Page 63 of All Out of Love

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

He arrived long after Grayson, Vincent and Pauly had left. He just showed up and rang the bell at the private residence door. The guard at the gate buzzed in and told her that he was on the property. Which surprised her.

“Did you tell him his son isn’t here?” Toya asked.

“No ma’am,” the guard responded. “It’s not my job to tell Governor Carrington anything.”

Former Governor Carrington, Toya wanted to say. We have a black governor now! But then she realized it didn’t even sound like the guard that was usually at the gate. His voice was much higher-pitched. But then she remembered that security had been beefed up. Maybe it was one of the three men that worked for Vincent that was also at the gate. “Thanks for letting me know,” she said and released the intercom button. And then he was ringing the bell.

She knew Grayson’s father could be a very harsh man with a nasty tongue, but she also knew she desperately needed that same man to come through for her. She knew it was wrong on every level to allow that state’s attorney to bribe Grayson with dropping the charges only if she could get an endorsement from his father, but those charges against her were wrong too. And she wasn’t risking a lifetime in prison to stand on a principle nobody else was willing to stand on. She needed Sebastian Carrington to come through.

That was why she opened the door.

To her shock, Seb was smiling. “Hello there.”

“Hello, Mr. Carrington. Gracie isn’t . . . I mean, Grayson isn’t here.”

“It’s Governor Carrington,” he said in a nice-nasty tone, “and you’re the one I want to see anyway.” He entered the home whether she wanted him to come in or not. But since it was his son’s home, she closed the door behind him.

Besides, she was too curious. “You want to see me?” she asked him.

“That’s what I said,” he said as he made his way to the sofa. “Could I get a glass of water please?”

“Yes sir,” she said as she headed for the kitchen.

But as soon as her back was to Seb, he grabbed her cellphone that was sitting on the coffee table. She had been using it: It still was showing her message screen. That was when he quickly turned the volume down to zero. Then he turned the phone facedown.

But what he didn’t know was that within seconds of him turning her phone down to zero and hiding her screen by flipping the phone facedown, her phone began ringing. It was Grayson. But neither of them could hear it ringing or see it come up on her phone’s screen. His scheme worked. And then Toya returned with a glass of water.

“Thank you,” he said as she handed it to him and sat back down beside him.

“I came to discuss the endorsement.”

This interested Toya very much. “Okay.”

“I wanted to let you know that I will endorse Emily Preston.”

Toya smiled. “Thank you sir. Thank you very much.”

“You want to know why I’m going to endorse her?”

“No sir.”

“I thought long and hard about what happened here earlier. I was a bastard, I admit it. I was rather salty towards you, and for that I apologize.”

Toya was thrown at first. She didn’t expect an apology! What was going on here?

“First of all, I’m not a racist okay?”

Uh-oh, she thought. Red flag. It had been her experience that whenever somebody declared they weren’t a racist, they usually were. But she needed this man. She was willing to hear him out.

“My anger had nothing to do with your race. It’s just that my son has run through so many females in his lifetime that I’m fed up with him. He’s forty-four years old and still hasn’t married. That’s insane to me. Isn’t it nuts to you?”

Toya had thought about it. “Maybe he just couldn’t find the right woman.”

“But he found her now,” Seb said and put on that smile that charmed the whole state of Maryland.

Toya wasn’t charmed; there was still a lot about the man that she couldn’t recommend. But she was relieved. “Thank you,” she said.