Going Back (22 page)

“It sounds more romantic than mushy
pasta.” He could think of only one thing more romantic that he’d
rather do in bed with Daphne than eat, and they’d already
established that they need to refuel for that.

“Well, I figure, one way or
another, something’s going to go right tonight in the romance
department.”

“Something already did,” he
reminded her, his smile a hybrid of lecherousness and
gratitude.

She laughed. “Something besides
that,” she said, slipping her eyeglasses on and then heading for
the door in a loping stride.

“I might get bread crumbs on the
sheets,” he called after her in a warning.

“I wouldn’t kick you out of bed for
that,” she said before vanishing down the hall.

Temporarily abandoned, he propped
the pillows against the headboard, fashioning a more comfortable
seat for himself. Then he contemplated the woman who’d just left
the room. He thought about her lanky legs, her shapeless nose, the
angular protrusions of her shoulder blades, the milky pallor of her
skin, the inexplicable drabness of her eyes...the way her questing
mouth had felt on his chest, and her fingernails when she’d scraped
them across his back, and the way he’d sensed as much as heard the
low, purring sound of rapture that filled her throat the moment
she’d peaked.

Even without an emergency dose of
megavitamins, he felt himself getting hard again. Twisting to
examine the back of his shoulder, he saw a red welt where she’d
scratched him—and the sight aroused him even more. If she didn’t
look so much like an improved version of the dowdy co-ed with whom
he’d botched things so badly in college, he would have been
convinced that the Daphne Stoltz he remembered and this one were
two completely different creatures. It didn’t seem possible to him
that the same woman could have been responsible for both the worst
and the best sex he’d ever experienced in his life.

The best? Well, no, he and Daphne
had just had a terrific time, but it hadn’t really been the best
he’d ever had, had it? Back in Seattle, he’d been seriously
considering marriage to Nancy, for God’s sake. He’d loved Nancy,
revered her, been dazzled by her. He’d spent more than two years
dating her, and untold hours meditating on her perfectly shaped
hazel eyes, the lustrous auburn waves of her hair, her
peaches-and-cream complexion, her voluptuous breasts and
microscopic waist and soft, sultry lips...

But the truth was, sex with Daphne
just now had been better than anything he’d ever known with
Nancy.

It must have been a fluke, the
orgasmic equivalent of an optical illusion. Surely he and Daphne
would never be able to scale such heights a second time...although
his insistently aroused body seemed more than ready to deny that
prediction.

She returned to the bedroom
carrying a tray of food, and Brad discreetly pulled the blanket
around him so she wouldn’t notice his condition. She lowered
herself onto the bed next to him, then balanced the tray between
them on its fold-out legs. It held two plates, a loaf of whole
wheat bread, a jar of peanut butter, one of strawberry jam, knives
and paper napkins. “I don’t know whether you want something to
drink,” she said, crossing her legs squaw-style and reaching for
the peanut butter jar, “but while I don’t mind crumbs in bed, I do
mind spilled beverages.”

“That’s understandable,” Brad
granted, watching her smear peanut butter onto a slice of bread and
fantasizing about her naked body beneath the baggy shirt. The
fantasy was so erotic he had to shift his legs and rearrange the
cover around him, but Daphne appeared to be unaware of his arousal.
She handed him the sandwich she’d begun, and he topped a second
slice of bread with jam to complete it.

“I was right about the linguini,”
she reported, preparing another sandwich for herself. “It was
disgusting. I had to take the flowers out of the sink in order to
soak the pot. The flowers are all mushy, too.”

“Ask me if I care,” Brad
said.

“The roses I put in the vase are
beautiful, though,” she said, offering Brad a sincere smile. “Did I
tell you how much I appreciate them?”

He wondered how often—if
ever—Daphne received roses from men. The possibility that she never
did saddened him, and he shoved the thought away. “If I’d have
known you liked roses, I would have brought you more of
them.”

