Page 253 of Now and Forever

Falling For My Husband

Prologue

Callum

“Son, here’s your present. Enjoy your transition from a boy to a man.” My father patted my back and then pushed the doors open, leaving me in ultimate heaven. “Thirteen women to celebrate your thirteen years of life.”

That was how my father, Charles Kensington, brought me up. My father was a fine connoisseur of women, in all shapes and sizes. He once told me that marriage meant nothing because all it ever did was merge money for both families; it was a tool to build dynasties, nothing more. Marriage was a façade that people crawled behind in order to unite two powerful families and form a stronger bond which would produce heirs.

Legacy was everything; without it, nothing mattered.

We were, after all, The Kensingtons. At a young age, I was groomed and schooled to marry a well bred woman; someone from my stature who would mingle amongst my social strata easily.

All of these ingrained idiosyncrasies and pompous ceremonials left me when I met a man named Richard von Berg. We went to Cambridge and were on the rowing team together. Richard was in the same class as I was, but he was a free man; a man who was allowed to grow without his parents’ having shackled him to their own beliefs. He didn’t live the way I did. Richard was a unique man; a man I admired and loved like a brother. He taught me to follow whatever and wherever my gut directed me.

With his guidance and support, I was able to find the woman that I could finally say I loved. It was a dire day when that love was not returned. On that day, I found out that my father married the woman I had wanted to spend the rest of my life with. When I confronted him, it left me in shambles.

“I did it for your own good! Love! That word is for cunts. You’re being fanciful. You’re a bloody Kensington and love is not part of our lives. Get that through your skull, you dim-witted fool.” My father’s green eyes struck me with their anger as his words sent me to hell.

I walked out of his home, vowing never to speak to him again.

Vowing to destroy him and his young bride.

No one was going to make me a fool and go unscathed.

As expected, the confrontation left me gutted, but the world had another lesson to teach me. When I got a call from Richard, asking—no begging—me to see him at St. Lucia at once, I couldn’t ignore it.

That call changed my life.

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