Going Back (18 page)

At four o’clock, she and Bob parted
ways. She had no reason to return to her office, other than to drop
off the paperwork from the morning’s closing. Although realtors
were sometimes required to work on weekends, they rarely had to
work on Friday evenings. Nobody wanted to shop for a house after a
long, exhausting week on the job.

Since she wasn’t in a hurry, and
since she wanted to think through what Bob had said about the value
of the partnership, she decided to drive back to Bloomfield Avenue
by a meandering back route, passing a raised ranch she had a
listing on, a split-level she’d sold two months ago and a
contemporary on a half-acre that she’d sold last year—and could
have sold for twice the price this year. Then she drove to the
expanded cape she’d just sold to Brad. She found him standing in
the driveway, his blazer slung over his shoulder and his shirt
sleeves rolled up, his neck craned back so he could inspect the
roof.

The fact that he happened to be
visiting the house when Daphne cruised by didn’t mean she was able
to read his mind. It merely meant that this particular house was
significant in both their lives at the moment. “The roof’s fine,”
she called to him through the open window of her car.

Brad spun around, then grinned as
he recognized Daphne. She pulled her car to a halt behind the
silver Toyota, parked at the curb and climbed out. “How do you know
it’s fine?” Brad asked.

“It’s only four years old, with a
thirty-year transferable warranty. Didn’t you read the write-up on
it?”

Brad shrugged. “Should I care?” he
asked, smiling hesitantly. “What I mean is, should I be thinking of
it as my roof?”

Daphne strolled across the sloping
front lawn and joined him on the driveway. “Meaning, is this your
house? Assuming the bank approves, yes.”

His smile grew wider, shimmering
with delight. “I didn’t dream about it last night,” he confessed.
“But I should have. It’s a dream house, all right.”

“Even if you’re going to clobber
your head on the sloping ceilings upstairs?”

“Even if.” He turned back to
examine the house some more, and slid his arm casually around
Daphne’s slender waist. “Daff...did I thank you for all
this?”

“Several times last night,” she
reminded him. “More times that I would have liked. You must have
kept me up at least thirty seconds longer than necessary with all
your thank-yous.”

“I’m sorry I called so late.” His
arm tightened around her for a moment, and then he let it fall to
his side and took a cautious step away from her. “There was a whole
lot more I wanted to talk to you about, but you were obviously too
sleepy to take it in.”

“Take what in?” she asked, eyeing
him with curiosity. His tie hung loose from his collar, implying
that he’d once again spent time at his office in New York. Yet he
didn’t look frazzled or worn out. His eyes glowed with a brilliance
that put the clear May sky to shame, and his smile cut long dimples
into his cheeks.

It was not the kind of expression
that made Daphne brace herself for a further discussion of Brad’s
parents’ marital woes. What else might Brad have wished to talk
about with her at twelve thirty last night?

He extended his hand to take hers,
and she let him lead her to the front steps of the house. He tossed
his blazer down onto the concrete to protect her skirt, and she bit
back the reflexive urge to make a wisecrack about his
Sir-Walter-Raleigh brand of chivalry. Instead, she lowered herself
to sit, pressing her legs together decorously beneath her skirt,
and clasped her hands in her lap. Brad dropped onto the step beside
her, balanced his elbows on his spread knees, and squinted into the
late-afternoon sunlight.

His prolonged silence fed her
curiosity. Finally, he asked, “Remember when we talked about a time
machine?”

He was facing the lawn, not Daphne,
but she understood that what he was really asking her was whether
she remembered the discussion they’d had on her back porch, about
the time they’d had sex—and he was also asking her, possibly,
whether she was willing to accompany him in a rehash of
it.

She believed they’d already said
everything that had to be said on the subject. Probing it further
would only make her uncomfortable.

She didn’t want to be angry with
Brad. But talking about the unhappy incident shadowing their past
was bound to make her angry. “I remember,” she said curtly, hoping
to close the subject before it was too late.