Daphne chuckled. “You brought
plenty of flowers, Brad,” she assured him. “More than I know what
to do with, obviously.”

He was listening to her with only
half his mind. His other half continued to scrutinize her as she
bit into her sandwich, chewed, swallowed and ran the tip of her
tongue over the corners of her mouth to capture the stray crumbs.
It vexed him to think that Daphne wasn’t showered with roses from
male admirers on a regular basis. She ought to have boyfriends by
the dozens, by the hundreds. But she didn’t—for the simple reason
that she was homely. The comprehension infuriated him, and yet
there he himself was, no better than any other man, wishing that
she were prettier so he could think of her as a suitable partner
for himself.

He gently lifted her eyeglasses
from her face and set them on the night table behind her. “Why did
you do that?” she asked, blinking.

“You took them off before. I’m just
trying to get used to the way you look without them.” He skipped
mentioning that she looked better when she wasn’t wearing them, and
chose instead to ask, “Have you ever considered wearing contact
lenses?”

She nodded and scowled at the
memory. “Right after college, when I moved to Chicago I bought a
pair. They were never comfortable. Dust kept blowing into my
eyes—believe me, they don’t call Chicago the `Windy City’ for
nothing. Then I scratched my cornea taking one out, and I was in a
lot of pain from it.” She bit into her sandwich, reminiscing. “Some
people just can’t wear contacts. I wish I could. I can still
remember one night when I forgot to take them out before going to
bed. When I woke up the next morning and opened my eyes, my vision
was kind of cloudy, but I could see things. I could read my alarm
clock without squinting, and make out the slats on the Venetian
blind on my window. I thought I’d been the beneficiary of some sort
of overnight transformation, and my eyesight had been miraculously
cured. That’s always been one of my lifelong dreams—to wake up one
morning and discover that I had perfect vision.”

Brad lowered his empty plate to the
tray and slung his arm around Daphne’s shoulders. It had never
occurred to him that for nearsighted people, the worst thing about
their situation was not having to wear eyeglasses, but having to
contend with poor vision. Instead of feeling sorry for Daphne for
having to wear eyeglasses that detracted from her appearance, he
ought to feel sorry for her for having a blurry view of the
world.

“What are some of your other
lifelong dreams?” he asked, suddenly frustrated by how
embarrassingly little he knew about her.

She popped a corner of crust into
her mouth and then snuggled more cozily against him. Her elbow
poked into his rib cage in a way that ought to have hurt him, but
it didn’t. He wanted her close to him, as close as it was possible
to be. Once she had arranged herself comfortably he tightened his
hold on her, pinning her to him so she wouldn’t be able to move
away. “My lifelong dreams, huh,” she echoed. “Other than waking up
with perfect vision?” She ruminated for a minute. “I’d like to be
able to buy my partnership in Horizon Realty without having to sign
for any more loans.”

“That doesn’t
count,” Brad criticized good-naturedly. “One week ago, you weren’t
even thinking in terms of a partnership in the company. I mean
your
lifelong
dreams, dreams you’ve been dreaming for a long time. Like
perfect vision.”

Daphne nodded and lapsed into
thought for a minute. “World peace, of course, and a cure for
cancer—along with a cure for myopia. And I wouldn’t mind finding
Mr. Right someday, and having a child. How about you?”

“Pretty much the same,” Brad told
her. “World peace, a cure for cancer...and a cure for myopia if you
want it, Daffy.” He twirled his index finger through a ringlet of
her hair as he thought. “I dream that my parents will stop their
silly bickering and get back together again. And, sure, the rest of
it—a beautiful wife and a couple of kids.”

He detected a subtle tension
rippling through her, causing her shoulders to hunch slightly. Why
was she suddenly recoiling from him? What had he said
wrong?

A beautiful
wife
.

Surely Daphne didn’t expect Brad to
propose marriage to her just because they’d made love. She was a
savvy woman, smart and mature. She and Brad both understood the
reason for this get-together. It had to do with preserving a
friendship, not exploring marital options. They both knew
that.

