by Kiru Taye
Bound To Favor
Bound Series: Book 4
By
Kiru Taye
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Smashwords Edition
Bound to Favor
ISBN: 9780463937556
Copyright© 2018 Kiru Taye
Cover Artist: Love Bites and Silk
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used
or reproduced electronically or in print without written
permission, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in reviews.
Kiru Taye
www.kirutaye.com
Blurb
Kamali Danladi has sworn never to get married again. But his meddling mother is bent on hitching him to any eligible female that comes along to the next family gathering. There's only one thing for it. Get fake-hitched to his executive assistant. If anyone is more averse to marriage than he is, it's her. So they'll be perfect together. Or at least, they'll fake perfect together.
Ebun Forson doesn't do families. She certainly doesn't do festivities. So when she has to spend a week playing fiancée to her boss, how is she going to cope with the extensive Danladi kinsfolk without breaking out in hives? Her next shopping trip funded by the bonus he's giving her should more than make up for the inconvenience.
However, she soon finds the real threat is to her heart. The dark and intense Kamali behaves as if he sees through to her soul, making her almost forget that this is all an act. In any case, someone with a past like hers doesn’t deserve a happy ever after, surely.
Bound to Favor is a story about learning to heal from emotional pain and finding love in the most unexpected places.
Author’s Note
Dear reader,
In the 60s, 70s and 80s many children of African parentage were abandoned in the UK by their parents who returned to their home countries. These children were raised in the UK foster system and many didn’t reunite with their parents and siblings until much later in their lives.
I haven’t attempted to explain the reason why those parents left their children to be raised by foster parents, because that is a whole other story. But I should mention that in some African cultures it is an accepted norm to send ones child to live with relatives or foster families.
While Ebun Forson, our heroine in Bound to Favor, wasn’t raised by foster parents, the feeling of abandonment she experiences when her father leaves is real. Her struggle with her identity is also very real.
I hope you enjoy her story.
Love,
Kiru
Acknowledgments
I want to give a special mention to Rahila and Dyenaan who came to my help when I needed Hausa translations. Thank you so much!
Dedication
To everyone who has experienced abandonment by a parent, I hope you find your closure.
Prologue
“Your father doesn’t love you!”
With the angry utterance, Ebun Forson’s mother changed her life forever.
Pain rose in the back of Ebun’s neck. Why did Daddy not love her?
The man she adored and idolised. The man who referred to her as his ‘African Princess.’ The one who had named her Ebunoluwa which he’d said meant ‘the gift from God.’
“No!” she shouted. Her mother was only being difficult because Ebun has requested to phone her father and find out when he would be coming home. “Why are you saying this?”
Her mother had always been the emotionally distant parent, always busy with work as an academic and lecturer.
When she’d been little, Ebun’s father had been the one who held her hand and walked her to school most mornings and picked her up after school, sometimes.
Growing up in a white-only middle-class suburb of a British town in the 1980s hadn’t been a walk in the park.
Daddy had been the one who had listened to her complaints about pupils in her primary school who had made fun of her because she’d been the only black child in her year and school at the time she’d started there. They had picked on her ‘nappy’ hair and ‘dirty’ skin colour and had even taunted her about living in trees in Africa.
Her father had gotten angry and told her that in Africa she would live in a palace and have servants catering to her needs. That as his princess, no one would dare pick on her.
His words had always made her feel better, and of course, he would take her out whenever she was upset and buy her a treat, mostly ice cream.
“So where is he, then?” her mother taunted, waving a hand in the air. “Where is your precious Daddy?”
“I don’t know!” Tears welled in Ebun’s eyes, and she rubbed her arms in furious motions.
Her father had told her that he was going to Africa to work on a project. When he came back to the UK, he would take Ebun to Nigeria, and she would live like a princess.
That had been two years ago.
He had called a few times, and she’d spoken to him asking when he would come back, but he hadn’t given a date.
Her fourteenth birthday would be in a few weeks, and she hoped that Daddy would finally come home for the occasion instead of sending birthday cards and presents like he’d done on the last two dates.
“I’ll tell you where he is.” Her mother had pointed towards the kitchen window as if her father stood out there on the lush green mown lawn. “He is in that godforsaken Nigeria with his wife and kids.”
Ebun jerked back as her breath hitched. “Why are you so mean? Daddy doesn’t have another wife or kids?”
