Going Back Read online

  A man in a suit and tie sat at one of the desks, talking on the telephone with the receiver tucked between his ear and his shoulder so he could jot notes on a pad. The only other person Brad saw was a woman, also conservatively dressed, using a photocopy machine at the rear of the room. Since she had her back to Brad, he was able to study her for a moment, unobserved. She appeared to be middle-aged, with a matronly figure and dark brown hair arranged in a moderately bouffant style. Brad couldn’t believe that Daphne had changed—or aged—so drastically.

  The woman pulled a few sheets of paper from the tray on the side of the machine, then turned around and revealed to Brad that she definitely wasn’t Daphne. She presented him with a polite smile. “Good morning,” she said, tapping the paper into a neat stack. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Daphne Stoltz,” he answered, then felt compelled to add, “I’ve got an appointment,” as if to emphasize that this was a business call, not a personal one.

  “She’s in her office,” the woman informed him, beckoning him toward the rear of the room. Brad was brought up short by the news that Daphne had her own office instead of working at one of the desks in front.

  The dark-haired woman ushered him to a short hallway leading to the rear of the building. The first door they came to was open, and the woman indicated it with a wave of her hand. “That’s Daphne’s office.”

  Brad approached the door quietly. It wasn’t that he wished to sneak up on Daphne, but he did want a chance to see her before she saw him. He was hoping that catching a preliminary glimpse of her might somehow prepare him for this meeting, give him an idea of what to say or a clue as to how she felt about spending a day with him.

  He waited until the middle-aged woman had returned to her desk in the front room before peering inside Daphne’s private office. Like the front room, this back room was brightly lit. In addition to photographs of houses, the large bulletin board occupying the far wall contained a big calendar with notes and schedules scribbled inside each date’s square. Another wall held a few framed documents, one identifying Daphne as a licensed Realtor, another claiming that she was a state-certified assessor. A cloth-upholstered loveseat rested against a third wall, and two matching chairs faced the broad oak desk where Daphne sat talking on the phone.

  She looked good, Brad thought with inexplicable relief. The telephone receiver blocked part of her face from his view, but he could see enough to know that the past eight years hadn’t been unkind to Daphne. Her hair was the same flaxen shade he remembered, but the frizz had relaxed somewhat, shaping small, bubbly curls that tumbled loosely to her shoulders. She still wore eyeglasses, but the frames she had on, a honey-colored brown with stylish rectangular lenses, flattered her more than did the wire-rims she’d worn in college. Her nose was too small for her face, but it managed to hold her eyeglasses in place.

  Brad’s gaze shifted downward to the shapeless linen blazer she had on over a simple silk blouse of bright turquoise. A narrow gold wristwatch adorned her slender left wrist. She looked a bit thinner than he had remembered. The sweep of flesh under her jaw was smooth and taut, and her cheeks were hollow beneath her angular cheekbones. Her nails were polished. As she spoke into the phone, her voice was soft but solid.

  It occurred to Brad that Daphne Stoltz was no longer the clumsy, gawky college girl he remembered. She was clearly a woman on her way, poised and accomplished. He directed a silent curse at Andrea for having failed to warn him.

  “Well, it’s only my opinion,” Daphne said into the phone, “but if you’re planning to move in a couple of years you’re better off with the variable. The rates are going to have to go up eventually, but the variables are still a couple of points lower. Either way, you’ve got to get the application process started right away. If there’s a good chance the interest rates are going up, the bank is going to sit on your application.... Fine. Just get the paperwork started, and let me know if you have any problems. Take care.” She hung up and swiveled to face the doorway.

  “Hello, Daffy,” Brad said.

  As soon as the words hit the air, he regretted them. He ought to have called her Daphne; it would have been more respectful. It was just that when Andrea talked about her she usually referred to her as Daffy. Brad had called her Daffy in college, but there didn’t seem to be anything particularly daffy about her right now.

  She stared up at him as he hovered in the doorway, awaiting an invitation to enter. The lenses of her eyeglasses made her eyes appear flat, a pale green. She had on lipstick, he noticed, also a pale hue. Her coloring seemed strangely washed out, but Brad acknowledged that a darker lipstick would have made her look like a clown.

