Love Ever After

Nelda Ellen Carter

Description

In this exciting tale of life, love, and basketball, a university coach and his musician wife must navigate through a series of challenges to find peace again.
David Cooper is a happy man. The former professional basketball star and eligible bachelor has won the love of his life, the lovely violin teacher, Dr. Julia Crane. Now married, the newlyweds are living in a beautiful new home as they await the birth of their first child. Meanwhile, David is hoping his team, now ripe with freshmen talent, will secure another deep run in the NCAA tournament. Unfortunately, life has a way of disrupting even the best of plans.
After the athletic department hires a flirty secretary, she makes it her mission to seduce Coach Cooper, get him fired, and gather inside information about the team for her gambler husband. As David struggles to retain his job, hold his marriage together, and love and support his wife as her pregnancy advances, he and Julia must help a star player who wants to quit the team to resolve a financial challenge. But when Julia goes into labor, just as a violent storm threatens their neighborhood, she and David soon discover that when a new life wants to enter the world, nothing will stop it.
In this exciting tale of life, love, and basketball, a university coach and his musician wife must navigate through a series of challenges to find peace again.

Sujets

• Sport
• Fiction
• Romance
• Gambling
• Sports

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 11 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663253439
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

LOVE EVER AFTER
BOOK 2
 
 
 
 
 
 
NELDA ELLEN CARTER
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
LOVE EVER AFTER
BOOK 2
 
Copyright © 2023 Nelda Ellen Carter.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
844-349-9409
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-5342-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-5347-7 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-5343-9 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023909865
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date:  06/02/2023
CONTENTS
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
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
CHAPTER 1
 
