I pushed down my desire to keep staring at him, analyzing what this discovery meant, and instead concentrated on shaking Governor Mane’s hand. Mane was a big man with shiny hair, a former linebacker for the Longhorns who’d spun his natural charm into a political career. That career had reached its peak in his stunning gubernatorial victory over a hard-line überconservative incumbent.
It made Grover Mane the closest Texas had come to a Democratic governor in decades. He supported big business, like any good Republican, but was socially liberal, which meant as soon as he’d taken office, he’d changed immigration laws, revitalized funding for women’s clinics, and committed to a number of criminal justice and health care reforms. Over in the Lise office, once we’d started to catch wind that Governor Mane was actually walking the walk, we’d decided now was our moment to pitch the transportation bill.
“Nice to see you again, Lee.” The governor swept a hand in Ben’s direction, his Texas drawl thick as always. “Meet Benny boy.” The governor winked. “I got you someone your own age to talk to.”
It was zero hour. How to play it? Say we knew each other because we went to UT together? That was true, and uncomplicated—
Ben extended his hand, face expressionless, blue eyes giving away nothing. “Nice to meet you.”
Oh my God.He was pretending he didn’t know me.
“Lee Stone,” I said automatically, pumping his hand once before dropping it like it was on fire. Great. Now I was complicit.
You owe him, I told myself. After what I’d done to him, if Ben wanted to pretend a little, surely I could go along with it.
The governor sat, so we all followed. Dakota took the seat directly across from Mane, and Wendy took the seat to her left. Which left an open seat at the end of the table, right across from Ben. If I didn’t take it, it would look weird. So I sat, and tried to soak up all the details of his face—parse some hint of what he was thinking—without being obvious.
“All right, I’ve got to keep this brief because I have lunch with the chief justice. I wanted to introduce you to Ben and get a plan going for the Green Machine.” Governor Mane turned to his right. “Ben’s excited about this bill, told me right from the start. I know that surprises the hell out of everyone at this table—a Silicon Valley transplant who’s turned on by clean energy.”
He paused to give us a chance to chuckle, which we all did, right on cue. I watched Ben. He smiled good-naturedly at the governor, like he’d grown used to assuaging powerful people. The Ben I remembered would have rolled his eyes.
His teeth were blindingly white. He was like a polished magazine version of himself.
The governor clapped a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “In fact, he’s already read the bill and marked it up.” He turned to me. “Ben here’s going to give you a run for your money.”
I tore my gaze from Ben’s face. He’d donewhat? Added what notes? I’d consulted with no less than eight environmental and transportation policy experts to write the bill language.
Governor Mane’s eyes flicked to Dakota, and his expression turned a little bashful, like a boy confronted with the valedictorian and prom queen rolled into one. She had that effect. “What I’d like to do now is agree on a plan forward.”
Wendy raised her eyebrows. “Does this mean we have your full support? You’re willing to use your capital to push the bill?”
The governor’s bashful smile melted, and he was back to game face. “Thank Ben. He argued it should be one of my signature initiatives. I wasn’t sure at first, but it was one of his conditions in taking the job.”
Itwas? My eyes found Ben’s face again, but he was looking at Dakota, his expression coolly neutral. “Clean energy on this scale is the right thing to do.”
“We’re grateful you feel that way,” Dakota said. “You’re going to make history, Governor. Make the world a better place for our children.”
“Fingers crossed,” said the governor, sitting back and crossing his arms. “So, let’s talk strategy. How do we win this thing?”
Dakota turned to me and nodded. I took a deep breath, blocked out Ben’s distracting presence and put on my boss face.
I looked around the table, making sure I had everyone’s attention. “The House is solid blue. We’ve been in conversations for a while now, and we have vote commitments from more than enough representatives to pass the bill. It’s the Senate we’re worried about. We need to start by gut-checking with the Natural Resources and Economic Development Committee, where the bill will get assigned for review. Find out where they’re at.”
“Done,” Ben cut in, andfinally, we locked eyes. There was a challenge simmering there that I remembered from Law School Ben, the guy who reveled in oral arguments, in taking down his classmates.
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t look away, just adjusted his clear frames to more perfectly center his eyes. “I got a jump start on vetting once I knew I was taking the job.”
The governor nodded approvingly. “Didn’t I tell you? Run for your money.”
My face grew hot. I’d come to this meeting ready to be nice to Ben, to make up for the past. At the very least, I’d been determined to be professional enough to sweep our history under the rug. But he was challenging me in front of my bosses. I could feel my guilt, and my desire to be conciliatory, evaporate. In their place, anger swelled.
Apparently, Ben was now in charge, because he addressed the table. “Here’s where we stand. The bill needs to clear the committee with strong endorsements, and we have three major holdouts. Janus, Wayne and—”
“McBuck,” I practically shouted, desperate to contribute. Lame, because it was the obvious guess. Senator Roy McBuck’s district was home to Mendax Oil, a huge oil and gas company that employed a lot of McBuck’s constituentsanda lot of lobbyists.
Ben smiled at me like I was a five-year-old who’d spelled her name right. “Exactly. We need to focus on winning over those three and not pissing off anyone else while we’re at it. We do that, and we win.”