  She wasn’t pretty. She hadn’t been eight years ago, and she wasn’t now. But there was a directness about her looks, an unpretentiousness that Brad admired.

  “Hello, Brad,” she said, her voice as quiet and cool as it had been during the telephone conversation Brad had eavesdropped on. He inferred from her impassive tone that she intended to treat him the same way she’d treated the person she’d been talking to on the phone: as a client. “Come in.”

  “Thanks.” He entered the office, surveying it one more time before he sat in one of the chairs across the desk from her. His vision took in the calendar, the African violet residing on one corner of her desk, the tidy oak bookcase behind her. The leather upholstery of her chair. The plush area rug. “What are you, the boss here or something?” he asked.

  She favored him with a tentative smile. “I’m in charge of this office, if that’s what you mean,” she replied. She folded her hands above her blotter, and Brad focused for a moment on the tapered shape of her fingers, the enameled pink ovals adorning each fingertip, the amethyst ring on her right ring finger. No wedding band, he noted. If Daphne had been married and Andrea hadn’t informed Brad, he would have throttled Andrea the minute he returned to New York.

  Not that he cared one way or another about Daphne’s marital status. He just wanted to be prepared, that was all.

  “So,” he said, wondering if he was coming across as awkward as he felt. “How have you been?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  A heavy silence descended over the office. Brad shifted in his chair, balancing one leg across the other knee. He inspected the brown leather loafer on his foot, the length of khaki trouser covering his leg, the brass buckle of his belt, the faint wrinkles webbing his cotton oxford shirt beneath his jacket. Daphne’s outfit would be appropriate for the C.E.O. of a multinational corporation, and here he was, dressed like a prep school sophomore.

  “How did you wind up in real estate?” he asked, anxious to break the silence. “That wasn’t your abiding goal in life when we were in school, was it?”

  Once again, Brad wished he could have retracted the words. He didn’t want to reminisce about when they were in school. He didn’t want to dredge up old memories about what an asshole he’d been back then. In his entire life, there had been perhaps only two occasions when Brad had done something he’d subsequently been profoundly ashamed of. One of those occasions had occurred when, at the age of five, he’d made fun of the way a neighbor with cerebral palsy spoke. The other had occurred with Daphne, and he certainly didn’t want to spoil the day for both of them by reminding her of it.

  Evidently, his comment didn’t disturb her—unless the flicker of a shadow across her eyes was a reflection of her emotions rather than the overhead light on the lenses of her glasses. Her lips curved into another tentative half-smile, and she said, “No, Brad. It wasn’t my abiding goal in life.”

  Damn. Was he imagining that her tone was accusing, or was it really? Was she actually trying to tell him that he’d had a hell of a nerve sleeping with her when he hadn’t even known her well enough to be aware of her career plans?

  Or was it just his conscience speaking, that rattling old vestige of guilt that he ought to have overcome by now?

  “I kind of stumbled into real estate,” she explained. Brad was grat
eful to her for reviving the conversation when he’d all but let it die. “I held a couple of merchandising jobs after college, and I took classes in different things. Somewhere along the way, I decided on a whim to take a course in real estate, never guessing I’d have an aptitude for it.”

  “Well, you obviously do have an aptitude for it,” he concluded, gazing around her office one more time. Merchandising, he thought, trying to remember what Daphne had majored in. How could he remember something he’d never known in the first place? Daphne Stoltz had been as much a stranger to him then as she was now.

  He supposed he could always ask Andrea about what Daphne had studied in college. But if he did that, Andrea would ask him why he wanted to know—and he didn’t have an easy answer to that question.

  “I understand you’ve been transferred to a New York-based job,” Daphne remarked.

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s your field?” she asked.

  Brad might have been consoled by the fact that Daphne knew as little about him as he knew about her. But he wasn’t. “Head-hunting,” he answered.

  “You mean job placement counseling, that sort of thing?”

