Love Without Ceasing

Love Without Ceasing; A Contemporary Romance Novella Vol. 2 of Love Through the Ages Samantha Tate could smell him before she saw him. She scrunched up her nose, and when she heard a man's voice call her name, she turned around, and there they stood, facing each other almost within touching distance, she in black pants topped by a black vest over a unisex white shirt with half-inch pleats, her shirt with a black satin band around the collar and black stud buttons, her makeup, her nails, her long dark hair and her perfume perfect, everything about her immaculate, as if she had been chosen to work a state dinner at the White House, he with long dark hair, a bushy beard and dirty fingernails, his clothes and his bulky brown backpack covered with the road dust of a thousand miles, he with a body odor powerful enough to gag a gorilla. Thus did Samantha – "Sam" – a single mother and a waitress in a posh, upscale restaurant in Neehawk, Nebraska, meet Austin, a mysterious character from who knows where, who found her missing wallet in a dumpster and returned it to her with all of its contents intact. Sam was so grateful she ignored his B.O. and offered to make him a latte. Before she could do that, however, the restaurant manager kicked "the bum" out. Undeterred, Sam went out on the street and pleaded with Austin to wait. Minutes later she brought a latte out to him, and their relationship began to build from that point on. Enter Veronica Voss, owner of the restaurant. Veronica was tall, beautiful, willowy and, according to the Neehawk grapevine, willing. So willing, in fact, the word was her rich cattle rancher husband Vern bought the restaurant for her for the sole purpose of keeping her busy and out of other men's bedrooms. If that was his purpose, it was a strategy that had scant success. When Veronica saw what a hunk Austin was after Veronica cleaned him up – the beard was gone, the hair was cut and the clothes were clean – she made designs to have Austin for her own. Meanwhile, Sam was trying to figure out who Austin was. She knew little about him, only that she had fallen in love with him. Then, in a long evening heart-to-heart, Austin told Sam of an episode in his life that left her stricken, scarcely able to breathe. Austin and Sam were an unlikely couple who had an inauspicious beginning; Sam fell in love with him in spite of it; Austin wanted to fall in love with her. Before they could live happily ever after, however, they had to answer a question: Is there love after death? Love Without Ceasing is Vol. 1 of Love Through the Ages, a five-book bundle of contemporary romance fiction love novellas. Love Through the Ages is not an ordinary series. Each book is a stand-alone. The setting for each book is the same, the fictitious city of Neehawk, Nebraska. But the characters in each book are different, and they are older in each succeeding book – thus "love through the ages." The characters in The Virgin Conquest, Vol. 1 of Love Through the Ages, are 18-20 years old. The characters in Love Without Ceasing are 26 to 29 years old. The characters in Vol. 5 of the bundle are in their 70s. But love is the same throughout.