Going Back (15 page)

Daphne returned
his hug, then returned his kiss. It suddenly seemed marvelous to
her that Brad was with her for this special occasion. Andrea and
Phyllis were much closer friends, yet they often seemed less than
totally involved in the ups and downs of Daphne’s life.
Oh, that’s Daffy,
seemed
to be their attitude.
Of course she’s
scored a professional coup. What do you expect? That’s Daff for
you, stable and safe and making her way through this world without
any major psychological trauma.

They would have been excited for
her, of course. They would have cheered, raised their cocktails in
a toast to her, congratulated her...and then resumed quarreling
about what Phyllis ought to do with Jim.

But Brad’s focus was solely on
Daphne, his only apparent desire to share her joy. Andrea and
Phyllis wouldn’t have hugged Daphne, but Brad did—and it felt
wonderful. His arms were strong, his embrace powered by the delight
he took in her good fortune. She felt flooded with warm emotion for
him, an emotion much more intense than what she’d felt the night he
had taken her to bed.

Shocked by that realization—shocked
that in the middle of a friendly embrace she could think about Brad
in sexual terms—she relaxed her hold on him. As her hands fell from
his shoulders, she acknowledged how conscious she was of their
sturdiness and solidity, and as she took a discreet step back from
him she admitted how delicious his lean male body had felt against
hers. As he released her, she suffered an inexplicable stab of
loss.

You couldn’t lose what you’d never
had in the first place, she reminded herself, trying to erase her
memory of his light kiss. Thinking of Brad as a man wasn’t safe.
And weren’t Phyllis and Andrea always saying that Daphne preferred
safety?

“There’s your car,” she murmured,
grateful for the distraction as the attendant cruised up the ramp
in the silver Ford.

If Brad noticed the alteration in
Daphne’s mood, he didn’t comment on it. He opened the passenger
door for her, then climbed in behind the wheel and steered out of
the garage, merging with the traffic on the street. “Now tell me
more about this partnership offer,” he said, using a stop at a red
light to remove his jacket and toss it into the back seat. He
managed to loosen his tie and unbutton the cuffs of his shirt
sleeves before the light turned green again. “When did you find
out?”

“This morning. Mr. Battinger
called—I mean, Bob.” Daphne laughed faintly. “I guess I can stop
thinking of him as Mr. Battinger now, if I’m going to be his equal
in the firm.” Talking about the partnership offer was certainly
much less dangerous than thinking about how good Brad’s arms had
felt around her. She hoped she and Brad could talk about business
until they reached the house he was considering buying, and then
they could talk about that, and by the time they’d run that topic
into the ground, Daphne wouldn’t have to worry anymore about
reliving the sensation of Brad’s lips brushing her
cheek.

“There are three partners, you
said?”

Daphne nodded. “Three male
partners, the youngest of whom is in his late fifties. I’m going to
fit right in,” she concluded with a dry laugh.

“Obviously they think you will,”
Brad pointed out. “Partnership decisions aren’t made frivolously.
I’d give my eye teeth to be offered a partnership at my
company.”

“I’m sure you will,” Daphne told
him. “Maybe even before you start losing your teeth.” She took some
small pleasure in the thought that, even though Brad had fantastic
looks, affluence, and beautiful women like Phyllis fawning all over
him, he didn’t have a partnership offer—and Daphne did.

Brad accepted her mild teasing
without complaint. “Okay. I want to hear all the details. What did
the guy say when he called you?”

Daphne smiled. She couldn’t imagine
Phyllis and Andrea grilling her about the minutiae of her
conversation with Bob. Yet Brad’s interested in her success didn’t
seem forced. Once more, she realized how right it was for her to
have shared her news with him first, rather than anyone else. “Bob
asked me to drive over to the Montclair office to discuss some
important business. I went over, and there were all three partners.
Mr. Hayes—Gerald—had a heart attack a few months ago, and all the
office managers had been informed that he was thinking about
retiring. Well, the three of them told me they’d talked it over and
decided that they wanted me to take his place. I’m still kind of
stunned,” she admitted.