She and her mother were Daddy’s family. He couldn’t have another. Daddy would’ve told her, wouldn’t he?
Her mother threw her hands up in the air. “I’m the one being mean? You think your father is so perfect while I’m the wicked mother. Right. Come with me.”
Her mother walked out of the kitchen and headed to her bedroom, her feet stomping on the carpeted stairs of their three-bedroom semi-detached house. “I’ve been trying to save you from finding out. But you’re old enough to know the truth.”
Ebun followed, wondering what was going on. Mum couldn’t be serious.
The older woman strode over to her large oak-wood wardrobe and pulled out a drawer. She took out a large envelope and shoved it at Ebun.
“Take it. See for yourself how perfect your father is.”
Ebun took the envelope. She recognised the bold scrawling on the brown paper with Air Mail stamped on it. Her father had a distinctive writing style. Her hands trembled as she tipped the content onto the blue quilt-covered bed.
A folded blue-lined white paper fell out along with a photograph. She grabbed the letter first because she wanted to know what her father had written.
It was addressed to her mother. The crux of the letter was about how difficult things were in Nigerian with a military dictator as a ruler. His business wasn’t going as well as he’d planned so he wouldn’t be returning to the UK this year as he’d thought.
Also, he’d wanted Ebun to visit Nigeria during her school vacation, but since she had never been to Nigeria before, this wouldn’t be a good time to visit due to security reasons. He had wanted Ebun to meet her siblings.
At this point, Ebun dropped the letter. “Mummy, what is he talking about? I have siblings?”
“This is what I’ve been telling you. Your father has a family in Nigeria. He has two sons and one daughter.”
“What?” She staggered backward, staring at her mother with wid
ened eyes. “How? When?”
“He’s always had another family.” The older woman picked up the photos from the bed. “Here. Take a look.”
Ebun snatched the item.
The picture was taken at a studio with some kind of waterfall background. Sure enough, Daddy sat on a stool next to a woman Ebun didn’t recognise, surrounded by children. They all dressed in matching purple lace attire with the males in caftans and trousers and the females in long skirts and blouses.
“No!” Ebun dropped the photos and ran out. In her bedroom, she slammed the door and flopped on the bed. Tears spilled from her eyes as she sobbed, her body shaking, and her heart wrenching.
Why would Daddy have another family? He had Mummy and her. They should be the only family he needed.
Ebun was his daughter, his princess. His only child.
She’d often wondered what it felt like to have a sibling, someone to play with regularly and share her toys with, whenever she saw her school mates who had siblings.
Yet, she had siblings. Three of them. They had looked happy and regal, like princes and princess, in that photo, as they surrounded Daddy, their king and father.
Ebun’s hands clenched into fists as she rocked back and forth, hunched over the bed.
Why wasn’t she in that photography? She was entitled to stand beside her family in a family portrait too.
Why hadn’t her father told her of his other children? When he’d been home, he’d told her many stories about life in Africa. But he’d never mentioned a different wife or kids. One or two of them in the photo looked as old as Ebun. She could have met them, and they could have played together.
Why didn’t they live in the UK and close by? They could’ve gone to the same school, that way Ebun wouldn’t have been the only African child in her junior school.
Why did Daddy live with them in Nigeria and not her? If things were not going so well why didn’t he bring them over here?
So many unanswered questions plagued Ebun that night.
Perhaps her mother was right. Daddy didn’t love her.
Maybe there was something wrong with Ebun. She wasn’t a good enough daughter for her father.
Maybe she wasn’t as beautiful as his other daughter. She’d hit puberty and started filling out a lot faster than her school mates. Not to mention the spots on her face that she couldn’t seem to get rid of. She wasn’t slender and flawless.
Maybe she wasn’t as clever as his other children. She had always worked hard to maintain good grades when Daddy was here. He had praised her work and rewarded her each time he’d read her school reports. Since he left, her grades hadn’t done so well.
Her father had been her confidante. She could talk to him about her school day no matter how good or bad it had been.
Now, she had to find someone else who would take an equal interest in her life.
In her secondary school, there were at least two other black students that she’d seen, so she wasn’t the sole black child. She didn’t have many friends. She’d found companions in some of the other misfit white kids who seemed to be outsiders like her.
That night, Ebun cried for the father she had lost, her hero crashed and burned.
For the first time, she scoured gashes into her arm with her fingernails, seeking the physical pain to cover the emotional ache of a broken heart and her world that had ripped apart.