He shot her a glance, obviously
sensing her edginess. “Then you remember that we both agreed if we
ever got our hands on a time machine, we’d use it to go back to
that night and do things all over again. Only we’d do them right
this time.”

“Uh-huh.,” Her hands cramped in her
lap, and her knuckles began to turn white. “So what?”

“I was thinking about it
yesterday,” he went on in an annoyingly leisurely manner. Daphne
gritted her teeth. No matter how uninterested she made herself
sound, he obviously wasn’t going to stop. “I was thinking about it
because when I visited my mother’s apartment it was almost like
going into a time machine. I grew up there, Daff. I spent my entire
childhood in that apartment. And there was my mother, dredging up
the complete history of her relationship with my father, and…” The
sentence went unfinished asBrad observed the breeze playing through
the newly opened leaves of a red oak on the property.

Daphne forced herself to unclench
her hands before her fingers went numb. If he didn’t reach the
point he was trying to make soon, she was going to get up and march
back to her car.

“The master bedroom ceiling in this
house,” he said abruptly.

“What about it, other than that
someone your height has to be careful?”

“That’s just it, Daff. It’s low.”
At last he turned to her, his gaze penetrating her, cutting through
her in search of a shred of evidence that she understood what he
was getting at. His voice was soft and gentle when he continued.
“We were both thinking the same thing when we were standing up
there in the bedroom the other day, Daff. We were thinking about
the last time we were together in a bedroom with a low ceiling.
It’s still with us, Daphne. The memories are still with
us.”

“All right,” she said impatiently.
“They’re still with us. So what?”

“Imagine a time machine,” he said.
“If only we could go back, we could undo the bad stuff.” He paused
to let his words rsink in, then added, “We can do it right this
time.”

“Do what right?” she asked
warily.

“Have our night
together.”

“What
?”

“Make love.”

“Now
?”

“Not this minute, Daff—but the
thing is, we can go back, if we want to. We can relive that moment
in time. We’ve got each other now, and we can relive it the right
way.”

She allowed herself a full minute
to let his suggestion register. As soon as it did, she succumbed to
a loud laugh. “You’re insane!”

Brad appeared wounded. “I am not
insane. I’ve been giving this idea some serious thought—stop
laughing, Daphne,” he said sternly.

She smothered her giggles by
clamping her hand across her mouth. A couple of hiccups slipped
out, but she did a respectable job of regaining her
composure.

Satisfied that she wouldn’t
dissolve into laughter again, he resumed speaking. “I’ve been
thinking about it. We all go through our lives making mistakes and
wishing we could go back and fix them. My parents keep dwelling on
all the mistakes they’ve made with each other, instead of trying to
fix their relationship. Never once did they try to go back, figure
out what went wrong and make amends for it, or do it over the right
way. And look at them now—bitter and sniping at each other. Well,
for once in my life, I’ve got a chance to go back and fix the
biggest mistake I’ve ever made. We’ve both got that chance, Daphne,
and I think we’d be making even a bigger mistake if we didn’t take
advantage of the opportunity.”

“What opportunity?” Daphne asked,
her amusement replaced by confusion.

“This opportunity. Eight years
after we made asses of ourselves, here we are, good friends. We’ve
talked the thing out, but it’s still lying there between us.” He
stared defiantly at her, as if daring her to deny his
statement.

She couldn’t, of course. It was
still lying there between them. But even so, what he was implying…
“I don’t see how making love is going to fix anything,” she said,
wondering if she was only imagining the tremor in her voice. “We
may be friends, but we don’t love each other.”

“Which is why this is perfect,” he
explained. “That’s what makes this thing so right. If neither of us
loves the other, neither of us can get hurt.”

