Going Back (28 page)

“Never mind,” he
said, cutting her off before she could think of what to say. “Just
understand, Daphne, that I never, never thought of you that way.
What happened between us wasn’t just some casual search for
an
outlet
, and you
know it.”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t
love,” she pointed out in a taut voice. She was growing pretty
exasperated, herself. Who the hell did Brad think he was to sweep
into town and try for a quick roll in the hay with her? Who did he
think he was kidding? He had once differentiated between relief and
ecstasy for her, but she knew that even the ecstasy they’d shared
in bed was a far cry from love and commitment.

His silence, his stare, the
mysterious light in his disturbingly beautiful blue eyes irked her.
“Well?” she goaded him. “It wasn’t, was it?”

“No,” he said slowly, frowning as
he examined her face in the fierce afternoon sunshine. “I thought
we were both clear about that.”

She heard the subtle reproach in
his words. He had probably figured out the source of her anger, and
he was reminding her that she had no right to resent him. He was
correct, of course. They had been clear about the fact that they
didn’t love each other—except that Daphne’s feelings had backfired
on her.

She directed her rage toward
herself and spared him with another half-hearted grin. “Um...I
really...” She cleared the raspiness from her voice and tried
again. “I really have to be going. We’ll get together some other
time—for dinner,” she thought it worth stressing. “Now, you’ve got
the key to your new house, right?”

He nodded, still studying her,
still frowning.

“Do you remember how to get
there?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re all set. I had the gas
turned on this morning, and the electric service has been
transferred into your name. The cable company’s coming in two days.
I’m sorry I couldn’t get them to come any sooner—”

“It’s fine,” he said in a strained
voice. “I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

She assumed that
by
everything
he
meant showing him the house, negotiating a good price for it and
getting the utilities hooked up. Surely he didn’t appreciate
getting turned down for a night of wild-and-crazy sex by a woman
who obviously didn’t have anything better to do that evening, but
who had stubbornly chosen solitude over his
company.

“Well.” She held his gaze for a
beat longer, then awkwardly turned away and poked her key into the
handle of her car door. As soon as the lock gave, Brad chivalrously
opened the door for her.

“I’ll call you once I’m settled
in,” he said.

Daphne nodded. It was the sort of
thing a man told a woman, just as he told a woman she was beautiful
after he’d made love to her. Much as she hated to admit it, Daphne
sensed that Brad wouldn’t call her, that the next time she’d see
him would be at some massive gathering organized by Andrea and
Eric. Daphne and Brad would be back to where they’d been at the
start—two satellites circling in separate orbits, rarely
intersecting. They had neutralized their past and ended up no
better off than they’d been when they’d first met each
other.

Or, perhaps, Daphne had ended up
worse off, in love with someone who didn’t love her—who hadn’t
loved her even during the most intense moments of their
ridiculously brief affair. As he’d said, he had been clear about
that.

She was worse off, but only
temporarily. She would get over this, too, in time. She’d made yet
another mistake with Brad, but she would recover from it
eventually. Trying to go back had been futile, and she wouldn’t go
back anymore. From here on in, she vowed, she would go forward, and
hopefully, the past would fade into oblivion.

Maybe, in eight years—or eighty—it
would.

***

HE WATCHED HER steer her car over
the parking lot’s speed bumps and out into the street. Then he
slung his blazer over one shoulder, slid the envelope containing
his deed and mortgage agreement under the other arm, and continued
to stare in the direction of her vanished automobile. Gradually, it
vanished around a curve in the road, and a muggy gust of wind
cleared away the lingering scent of the car’s exhaust.

He shook his head, but his mind
wasn’t as easy to clear as the air had been.

He ought to have been in a
celebratory mood. He was now the proud owner of an exorbitantly
priced dream house. He was officially back east, ready to move in
and establish a new home for himself, ready to start a challenging
new job. The limbo in which he’d existed for the past few months
was over. He was grounded, able to start living again like a normal
human being. He had an address. He belonged somewhere.

Although he’d been looking forward
to this moment for weeks, he had also been suffering from some
vaguely defined apprehension. It had hovered over him when he’d
left Seattle a week ago, growing stronger with each mile he driven
until that afternoon, when he’d entered the lawyer’s office in a
state akin to sheer dread.

Then Daphne had appeared at the
doorway to the conference room, and her presence seemed to have
miraculously calmed him. Seeing her, being in the same room with a
woman he considered a dear friend and soulmate, had rejuvenated
him, instilling in him the profound understanding that everything
was going to be all right, that he was where he belonged. He’d felt
bathed in contentment.

Closing his eyes, he relived the
rush of happiness he’d experienced when she had nodded to the
receptionist and then stepped across the threshold into the
conference room. The shape of her dress had downplayed her already
underendowed curves, making her look almost skinny, but he’d liked
the way the vivid shade of it picked up the color of her eyes. He’d
liked the way she had pulled back her hair with two tortoise-shell
combs in an effort to tame her wild blond curls—and the way her
curls defeated that effort. He’d liked the way her high heels had
given her an almost statuesque grandeur, and the way her pale lips
had curved into a modest smile as all the men had scrambled to
their feet. As she’d stalked down the far side of the long table to
reach Jay Kreitz, Brad had felt a deep sense of well-being descend
over him. He’d felt as if he was finally home, safe and
sound.