“How are the finances going to work
out?” Brad asked.

His question caused her smile to
fade slightly. That the company was successful was what made the
partnership worth having—but it also made buying in expensive.
Daphne had resolved that she wouldn’t even think about how she was
going to buy Gerald Hayes out until tomorrow. Today, all she wanted
to do was savor the idea of it, to wrap herself up in the
excitement of it.

“I haven’t crunched the numbers
yet,” she said vaguely. “I’ll probably have to take out a loan, but
I’ll figure out a way to pay for it, somehow.”

“I’m thrilled for you, Daff,” Brad
murmured, weaving from lane to lane as he approached the entrance
to the Lincoln Tunnel. “What have you got planned for tonight? How
are you going to celebrate?”

The car entered the cave-like
darkness of the tunnel. Daphne squinted until her eyes adjusted to
the murky yellow lights lining the tunnel. They illuminated Brad’s
face in a flickering amber pulse. Somehow, in this dark, echoing
world, she found herself thinking again of the swift, reflexive hug
he’d given her, and the graze of his lips across her cheek. It
wasn’t love she was thinking about, but something else, something
akin to celebration.

When Brad had kissed her eight
years ago, the occasion had called for whatever was the exact
opposite of celebration. Mourning? she wondered. Misery? She ought
to associate erotic thoughts of Brad with that dismal
incident.

She ought to avoid having any
erotic thoughts of Brad altogether. Surely he hadn’t had any erotic
thoughts of her when he’d hugged her. Just because the strobe-like
yellow lights kept throwing his face into stark relief didn’t mean
Daphne had to respond to his striking handsomeness.

“I haven’t really thought about
celebrating,” she said, realizing that he was waiting for an
answer. “I guess when I get home from work, I’ll break open a
bottle of apple juice and live it up. Maybe I’ll even whistle some
more.”

Brad pretended to yawn. “You’re
really aiming to break a few laws, aren’t you,” he teased. The car
emerged into the glaring daylight on the New Jersey side of the
Hudson, and Daphne squinted again. “I’ve got a better idea,” he
suggested, cruising around the ramp to the highway.

“Better than apple juice and
whistling?”

“I’ll take you out to
dinner.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Daphne
said.

“If I had to, I wouldn’t want to.
How about it, Daff? We’ll check out the house one last time and
then stuff our faces.” He shot her a swift look, then turned back
to the road and grinned. “Let’s go someplace fattening. Do you like
Italian food?”

Daphne loved it. She also avoided
it whenever possible. “If I merely whisper the word pasta I gain
three pounds. Oh, no!” she moaned, pressing her hands against her
abdomen. “I said it! I can already feel my weight
ballooning.”

“That settles it,” Brad said.
“Spaghetti, garlic bread, and tiramisu for dessert. You could use a
couple of pounds.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

Brad shot her another brief look,
then laughed confidently. Daphne could tell, from reading his
resolute expression, that her waistline was doomed.

A half hour later, they arrived at
the house. It was deserted; the owner had been transferred to
Boston, and he’d had to move before he could sell the place. Since
it was her listing, though, Daphne made sure the property was well
tended. She’d hired a landscaping company to keep the grass
trimmed, the shrubs pruned and the beds mulched, and she’d placed a
few lamps on timers inside the house so it wouldn’t look dark and
abandoned at night.

Brad waited for her to unlock the
front door, and they entered together. She lingered in the entry,
allowing him to wander through the first-floor rooms by
himself.

He ambled through the living and
dining rooms before disappearing into the kitchen. Daphne was able
to follow his footsteps. his long legs carrying him to the sink, to
the stove, to the back door and out to the porch. Even though her
eyes were on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, her mind
focused on a picture of the tailored slacks Brad had on, the dress
shirt with the rolled-up sleeves, the loosened necktie. The strong
arms that had nearly lifted her off her feet in his enthusiasm. The
dimpled smile, the even white teeth. The striking blue of his eyes
gazing at her.