  He forced a grin. “I don’t mean the other kind of head-hunting—you know, the jungle kind, with all that blood and gore.”

  She digested this item with another impassive smile, refusing to laugh outright at his joke. “Well, Brad,” she said, pulling a lined legal pad toward her and plucking a pen from the top drawer of her desk, “why don’t you tell me a little about what you’re looking for in a home?”

  Daphne was no fool. She wanted to get down to business so neither she nor Brad would have to strain themselves any longer, pretending that they were enjoying this banter. He thanked her for her briskness with a tacit nod and said, “Most important, I’d like someplace no more than an hour outside Manhattan. The quicker the commute, the better.”

  She lifted her eyes to him. He wondered whether they were really as wide-set as they seemed, or whether it was an illusion caused by her eyeglasses. He also wondered why she hadn’t worn her hair at its present length when she’d been in college. The soft, face-framing shape of it was much more becoming than the wild waist-length mop of fleece her hair had been then.

  “Are you aware of what housing costs are like in any community that offers a quick commute to New York?” she asked.

  “I know the prices are way up there,” Brad said.

  “They’re higher than that,” Daphne corrected him. “They’re way, way up there.”

  “I know, Daff,” Brad assured her. “My parents live in New York. I know what property values are like in this part of the country.”

  “We’re talking mid to upper six figures, minimum,” she said. “For a small but nice condo, or a slightly larger fixer-upper.”

  “Yes, I know,” he insisted—he hoped for the final time. Daphne didn’t have to lecture him. He wasn’t a moron.

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t want to waste your time or mine. So let’s make sure we’re on the same wave-length, okay?” She opened her pen with an ominous click. “How much will you be earning in your new job?”

  None of your damned business, he almost retorted. Personal finances were a subject Brad had been raised to believe sacred, not open to idle discussion. But he checked the reflexive indignation that filled him and forced himself to relax in his chair. “Enough,” he answered evasively.

  Daphne’s expression was unreadable. “I have to ask,” she asserted. “I have to know whether you’re going to be able to afford—”

  “I’ll be able to afford it,” he said curtly.

  She continued to stare at him, her large eyes glowing enigmatically, her lips twisted into that wry smile of hers. Damn her, but she was going to win the stare-down, he realized a fraction of a second before he spat out, “In the vicinity of two hundred thousand, give or take.”

  She made no indication that she was impressed by his high earnings—or that she was afraid his salary wouldn’t be enough to pay for housing in the area. “How much do you have available for a down payment?” she asked emotionlessly, scribbling a note to herself on the pad.

  Again he had to check the impulse to protest that he was under no obligation to describe his liquidity situation to her. “Assuming the sale goes through, I’m going to make a nice profit on my condo in Seattle,” he said tensely. “Really, Daff, if you show me something I can’t afford, I’ll let you know. You can trust me.”

  A shadow flickered in her eyes again, and this time Brad was convinced that it had nothing to do with the overhead light. What she was thinking, he guessed, was that she couldn’t trust him, and that he had some nerve asserting that she could.

  She could trust him now, though. Except for a brief lapse eight years ago, he had always been trustworthy around women. Besides, his presence in Daphne’s office this morning had nothing to do with his behavior, good, bad or otherwise, toward women. It had to do with the business of purchasing a house. Daphne didn’t want to waste her time or his in showing him houses he couldn’t afford. Fine. He didn’t want to waste their time, either.

  His resentment of her nosy questions dissipated, replaced by an undefined sense of frustration. He wanted her trust. He needed it. It would be proof that she forgave him, that he no longer had to feel guilty about whatever sins he’d committed so many years ago. It was over, done with, and if only Daphne would trust him now, he could put the past to rest.

  She seemed to be scrutinizing him, sizing him up, trying to determine whether he was worthy of her trust. “Believe me,” he muttered, surprised by the vehemence in his tone, “I can afford whatever you want to show me.”

  Daphne chuckled. “In that case...I don’t suppose I want to show you the cute little cottage in Upper Saddle Brook that I’ve got a listing on. The asking price on it is three-point-five million.”

