His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia (4 page)

By the time he was done and dressed in camo shorts, he’d already decided not to put his latest bionic leg back on. The strange nausea he’d been experiencing for six years kicked up at just the thought of touching the thing, and he wasn’t sure it was up to the job anyway. With a slick carbon design and about a million shock absorbers and micro-processors inside, it had been custom-made to give him a little bit more flexibility and maneuver capabilities than his last leg, but like most pegs, it still couldn’t handle more than three hundred pounds of weight.

And he planned to move some serious weight when he went downstairs to the same home gym he’d used back when he’d been playing high school football. Pump weight and try to forget his weird fixation on Stork fucking Harper.

A girl—now a woman—who would most likely want nothing to do with him after the way he’d treated her in high school. Even if he had bought her a car.

And fuck, now he was hard again. Just thinking about her in any capacity seemed to cause that reaction. Jesus effin Christ, what was the matter with him?!

Maybe he should give that shrink they’d assigned him at Walter Reed a call. Get the name of somebody he could see down here. Although, he already knew how his father would feel about that.

“Remember, Son, everything you do and everything you’ve done will be on your record when you run for Congress,”
he’d told him earlier in the summer when he’d been studying for the bar.

That was his father’s way of saying his bar scores had better be good. No JFK Jr.’s in this family. Not that his father would ever want to compare himself to that lot of Democrats.

But working out—that wasn’t something a reporter could hold against him. So Sawyer headed for the stairs on his crutches, thinking a good long strength training session might help his dick go down again.

But then somebody rang the doorbell right as he got to the bottom of the stairs. Hell…he swore he’d slam the door in his visitor’s face if it turned out to be a salesman or anyone like that. Upcoming political campaign be damned.

His head was throbbing like a mother from too much whiskey on top of too little water, and he didn’t think he had it in him to pretend he was still as charming as he used to be before he lost his leg. Like that hadn’t changed everything, even though, according to the early campaign ad script his dad sent over, it “hadn’t changed anything at all.” Cue the patriotic music…

He opened the door, fully prepared to prove that ad to be a total crock of lies

Only to stop short when he saw who was standing on the other side of all that stained glass.

“Stork,” he said. “What’re you doing here?”

Her face tightened with irritation. “My name is Willa. It’s never been Stork.”

Hmm,
he thought with a smirk. So it looked like he wasn’t the only one who had changed. Back in high school, she’d gone all quiet and furtive whenever he called her by the name he’d pinned on her. Eyes skittering around, like she was searching for some place to hide.

But now, she wasn’t shrinking away into the nearest shadow and she seemed to have lost that stutter of hers.

“Okay,” he agreed, feeling a little less hungover, and a lot more charming than he did a few minutes ago. “
Willa
, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

Her lips tightened, like she’d been expecting a fight and was annoyed she hadn’t gotten one.

“I’m here to thank you for the car,” she answered, almost grudgingly. “You didn’t have to do that, but you did, so here.”

She held out an envelope to him.

He looked at it, then back up at her. “What’s that?”

“A check for a thousand dollars. What I was planning to put down on that car. I’ll send you a monthly payment for the rest until I’m done paying you back every dime. You’ve got my word on that.”

Her eyes shone with pride as she said this, like she was giving him a sacred vow. But Sawyer only stared back at her. Hard. Relaying with his eyes what would be too crazy to say out loud.

It ain’t your money I want, Willa.

And maybe she got his unspoken message, because she said, “Please just take the money,” sounding terrified. Like she was maybe as afraid as he was of all the emotions sizzling in the air between them.

He stood there on his crutches. His cock pulsing. So hard and loud, it felt like a heartbeat. So hard and loud, he wondered if she could hear how much he wanted her, if she could feel his hunger across the small space that separated them.

For moments on end their gazes stayed lock. His lust hanging over them like a cloud.

But then her eyes went down. Not to his erection, which he was half scared she could see, even though he was wearing his loose camo shorts. But to the empty space below his left leg.

“You’re leg doing all right after that motorcycle ride yesterday?”

