Love's Promise_An Inspirational Romance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Book Previews

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  CHAPTER 1

  Chapter 1-Marie

  Chapter 2-Winston

  Chapter 3-Marie

  Chapter 4-Winston

  Chapter 5-Marie

  Chapter 6-Winston

  Chapter 7-Marie

  Chapter 8-Marie

  Chapter 9-Marie

  Chapter 10-Marie

  Chapter 11-Marie

  Chapter 12-Winston

  Chapter 13-Marie

  Chapter 14-Winston

  Chapter 15-Marie

  Chapter 16-Marie

  Chapter 17-Marie

  Chapter 18-Winston

  Chapter 19-Winston

  Chapter 20-Marie

  Chapter 21-Marie

  Chapter 22-Winston

  Chapter 23-Marie

  Chapter 24-Marie

  Chapter 25-Winston

  Chapter 26-Marie

  Chapter 27-Winston

  Chapter 28-Marie

  Chapter 29-Winston

  Chapter 30-Marie

  Chapter 31-Winston

  Chapter 32-Marie

  Chapter 33-Winston

  Chapter 34-Marie

  Chapter 35-Marie

  Chapter 36-Winston

  Chapter 37-Marie

  Chapter 38-Winston

  Chapter 39-Marie

  Chapter 40-Marie

  Chapter 41-Winston

  Chapter 42-Marie

  Chapter 43-Winston

  Chapter 44-Marie

  Chapter 45-Winston

  Chapter 46-Marie

  Chapter 47-Marie

  Chapter 48-Winston

  Chapter 49-Marie

  Chapter 50-Winston

  Love’s Promise

  Protected By Love Series: Book Two

  By:

  T.K. Chapin

  www.tkchapin.com

  Copyright © 2017 T.K. Chapin All rights reserved.

  Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.

  Version: 11.09.2017

  ISBN:

  ISBN-13:

  Available Books

  By T.K. Chapin

  (Inspirational Christian Fiction & Romance)

  Protected By Love Series

  Love’s Return (Book 1)

  Love’s Promise (Book 2)

  Diamond Lake Series

  One Thursday Morning (Book 1)

  One Friday Afternoon (Book 2)

  One Saturday Evening (Book 3)

  One Sunday Drive (Book 4)

  One Monday Prayer (Book 5)

  One Tuesday Lunch (Book 6)

  One Wednesday Dinner (Book 7)

  Embers & Ashes Series

  Amongst the Flames (Book 1)

  Out of the Ashes (Book 2)

  Up in Smoke (Book 3)

  After the Fire (Book 4)

  Love’s Enduring Promise Series

  The Perfect Cast (Book 1)

  Finding Love (Book 2)

  Claire’s Hope (Book 3)

  Dylan’s Faith (Book 4)

  Stand Alones

  Love Interrupted

  Love Again

  A Chance at Love

  The Broken Road

  If Only

  Because Of You

  The Lies We Believe

  In His Love

  Please join T.K. Chapin’s Mailing List to be notified

  of upcoming releases and promotions.

  Join the List

  Dedicated to my loving wife.

  For all the years she has put up with me

  And many more to come.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1-Marie

