Love Remains (35 page)

“Bobby.”

Chapter 25

W
hen Bobby had seen the name of this restaurant on the list of those that would accept the gift card he got at the airport, he had no idea how expensive or fancy it would be. But once he entered the dining room and looked at the menu, he’d decided to stay.

Good thing, too.

Zarah’s face pinched with the effort to keep from crying when she looked up at him. He laid the rose on the table and took hold of her hand as he sat in the chair across the corner from her.

“How did you know I was here?” Anguish thickened her voice.

“I didn’t. I’m actually supposed to be on a plane flying back to Nashville right now, but it was overbooked.” With his free hand, he reached into his interior jacket pocket and fished out his handkerchief for her, though she didn’t really need it as she seemed to be keeping her emotions under control for the moment. “I agreed to fly out tomorrow so my co-worker could fly back tonight and be at his kid’s soccer game tomorrow.”

A fresh wave of emotion stole some of Zarah’s control. Her hand convulsed in his, and she held the handkerchief up to cover her nose and mouth, eyes squeezing shut.

“I came in and got a table across the room—and then I saw you
sitting here by yourself. I thought you were waiting for someone; and when you made that phone call, I realized your…party wasn’t coming. So I decided to invite myself to join you.”
Please, God, don’t let it have been a date. Not on top of her interviewing for a job up here
.

“It was my…my…my f–f–father.”

He had to lean closer to hear what she said. Movement caught his eye—a waiter approached the table. Bobby held up his hand and shook his head. The waiter diverted to another table.

“Your father?”

She nodded, and her face pinched up again. But still, no tears escaped.

“Do you see this rose?” Bobby picked up the long-stemmed, dethorned flower. “I stole it from the vase of roses on the piano. But then I left the pianist a big tip.”

Zarah released a sound that was half sob, half laugh. “You brought me a rose on our first date. I think you stole that one, too.”

“Sort of. I picked it from a rose bush I saw on my way to pick you up at your sister’s dorm.” He smelled the rose then laid it on the table again. He turned Zarah’s hand faceup in his and traced the lines of her palm with his free hand. “Can you tell me what happened tonight?”

She opened her mouth, frowned, then shook her head. “Not here.” Her voice crackled.

“Did you order dinner?” He reached for his billfold.

“No.”

He placed a couple of bills on the table, stood, and reached for Zarah’s wrap, marveling at how someone could be so statuesque and strong and yet so fragile at the same time. He settled the thick shawl around her shoulders, waited for her to retrieve her purse and the rose, and took her hand to lead her out of the restaurant.

“Sir, sir—is everything all right?” A woman who must have been the floor manager chased them into the hostess lobby.

Bobby settled his arm around Zarah’s waist. “She’s not feeling well. Everything was fine, thank you.”

The contrast between the warmth of the building and the cool autumn night outside made Bobby long for the continual warmth of Southern California. Really, though, he couldn’t bring himself to miss anything else about it.

Zarah shivered beside him. Ignoring his own discomfort, Bobby draped his topcoat around her shoulders and drew her into his side.

To his dismay, she burst into tears. Not just a few jewel-like droplets on her cheeks, but sobs that wracked her body, interspersed with raw, rasping breaths.

Disregarding the flow of people on the sidewalk, many of whom slowed or paused to stare at Zarah, Bobby guided her up the block to a side street, where he pulled her out of the main flow of traffic. Sheltered from prying eyes by a half-story staircase on the side of a furniture store, Bobby turned and pulled Zarah fully into his arms and let her cry herself out.

“Why can’t he love me?”

Bobby thanked God he held Zarah in his arms so she couldn’t see his expression. “Your father?”

She nodded against the base of his throat.

Anger—no, fury gushed molten hot through Bobby’s veins. But just as she’d controlled her emotions in the restaurant, he tamed his now. “Tell me what happened.”

“I…a few weeks ago, when I made my travel reservations, I called and left a message for my father, letting him know when I’d be in town and that I would like to get together with him and my stepmother for dinner one night.” She took a deep breath and dabbed at her cheeks with the handkerchief, but she didn’t lift her head from where her forehead rested against the junction of his shoulder and neck.

“I didn’t hear anything until last Thursday.” She made a rueful sound. “I’d been at Pops and Kiki’s house, and Kiki and I talked about you and me, and about how I needed to let my walls down but still
keep my guard up. I promised her I would. And on my way home, my father called. Told me to meet them at that restaurant at eight o’clock tonight.” Her voice hitched.

He rubbed his hand in a circle on her back and waited for her to continue in her own time.

When she did, her voice came out as a deep, but frail, rasp. “When they hadn’t shown up by eight thirty, I called. Their younger son, Chad, came home from UVA for a long weekend, so they decided to drive up to see the older son, Brice, in Boston.”

She coughed, a deep, wrenching sound. He redistributed his weight to keep both of them balanced. He needed a gym, a boxing ring, something. Rage against Zarah’s father grew so palpable inside him, his skin tingled.

But when she told him what happened next, what her father had said in response to her telling him about the job interview, he had to release her for fear of squeezing her too tightly and injuring her.

At first, she looked hurt by Bobby’s abandonment of her. But when he started pacing between her and the alleyway behind the building, she seemed to understand his need to burn off some of the manic energy brought on by his strong reaction to her story.