His stomach shriveled as he watched her study his leg, and that pretty much solved his erection problem. He felt like a fool. Coming down here all horny for her. Forgetting for even a second that he wasn’t the god he used to be around here, calling girls over with one suggestive glance.

And when she looked back up at him to get an answer to her question—fuck, he hated the look in her eyes. Concern on top of pity. Poor little amputee.

But he answered her anyway. “It hurt like a bitch yesterday after I took off the fake, but it’s doing all right this morning.”

“At least until the painkillers and alcohol wear off,” she said with a disapproving look.

So he guessed she could smell the whisky on him.

“Didn’t take any painkillers.”

“So you’re just self-medicating with alcohol? That’s considerate of you. One less thing they’ll have to deal with when you land in rehab.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’ve become a whole lot more judgmental since we last met, Stork—I mean,
Willa
.”

“No, I haven’t. You just didn’t know me very well when we were in high school,” she answered. “Back then I was nice enough to quietly judge you.”

Another disapproving look, and he had to wonder… “You some kind of nurse now or something?” His eyes flicked down to the name badge clipped to the pocket of her t-shirt. It had her picture on it right underneath the words “Richmond Health Center.” Plus, nurses were the only other women he’d encountered who went around dispensing as many disapproving looks as this one.

“No. I’m not nearly cut out for that kind of heroic work,” she answered. “But I finally finished a master’s in Physical Therapy, and I’ve been working as a Recreational Therapist over in Richmond for about five years now.”

Finally
. He was thirty-two now, so what did that make her? Thirty? He wondered what had taken her so long. “You must have taken a break after college.”

She shrugged. “Guess you could say that.”

He could almost feel the rest of the story radiating off her. Locked down under her surface. A story she wasn’t willing to tell. At least not to him.

That was when curiosity began to burn inside of him right along with the need. He didn’t just want her, he realized then. He wanted to know her.

“I’ll be heading to Richmond myself in a couple of hours. I’m going to be working with my brother, Josh, doing some pro bono work for vets at his law firm. At least for a little while until I start campaigning. I’m running for my dad’s old seat next year.”

If he expected her to be impressed by any of this information, he was sorely disappointed. She just tilted her head to the side and asked him carefully, “And are you happy about that?”

“Sure, I guess. I’m fresh off taking the bar and using my degree isn’t the worst way to kill time before I start campaigning. I guess.”

“You guess,” she repeated, like she didn’t quite believe him.

But whatever she was thinking, she didn’t give him any more words about it. And an awkward silence settled over them.

“Well, I should be going,” she said, raising up the check again. “I’ll just leave this here with you.”

“You know much about gimp legs like mine?” he asked her. Surprising himself by bringing the subject back around to his leg. But if it meant keeping her here…

She blinked. “If you’re referring to amputations, then yes, I know a few things.”

Again, that unspoken feeling came over him. Like everything out of her mouth was only half a story.

“Well, I got this new prosthetic limb a few weeks ago, and the docs suggested I do some more PT with it. What do you think about that?”

She shifted. Obviously reluctant to fully engage. Damn, she was adorable, he thought. With all that arm folding and brow furrowing. He settled on his crutches and watched the fight. Somehow knowing how it would end.

Some women—hell, some medical professionals even—would have been able to walk away from that question. But not her, he sensed.

And he was right. Her answer eventually came bursting out of her, pent up air unleashed. “Why did you get a new prosthesis? Was there something wrong with the old one?”

“Yeah, same thing that’s been wrong with the last six bionics they tried out on me. It didn’t agree with the rest of my leg.”

She glanced down at the empty space where the bottom of his leg used to be, then back up at him. “Didn’t agree, how? Like you were in pain?”

“Yeah, that, and I can’t really describe it. But whenever I try to wear one of those pegs too long, my leg starts feeling strange. Like I’m nauseous—but not in my stomach, in my leg.”

It sounded crazy. He knew it sounded crazy, which was why he’d just gone in for replacements and hadn’t told the docs about the rest of it. But for some reason he told her about it. It was like he had some kind of connection with her already. Like he already knew she’d understand.

