Love Remains (8 page)

Bobby knelt to tie his trainers tighter after his warm-up stretches. He was as quiet as possible descending the stairs. With Greedad dozing in his recliner in the living room and Mamm listening to an audio book while she knitted in the den, Bobby didn’t want to disturb the somnolent atmosphere of the house by crashing down the stairs the way he usually did.

Maximus jostled Bobby at the door, obviously assuming Bobby was going to take him for a walk. Bobby considered taking the long-legged monstrosity with him but then remembered Greedad’s complaints that when he took Maximus out, he spent half the time being dragged and the other half trying to drag the 130-pound dog. Not conducive
for the kind of hard run Bobby needed today.

By the time he managed to shove Maximus far enough back from the door to get out, he’d already had a pretty decent workout, gotten his pulse rate up, and broken a sweat.

With no particular destination in mind, only a desire to clear his head, Bobby headed northwest through the neighborhood of gridlike streets. He noted several five- or six-unit condominium developments along with several town house-style duplexes which had obviously been built to replace smaller, older homes like those that surrounded them. He made a mental note of several for-sale signs, but even though his sense of curiosity led him to want to tour the condos and duplexes in this area, he was pretty sure he wanted to try to get into one of the newer buildings in midtown or closer to downtown. Not only would they have better amenities, but they would be more like what he’d grown accustomed to in Los Angeles. Especially if his parents’ three-thousand-square-foot penthouse condo was any indication of the kind of quality he could expect—not that he could dream of affording something like that.

Eventually the steady rhythm of his feet pounding the pavement worked its magic. Rather than a confusing jumble of images, memories, questions, and thoughts, his consciousness seemed to stretch out in front of him like the road ahead. Tuesday on his way to work, he would put in a call to Patrick’s real estate agent. Then, he would focus on gleaning what he needed to know to make his transition into his new job go as smoothly as possible. As for church, and the people he had encountered there, he didn’t need to think about that for six more days. He shuddered, interrupting his study rhythm, at the memory of the young women at lunch today. He’d felt like the fatted calf thrown to a pack of ravenous wolves. One would have thought he was the only unmarried man at the table of twenty. Actually, one would have thought to he was the only single man in the whole of Nashville—or even Tennessee.

He had hoped, upon discovering his home church had such a large
singles’ group, that finding a wife—the next step on his life’s journey—would be easy. He hadn’t planned on Zarah’s presence making that completely impossible. Seeing her again after so long—seeing that she was more beautiful now than she had been at seventeen—these generic, bleached-blond Stepford girls would never be able to compete with her.

After about an hour, with thunderheads approaching from the west, Bobby headed back toward his grandparents’ house. The first few splashes of rain helped his cool-down efforts considerably as he made his way up the driveway at a slow jog.

He grabbed a quick shower and then pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and a blue polo shirt, but was only able to find one of his pair of favorite leather flip-flops. He had a sneaking suspicion that if he ever did find the second one, it would have some pretty big teeth marks on it. He tossed the single thong into the bin with the rest of the shoes he hadn’t needed yet and pulled out a different pair. Yes, not only would he call the real estate agent first thing Tuesday morning, he would let her know to look for properties with owners who wanted to close quickly. If worse came to worst, he might even be willing to rent for a while. He loved his grandparents; but, after just a few days, he was ready to be back in his own—dog-free—place. His cell phone beeped, indicating he’d missed a call while he was out and someone had left him a voice-mail message.

“Robert Patterson, this is Captain Carroll from the TCIU. I wonder if you might be available to come into the office for a few hours this afternoon. We have a new fraud investigation case we want you to take the lead on, and we’d like to bring you up to speed so you can hit the ground running on Tuesday. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience.” Bobby scrambled to find pen and paper and ran the message back twice to write down and double-check the phone number Captain Carroll left.

Excellent. Even though he’d been hired as a special agent in charge, he’d worried that he might get stuck with either administrative work
or acting as a support person on someone else’s investigation for a while—exactly what had happened to him the last few months he was in California. Whatever this new case was, he would put all his efforts into closing it quickly and showing Carroll the kind of asset he would be to the unit. With no family of his own and, as of yet, no outside commitments, he could devote almost all his time and energy to the investigation.

These bad guys had no idea what they were in for.

Chapter 6

S
o you had absolutely no forewarning that he was going to be there?”

“None whatsoever. I walked through the door, and—bang!—there he was.”

“Excuse me, but I’m the one who actually dated the guy fourteen years ago.” Zarah couldn’t help but be amused by the interchange between Caylor and Flannery. When the gorgeous redhead had shown up just moments after Zarah arrived at the coffee shop, Zarah knew she’d been betrayed. Of course, she had almost suggested that Flannery call and invite Caylor to join them. After all, the three of them were best friends. And Sunday afternoons were pretty much the only time they could get Caylor out without Caylor experiencing a guilt complex over leaving her grandmother home alone with no means of transportation, since Sassy couldn’t drive anymore.

“But I knew
you
would’ve been shocked to see him, Zare.” Caylor flashed her megawatt grin at Zarah. “I was more curious about Flan’s reaction to seeing him.” Caylor’s turquoise eyes twinkled.

“Seriously though,” Flannery interjected, “why do you think he’s come back to Nashville after all this time?”

“You’re asking me?” Zarah held her hands out in front of her. “If
I could read that man’s mind, my life would have turned out much differently.” If she’d known from the beginning that he’d never intended to do anything other than toy with her, she never would have agreed to sneak around and disobey her father’s direct order that his daughters were not, under any circumstances, allowed to date enlisted men.

Caylor and Flannery continued to gaze at her as if somehow, miraculously, she would come up with an answer for them. “Flan, you’ve known him a lot longer than I have. Why do you think he came back?”