  Brad silently conceded that he couldn’t afford that. But he wasn’t going to admit it to her. There was something irritatingly patronizing about her attitude. Maybe this was her way of knocking him down a peg.

  “Here,” she said, tapping a few keys on her computer and then swiveling the flat-screen monitor so it faced him. “This site has the most recent Multiple Listing Service properties. I have a few places in mind I’d like to show you, but I’ve got to make a phone call first. Why don’t you scroll through the site and see if anything catches your eye.”

  She rotated in her chair and reached for the telephone. Brad understood that he’d been dismissed.

  He shifted forward in his chair and studied the thumbnail photos of houses listed for sale, and the accompanying descriptions enumerating each house’s features. He was unable to translate a few of the abbreviations, but he couldn’t ask Daphne to interpret them for him; she was busy talking to another broker on the phone, setting up a appointment to view a house that afternoon.

  Even if Daphne weren’t on the phone, Brad probably wouldn’t ask her to clarify the book’s jargon to him. She had already gotten the upper hand enough this morning. Brad saw no need to parade his ignorance before her.

  Had she really gotten the upper hand, though? Peeking over the monitor’s frame, he contemplated the woman seated across the desk from him, chatting easily with her colleague on the phone and absently twirling her index finger through a curling lock of hair below her ear. She certainly seemed harmless enough when he viewed her objectively.

  Maybe she had no desire whatsoever to knock him down a peg. Maybe he was just being defensive.

  Of course, that was all it was. He felt defensive because Daphne was no longer the inept, ungainly co-ed she used to be. He felt defensive because she had improved with age much more than he had, and because she seemed to have risen above the past much more effectively.

  “See anything you like?” she asked, breaking into his ruminations.

  He jerked his head toward her. Daphne was smiling pleasantly, and Brad did his best to adopt her cool affability. Returning her smile
, he shrugged. “I’d rather look at what you’d like to show me,” he told her.

  “All right,” she said, pulling her briefcase from the well beneath her desk and shoving back her chair. As soon as she stood, Brad leaped to his feet. He knew his manners, and he wanted to impress upon Daphne that he did.

  Just a bit more defensiveness on his part, he muttered inwardly, wondering why the hell he felt such a strong desire to win her forgiveness.

  ***

  HE WAS better looking than she’d remembered.

  Not that she had ever considered him bad looking, Daphne admitted as she steered her car through the late-morning traffic toward the scenic park that was one of Verona’s most charming assets. Since Brad seemed relatively unfamiliar with the area, she planned to take him on a brief tour of Verona, the Caldwells, Cedar Grove—the towns her office of Horizon Realty served—to give him a feel for this part of New Jersey. While she drove, she pointed out interesting landmarks and provided useful information: “That road will eventually lead you to Bloomingdale’s, if you like to shop,” or “Here’s the entrance to Caldwell College,” or “This is one of the better golf courses in the area.” It was her standard speech, altered to suit the individual client. She wasn’t sure whether or not Brad played golf, but she doubted he was all that interested in the local school systems.

  As she spoke, she glanced frequently at him. Each time she did, she was struck by how handsome he was. His hair was still thick and black, cut in a casual style that was just barely short enough to be acceptable in the business world. His eyebrows were thick and dark, too, and his complexion had a robust golden glow. His burnished coloring created a startling contrast with his eyes, which were an unexpectedly clear light blue. He had a strong chin, a straight nose and teeth as white and even as an orthodontist could dream of. But it was those piercing blue eyes that Daphne kept returning to, eyes much too beautiful to belong to a man.

  He had always been handsome. But back in school, Daphne had never really considered him her type. He’d been good looking the way a movie star might be: the kind of good looking about which, as Phyllis used to say, “You wouldn’t kick him out for eating crackers in bed.” Brad Torrance was someone whose appearance Daphne had admired from a distance, someone whose attention she’d never bothered trying to attract. He was Eric’s friend and she was Andrea’s, so their paths were bound to cross every once in a while. But when it came to getting crushes, Daphne preferred to keep her fantasies well within the realm of the possible.