Julia Crane Cooper hurried to the parking lot, eager to get home to tell her husband the news. She climbed into her luxury sedan and headed north out of town, toward the river. Her husband, David, had bought the car for her as a wedding gift when they married four months ago. He’d said he wanted her to have a sturdy car, not one of those tin cans some people drove.
A couple of miles out of town, she made a left turn onto Riverview Road. It was a lovely drive. Tall oaks, maples, and beech trees stood by the side of the road and up the hill on the left. She remembered the dogwoods, redbuds, and wild azaleas that had been in bloom the first time David brought her to the town house last spring. Today, the first week in October, some trees were showing hints of gold and brown among the green.
On the right was steep drop-off with a sturdy guardrail. The road had been cut out of the side of the hill. A recreation complex with picnic tables, playground equipment, and a boat launch ramp filled the space below the road to the Ohio River. After she went up the first hill, the road dipped to cross a small creek. The road continued up the hill for another mile to the Riverview Town Houses on the bluffs overlooking the river.
David was the assistant basketball coach for Chapman State, a small liberal college in Hoover, Kentucky. Last year, he had been hired after the year started, so he had lived in the athletic dorm on campus. Later, he’d bought the luxurious town house just before he asked Julia to marry him.
There were six town houses on the river side of the street. All were complete, but only four were occupied. On the other side of the street, two town houses were under construction, with four more planned. A clubhouse, a swimming pool, and tennis courts were planned for the end of the street. The last house on the right belonged to Dr. Henry Jackson, a retired cardiologist. Dr. Jackson, an avid gardener, had purchased the space next to his house for his vegetable and flower gardens.
When Julia reached the first town house on the right, she punched the garage door opener and pulled into the ample space. She went into the house and past the elegant Queen Anne furniture in the living room to her magnificent kitchen. Light birch cabinets with beige granite countertops lined the back wall, and a copper hood stood above a state-of-the-art range. A pot rack with copper pots and frying pans hung over a large island in the center of the kitchen. David had told the builders he wanted a kitchen for a gourmet cook, and they had succeeded. She loved to cook, and her new kitchen made it more pleasurable.
She put on her apron and set the stately dining table in the alcove to the left of the living room with a tablecloth and her best china. She checked the slow cooker and saw that the pot roast and vegetables she had put in that morning were done. She had suspected that a celebration might be in order that night. She removed frozen homemade bread and brownies from the freezer.
Julia had taken vegetables from the fridge and begun to chop them, when she heard David’s truck pull into the garage. She heard the door to the garage open and David’s footsteps as he came into the kitchen and up behind her. He wrapped his long arms around her waist. She felt his warm breath as he kissed her neck and gently nibbled on her ear. She giggled. “Ooh, that tickles,” she said.
A warm chuckle rose from his throat. “But you love it, don’t you?” he asked as he stood behind her and ran his hands up and down her arms.
God, yes. She loved everything about him. She laid down her knife, wiped her hands on her apron, and turned in his arms to face him. Although she was five feet, nine inches tall, the top of her head was still below his chin. He pulled her close. She stood for a moment with her body molded to his, enjoying the nearness of him. She always felt safe, secure, and loved in his arms.
She looked up into his lean, handsome face, gazing at his smooth brown skin and wide mouth with straight white teeth, and lifted her chin to be kissed. The first time she had seen him, she’d thought he was the handsomest man she had ever seen. When his soft lips came down on hers, a tingle ran down her spine as he gently massaged her back. Although she had known David for a year now, his kisses still left her breathless and weak in the knees.
“I’ve waited all day for this,” he said. “How was your day?”
“Great,” she answered, smiling up at him. I’ll keep my secret a little while lo nger.
His soft chocolate-pudding-brown eyes sparkled with happiness. “I’m glad,” he whispered as he held her closely. “I love you so much.”
“And I love you,” she said as her arms went around his neck, and he kissed her again.
One of his long arms reached around her, and he helped himself to a cucumber slice from the cutting board as he kissed her again.
“Are you distracting me with kisses while you steal my cucumbers?” she asked.
“Absolutely.” He plopped the cucumber into his mouth as she returned to slicing. “It looks like Dr. Henry has been at it again,” he said.
“Oh yes,” she said. “He takes great pleasure in sharing his vegetables. I’m making a special salad for your dinner.” She scooped the chopped vegetables up into a salad bowl.
“I noticed the tablecloth and good china,” he said. “Are we expecting company?”
“No, we’re celebrating,” she said as she chopped a tomato.
“And what are we celebrating?” he asked as he snitched another cucumber and popped it into his mouth.
“A monumental event.”
“And when did this monumental event happen? Today?”
“On no, it happened about six or seven weeks ago.”
“And where was that?”
“It may have been in Florida when we were visiting my mother Labor Day weekend, or it may have been here,” she answered as she put the tomato into the bowl and began to slice an onion.
“I don’t remember a monumental event. Was I there?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “In fact, my darling, if you had not been there, it never would have happened.”
“And did you know when this event occurred?”
“Not really,” she said, concealing a smile. “But I suspected it might have happened.”
“So why are we celebrating today?”
“Because I just found out for sure today.”
“And how did you find out?”
“Dr. Ramirez told me.”
“Dr. Ramirez? Your gynecologist?” Suddenly, his brown eyes widened in anticipation, and she could tell by the look on his face that the pieces of the puzzle were coming together. “Are you pregnant?”
“We believe so.”
“Who is this we ?”
“Dr. Ramirez, the lab technician who read my pregnancy test, and me. We all think I am pregnant.”
“That’s wonderful!” He grabbed her around the waist and swung her off her feet, as he sometimes did when they were dancing. Suddenly, he stopped. “Oh no, should we be doing this? Maybe you should sit down and put your feet up.”
“I’m OK, David,” she said, “and he’s OK.”
“Is it a boy? Do you know already?”
“No, David. I don’t know. I have been calling the baby he because I know how much you want a son.”
He looked pleased. “And when can we expect him?”
“About the middle of May,” she said. “Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes. I just have to make the gravy for the pot roast and warm the bread. You have time to call Caroline and tell her. She would never forgive you if you didn’t let her know as soon as you found out.”
Julia heard him call his mother and tell her that they couldn’t come to see her on Mother’s Day next year, because they had something more important to do. After he ended the call, she said, “You were not nice to your mother.”
“I know,” he said with a mischievous grin on his face, “but she deserved some teasing after a