His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia

by Theodora Taylor

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Theodora Taylor

  HIS EVERLASTING LOVE

  A Rather Unusual Steamy BWWM Paranormal Romance from the 50 Loving States Series [Virginia]

  IR Weekly Bestselling Author

  Theodora Taylor

  http://theodorataylor.com/

  Ⓒ 2015 Theodora Taylor

  ISBN: 978-1-942167-03-7

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  1

  Sawyer couldn’t stop looking at her.

  Even when he tried to stop. Even when he ripped his eyes away, and put a whole lot of concentration into listening to what his friend Donny was saying.

  And he should have been listening to what Donny was saying. The things he was telling him were important. Life and death important. And Donny had stuck his neck out to make sure he got a custom Harley he could drive with his prosthesis. He should be listening to every word coming out his old football buddy’s mouth.

  But he wasn’t.

  In fact, only a few seconds after deciding to pay attention, his eyes drifted back to the black woman on the other side of the dealership, sitting in one of the sales cubicles.

  She had a piece of paper in her hands, and her face told a story about how much distress it was causing her to read the numbers written on it. On the other side of the desk, Donny’s dad—Donny Sr., a potbelly with a bad comb-over—seemed to be offering her some sympathy.

  But he was full of shit. Sawyer could tell. Donny Sr. wasn’t a politician, but Sawyer had spent enough time with his dad’s cronies to know fake sympathy when he saw it. Know it and hate it. This guy reminded him of every Republican who’d ever offered him a syrupy thank you for his service and sympathy for his leg, while trying to figure out how to use both to the Party’s advantage.

  “What’s he trying to sell her?” Sawyer asked Donny, interrupting him mid-point.

  “Who?” Donny questioned back, looking around the dealership, even though there were only two customers there: Sawyer and the woman he couldn’t stop staring at.

  “The Crazy Librarian’s daughter,” Sawyer answered.

  “Oh, Stork!” Donny said, peering over at her like he’d just realized she was there. Bullshit. Donny knew the history between her family and Sawyer’s. The whole town did.

  “Yeah, Stork,” he answered. He’d given her that nickname, he vaguely recalled. She’d been skinny in high school and taller than most girls. Like a stick you’d half expect to disappear from view if she walked behind the wrong wooden electrical post. Shy, too. With a stutter. All too easy to make fun of, really. She’d given him plenty of material to work with.

  But she wasn’t skinny now. She was wearing yoga pants and a t-shirt, which made it easy to tell how nicely she’d filled out over the years. Her skinny frame and flat chest were replaced with a full set of hips and what looked like more than a handful underneath that t-shirt. Instead of the small afro she’d had in high school, she wore her hair in long, thin braids twisted into an efficient ponytail that hung low on her nape.

  Donny squinted, seeming to conduct some kind of special car salesman body language translation of the conversation she was having with his dad.

  “From the looks of it, she’s got bad credit and Dad’s giving her the old ‘your job’s your credit, so we’re going to let you have this car with a twenty-percent interest loan’ speech.”

  Sawyer grunted. “Fuck. Twenty percent? You serious?”

  Donny shrugged. “People who don’t take care of their credit get used to having to pay a lot more than decent folks who know better. Folks like you and me.”

  Yeah, Sawyer got what he was saying. His father had made a version of that same argument a few years back when his party killed a credit relief bill that came up for a vote. But damn, twenty percent! That was a goddamn gouge job if he’d ever heard one.

  Stork seemed to feel the same way because she was shaking her head at Donny’s dad before he was even done with his pitch. Sawyer leaned in, wondering if she still stuttered.

  But then she suddenly stopped, her whole body going still. As if she’d just seen a ghost.

  Or realized she was being watched, he corrected with a mental curse when she slowly turned her head toward him.

  Her eyes widened when she spotted who was staring at her. Yeah, she probably hadn’t expected to find Sawyer Grant, the best running back Greenlee county had ever seen, staring her down in their small town’s only car dealership.

  Plus, it had been nearly thirteen years since he’d set foot in the county his mother’s ancestors had founded. Literally one foot since the Landstuhl docs had relieved him of the other one along with the bottom half of his leg six years ago. So yeah, she had lots of reasons to look surprised when she caught him staring at her.

  I’m probably creeping her out. I should look away.

  But he didn’t.

  However, he didn’t have to. Her eyes only skittered over him for second before quickly dropping back down to the paper in her hands. But she seemed flustered when she returned to her negotiations with Donny Sr.

  “She’s arguing with him,” Donny said beside Sawyer. “Might get him down to fifteen.”