Then Daphne had looked at him, and
he’d felt something else, something unexpected but not at all
unwelcome: lust. Throughout the entire process of finalizing the
sale, he’d sat in his chair and fantasized about taking Daphne back
to his room at the hotel in Fort Lee—or, better yet—to another room
at another hotel, one of those places that specialized in romantic
rendez-vous. He’d imagined them bouncing around on a vibrating bed,
watching their reflections in an overhead mirror, calling up room
service and ordering peanut-butter and strawberry-jam sandwiches
and eating them in the nude.

He wanted Daphne. He wanted to
enjoy all over again what they’d both enjoyed so much last time.
What was so terribly wrong with that?

Something, obviously. Judging by
Daphne’s reaction, Brad had once again botched things royally with
her. And once again, he felt awash in guilt.

The problem was obvious: she’d
fallen in love with him.

He should have done something to
reassure her, or said something that would at least have salvaged
their friendship. He should have sworn to her that he loved her,
too. It was the truth—even if his love was very different from the
love he assumed she was feeling for him. He loved her as a friend,
and he loved her as a sexual partner. Telling her that might have
been enough to cheer her up.

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed, his
shoes crunching against the gravel as he trudged across the lot to
his car. The State of Washington license plate affixed to the
bumper looked peculiar to him, surrounded as it was by the New
Jersey plates attached to all the other cars in the lot. The road
dirt of Interstates 90 and 80 still clung to the metallic blue
chassis, and the remains of a few dead bugs were smeared across his
windshield. His car almost seemed to taunt him, indicating that as
much as he wanted to belong in Verona, the lovely New Jersey town
would never feel like home for him if he’d lost Daphne’s
friendship.

Telling her he loved her as a
friend wouldn’t be enough. Nor would telling her he loved her as a
sexual partner. She was an unusual woman, but she was a woman, and
women were tricky that way. A man couldn’t simply seek sexual
pleasure with them. They needed more—and they were hurt when a man
was unable to provide them with all they needed.

Not only
hurt—they sometimes got downright nasty. How could Daphne have
implied that Brad thought of her only as an
outlet
? He wasn’t like his parents,
damn it. He wasn’t so crass that he was willing to settle for a
simple physical experience, utterly lacking in depth. The only time
he’d ever thought of sex in such unemotional terms was one icy
February night during his senior year in
college...

With Daphne.

All right. So maybe he couldn’t
blame her for accusing him of using her as an outlet now. Given
that precedent, she could reasonably assume that that was all she
meant to him. But what about the other precedent, the more recent
one? Something very real existed between them, and if it wasn’t
true love, it was still valid. Brad honestly liked
Daphne.

Bewildered by the degree of
loneliness he felt in the wake of her departure, he headed back to
the hotel in Fort Lee to pick up his suitcase and check out of his
room there. It was after seven by the time he reached his new
house. His momentary alarm at seeing a couple of lights on in the
house waned when he recalled that Daphne had left a few lamps on
timers scattered throughout the house so it wouldn’t look
abandoned.

He was touched by the thought that,
even if she was furious with him, she had lit up his house for him.
She had made it homey and welcoming. Rationally, he knew the timers
had turned on the lamps, but he saw no harm in pretending that
Daphne herself had come to the house, glided through its rooms and
switched on the lights for him. He was also touched to see that
she’d hooked a “Sold” sign to the bottom of the “For Sale—Horizon
Realty” sign posted at the end of the driveway. He wanted to
believe that she was with him in spirit as he planted his feet on
what had just become his very own property.

Even with the lamps glowing, the
house seemed barren when he let himself inside. Curtainless windows
invited in the dusk light, and his footsteps echoed in the vacant
rooms. The refrigerator was empty and unplugged, its doors propped
open, and the sink basin was dry. A fresh wave of loneliness swept
over Brad.

Shrugging it off, he marched up the
stairs to the spacious bedroom that would become his. He could have
waited until his furniture was delivered the following day before
checking out of the hotel. But he had spent the last seven nights
in hotels, and he was ready to sleep in a real house.

It would have been nicer to sleep
at Daphne’s house. Much nicer. Or even for her to sleep with him
here, on the floor, with the eaves sloping around them like a
tent.

But she would never do that. She
would never sleep with him in a room that reminded her so strongly
of the past.

If
she ever slept with him at all, he thought,
grimacing at the possibility—the likelihood—that he would live the
rest of his life without ever again making love to Daphne. He might
socialize in New York, meet new women, find an ideal partner for
himself, someone pretty and cultured and perfect in every way, and
they would marry and live happily ever after… But always, deep
within him, he would nurse an abiding sense of loss, a
comprehension that he had failed Daphne.

A comprehension that in doing so, he had failed
himself as well.

“MR. TORRANCE?” Cindy’s
well-modulated voice reached Brad over the intercom phone. “Your
parents are here to see you.”

Leaning back in the swivel chair
behind his broad desk, Brad gazed around his office. It was more
spacious than the office he’d had in Seattle, as befitted his
elevated position in the firm. The windows overlooked a side
street, but the building across the street was only six stories
high, so plenty of sunshine managed to make its way through the
sealed panes of glass and into the office. The floor was covered
with the same plush carpeting as the reception area, and a sofa,
two arm chairs and a coffee table stood in a cozy arrangement
across the room from his desk.

The one thing he didn’t like about
the office was that he couldn’t control the air conditioning. It
blasted from the vents in frigid gusts. As a result, Brad had to
keep his necktie and jacket on at all times.

But the news that his parents were
in the reception area warmed him—if he’d heard Cindy correctly.
“Did you say parent or parents?” he asked, realizing as soon as he
spoke that if only one of his parents had come, she would have
announced the visitor as “your father” or “your mother.”