  Chapter 2-Winston

  Chapter 3-Marie

  Chapter 4-Winston

  Chapter 5-Marie

  Chapter 6-Winston

  Chapter 7-Marie

  Chapter 8-Marie

  Chapter 9-Marie

  Chapter 10-Marie

  Chapter 11-Marie

  Chapter 12-Winston

  Chapter 13-Marie

  Chapter 14-Winston

  Chapter 15-Marie

  Chapter 16-Marie

  Chapter 17-Marie

  Chapter 18-Winston

  Chapter 19-Winston

  Chapter 20-Marie

  Chapter 21-Marie

  Chapter 22-Winston

  Chapter 23-Marie

  Chapter 24-Marie

  Chapter 25-Winston

  Chapter 26-Marie

  Chapter 27-Winston

  Chapter 28-Marie

  Chapter 29-Winston

  Chapter 30-Marie

  Chapter 31-Winston

  Chapter 32-Marie

  Chapter 33-Winston

  Chapter 34-Marie

  Chapter 35-Marie

  Chapter 36-Winston

  Chapter 37-Marie

  Chapter 38-Winston

  Chapter 39-Marie

  Chapter 40-Marie

  Chapter 41-Winston

  Chapter 42-Marie

  Chapter 43-Winston

  Chapter 44-Marie

  Chapter 45-Winston

  Chapter 46-Marie

  Chapter 47-Marie

  Chapter 48-Winston

  Chapter 49-Marie

  Chapter 50-Winston

  Chapter 51-Marie

  Chapter 52-Winston

  Chapter 53-Marie

  Chapter 54-Winston

  Chapter 55-Marie

  Chapter 56-Winston

  Chapter 57-Marie

  Chapter 58-Winston

  Chapter 59-Marie

  Chapter 60-Winston

  Chapter 61-Marie

  Chapter 62-Marie

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Note from the Author

  Through careful prayer and consideration, I decided to write a Christian Romance series based around the topic of love. In today’s world, we have a whole lot of ideas on what love is, but rarely do we see God’s love extended outward to others.

  In the second book of the Protected By Love Series, entitled Love’s Promise, we get an inside look at one marriage’s struggle to overcome a difficult situation. Oftentimes in our own lives we encounter hardship and it’s only when we’ve tried everything else that we finally turn to God. What this book aims to do is help shine a light on how God can help us as we journey through the valleys we encounter in life.

  My desire through writing this inspirational Christian romance is to inspire your faith, warm your heart, and fill you with the hope that is only found in the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. May this story bless you in reading it as much as it has done me in writing it.

  Sincerely,

  T.K. CHAPIN

  If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels,

  but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong

  or a clanging cymbal.

  1 Corinthians 13:1

  Chapter 1-Marie

  I HAD BEEN MARRIED TO WINSTON Jones for twenty-three years and never once seen him as
broken as he was after the accident at Diamond Lake. I knew when the doctors told me he’d never walk again that he wouldn’t settle for that life sentence. He was a fighter.

  Watching as Winston wheeled himself in his wheelchair up the ramp from the garage and into our house, I felt his pain as we passed through the doorway into our home. Neither he nor I wanted to accept it, but this was the life he now had to embrace. His misery was evident in his eyes every time one of the physical therapists at the hospital told him what he could and could not do. His anguish was understood in the way in which he spoke about his situation as if it was a curse placed on him by God. He’d say things like, “if my legs weren’t broken” and “back when I could walk …” It was sad seeing my strong and courageous husband brought to his knees, literally.

  “Marie,” Winston said, in a cold and dark tone as he parked himself in the hallway of our home. I was about to head down the hall to our bedroom to change.

  Turning back to him, I caught his steady gaze. “Yes, Winston?”

  “Could you bring me my 45 Colt? I’d like to clean it. It’s been a while.”

  “Sure.” Winston loved his guns. He didn’t clean them all the time, but he had been itching to handle them while cooped up in the hospital. One day, in particular, at the hospital, he asked the doctor whether I could bring a gun up for him to clean, and the doctor firmly rejected the idea. Cleaning his gun was a favorite past time of Winston’s when he had free time, which he had plenty of at the hospital, so I’d understood his request.

  Continuing down the hallway to our bedroom, I passed by all the memories that hung on the wall. A mixture of pictures of both our son and ourselves, it was a collection of our life before the accident. That wall was a haunting reminder that things would never be the same, much like when Greg had left for college, never to return home, and rarely even giving us a phone call.

  Arriving in our bedroom I accidentally caught sight of a picture frame with a snapshot of Winston and me on a beach in Hawaii from a couple years back. He had taken me there for our anniversary as a surprise. That week alone together on the big island of Maui was a magical time I’d never forget. We’d discovered a new depth to our love and had connected in an intimate way like never before. We’d shared laughs on the beach as we lay out in the sun and dined at the finest restaurants on the island. Things were good back then, but they were good even before the accident at Diamond Lake. Picking up the frame, I longed for my old Winston, our old love that burned with a fiery passion. That was now but a distant memory, a flickering flame of a time that was no longer. My husband was now a man lost at sea unable to find his identity as he struggled to stay afloat, forgetting that I’m here with him, drowning in this grief alongside him.

  After changing into a sweatshirt and sweats, I grabbed his gun from the drawer of his nightstand and headed down the hall toward the living room. As I walked into the living room I saw him near the coffee table with a picture frame in his hand. The TV was off, and he was looking intently at the photo. Curious to get a peek at the inner workings of my lately distant husband, I walked silently up behind him.

  Glancing over his shoulder I saw the picture he was looking at. It was of the two of us taken last year at his parents’ lake house over on Lake Stevens, not far from Seattle. We were standing on the dock just after our Thanksgiving dinner. His arm was wrapped around my waist and my head was pressed against his chest.

