Going Back (30 page)

She wasn’t expecting company. The
only person who might drive to her house without warning was
Phyllis, and as far as Daphne knew, Phyllis wasn’t in the midst of
any crisis that would require an emergency trip to New Jersey. The
last Daphne had heard, Jim had moved out of Phyllis’s house without
incident and she was eagerly working on a scheme to lasso
Brad.

The ginger ale began to spurt
through the half-open cap, and Daphne raced from the table to the
sink with the hissing bottle. Leaving it there to overflow, she
dried her hands on a towel and tiptoed into the living room to spy
on her uninvited visitor through the picture window.

She saw Brad strolling up the front
walk. Although it was after seven o’clock, he had on a navy blue
business suit. His tie hung loose around his collar. Even in the
waning light she could see that his shirt was wilted and his hair
was limp, his eyes were downcast and his lips were set in a grim
line.

She didn’t need any light at all to
recognize that, despite his obviously gloomy mood, he was gorgeous.
She knew that, however much he was scowling, his eyes were
breathtaking in their color and intensity, and that regardless of
his weary posture, his shoulders were strong and sturdy.

She wondered what he was doing at
her house. If there was a problem with his house, he could have
contacted her at her office. He must have come for personal
reasons—and those reasons had better not have anything to do with
sex, she thought irately. She’d stated her position on that subject
the last time she’d spoken to him, right after the closing a week
ago. She wasn’t going to sleep with him again.

Before he could ring the doorbell,
she had the front door open. She glowered at him through the
storm-door screen, suffering a strange mixture of resenment and
desire as she was seized by a memory of what had happened the last
time he’d come to her house. Afraid that she’d say the wrong thing
if she spoke, she kept her mouth shut.

“MayI come in?” he
asked.

A simple enough request. Daphne
switched on the porch light to see him more clearly, and decided
that he looked too pathetic to pose a threat to her. He certainly
didn’t look lustful, in any case. Sighing, she held the door open
for him.

He stepped inside, scanned the
unlit living room, and then started toward the kitchen. “Can I have
something to drink?” he asked.

Daphne snorted. “Can you say hello,
first, or is that asking too much?”

He spun around and grinned
crookedly. “I’m sorry, Daff. I’ve just had one of the worst days of
my life.”

“And you figured you’d top it off
with a visit to me. No, you can’t have something to drink,” she
said bluntly.

His smile faded, and he pulled her
into his arms. He hugged her tight, clinging to her as if his life
depended on her, and rested his chin against the crown of her head.
“My folks are getting a divorce,” he said. “I’m really upset.
Please don’t give me a hard time.”

Daphne took a minute to digest his
announcement. “I’m sorry,” she said, less for having given him a
hard time than for the news about his parents. Brad had confided in
her about his parents ever since he’d first come east. She could
imagine how devastated he must be over the finality of their
decision. Her own feelings went forgotten as she focused her
concern on him and the sorrow he must be feeling. “What do you want
to drink? I was just about to get myself some ginger
ale.”

“I’d love some,” Brad said,
releasing her and following her into the kitchen.

Only a little of the soda had
leaked out of the bottle. Daphne rinsed the spill down the drain,
then filled two glasses with soda and handed one to him. “I’m sorry
it’s so hot in here, but—”

“I like it,” Brad swore as he
removed his jacket and draped it over a chair. “I’m sick of air
conditioning.”

“Let’s sit on the back porch,”
Daphne suggested, leading him out the kitchen door. They took seats
across the glass-topped table from each other, just as they had a
couple of months ago—when they’d had their heart-to-heart talk
about their frat-party folly eight years ago.

Brad took a long drink of soda,
then lowered his glass to the table and slumped in his seat. “They
came to my office and made their announcement this afternoon,” he
related, resting his head in his hands and eyeing Daphne dolefully.
“I left the office at five, got off the train in Montclair at six,
got into my car and sat in traffic for a while, and finally
realized that I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to come here. I
wanted to be with you.”

“Lucky for you, I didn’t go out
tonight,” she said—as if Brad would have had any reason to doubt
that she would be at home. Daphne didn’t go on dates, after all.
She didn’t gad about on weekday nights—or weekend nights, for that
matter. She was always home, ready for some wonderful man who
didn’t love her to come and weep on her shoulder.

“It was the
weirdest thing,” he went on. “It was more than just wanting to come
here, Daffy. It was this deep knowledge that I
had
to come here. There’s no one else
I can face this thing with, no one else I can trust to help me see
it through.”

He sounded perplexed, yet there was
a certain serenity about him, a comprehension that by her side was
where he needed to be. As angry as she was about what had gone
wrong between them, about her foolishness in falling in love with
Brad and his predictability in failing to fall in love with her,
she was touched that he still trusted her, that he still relied on
her to comfort him when he was hurting.

“Tell me what happened,” she
said.

He did. He described his parents’
surprise visit to his office, their cheerful mood and their
determination to go through with the divorce. “I just don’t get
it,” he groaned. “They’re so perfect.”

“You always say that,” Daphne
interrupted him. “What makes you think they’re perfect?”

“Well...they mesh so well
together,” he struggled to explain. “They’re well matched. They
complement each other. When you look at them, you get a sense that
they belong together.”

“But they don’t love each other,”
she pointed out.

“They
should
,” Brad
argued.

Daphne laughed.
“Why should they? Just because their son has some crackpot idea
that when people are well matched they ought to be in love? Your
parents
don’t
love
each other. They’ve told you they don’t. You’ve simply got to
accept it.”

He stared at her. His gaze seemed
to pierce the thick lenses of her glasses, to reach for her and
hold her. “But it doesn’t make sense,” he complained
quietly.