“I don’t believe that,” Daphne
argued. “And while we’re at it, I don’t believe we can go back in
time. We’re eight years older—”

“Exactly. Eight years older and
wiser and more attuned to each other. That’s the beauty of time
machines—the time traveler returns to the past and brings his
present perspective with him. We can’t miss, Daff. We’re mature and
sensible.”

“If we were all that mature and
sensible, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” she muttered.
Making love without being in love seemed so cold to her, so
mechanical and arbitrary. Wasn’t that part of the reason she and
Brad had had such a bad experience last time? They’d made love
without being in love.

No. They hadn’t made love that
time. They’d had intercourse, but they certainly hadn’t made
love.

She glanced at him, simultaneously
intrigued and dismayed by his beguiling grin. Whether or not they
loved each other, he was a hypnotically good-looking man, and she
was a woman who hadn’t been intimate with a man in a long
time.

“You’re tempted,” Brad said,
interpreting her expression accurately.

“Well…” She smiled reluctantly,
recalling the many times she’d thought about how she wouldn’t kick
Brad out for eating crackers in bed. “I think what you’re proposing
is…kind of dangerous.”

“No, it’s not. We’re friends. And I
promise you, it’s going to be good. We’ll do it right, negate the
past, and it’ll make us feel so much better afterwards.”

She felt a strange fluttering
inside her, a warm, erotic tug when he said, “It’s going to be
good.” She didn’t agree with him that it wouldn’t be dangerous, but
she knew it would be good. She just knew it.

And as far as the danger... Phyllis
and Andrea were always berating her for her tendency to avoid
risks. Maybe they were right; maybe she spent too much of her life
playing it safe. And where had that gotten her? She was a
thirty-year-old single woman with a respectable career, a lot of
debts, and the social life of an amoeba. A night of sex with a
friend had to be better than that.

“I thought you were leaving for
Seattle next week,” she reminded him, groping for any justification
to turn him down.

“Monday afternoon,” he confirmed.
“That still leaves this weekend—unless you’re already
busy.”

She laughed nervously. Now it was
her turn to stare at the leaves of the majestic oak tree across the
lawn. “I don’t know, Brad. It seems so unromantic….”

“Talking about it
makes it seem that way,” he agreed. “But in actual practice, it’s
going to be the most romantic night of our lives. That’s part of
where we went wrong last time, Daff—we weren’t romantic. This time
we will be.” He warmed to his subject, curling an arm around
Daphne’s slightly hunched shoulders. “We’ll have an intimate
dinner
a deux
first. Candlelight, mood music, the works. How does that
sound?”

“Romantic,” she admitted. “Are we
supposed to have this romantic dinner at a restaurant, or am I
supposed to cook it?”

“Whichever you prefer,” he
answered. “I’d cook it myself, except that I don’t have title on
this house yet, and I don’t think it would be an intimate dinner if
we did it in Manhattan, with Andrea and Eric in the next
room.”

“All right, I’ll cook it,” Daphne
decided. If they were aiming for an intimate dinner, they couldn’t
go to a public restaurant. Daphne wasn’t the world’s greatest chef,
but she would be able to concoct something reasonably
romantic.

“What sort of music should we go
with?” he asked. “Classical? Jazz?”

“Definitely not rock and roll,” she
said firmly. They’d had rock and roll the last time, and she wanted
this time to be completely different. “Strauss waltzes?”

“Mozart’s better than Strauss,”
Brad said.

“All right. Mozart.” She laughed
again, less nervously. It amazed her to think she was actually
considering Brad’s insane idea—more than considering it. Somehow,
without being aware of the precise moment, she’d crossed the line
from considering to contributing to the plan.

But she had crossed the line. That
much was clear. She was not only contributing, she was actually
looking forward to this romantic evening with Brad. For once in her
life, she deserved to be romanced, to be reckless and sentimental
and utterly swept away. If Brad was right, one romantic night would
eradicate her memories of the least romantic night of her life. And
even if he was wrong, what did she have to lose? A few hours? A
lonely Saturday night?