“He said…he said I was interrupting their—their family time.”

If Bobby turned and saw fresh tears streaming down her cheeks, he wasn’t certain he would be able to control himself any longer. Good thing General Mitchell was in Massachusetts.

“But I’m their family, too, aren’t I?”

He turned, walked back to her, and took her by the shoulders. “No. No, you’re not their family.”

The little hope in Zarah’s face vanished.

“You’re not their family because they don’t deserve you. They’ve made their position perfectly clear. They are not worthy of your consideration, of your thoughts, of another single tear.” He took his handkerchief out of her hand and dried her cheeks with it. “You have a family. You have parents—Trina and Victor. You have sisters—Flannery
and Caylor. You have”—he floundered a moment—”Dennis.”

Zarah laughed, a glorious, if tentative, sound. “Who’s like an uncle.”

“And you have everyone in the singles’ group, who looks up to you and depends on you and loves you.”
And you have me
, he wanted to add.
I love you
.

He held Zarah’s wonder-filled gaze a long moment. “General Mitchell may be your flesh and blood, but that doesn’t make him your family.”

Zarah stared at Bobby. At his words, something inside of her clicked, like an ancient, rusted padlock unlocking for the first time in living memory. Everything she’d ever talked about with her therapist suddenly made sense.

“What did he say to you?”

Confusion drew lines across Bobby’s high forehead. “Who?”

“My father—General Mitchell. What did he say to you that day?”

Bobby’s gaze flickered back and forth between hers. “That’s not a conversation for an empty stomach.”

Zarah pulled up her watch. “It’s almost ten o’clock. There’s a café in my hotel that’s open twenty-four hours.”

Bobby pulled the pendant out of her hand. “It’s a watch. I’ve been wondering why you were always playing with this necklace.”

“It was my great-great-great-grandmother’s watch.” Her hand tingled when he placed it back in her palm.

“The one in the picture at the museum?” He put his arm around her waist and started walking back toward King Street.

“Madeleine Breitinger.”

“You don’t look anything like her, you know.” He looked down and winked at her.

“I take after Kiki’s Greek ancestors, apparently.”

“You never did finish telling me Madeleine and Zander’s story. I’m
still waiting for my happy ending.”

A shiver passed through Zarah’s body that had nothing to do with the cold breeze that hit her in the face as soon as they turned onto King Street. Rather than mention the happy ending she still waited for, Zarah launched back into Madeleine and Zander’s story, finishing it as they reached the hotel’s front steps.

“Though she never returned to full health, with Zander always at her side, the last five years of Madeleine’s life were the happiest she’d ever known.”

“See, there you go. A happy ending.”

“A happy ending.”

Bobby opened the front door for her. “So what happened to Karl?”

Zarah chuckled and stepped into the hotel lobby. “He went to college, fell in love, got married, and had a happy ending.”

“You and your happy endings.”

“Everybody’s entitled to one.” She led him to the hotel’s café.

Rather than order a heavy meal so late at night, Zarah ordered a slice of quiche with a fruit salad on the side—to go along with her super-giant-sized caramel mocha latte. Bobby’s roasted lamb gyro came with a huge plate of french fries.

“Looks like the kitchen is trying to clear out leftovers from the dinner rush.” Bobby scraped a wad of mayonnaise out of a ramekin, added an equal amount of ketchup to it, and swirled it into a pink concoction with one of the fries.

Zarah watched in disgusted fascination. “That’s new.”

“What—oh, the mayonnaise. I picked that up from a buddy in Iraq.”

Halfway through her piece of quiche and starting to feel sated, Zarah redirected the conversation. “Speaking of when you were in the army…what did my father say to you?”

“The morning after your graduation, he came to me and told me that you’d admitted to him we were secretly dating, that you wanted
out but didn’t know how to tell me—because you were afraid of me. He told me I was to have no further contact with you—that you didn’t want it.” Bobby polished off the last bite of his sandwich. “What did the general tell you happened?”

“The morning of graduation day, he woke me up at five o’clock in the morning by throwing a suitcase on the end of my bed. He said he’d found out about us, that I’d been sneaking around and lying to him, and that I was no longer welcome in his house. He gave me two hundred dollars and told me I had until noon to pack up whatever I could carry and get out of the house. If I went to Phoebe, he’d stop paying for her college. I packed up as much as I could and went to the lady next door and asked if she could drive me to the bus station.”

“She just took you? No questions asked?”

“She didn’t like my father very much. She believed I was running away—and I let her believe that. I knew if I could get to Nashville, I at least already had a place at Vanderbilt. And I had my mother’s address book, so I knew my grandparents were here—at least, I hoped they were still here.”

“But what about graduation—your salutatorian speech? You worked so hard on that.” Bobby leaned back and laced his fingers over his flat abdomen.

She shrugged. “Survival was more important to me at that point in time. All I could think of was getting to Nashville.”

“So was that all the general told you?”

If only. “No. He said that you’d told him about us because you were afraid he was going to find out some other way and it would ruin your career. He said you apologized to him and told him you would do anything he asked to keep you in his good graces.”

“So he made you think I chose my career over you. And he made me think you didn’t want to see me—that you’d chosen college over me.” He sat forward and captured her hand in his. “Can’t you see now how he doesn’t deserve for you to waste another thought on him?”