Still, he held his breath, waiting for her answer. Afraid her reluctance to engage with him would turn into skeptical confusion. The kind he usually got from the docs who told him the prosthetics they were giving him were top of the line and proven to work with plenty of below-the-knee amputee cases like his.

But instead of throwing him a “you’re crazy” look, she asked, “Do you mind if I take a look? I won’t touch you.”

“It’s okay if you have to,” he answered. Voice tight, because though he usually hated when people—especially women—touched his gimp leg, the prospect of this woman touching him made his dick pound that much harder.

It felt like he had a throbbing beast inside his pants as he watched her bend down in front of him and full-on study his leg and the empty space below it. Fuck, what would it feel like to have her down there for non-medical reasons? he wondered. To have her full lips wrapped around his cock? How long would he last in her mouth…?

A few times since his accident, he’d had trouble reaching completion with other women. Giving them multiple orgasms was easy, but he couldn’t get there himself. But the way his cock was beating now, he had a feeling that wouldn’t be a problem with Willa. Just the opposite, in fact. He’d be afraid of coming too quickly. Of blowing his load inside her mouth so fast, it’d be embarrassing.

“You should apologize for the motorcycle.”

He blinked, coming out of his fantasy and back to the real world where the woman in front of him was more interested in his gimp leg than sucking him off.

“What?” he asked her, not understanding.

“It sounds strange, I know. But talking to your leg sometimes helps.” She stood back up. “Next time you put on the prosthesis, you should say something to it, like ‘I’m putting on the prosthesis now. Sorry for not warning you about the motorcycle. But I want you to know I’m going to put on the prosthesis for a while. Then you know…explain what you’re fixing to do, and how long you’re fixing to do it for. And let your leg know when you’ll be taking the prosthesis off, too. If you do that, it will help with that ‘not right’ feeling, and it won’t hurt as bad the next time you ride.”

“Wow,” he said after a few beats of silence. “That advice is rather unorthodox, Willa.”

She was too dark to blush. But his words seemed to embarrass her. Her eyes skittered away like she was Stork again, and she mumbled, “I’ve g-got to get going. I-if you d-don’t want to take this check, I’ll just l-leave it in your mailbox.”

Shit, now she was going to run away.

“Thanks for the advice,” he rushed out.

“Yeah, sure,” she answered, already turning to head toward the original Doremus mailbox that had been attached to a lamppost at the end of their walkway for over a hundred years.

“So are you up for the job?” he asked before she could get her back to him.

She stopped. “What job?”

“Like I said, I need six sessions of PT. And you seem…capable.”

Then before she could start shaking her head, he reminded her, “You said you wanted to pay me back for the car. Do this and we’re even.”

Now she turned all the way back around. “Six sessions of PT isn’t worth a car,” she informed him.

He shrugged his shoulders over his crutches. “So you say. But I got this campaign coming up, and I don’t need voters knowing I’m having problems with my gimp leg. Voters like their vets well adjusted, you see. All fixed up, with no rusty hinges, know what I mean? So I’ve got to be discreet about my therapy. And if I was paying a PT out of pocket for the sessions…”

“It still wouldn’t cost as much as a car,” she finished, still shaking her head.

“But it would be close, right? Plus, you won’t have to deal with any insurance paperwork. Win-win, right?”

A small smile appeared on her lips and Sawyer felt like he’d finally completed some kind of important mission. Making Willa Harper smile—for some reason, that made his heart hum with triumph.

“I don’t love paperwork,” she admitted. “But still the rest of that money…”

“Could be considered a bonus for your discretion.”

“I’d be discreet anyway. It isn’t right to go around telling your patients’ business.”

He wondered if she knew how cute she looked when she got all self-righteous. “So that means you’re taking the job?”

Another inner-battle broke out across her face. And this time, Sawyer helped his side along by pointing out, “If you don’t do it, I’m just going to outsource the job to my old friend, Jack Daniels.”