  That wasn’t great either. He knew the dealership was a business, but he still didn’t like the idea of them charging Stork Harper that much interest on a car—one she probably truly needed since she hadn’t thrown that paper in Donny Sr.’s face and walked away as soon as that twenty percent fell out of his mouth.

  None of your business, he reminded himself. He forced his eyes back to Donny’s now jowly mug and asked. “Can I ride the bike out of here or do you need me to test it first? Prove I can handle it with my gimp leg.”

  “No, no, man, I believe you can handle it,” Donny answered with a chuckle. “And sure, you can ride it out. We got it all gassed and cleaned up for you…”

  Sawyer’s eyes drifted back to Stork and Donny’s dad. The guy was leaning back in his seat now. The sympathetic look a touch harder as he shook his head. Probably giving her some line about how fifteen percent was the best he could do and no lower than that.

  She appeared to be taking in his slightly lower offer, bu
t then…

  Her eyes drifted to Sawyer again. Brown eyes locking with his brownish-green ones, and for a moment it felt like there was some kind of magnetic thread between them, humming with electricity.

  That is until she once again quickly glanced away. It looked to Sawyer like she was redoubling her efforts to pay attention to Donny Sr.’s shitty offer.

  None of your business, he reminded himself. Again.

  But then he heard a voice that sounded just like his ask Donny, “What kind of car is Stork looking to buy anyway?”

  HE’D TOLD DONNY to wait until he was clear of the dealership before they told her what he’d done. But Donny probably didn’t get a whole lot of chances to play the bearer of good news as opposed to the fake kind car dealers were always pretending to have. As Sawyer turned his new bike around in the parking lot, he could see Donny through the collection of glass windows that made up the entire front wall of the dealership. Already running over to his dad’s desk like one of those Helpful Honda Guys.

  Then they were all staring at him as he drove past on his new bike.

  But he didn’t care about Donny and his dad. Only about her. And instead of peeling out of there as originally intended, he found himself slowing down. Actually wanting to see her reaction.

  Actually wanting to watch her watch him leave.

  Her eyes stayed on him as he rode out, confused and troubled. Not nearly as happy as you’d expect a woman who’d just found out she was getting a new Chevy Volt absolutely free. Probably to be expected. He’d been nothing but an asshole to her in high school.

  So why couldn’t he tear his eyes away from her now? He even looked back over his shoulder after he drove past the window. Stealing a few more glimpses before he had to either force his eyes back to the road or risk wrecking his brand new custom bike.

  2

  Willa arrived home still in a state of shock.

  He’d bought her a car. Sawyer Grant had bought her a car. She still couldn’t wrap her head around it, unless…

  I’ll find you…

  No, no, that couldn’t be it.

  Could it?

  No, she told herself, pushing through the front door of the modest two-bedroom brick house she shared with her sister, mother, Trevor, occasionally her grandfather, and a whole bunch of books. It couldn’t be that.

  Her thoughts of Sawyer were cut short when she walked into the childhood bedroom she still shared with her sister. Thel was standing at the room’s only window with a cup of tea in her hand, staring through the dirty glass with a forlorn expression on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked her sister.

  Thel looked up, surprised. She must not have heard her come in.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know you were rehearsing,” Willa said.

  “Rehearsing” was what Thel called it when she got to concentrating on a piece so hard, she couldn’t hear or see anything else. But to the rest of the world it just looked like she was drinking tea and staring into space.

  “I wasn’t,” Thel answered, her voice distant. Her eyes flicked back to the window and she was quiet for a long while. Then she said, “Trevor’s with Marian. They went into Richmond to look at some book she found on Craigslist.”

  Then before Willa could ask, she said, “Don’t worry, I took her debit card and told Trevor to call me if she tries to buy anything.”

  Willa frowned, “I’m not sure policing our mom is a job Trevor can handle.”

  Thel nodded. “I know it ain’t. I should have gone with them. But I got a call from the SoCal Opera right as we were about to leave. So I told them to go on without me.”

  “Oh,” Willa said, her voice lighting up at the news of her sister’s new job prospect. “Did they want to go over the moving details?”

  “No, they called to tell me I was no longer invited to take part in their Young Artist Program. They gave my spot to somebody else.”

  “Oh, Thel…” Disappointment set in like a leaden weight as she tried to think of something to say.

  Most of the reason she’d gone to buy that car was because her, Thel, Marian, and Trevor were supposed to be leaving Greenlee soon. Thel had gotten the go ahead to live her life fully from her oncologist a few months ago, and she’d easily gotten into the SoCal Opera’s Young Artist Program.

  Thel had already given notice at Greenlee County Care, the hospital where she worked the night shift as one of the cleaning staff. They’d been all set to move. To begin a new life together.