She had always known that he was
attractive; she’d always agreed with Phyllis that he wasn’t the
sort of man you’d kick out for eating crackers in bed. But why,
when she and Brad had finally made their peace with that ghastly
encounter in their past, did Daphne suddenly discover herself
thinking of how desirable he was, and how exciting it would be for
such a desirable man to think of her as something other than a
sister?

Maybe she ought to start whistling
again.

She was halfway through the
Star-Spangled Banner, and well beyond the paltry one-octave range
of her whistle, when Brad returned to the entry. “That’s it for
down here,” he said.

“Let’s go upstairs,”

She would have let him go upstairs
himself, but it was obvious that he wanted her with him. She led
him up the stairway to the second floor.

“What’s the asking price?” Brad
asked as they ascended, even though he knew damned well what it
was. He’d visited the house several times already, and he had the
brochure she’d printed out for him.

“Five hundred fifty-nine
nine.”

Brad followed her into the master
bedroom. Like the two smaller bedrooms, it was built under the
eaves, with the ceiling sloping on either side of the full-shed
dormer. Only at the edges of the room did Brad have to bend to
prevent himself from bumping his head. “How much play is there in
that price?” he inquired.

Daphne knew this routine well. It
came with almost every purchase of a house, and she enjoyed the
give and take of the negotiations. She viewed them as a cross
between chess and poker—mostly skill, but with a varying amount of
luck and bluff involved. “What are you thinking of offering?” she
asked.

Brad peered out the side window.
“Five-thirty?” he suggested.

“Try a lower starting offer,”
Daphne counselled him. “I think you could get it for under
five-forty. Offer five-twenty.”

“I’ve got to get back to Seattle,”
Brad pointed out, spinning around. “I’m supposed to be back there
next week. I don’t have time to play games. I want to settle this
thing fast.”

“I’ll negotiate on your behalf,”
said Daphne. “I’m your broker, Brad. If you’re sure in your mind
that this is the house you want, I’ll get it for you at the lowest
price I can.”

“But you’re his broker, too,” Brad
noted. “Whose interests are you going to be representing in the
negotiation, his or mine?”

“Both,” Daphne assured him. “He’s
got a valuable property here, but he’s paying two mortgages and
he’s anxious to get rid of one of them. He’ll get a fair price, and
so will you. Trust me.”

Brad leaned his hips against the
window sill and scrutinized her. His smile spread slowly across his
face, lazy and dimpled, and he folded his arms over his chest. “Do
you really think I should trust you? You’re a hot-shot
wheeler-dealer. A bunch of old white farts don’t invite just any
thirty-year-old woman to become a partner. They invite the
sharpest, shrewdest person they can get their hands on. Maybe I
shouldn’t trust you at all.”

Daphne knew Brad was testing her,
but she appreciated the humor in his tone. “You’ve got to trust
me,” she reminded him. “We’re friends.”

Brad mulled that over, then nodded.
“I suppose if you can’t trust your friends, you’re in pretty bad
shape.” He shoved away from the sill and slammed his head into the
angled ceiling. “Ow!”

Daphne tried unsuccessfully to
stifle a laugh. “If you really want to live here, Brad, you’re
going to have to watch your step.”

He grunted and rubbed the crown of
his head. “Tell me about it.”

She pushed his hand away, wove her
fingertips through the soft dark strands of his hair and felt
carefully along his skull in search of a lump. “Are you seeing
stars?” she asked solicitously. “Double-vision?”

“If you’re asking me whether I’ve
given myself a concussion, I think the answer is no,” Brad said,
tilting his head to accomodate her gently probing hand. “But if you
want to pretend I’m seriously injured so you can pamper me, be my
guest. I’ll start with a stiff drink, and then maybe a hot
bath.”

“If I found a bump, I’d bring you
an ice pack,” Daphne said briskly, pulling away her hand. “That’s
about the limit of my nursing talent. I’m not very good at
pampering people.”