn’t believe
he’d said such a thing.

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“No!”

His smile vanished as he absorbed
her emphatic tone. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she shot back. “Why are you
sorry?”

“You seem...offended,” he said,
searching for the right word.

She let out a long, steadying sigh.
“I’m not offended,” she told him. There was no reason to be, after
all. He hadn’t said anything cruel to her, or put her down in any
way. He’d just asked her for sex, and given how much fun sex had
been the last time they’d indulged in it, who could blame
him?

“It’s not...” Again, he seemed to
struggle with his words, groping for the right phrasing—or, at
least, a phrasing that wouldn’t send Daphne into a fit of anger.
“It’s just that, when you walked into the conference room and I saw
you for the first time in so long, I remembered how good it had
been with us and I...got turned on.” He presented her with a
sheepish smile. “Am I being too blunt here, Daffy? I’m just trying
to tell you—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she
snapped. What she wanted to hear was that Brad loved her, that he
worshiped her, that he wanted her to be his beautiful wife and bear
his beautiful children. He wasn’t going to say that, though. He
wasn’t even going to say that she turned him on. What had turned
him on was a memory—a memory of something going a bit haywire one
night and taking both her and Brad by surprise. When he reminisced
about it he became aroused.

Big deal. So did she. It didn’t
mean she was going to invite him into her bed for a repeat
performance.

“You’re pissed at me,” he guessed,
appearing slightly miffed. “I’m sorry. All I said was—”

“I know exactly what you said,”
Daphne muttered. Brad’s irritation was justified, she admitted
silently. He had done nothing to hurt her, either that night or
this afternoon. If she was hurt, it was her own fault for
overestimating her ability to remain emotionally detached after
making love with him.

Shaping a half-hearted smile, she
focused on the brick wall of the office building behind him. “I
don’t want you to think of me as some sort of—of outlet for you
until you settle in and meet other women,” she said quietly. “I
know it was good between us. But that was one special night, and
I...” A deep breath. “I think we ought to leave it at
that.”

She believed she
was being sound and reasonable, but something she’d said clearly
struck a raw nerve in him. “
Outlet?
” he flared. “Is that the way
you think I think of you?”

“You know what I mean,” she said,
unsure of why he’d reacted so negatively to that one
word.

He toyed with various responses.
“My parents...no, never mind.”

“How are your
parents?” she asked, oddly relieved to talk about something
else—
anything
else—with Brad.

“I have no idea. I didn’t call them
last night, either.”

Daphne wondered what it meant for
her to be lumped with Brad’s parents in his mind. Was he as
exasperated by her as by them? Did he worry as much about her as he
did about them?