“You’ve been in love before,”
Daphne said, not bothering to disguise her growing impatience. “You
ought to know there’s no law that says love has to make sense.” If
love made sense, she added silently, trying to smother a fresh
surge of bitterness, she would never have fallen in love with Brad.
She would have fallen in love with a nice, safe, funny-looking
fellow, possibly someone a bit gangly and a bit awkward, with
unmanageable hair and Coke-bottle eyeglasses like hers.

But love wasn’t sensible, and she’d
fallen in love with Brad, instead.

“I’m not sure I like my new house,”
Brad said abruptly.

Daphne took a moment to absorb his
non sequitur. “What don’t you like about it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Brad exhaled and
took another long drink of soda. His eyes remained on Daphne,
glowing steadily in the descending gloom. “Whenever I’m there, I
keep wishing I were here instead.”

“Here? In my house?” At his solemn
nod, she chuckled. “What did you have in mind? A swap? I think I’d
come out ahead. The assessment on your house—”

“Daff,” he silenced her. “It’s not
the house. It’s you. I miss you. I want to be with you.”

“You want to
sleep with me,” she muttered, spitting out the words just to get
them said. She might have been amused by the notion that Brad
seemed to view of her as some sort of irresistible sex partner,
a
femme fatale
of
exotic amorous skills. But as long as all he wanted from her was
sex, she wasn’t inclined to be amused.

“I do want to make love with you,”
he admitted. He raked his fingers restlessly through his hair, then
leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Damn,” he said
softly.

His unexpected laughter put her on
the defensive. “What?”

“Something my father said today. He
told me that, even though he and my mother were married, they had
never really been friends.”

“And?”

“And I love you.” Brad seemed
astonished by his epiphany, speaking it as if it were a revelation
from above. “You’re my friend, and we’re great in bed, and I love
you.”

“No you don’t,” Daphne refuted him.
Brad couldn’t possibly love her. He could love his pretty
almost-fiancee in Seattle, or Phyllis Dunn, or any other woman as
good looking and self-possessed as he himself was. He could love
any woman who complemented him and made a good match for him. By no
stretch of the imagination did Daphne fit into that category, so he
couldn’t possibly love her. “You think of me as a sister,” she
accused him.

“Oh, no, I don’t,” he swore, rising
and circling the table to her. “That would be incestuous.” Cupping
his hands around her elbows, he pulled her to her feet. Then he
kissed her, slowly and thoroughly. “I’m an only child, but as far
as I know, brothers don’t kiss sisters like that.”

“Yes, well...” Daphne fought to
catch her breath. Brad’s shatteringly sensual kiss had been an
unfair tactic, and she strove to keep her wits about her. “I think
you’re confusing love with lust.”

“No, I’m not,” he defended himself,
his smile gaining in certainty. “I happen to be lusting for you
right now, Daphne, but that’s not why I love you. I love you
because you’re my friend. Because I can talk to you. Because, when
I’m angry and in pain, you’re the only person I want to be with,
the only person I can trust to see me through it.” He kissed her
again, sliding his hands up her arms to meet at the center of her
back. “Make love with me,” he whispered, his breath running over
her lips and chin, fanning the blaze he’d ignited deep inside her
with his kiss.

“I don’t know...” she mumbled. “I’m
dressed like a slob, Brad, and I’m kind of sweaty, and—”

“And you’re beautiful,” he vowed,
touching his lips to her brow.

“But it isn’t—I mean, maybe it
won’t be such a success,” she worried aloud. “We haven’t done
anything to make it romantic—”

“What romantic things are we
supposed to do?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with humor. “Smash a
jar? Break out in hives?” He gripped the fabric of her tee shirt
and edged it upward. “At least we don’t have to worry about stuck
zippers this time,” he pointed out, sliding his hands underneath
her shirt to stroke her back.

She issued a throaty sigh, savoring
his tender caresses. She could tell from her body’s instantaneous
response to him, from the heavy ache spreading through her hips and
the tingling sensation in her breasts, that she and Brad didn’t
need any artificial romantic gestures for their lovemaking to be
successful. She could tell, as Brad’s hands ventured down to the
waistband of her shorts and wedged inside, pressing into the soft
flesh of her bottom, that she needed nothing but Brad—and she
prayed that he would need nothing but her.

She eased out of his arms, then
took his hand and escorted him inside. They stole quickly down the
hall to her bedroom. As soon as she opened the door, a blast of icy
air slammed into them.

“Jeez. It’s freezing in here,” Brad
complained.

Daphne was surprised. The
atmosphere in the rest of her house was so hot and muggy, she would
have thought he’d appreciate the cooler air in her bedroom. She
herself preferred it. But she wasn’t going to argue with him, not
now. Not when they were both so hot in a very different way. “We
can turn the AC off if you want.”

He rotated to her. “You would
rather have it on, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, yes, but I’m willing to
compromise.”

He smiled and shook his head. “I
didn’t know it was possible for lovers not to quibble over every
little thing.”

“It’s definitely possible,” Daphne
assured him.

Brad dipped his head to hers and
brushed a kiss over her lips. “I like not fighting with the woman I
love,” he murmured, then pulled off his shirt and tossed it onto
Daphne’s dresser. Gently, he slid her eyeglasses from her nose and
placed them carefully on the dresser next to his shirt.

“You think I’m ugly when I’m
wearing my eyeglasses,” she guessed, one last attempt to prove to
him—and to herself—that he didn’t truly love her.

“I think you look better without
them,” he answered frankly. “Maybe you ought to give contact lenses
another try. It’s not as windy here as in Chicago, and they’ve come
up with more comfortable lenses. Soft lenses. Gas permeable. Long
wearing. Whatever” He kissed the tiny red marks her glasses had
left on the bridge of her nose.