Going Back (26 page)

“Well, I wanted you to know that
I’m hoping we’ll be able to renew our friendship when you get back.
Jim was so possessive, but now that he’s out of my life, I don’t
see why you and I can’t get to be friends.”

“We already are friends, Phyllis,”
Brad noted. Was that the right thing to say? Did he even care?
“Look, Phyllis, I’ve got to go. I’m really bogged down in work, and
I’m kind of...in a hurry.”

“Of course. Let me just give you my
phone number, and you can give me a call once you’re all settled in
at your new house.”

“Now that you’ve called me, it’s in
my phone,” he said.

“Well. I’m looking forward to
seeing you.”

“Good talking to you, Phyllis,” he
mumbled. “Take care.” Disconnecting the call, he let out a long
breath.

There had to be something wrong
with him, something beyond his boredom over packing and his disgust
with the relentless rain to explain his lackluster reaction to
Phyllis’s call. She had contacted him to announce her availability,
and his response had bordered on rudeness. He ought to be jumping
at the opportunity she offered. It wasn’t every day that an
attractive, well-educated, sophisticated woman telephoned from the
other side of the continent just to let him know she was unattached
and interested in him.

Yet he felt
nothing, neither excitement nor revulsion. He had nothing against
Phyllis Dunn—but he sensed, deep inside him, that he had
nothing
for
her,
either. If a fleeting memory of his carefully plotted
one-night-stand with Daphne Stoltz could do more to his libido than
Phyllis’s blatant innuendoes about wanting to be “friends” with
Brad, something was seriously out of whack.

He’d been thinking a lot about
Daphne since he’d returned to Seattle. Most of the time, when he
thought about her it was in the context of their friendship—or of
his new house. She’d express-mailed a signed copy of the sales
contract to him, and she’d phoned him a few times to keep him
abreast of the progress being made on his mortgage application.
Their calls were generally rushed, and they concentrated almost
solely on business, but he couldn’t blame Daphne for that. She was
a busy woman.

He was always happy when she
called, always delighted to hear her voice. After each call, he
would find himself daydreaming about living only a couple of miles
from her, being able to call her at the spur of the moment and meet
her for dinner somewhere, or drop in on her and shoot the breeze
for an afternoon. Frequently, when he thought about his dream
house, he thought not about the house itself but about its
proximity to Daphne’s modest L-shaped ranch house with its
colorful, well-tended flower beds.

Usually, when he thought about
Daphne, he tried not to think about the night they’d spent
together. As fantastic as that had been, it had been planned
essentially as a one-shot deal, arranged with specific end in mind.
They’d accomplished what they’d set out to accomplish, and there
was no sense in dwelling on it. Brad didn’t love Daphne. He saw no
reason to think of her as a lover. Eventually, he presumed, his
body would accustom itself to that reality and he’d stop suffering
from those unnerving jolts of arousal whenever he visualized
Daphne’s fingernails in his mind.

He trudged back to the den,
determined to work his way through the remainder of the closet
before calling it quits for the day. At the doorway he halted to
survey the cartons stacked along one wall, the bookshelf already
emptied and the one still waiting for Brad to tackle its contents.
His gaze came to rest on the photographs of Nancy scattered across
the sofa-bed.

Maybe she was the reason for his
malaise.

They’d broken up six months ago,
and he hadn’t seen her since. He’d spoken to her only twice, when
she’d contacted him to ask him what he wanted her to do with the
toiletry items he had left in her bathroom. He had asked her to put
them in a bag and drop them off at his office, but the day she’d
stopped by with the bag he’d been out for lunch with a client, so,
through no deliberate design on his part, he had avoided coming
face to face with her.

He wanted to resume his affair with
Nancy about as little as he wanted to start something new with
Phyllis Dunn. Yet he felt as if he owed Nancy something. A goodbye,
at least. As far as he knew, she wasn’t even aware that he was
leaving Seattle.

Hoping that tying up a few more
loose ends would restore his mood, he returned to his bedroom,
lifted his cell phone and punched the speed-dial button for Nancy’s
number. She answered almost at once.

“Nancy? It’s Brad,” he identified
himself. “Are you busy right now?”

“You mean, this minute?”

That had been an irritating trait
of hers, he remembered—she always demanded precision, even in the
most innocuous of conversations. But Brad didn’t respond with one
of his sarcastic retorts. Instead, he said mildly, “How about in a
half hour? I thought maybe we could meet somewhere for a
drink.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to tell you
something.”

“In person?”

“Obviously, in person,” he snapped,
having exhausted his supply of patience during his chat with
Phyllis.

Nancy considered his invitation.
“All right,” she said. “Where do you want to meet?”

Thirty minutes later, Brad was
seated in a café, stirring the ice cubes in his glass of
cola-and-lime. He had thought about ordering something harder, then
decided against it. When he’d taken a sip of the non-alcoholic
beverage, he’d fleetingly thought of Daphne, the only person he’d
ever known intimately who avoided liquor.

He kept his gaze riveted to the
doorway, watching for Nancy and wondering what great insight, if
any, he would have when he finally saw her. When she swept through
the door, fifteen minutes late, he experienced nothing beyond a
twinge of regret.

She was as beautiful as he
remembered, far more beautiful than she appeared in the
photographs. Her hair was longer than it had been when they were a
couple, but just as lustrous with red highlights. Her figure was
still in perfect proportion. She was wearing a clingy blouse that
displayed her bosom, and a swirling skirt of a slinky material that
did equal justice to her hips and legs. As soon as she spotted
Brad, she brushed off the hostess’s assistance and strode regally
through the lounge to his table.

