Love Remains (28 page)

“Agent Patterson, this is your mother.”

For a moment, Bobby didn’t comprehend what he heard. “Mom? Hey—you’re back from New York?”

She laughed. “We told you we were coming back on Wednesday morning.”

He looked at his watch. A few minutes before twelve. “How was the dog show?”

“Fabulous. It was so wonderful to see everyone. And of course getting to spend a couple of days at Niagara Falls is always the best part of that kennel club’s show.” She talked about several people from the dog show circuit Bobby was certain he’d never met in his life. He sank into his chair. Wednesday. Noon. His stomach growled. Lunchtime.

He popped upright again, the chair squealing in protest at the sudden movement. Zarah’s lunch with Warren—that was
today
.

“Bobby? Are you still there?”

“What? Oh…yeah, Mom, sorry. What did you say?”

“I asked if you’d like to come over for supper tonight.”

“Tonight…?” He couldn’t miss the possibility that Zarah would be at church tonight, that he might find out how the lunch went. “I have Bible study tonight. How about tomorrow night?”

“Okay. Come over after work. I might actually get industrious and cook.”

The idea brought an amused sense of dread. “Maybe we can order Chinese instead?”

Mom laughed. He’d missed that sound more than just about anything else in Nashville. “Chinese it is. We’ll be looking for you tomorrow evening, then. I love you, son.”

“Love you, too, Mom.” He hung up the phone and eased back in the chair, propping his right foot on the open file drawer of his desk.

As much as he hated to admit it, the real estate fraud couldn’t have originated with Senator Todd Warren—not only was he new to the committee, he’d only been a senator a few months.

Bobby stood and picked up the blue marker. He drew an arrow
down from Todd Warren’s name and wrote
Delbert Warren
. Perhaps the seat in the senate wasn’t the only thing Todd Warren’s great-uncle Delbert had handed down to him.

While he didn’t hold out her chair for her—the way Bobby would have—State Senator Todd Warren did have the manners to wait until Zarah was seated before he sat across the table from her.

“Too bad they don’t have a patio…it’s such a nice day outside, and I never get a chance to get out and enjoy it,” Todd commented as he picked up his menu. “I bet you get to work outside a lot, with as much on-site work as the commission does, right?”

“Not really. As the assistant director of the agency, I’m pretty much stuck in the office all the time now. I work with the artifacts after they come back in from the field.”

“What do you recommend here?” Todd didn’t look up from his menu when he asked the question.

As Todd had pleaded his status as newcomer when he called to confirm lunch—but cancel the tour of the museum—yesterday, Zarah had suggested Amerigo. “You can’t go wrong with whatever the special of the day is—or anything from the menu. This is one of the best Italian restaurants in town.”

He asked her a few more questions about specific menu items before the waiter came back to take their orders.

As soon as the waiter was gone, Todd propped his elbows on the table and gazed across the table at Zarah. His scrutiny made her uncomfortable, not because it was inappropriate but just because she wasn’t used to having someone—particularly a handsome someone—pay such close attention to her.

“I feel like I know so much about you, yet you’ve never asked the first question about me,” he said finally. “Feel up to a game of twenty questions?”

Zarah smiled, grateful he’d finally broken the silence. “Actually, I
think I’ve pretty much got you figured out.”

Todd’s left eyebrow arched up gracefully. “Really?” His tone of voice added:
Prove it
.

“Well, you grew up in the aptly named Warren, Tennessee. You went to UT, where you were in a fraternity—either Phi Kappa Psi or Sigma Nu—majored in PoliSci, and were involved in the Student Government Association…you were definitely an officer, perhaps even president. After UT, you went to law school at Vandy and interned in the state senate. You wanted to be in the senate by the time you were thirty-five, so you started with the local school board at home, then moved up to other positions until your great-uncle died and you ran in the special election to fill his seat…right?”

Zarah smiled at the dumbfounded look on Todd’s face. “How did you know all that?”

For a moment, she thought about fibbing but then laughed. “I did a little research on you after the committee meeting. It’s amazing how much one can learn about someone else out there on the Web. And what wasn’t there, I filled in with my imagination. So was I right about the fraternity?”

Todd nodded. “Sigma Nu. And I was president of the SGA my senior year. Wow. I’m impressed—you
researched
me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since research is what you do for a living. Okay, so maybe you do know more about me. I don’t even know where you grew up, just that you moved here fourteen years ago for college.”

And how had he come by
that
piece of information? “What do you want to know about me?”

“Where were you born?”

Zarah looked up and smiled at the waiter as he refilled her iced tea. “Georgia. My father was stationed at Fort Benning at the time.”

“Ahh, so you’re an army brat.”

Zarah nodded and shrugged. “I guess so.”

“So you’ve lived lots of different places? I never even left the state of Tennessee until I went to college, and we took a trip over to North
Carolina. Where all have you lived?” Todd leaned forward as he talked, obviously intrigued by the topic.

How many times had she answered this question? “Georgia, Germany, Texas, Maryland, Belgium, New Mexico, and now here.”

Their conversation was interrupted when the waiter arrived with their food. Zarah had ordered her favorite salad, and Todd exclaimed over the size of the serving of pasta he’d ordered.

Before picking up her fork, Zarah momentarily closed her eyes and sent up a word of thanks to God. When she opened her eyes, she noticed Todd looking at her, his fork halfway to his mouth.

“What?” she asked.

“Were you just praying?”

“I was.” She raised her eyebrows, challenging him about whatever he was going to say next.

Todd took his bite, wiped his mouth, then said, “Oh. I didn’t know—hadn’t pegged you for a church-goer. But I respect that. I go to church with my parents whenever I get home.”