Gradually it
dawned on Brad that Daphne hadn’t been reacting to the word
wife
. What she’d reacted
to was the word
beautiful
.

A full minute after he’d spoken,
she still hadn’t relaxed within the curve of his arm. He cursed
silently, then twisted to peer at her. “Daff?”

She raised her eyes from the tray
to his face. They were dry and blank, refusing to reveal her
emotions.

“Can we talk about
this?”

“About what?” she asked.

“About why your body’s just dropped
twenty degrees in temperature.”

She turned to
stare at the tray again. She pinched the ruffled trim edging the
blanket with her fingers, then let her hands go slacken in her lap.
“It seems to me,” she said slowly, in a muted voice, “that far too
many men—the vast majority of them, no doubt—are looking for
beautiful
wives.”

It pained Brad to think of how much
his tactless comment must have hurt her—especially since she was
brave enough to answer him truthfully when he’d goaded her into
saying something she clearly didn’t want to say. “Don’t think you
aren’t beautiful,” he said, hoping he wasn’t digging himself even
deeper.

She smiled wryly. “Please don’t be
a hypocrite, Brad. One thing we seem to have going for us is
honesty. Don’t blow it, okay?”

Her tone was less bitter than
beseeching. She was right, of course—honesty was an essential part
of their friendship. Brad had no intention of spoiling that
friendship by resorting to hypocrisy.

Yet when he’d told her, however
obliquely, that she was beautiful, he hadn’t been hypocritical. At
least at that moment, when a measure of emotion had crept into her
face, the faintest glimmer of anguish and fear, he had considered
her beautiful. No matter how funny-looking she was from an
objective standpoint, she was beautiful, too.

He sighed.
“Daphne,” he murmured, stroking his finger absently behind her ear
and wondering how to regain the closeness between them. Abruptly,
he realized that they’d never lost that closeness. Talking to
Daphne was, in its own way, as intimate an act as making love to
her. “Listen to me. You
are
beautiful.”

She chuckled—and, again, he
detected no trace of bitterness in her quiet laughter. “Maybe
you’re the one who needs glasses,” she suggested. “I’ll grant you
that my face isn’t so horrible it’s going to shatter any camera
lenses. But I’m no cover girl, either.”

“You don’t have to be a cover
girl,” he pointed out.

“Thank God for that,” she said. “If
I did have to be one, I’d be in a whole hell of a lot of
trouble.”

“What I meant—” he felt suddenly
desperate to make her believe him “—is that beauty is in the eye of
the beholder.”

“No!” she gasped with phony
surprise. He recognized that she was mocking him, but she went on
before he could defend himself. “I thought it was only skin deep.
Or is it beauty is as beauty does?”

“Daff—”

She softened, apparently sensing
that he needed reassurance even more than she did. “Let me fill you
in on a little secret. Believe it or not, most women really do know
what they look like. We know that we have our good days—and our bad
days, too—but by and large, we’ve got a pretty clear idea of what
we look like. When I was growing up with my gorgeous little sister,
my parents were always reciting all those charming sayings to me so
I wouldn’t feel bad about being so much less attractive than she
was. It was all very sweet and well-intended on their part, but
none of it changed the fact that I’m a plain-looking woman. Most
men look at me and think I’m too tall or too gangly or too blah, or
my hair is all wrong or I squint too much. If they take the time to
get to know me, they decide that I’m not such terrible company. But
they sure as hell don’t think I’m beautiful.”

Her bluntness stunned Brad. He had
never heard a woman speak so frankly about herself, and he wasn’t
sure how to react. “Why don’t they fall in love with you?” he
asked, too fascinated by her words and her attitude to worry about
diplomacy. “You’re wonderful company and—depending on the eyes of
the beholder—you’re beautiful, too. Why haven’t you found Mr.
Right?”