Page 1 of It Started with a Kiss
Prologue
Fin
You know that feeling you get when you know everything in your life is just about to go belly up? Yeah? Well, I had it in bucket loads. Thereallystupid thing was,ifI had listened to my gut and backed out before it got to that particular point, I wouldn’t have been standing in the most embarrassing situation ever. A situation I didn’t evenwantto be in.
But no.
Like the spineless moron I’d become, I stood there at the altar, waiting for her.
When it got to forty-five minutes after the time sheshould’ve arrived and no one had been able to contact her—not even her own family—I got it.
I’d been jilted.
1
Fin
Until recently, in all my twenty-seven years, I’ve always done the right thing. At least I’ve tried to. Finlay Hunter—the blue-eyed boy—both literallyandfiguratively speaking. Never putting a foot out of line but somehow, when it comes to my father, still never good enough.
Having grown up in a very wealthy family, the younger of two sons, I’ve strived to be the perfect prodigy. My brother was an overachiever and had already made my parents proud by qualifying as a GP and becoming a partner in his own surgery. It wasn’t exactly what my parents wanted for him initially but as he saved people’s lives they forgave him for not going into law. So, it was down to me to follow in my father’s footsteps and continue the family business. Therefore, taking my degree in law had been part ofthe plan. Notice how I didn’t saymyplan? My degree had afforded me a great education and good friends, but not a choice of career. I would’ve been working for the family business in some capacity regardless. A serious case of nepotism.
A St Andrews University degree was seen by my family as a status symbol. ‘The Royals study there, don’t you know?If it’s good enough for them...’ A famous phrase often repeated at me by my dad.
I worked my arse off for my qualifications, and it was no bloody picnic, but at the end of the day, to my father, it was simply a necessary piece of paper he could wave under the noses of his corporate cronies. Like I said, a status symbol.
My father, Campbell Hunter, is a senior partner in Hunter Drummond Law, based in the magnificent city of Edinburgh. A high-flyer, you might say, and since a very young age, I too was encouraged to do well, to prosper. My father doesn’t suffer fools and ours was never really a relationship based on what you could call out and out love. I know he loves me. Or at least I think he does. He just never shows it, not really. Never has. Dad is a great believer in keeping emotions in check. ‘No one likes a cry-baby, Finlay,’ was another of his favourite phrases, and so I learned to keep my thoughts, feelings, and emotions to myself. It explains a lot.
Dad wasn’t the kind of guy to play footy on a Sunday with my brother and me. We were both sent to boarding school, and when we were home for holidays, he was always working, so we spent our time with the housekeeper, Henrietta—or Hetty—as Callum and I called her. We didn’t mind at the time because she was great fun. She had awesome taste in music and would smuggle CDs in for me of bands she thought I’d like. I can categorically say that my fantasies of being a rock star stemmed from Hetty.
You may be wondering what of my mother? Where do I start? Isobel Hunter was like a WAG; a footballer’s wife of her day. In her teens, she’d been a fashion model with high society aspirations. She too was from a wealthy family, but it was her looks that propelled her forward. She’s beautiful. Tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes, like my brother and me.
Once she married Dad, she gave up her modelling career and spent her time hosting dinner parties and adding to her ridiculous shoe collection. In all honesty, she was never cut out to be a mother, and regardless of how I tried to get her attention, I usually ended up feeling like an inconvenience. It’s my guess that she would have remained childless if she had met anyone but my father. You see, he’s of the old ‘keep the family line going’ generation, and I’m pretty sure the fact that he had male children was a bonus for him. Shame he never showed it. So in stepped Hetty. And I, for one, will be eternally grateful for her compassion and care.
My older brother, Callum, was the opinionated one. From an early age he rebelled, insisting he would choose his own path in life. He said that law looked boring and he couldn’t imagine being a stuffed suit, shouting at other stuffed suits in a courtroom until the loudest suit won. Mind you, he’d argue black was white and up was down if he thought it would get a rise out of Dad, and there was always some feud going on between them. They were far too alike; two strong-willed alpha male characters vying for dominance over each other and neither willing to back down. It was due tothisreason that I took it upon myself to be thebetterson. The compliant one. All I wanted was for Dad to be proud of me. But looking back, even when I graduated with a first, he didn’ttellme he was proud of me. Instead, he bought me a new sports car and told me I was expected at the firm the following week to begin work.
That was over four years ago.
* * *
I suppose I should tell you about my fiancée. Or should I sayex-fiancée.
Elise Drummond is the daughter of Eoin Drummond, my father’s partner at the law firm. She and I were kind of thrust together as teenagers. It was clear right at the start what our parents’ intent was. She was sweet and pretty. Long dark hair, almost black, in fact, and bright green eyes. But she was quite thin. Now, I don’t intend to ‘thin shame’ her by mentioning that. I just prefer women with curves in all the right places, if you get my meaning. Elise didn’t have curves to speak of. But she was… well… niceenough.
When we were twenty, we started dating—another contrived setup by our respective parents. You’d think in 21stcentury Britain there would be no such thing as arranged marriage, but in a roundabout way, that’s what we were being ‘guided’ into. We both silently acquiesced without protest, neither of us wanting to rock the proverbial boat. I grew fond of her if I’m honest, and for a long while, she was my best friend. I could talk to her about almost anything. I sayalmostbecause there were things I couldn’t say to her because they’d no doubt get back to my dad, via hers. Things like the fact that I felt trapped, that it appeared my life was mapped out for me and I had no say. Deep down, I was sure she felt the same way, but neither of us broached the subject, and so life went on.
She too worked for the family firm, which left us with little to talk about apart from our respective cases at the office. And that was it. Our tastes in just about everything were completely different. I loved rock music, but she couldn’t stand it. I loved art, but she preferred plain walls. She loved to travel, but I was a home body. They say opposites attract, but we were more ‘opposites thrown together for the greater good’.
Only it wasn’tourgreater good.
We moved in together aged twenty-two, just after leaving uni. The vast apartment was in a stunning area of Edinburgh in an old Victorian building, and Elise chose all the furnishings. But, of course, between the four of them our parents paid for pretty much everything.
The only things I contributed to my new home were some photographs I’d bought from a little craft shop in the city. The photographer, simply known as S.A.M, had captured a totally different side of Edinburgh. He or she had made it look somehow ethereal with the light and the glow to the prints. I loved them. Elise wasn’t keen, but I put them up anyway. I think we had got to the point of living on the path of least resistance, never mind just venturing down it.
Our relationship had been chaste up to moving in together, and rather embarrassingly, we were both virgins until then. In my defence, my upbringing and schooling hadn’t allowed the allotted time for rebellion that most teens get. There were no wild, alcohol-fuelled parties, no one night stands, and no strip clubs. I guess I’d led a pretty sheltered life, but thankfully, so had Elise. Realistically speaking, we’d been promised to one another since before university. It had been a kind of unspoken agreement between our parents that just added to my feeling of being a puppet in someone else’s theatre.
2
Star