  Willa had even lined up a few interviews for physical therapist jobs in L.A. “What happened?” she asked her sister now. “I thought that spot was supposed to be locked down.”

  “It was. The program director was so excited I wanted to come back to opera and that my voice was still good. But someone got to her. Told them they couldn’t let me into the program.”

  Willa shook her head, even more confused now than she’d been at the car dealership. “Who’d do that? And why?”

  Granted, she didn’t know a whole lot about opera. But she’d never in her life encountered anyone with a better voice than her sister. Who else would they have found for the program with more talent than Thel?

  Instead of answering, Thel turned her smoky dark eyes back to the window. “The lights are back on at Greenlee Place. You think Kate’s messing with us?”

  Willa moved to go stand next to her at the window, looking across the small valley and over the James River tributary that separated their place from the large brick colonial on the hill. Sure enough, the huge house was all lit up. At least partially. Two out of ten windows now glowed with yellow light.

  The story of how their family, the only black family left in all of Greenlee County, had come to own property directly across the river from the house of its founding family—the one the whole county had been named after—was long and involved.

  Real long. Their little brick house had originally started off as nicer than average slave quarters back in the 1700s. Then after the war, the slaves had been upgraded to sharecropper status.

  Eventually the last of the sharecroppers to work the property, their grandfather, died. And that was how their mother, Marian Thompson, a single mother with three children with three different last names, had come to make national news back in the late 90s.

  Having recently divorced Trevor’s father, she’d moved into the house with Willa, Thel, and their brother, Trevor, after securing a job as a nurse at Greenlee County Care—only to get an eviction order from the property’s now sole owner, Admiral Grant, just a couple days after moving in. Seeing as how her father was no longer working the land and bringing in a profit, the newly minted state representative wanted to demolish the house and the nearby woods to build a golf course to entertain his political buddies.

  Well, Marian wasn’t having any of that. She’d read herself a whole bunch of legal books and sued Admiral Grant ten ways to Sunday. You would have thought all them lawyers the congressman had working for him would have taken care of the problem, but they didn’t count on just how much crazy they’d run into.

  Her mother not only met everything they threw at her with claims that “the spirits told her to say this” and “the spirits told her to answer this way,” she’d also managed to put on enough of a show that the case became national news.

  And it was right after an election year, so eventually Admiral Grant settled with her out of court. He gave her all the property on their side of the river and back pay for all the money “the spirits” had told Marian his dead wife’s estate owed her father for a grossly unfair contract Kate Greenlee’s great-great grandfather had made with her father’s great-great-great grandfather shortly after the Civil War.

  For a while there, Marian was telling anyone who would listen that she was the only black person in Virginia history to receive reparations for what the white folks had done to her ancestors. And a few people in state government still blamed her family for Admiral Grant’s failed bid to become his party’s c
andidate for President back in the early aughts. Folks also said that was why he chose to live in a house in Bon Air after he became the state senator, instead of coming back to the house in Greenlee County where all his dead wife’s people had been bred and born, including his two sons.

  “That’s strange. Kate’s never acted up before,” her sister said now, looking at the two lights across the way.

  “It ain’t Kate. It’s the son,” Willa answered, staring stonily at the two lights.

  “Josh? I thought he lived in Richmond.”

  “No, the other one.”

  “Oh, Sawyer,” Thel said with a sneer of remembrance. “I heard he lost a leg in the Middle East or something, but that was years ago.”

  “I heard that, too,” Willa said, thinking of the faint limp she’d seen as he walked out of the dealership. His leg must have been hurting him, she thought. “You wouldn’t think a three-story house would be his first choice as a suitable residence.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” Thel responded, frowning at the lights. Obviously finding it hard to believe it was really Sawyer and not Kate who’d turned them on. “Why do you think he’d come back here?”

  “I don’t know,” Willa answered. “But he did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he bought me a car earlier.”

  “Oh,” Thel said, since that explained everything. But then the penny dropped… “Wait, what?!?!”

  3

  Willa wasn’t surprised her sister found it hard to believe the younger Grant brother bought her a car.

  Sawyer Grant was the worst thing that ever happened to Willa in high school. Her mother had seen it in a vision that Trevor’s father was running around on her with the receptionist at his job. And that had been the end of their time in Richmond in a relatively nice charter school with a seventy-percent black student ratio.

  So shortly after turning sixteen, Willa found herself walking beside her older sister down the halls of Greenlee High—yes, even the school was named after Sawyer’s mother’s family. Books held tight to her chest, hoping and praying all these white kids would just ignore the two new black students—the only black kids in their midst. The daughters of the woman the town had already dubbed “The Crazy Librarian,” and who the local newspaper had just announced had filed suit against one of their most illustrious residents.