Flannery shrugged her delicate shoulders. “Why does anybody do anything?”

Caylor threw a wadded-up napkin at her. “What kind of answer is that?” She pushed her coffee mug back and leaned forward on the edge of the table. “Why does anybody move back to their hometown? I’ve never met this guy, but I can’t imagine his intentions in moving back to Nashville are evil or malicious. And he grew up here. From what Flannery said, it sounds like all of his family is here. I think since we’re close to his age, we can all understand if he came back because of a desire to be close to them. He probably spent his twenties being wild and free, but now he realizes it’s time to grow up and start acting like an adult.”

“The problem with that scenario,” Zarah said with a sigh, “is that in being closer to
his
family, he’ll be closer to
my
family—because his grandmother and my grandmother are best friends. And you know how much they and their closest friends—including your grandmother, Caylor—like to throw parties where all of our families are invited.”

Flannery pulled her hair out of its haphazard ponytail, finger-combed it back, and secured it so that half of it stayed tucked up in the band. “There’s only one solution then.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Zarah crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair.

“You’re just going to have to find some absolutely fabulous guy to start dating, so you can show old what’s-his-name that you’re
completely over him and that you’re capable of landing someone a hundred times better than he is.”

Caylor made a face as if considering the merits of the plan.

Zarah shook her head, staring at her two friends. “And where, exactly, am I supposed to find this paragon of manhood?”

“You just leave that up to me, sweetie.” Flannery patted her hand.

Zarah hoped her expression showed her friend just how insane she thought Flannery was. She could count the number of dates she’d had since moving to Nashville on two hands, with a couple of fingers left over. And most of those had been in college. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been attracted to anyone since Bobby—she had, but he had turned out to be more interested in that year’s Miss Tennessee. And, as her father had always said, no man in his right mind would choose a fat girl over a slender one. If it hadn’t been for her father’s bootcamp-like diet and a training regime he had put her on at age fifteen, not even Bobby would have been able to pretend to be attracted to her.

“I guess that means I’m going to have to join the gym again.” She groaned and rested her chin on her fist.

“Why? I told you I would see to finding you someone. Trying to meet someone at the gym is too chancy.”

Zarah almost laughed at Flannery’s expression of wide-eyed innocence. “I don’t mean to meet someone at the gym. I mean I need to go to the gym to work out and try to lose about fifty pounds.”

Across the small table, Caylor made a raspberry sound. “Puh-leez. If you lose fifty pounds there’ll be almost nothing left of you. Besides, you know good and well I’m at least twenty pounds heavier than you. So what’s that say about me?”

Zarah rolled her eyes. “I seriously doubt you weigh more than I do, but you’re also almost four inches taller than me. When I look at you all I see is someone who has curves in all the right places. When I look in the mirror, all I see is fat.”

“Yet you know I wear the same size you do. So if you see yourself as fat, how can you not see me as fat?”

“Because you’re tall. You carry it better than I do.”

Caylor’s expression sobered, and she reached across the table to squeeze Zarah’s hand. “No, that’s not it. It’s because I didn’t have a father who called me fat when I wasn’t. But if you’re serious about joining the gym, I’ll join with you. Even though I think I’m pretty fabulous just the way I am, taking off a couple of pounds would give me a great excuse to splurge on a bunch of new clothes.”

“And don’t forget the shoes,” Flannery added, grinning. “You realize that if I’m going to start setting up Zarah on some fabulous dates, that means it’s time for a makeover. Because you can’t wear a business suit out on a hot date. And it has come to my attention, Miss
Thang
, that your wardrobe is entirely too serious.”

Caylor nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. “Flan’s right. If you’re going to make this Bobby guy jealous, suits and separates aren’t going to cut it.”

Zarah shook her head, laughing. “You guys know how I feel about too-short and too-low cut. Not happening.”

“Nobody said anything about making you into a hoochie mama.” Flannery’s emphatic statement drew looks and guffaws from the college students at the nearest table. “All I’m saying is that we have to break you out of the professor look.”

“Hey, now!” Caylor playfully smacked Flannery’s shoulder. “I resemble that remark.”

“Now, now Professor Evans. You know I wasn’t including you in that sweeping generalization, for all that you are a tenured professor. Actually, you have a few things in your wardrobe that I’d love to see if we can find—or borrow—for Zarah. And we’ve got to do something about that hair.”

Zarah self-consciously touched the frizzy curls resting on her shoulder. “What do you mean
do something about
it?”

Flannery narrowed her eyes and gazed at her as a sculptor might study a slab of marble. “I think it’s time for something drastic and dramatic. I’m seeing short hair.”

Caylor grimaced. “I don’t know, Flan. You’re the one who forwarded that article to us last year about the survey that proved men are attracted to women with long hair and intimidated by women with short hair.” She cocked her head and touched the flipped-out ends of her artfully messy, short hair.

“Exactly my point.” Flan smacked her hands down on the table. “Short hair is a sign of confidence, and we want Zarah to appear as confident as possible.”

Nervousness rose in Zarah’s chest. “There’s a huge difference between
appearing
confident and
being
confident.”

“And how would you know?” Flannery raised her brows. “You neither
appear
nor
are
confident. You never have been in the entire time I’ve known you.”

Though Flannery’s words were harsh, Zarah could not take offense at them—they were too true. At least, in her personal life. The only time Zarah had ever experienced confidence—since Bobby anyway—was with history, with her studies in college and her work in research since. If cutting all her hair off could give her that sensation about herself—if it could make her as confident and vivacious as Caylor—she’d consider it. However, she had a feeling it would take more than just a haircut. And it was going to take more than just a haircut to deal with the Bobby situation.