“How often do you do that?”

“Once or twice a month. I feel like it’s important to remain connected with the community I represent. So I go to the church I grew up in and see all the people who put me where I am today…. I guess it’s my way of remembering where I came from—to keep me humble, as you put it.”

“So you must be very close to your parents, then.” Zarah impressed herself by keeping her tone light.

“Yes, of course. I come from a very close-knit family. I’ve got two older brothers—or didn’t you see that in your research?” His eyes twinkled as he teased. “Most of both of my parents’ families still live in and around Warren. Is your family nearby?”

Zarah shook her head. “My father and stepmother live in Alexandria, Virginia.”

“Do you get up there often to see them?” Todd added a copious amount of salt to his fettuccini.

Zarah looked down at her salad to keep her distaste from turning to disgust at the display of sodium excessiveness. “Not often. But I hope to see them while I’m up there for work next week.”

“Any siblings?”

“Two half brothers. The older is twenty-three and in graduate school in Massachusetts. The younger is twenty and in college at the University of Virginia.”

“Half brothers, so your parents are divorced?” Todd looked around the restaurant, waved at one of the servers, and pointed to his glass to indicate that he needed a refill.

Zarah was surprised he hadn’t snapped his fingers to get a server’s attention. His gesture was borderline imperious, but she supposed in the position he held, he was used to getting immediate attention.

“My mother passed away when I was eight.” She hoped the tone of her voice clearly indicated she didn’t want to talk about this subject further.

“Sorry to hear that.” He tagged the waitress with an impatient glare as she refilled his tea.

Zarah waved her off from refilling her own glass. “No, thank you, though.”

“So, tell me about this piece of property in East Nashville. How did you find it to begin with? Isn’t that all residential over there?”

Finished eating, Zarah folded her linen napkin and laid it on the table. “It is. This strip of land is right on the Cumberland River, and it’s where several houses and businesses were destroyed in the flood. The insurance settlements cleared this summer, and when the owners all decided to sell out and the buildings were razed in preparation to auction the land, we had the opportunity to send out a field crew to see if there was anything of historic value on the land. The crew ran across what looked like an old stone battlement wall—just like up at Fort Negley. There are records of an entrenchment along the river, but nothing about an actual fort being built there. I’ve seen pieces of the masonry they uncovered, though, and it looks like more than
just an entrenchment—which would have been temporary and not reinforced with stone and brickwork walls. There may have been a substantially sized wall or fort there.”

“What if you can’t find anything other than just pieces of a wall? Those houses that were there had all been built in the late eighteen hundreds, and I’m sure that since there was a minimall there, lots of things have been built and torn down over the years. What if all of your evidence is already gone?”

Zarah raised her eyebrows and sighed. “It’s worth finding out, isn’t it?”

By the look on Todd’s face, she could tell he wasn’t convinced, but she decided to let it slide for now. She wasn’t a lobbyist, and she didn’t want him making decisions on her requests based on their having a personal relationship. That’s why going out with him had been such a bad idea.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Todd said. “I can see it in your face. Give me a little credit. I can make prudent decisions without letting personal relationships color my judgment. But what I want to know is this: If I ever decide not to support a project of yours, because it’s what the committee has decided or because I feel like it’s in the best interest of the community, will you hold it against me personally? Or will you be able to separate our personal and professional relationships?”

That was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? Zarah didn’t know if she’d be able to separate herself emotionally from her work—and she wasn’t certain she wanted to have a personal relationship with Todd Warren. “I’m not sure.”

“I’ll tell you what. Let’s just take this one step at a time, okay? Today we’re just two colleagues having lunch. Maybe, pretty soon, we can be two friends having dinner and going to a movie…maybe this Friday night?”

Zarah shook her head. “I’m not sure—I don’t think so. Look, I have enjoyed lunch, but I’m not certain that it’s a good idea, ethically, if we see each other outside of the committee chamber again.” She
reached for her wallet when the waiter brought the check.

“Put that away,” Todd chided. “This is my treat.”

“Thank you, but that wouldn’t be appropriate.” She placed her cash in the check folder and glanced at her watch. They hadn’t been here quite an hour yet.

Todd’s face bore an expression of injured confusion when she looked up again.

“Please understand, I appreciate your interest in the commission and our work and that you’re willing to take time to find out more about what we’re doing. But I couldn’t bear the thought that our developing a personal relationship might do something to harm either the commission or your career. The last thing either of us needs is some opponent raising questions about whether or not one of us made decisions based on us having a personal relationship and not on what’s in the best interest of the commission or the state.”

Todd stood when she did and held out his right hand. “I do understand, and I can do nothing other than respect you for your integrity.”

Zarah placed her hand in his, and he clasped it tightly. “Thank you for lunch, Senator Warren.”

“I guess I’ll see you in about three months, then.”

Zarah nodded and started backing away. “Yes…three months. Thanks, again. ‘Bye.”

Outside, she handed her valet ticket to the attendant and pulled money out of her wallet for a tip while she waited for her car to be brought around. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. It was a good thing Todd was putting his portion of the bill on a credit card and that the waiter hadn’t even come to pick it up before Zarah left the table. She knew she could be in her car and gone by the time Todd got finished paying.

What
had
she been thinking? Developing a personal relationship with someone on the committee was a bad idea, yet she’d let Todd badger her into this lunch—even after he’d canceled the tour of the
facility. But if she hadn’t agreed to the meal and he’d been offended, would that have set him firmly against her and every proposal she ever brought before the committee? She knew she had several people on Capitol Hill—the state archivist and state historian, for starters—who would always be on her side. The senators, however, could never be depended on to decide the same way twice. It all came down to money.