  “That was a good day,” I said, warmly recalling how he had danced with me by the fireplace to his mother’s piano playing.

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded agreement. Returning the frame to the coffee table, he said with a tone of longing, “It was.”

  Handing him his gun, I recalled our argument at the hospital about not going to Thanksgiving this year at his parents’ place. “Why can’t we go? It’s a tradition, Winston.”

  “Drop it, Marie. I don’t want people to see me like this, and especially not my parents. It was mortifying enough having them at the hospital.” His tone was edged, full of anger, disdain, but at whom? I took the guilt on myself. He continued. “Maybe we’ll go next year, when I’m walking again.”

  He wouldn’t acknowledge reality. He refused to accept what the doctors said. It wasn’t surprising though, because all his life he had used his strength to overcome adversity and thought he could overcome this too by sheer willpower.

  Wheeling over to his recliner beside the end table, he lifted himself onto it and relaxed a second. Then he opened the drawer of the end table and pulled out Q-tips and oil to clean his gun, and I headed for the kitchen to start dinner.

  Chapter 2-Winston

  MARIE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND MY WORLD, my life, my existence. Sure, she had been there through the ups and downs and turns along the way for the last two decades, but she wasn’t there when I pulled my buddy out from a burning truck that had been hit by a rocket in Afghanistan. She wasn’t there when I lived on my belly crawling through a jungle swamp to make it to my evacuation point after assassinating an Islamic terrorist leader down in southern Africa. My strength and my body weren’t just part of me. They were me.

  My gun clean, I set it atop the end table beside me in the living room and wheeled through the foyer toward my study. After closing the dual French doors that led into the study, I parked my wheelchair near my office chair and locked the brakes in place. Using my arms, I lifted myself up off my chair and flopped into my cozy swivel office chair.

  A deep relieving sigh escaped from my lips as I relaxed. Finally, I felt comfortable for the first time in weeks.

  Picking up my desk phone, I called my person in charge for WIN—Bruce Parker.

  “What’s good, Bruce?”

  “You home, Winston?”

  Turning in my chair, I looked at the bookshelves that held my life. The awards, the pictures, the medals. “Affirmative. How are things?”

  “Good, good. Polly Pocket let us know that she’s no longer in need of our services after the end of the year so Yancy is going to be open. I haven’t decided where to put him yet, but there’s still almost two months.” Polly Pocket was the code name given for the client, Miss Annabell Kwezzet, a foreign diplomat that Garrett Yancy had been assigned to since August when she arrived from Germany.

  “All right.”

  “How’s … everything?” Bruce asked. He didn’t say it, but I had a good idea of what he was thinking, and what he was really wanting to know. It was the question on everybody’s mind that knew me, I suspected. This question was, ‘How’s it going without walking? Without legs?’ Nobody was brave enough to ask me directly.

  “It is what it is and not much more. Now that I’m home I can do the workouts I want instead of just the garbage the physical therapist thinks is best. For that fact alone, I’m thrilled.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be back in action in no time.”

  “How’s the rest of the team?”

  “Good. Martinez is still with Blinders and Dekker is done with Diamond, and the church is opening on Sunday.”

  “I still can’t believe Dekker is quitting.”

  “Yeah, it’s too bad. He was good.” Bruce let out a sigh, then continued. “He seems pretty excited about being the Youth Group pastor out there though.”

  Kirk Dekker was one of the best bodyguards that WIN had seen in its time. He had an encounter with God, of sorts, not long ago and ended up deciding to leave his career as a bodyguard to pursue matters of faith. I respected his choice even though I wasn’t sure it was wise.

  The doors in my study opened, interrupting my conversation with Bruce. Swiveling in my chair, I saw Marie standing in the doorway with an expression that let me know it was time for dinner.

  Chapter 3-Marie

  HE HAD NO PROBLEM CONVERSING with others on the phone, but when it came to us he was nearly silent since the incident. He finished his dinner and then began to wheel away from the table without a word. My heart was continuously breaking by the cold and distant Winston he had become.
Enough was enough.

  “Would a ‘thank you’ kill you?” I asked, lashing out with anger from my place of hurt.

  “Stop it, Marie. You know I’m thankful.” He continued into the living room, leaving my heart hemorrhaging. I was so frustrated, burnt out, and at the end of my rope. Yet it was only the beginning of his recovery. My heart wanted so badly for us to get over this difficulty, to be how we used to be—happy. Following him into the living room, I decided to confront him again.