Going Back by Judith Arnold Read Free Book Online Page B

Brad requested a scotch on the
rocks.
    “Iced tea,” Daphne said when the
waitress asked if she wanted a drink. The waitress left them with
menus and departed.
    “You’re going to make me drink
alone,” Brad deduced, his tone laced with suspicion.
    Given that Daphne no longer partook
of liquor, her companions invariably had to drink alone. “I don’t
drink when I’m working,” she explained. It wasn’t the whole truth,
but it wasn’t a lie, either.
    Brad leaned back in his chair and
regarded her across the linen-covered table. “Is that your
strategy? You get your client smashed, and he’ll agree to buy
anything for any price.”
    Daphne smiled demurely. “I have the
feeling, Brad, that no matter how smashed you got, you’d still put
up a fuss about a house you considered overpriced.”
    “In other words, any house around
here.”
    She held onto her smile, refusing
to let him rile her. She knew that, given the comfortable income
he’d be earning in his new position, he could afford any of the
houses she planned to show him today. And he couldn’t be as shocked
about the prices as he pretended to be—he’d insisted that he was
aware of the inflated housing costs in the area. All of which meant
that what was bugging him was something essentially unrelated to
the house and the condo Daphne had shown him.
    What was bugging him, she surmised,
was the identity of the real estate broker showing him the
houses.
    The waitress arrived with their
drinks and asked if Daphne and Brad were ready to order their
meals. Daphne lifted her menu, skimmed it and asked for a bowl of
gazpacho and a garden salad. Brad cast her an unreadable glance,
then took her menu from her, handed it along with his to the
waitress and requested a hamburger. “Are you on a diet?” he asked
Daphne once they were alone again.
    Daphne scrutinized him carefully.
She studied the smooth fall of his glossy black hair across his
high brow, the square shape of his jaw, the thin line of his lips,
the brilliant blue radiance of his eyes, and finally his neck. It
was still one of the nicest necks she’d ever seen on a man. It was
the sort of neck that tempted a woman to graze it with her lips—if
she was sober and responsible, and if he was more than passively
receptive.
    “What makes you think I’m on a
diet?” she asked. She had hoped her voice would emerge sounding
amiably detached, but it didn’t. She came across as petulant, as if
she were eager to rise to Brad’s unspoken challenge and wear as big
a chip on her shoulder as he was wearing on his.
    “You’ve lost weight since college,”
he said.
    “I’m surprised that someone like
you would even notice,” she shot back, then bit her lip and cursed
her temper. How could she have uttered such an snide remark in
front of him? How could she have allowed herself to appear so
touchy?
    Her caustic
comment had an unexpected effect on him. Rather than rallying with
an equally insulting comeback, he softened. His lips curved in a
hesitant smile and his eyes remained on her as he reached for his
scotch glass. “You have lost weight, Daff. The fact of the matter is,
you’re looking great.”
    She accepted his compliment in the
spirit in which it was given—a simple observation, devoid of
ulterior meaning. “I was too fat in college,” she reminded him. “I
was still carrying around the ʻfreshmen twenty’ when I
graduated.”
    “The ʻfreshmen twenty’? What’s
that?”
    “The twenty pounds lots of girls
gain their freshman year of college.”
    “Why do they do that?” Brad asked,
apparently fascinated.
    Daphne laughed. “I don’t know,” she
admitted. “Maybe it has to do with leaving home for the first time.
All of a sudden, you don’t have your mother on your back, nagging
you that if you aren’t pretty you won’t get a date for the prom and
your life will be ruined.”
    “Did your mother do that?” Brad
inquired.
    Daphne tried to interpret the
gentle undercurrent in his