Brad stood as she neared him.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, then kissed the cheek she offered
him. He hadn’t expected her to angle her face toward his lips that
way, but he sensed subliminally that if he hadn’t kissed her she’d
have pivoted on her high heel and marched back out of the café. She
glided to a chair and waited for him to pull it out for her. Once
he did, she sat.

“Well,” she said, setting her purse
on the table and pressing her hands together, fingertips to
fingertips and palm to palm. “What do you want?”

Her briskness didn’t faze Brad.
“Would you like to order a drink?”

“I’ll have what you’re having,” she
said, eyeing his glass and then twisting in her chair in search of
a waitress.

Brad doubted that she’d be
satisfied with straight soda. He flagged down a waitress and
ordered Nancy a rum-and-Coke. “You’re looking well,” he said once
the waitress was gone.

“I know,” Nancy agreed serenely. “I
hope you didn’t make me drop everything and come running here on a
rainy evening just to tell me that.”

She didn’t sound arrogant as much
as supremely self-confident. Brad forgave her. “No, I’ve got
something else to tell you.” He waited until the waitress delivered
Nancy’s drink before saying, “I’m leaving.”

Nancy’s densely lashed eyes
lingered on him as she sipped through her straw. “Pardon me if I’m
missing something here, but as I understand it, you left a long
time ago.”

“I mean Seattle. I’m leaving
Seattle,” he told her.

Her eyebrows rode high on her brow.
“Oh?”

“I’ve accepted a transfer to New
York.”

“So? What do you want me to do
about it?” she asked archly.

Throughout a leisurely drink of
soda, he studied Nancy closely. She was so pretty, so unnervingly
spectacular in appearance. Her hands, like Daphne’s, had performed
feats of sensual magic on him at one time, yet he could look at
them and recall their dexterity without suffering any pangs of
arousal. Her lips shaped a rounded valentine around the tip of her
straw, yet for all the times she’d kissed him, for all the
seductiveness of her kisses, he felt only a nostalgia for what had
been, not a desire for what could be.

“I don’t want you to do anything
about it,” he explained. “I just thought you ought to
know.”

“You don’t have to keep me up to
date on your plans anymore.”

“I know I don’t.” Once again he had
to swallow his impatience. “I just thought it would be nice for you
to hear the news from me instead of someone else. We had a long,
intense relationship. I don’t want you thinking I skipped town in
the dead of night.”

“Fair enough.” She took another
dainty sip of her drink. “You’re right—I probably would have been
hurt or suspicious if you hadn’t told me yourself. But you don’t
have to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will.”

“I guess...” She smiled
tentatively. “I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you I’ve
been seeing someone else.”

Brad found this news oddly
gratifying. “Who?” he asked.

“I don’t think you know him. His
name is Adam Steele. He’s a friend of Mac MacKenzie’s.”

Brad nodded.

“He’s a good man,” Nancy went on.
“Reputable background, excellent schooling, solid career and all
that. We have a lot in common.”

Just like you
and I do,
Brad thought. “Do you fight all
the time with him?” he asked aloud.

Nancy’s eyes met Brad’s, and she
laughed. “Not as much as we did,” she conceded. “Just enough to
keep the sparks flying.” She leaned back in her chair. “How about
you? Any women waiting for you in New York?”

A picture of Daphne flashed across
Brad’s brain. “I know a few women there,” he admitted. “I’ve
already got a date lined up with an old college acquaintance named
Phyllis Dunn.” Hearing him mention Phyllis’s name momentarily took
him aback. He must have thought of her because he’d spoken to her
so recently. And yet, it had been Daphne he’d pictured in response
to Nancy’s question. “I’ve got friends there, too,” he added,
hoping his confusion wasn’t evident.

“That’s nice,” she said. “You’ll be
happy living back east. That’s always been your real
home.”

Brad nodded. He was glad he’d
arranged to meet Nancy, glad that she was taking his departure in
stride.

But the peculiar thing was, once
he’d bade Nancy a final farewell, walked her to her car and headed
for his own car at the far end of the parking lot, he felt at odds
with himself. He didn’t want to go back with Nancy, figure out why
they hadn’t been able to make their romance work and try to correct
their mistakes. He had no urge to repair the damage of their past,
or to build a friendship with her. Whatever had existed between
them was over, finished, and he was content to leave it at
that.

He wanted no future with her—that
was why. You didn’t go back and fix the past with someone unless
you were planning for a future with her, he surmised.

And what future did he want with
Daphne? A future in which they were neighbors, friends,
pals?

“Damn.” He grunted the oath out
loud, startling himself. “Damn, damn, damn.” Then he switched on
his windshield wipers and decided that the incessant rain was what
had driven him to start swearing.

DAPHNE FOLLOWED the receptionist
down the hall to the conference room at the rear of the
single-story stucco building that housed the offices of Kreitz,
Ferragamo & Leeds, Attorneys at Law. She did a substantial
amount of legal work with Jay Kreitz, and when Brad had asked her
to find him a competent real estate lawyer for the closing, she’d
arranged for Jay to handle it.

She knew she was going to be the
sole woman present at the closing; both the seller and the buyer
were bachelors, the seller’s lawyer was also a man and Daphne was
the only realtor involved in the sale. Ordinarily, being the lone
female at a business meeting didn’t bother her. Today, though, it
did. She wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible. She was edgy
and keyed up, and she was afraid the state of her nerves might lead
her to make a fool of herself.

Unrequited love was a depressing
condition.

She arranged a brave smile on her
face, whispered her thanks to the receptionist and stepped into the
conference room. Phyllis had claimed that all Daphne had to do was
fall out of love with whoever had failed to fall in love with her,
but turning off your emotions wasn’t quite as simple as turning off
a lamp. The light Brad had lit inside her was still burning bright,
and she hadn’t yet figured out a way to switch it off.