For days afterwards, she wore long-sleeved clothes to hide the cuts and scars from others, her mum especially. It would be years before her mother discovered she was self-harming.
Ebun learned to hide her depression behind fake smiles and false niceties.
On his part, Daddy called their house a few more times after that. But Ebun always found an excuse not to stay long on the phone—she had homework or had to go see a friend. She never asked her father about his other family or why he didn’t return to the UK. Soon the phone calls trickled down until they stopped altogether.
If Ebun learned anything from her mother, it was hard work, determination, and excellence. She aced her GCSEs and her A-level examinations and earned a place at her chosen university.
She’d been glad to get away from everything the house she’d grown up in represented and start a new life elsewhere.
After graduating with a BSc in Business with International Study, she was offered a job with the manufacturing firm where she’d done her work placement.
While her professional life flourished, her personal life proved the opposite.
She stumbled from one unhealthy relationship to another, picking, first boys, then men who were as damaged as she was, where the only outcome would be a breakup, eventually.
She could never trust anyone not to leave her or hurt her they way her father had done.
On some weekends, she took trips to London for a hairdresser’s appointment because the salons near where she lived didn’t offer services for Afro hair or products for her hair or skin type.
During one of those visits, while getting her hair braided, the couple on the cover of a Nigerian lifestyle magazine grabbed her attention.
A chill went down Ebun’s spine as she picked the magazine from the counter where the stylist had left copies.
The woman on the cover was young, not much older than Ebun’s twenty-three, if not younger. She looked stunning in her traditional turquoise Asoke attire with intricate pink beaded embroidery. The man, on the cover, her newly-wedded husband appeared magnificent in his turquoise agbada and a white long-sleeved shirt under it.
Ebun recognised the woman. Heart racing and hands trembling, she flicked through the pages quickly until she came across the image that froze her heart.
The father of the bride stared back at her from the glossy page.
He had aged—the laughter lines had deepened from when he lived in the UK and grey hairs peeked out of the edges of his hand-woven fila.
But the man smiling at the camera, the apparent, proud father of the bride, still looked like Daddy.
Her Daddy.
A lump formed in Ebun’s throat, and she struggled to swallow. Tears built at the back of her eyeballs.
“They are such a wonderful couple,” the stylist commented as she pointed at the magazine Ebun held in her hands.
“Yes, they are so beautiful,” one customer replied, coming to stand over Ebun.
“I read that the occasion was the wedding of the year in Nigeria. I wish I had been there,” yet another stylist commented.
Ebun’s muscles tightened as her chest burned with jealousy.
She wanted to yell at the women that the new bride was her sister. That the man who had paid for all that extravagance was her father. That she should have been the one marrying a tall, dark and handsome man.
Her mother had said that a good education and attaining the highest standard was the best preparation a woman could have in life. The training gave woman independence.
Her father had said something similar too when she’d been younger. Yet he hadn’t been to her graduation, and she’d scored a first class Honours degree.
Meanwhile, he sat at his other daughter’s wedding, looking ecstatic, as if his daughter getting married was the most critical thing in the world.
Ebun didn’t say anything and plastered a fake smile on her face. If she opened her mouth, she wasn’t sure she would say anything pleasant about the couple everyone else seemed to be gushing over.
When she left the salon, she took a copy of the magazine after tipping extra to cover the cost.
That night she called her mum and asked if she knew about the wedding.
Mum didn’t know about the wedding, nor did she care, as Ebun had expected.
“If your father wants to marry off his children at a young age, that’s his headache, but he’s not going to get his hands on you,” her mother said. “I’ve given you a good education. You have a good job. You just need to focus on building a career. The last thing you need at this age is a husband.”
She wanted t
o tell her mother that a husband for her would be impossible, not with her doomed relationships. None of them had lasted longer than a few months at a time.
She couldn’t help feeling that if her father had been in her life maybe things wouldn’t have gone so wrongly for her in that area. If her father couldn’t commit to her, how could any other man take her seriously?
“Mum, it’s still unfair,” she said. “Why is she the one who gets a handsome man who is devoted to her enough to propose?”
“Look. You should know that those kinds of marriages are arranged between families. It’s not about love. It’s about family alliances for business or political gain.”
Ebun sighed. Her sister and her husband looked like they were besotted with each other from the way they stared at each other in the photographs. How could that be an arrangement?
“Anyway, I’ve told you before. You should keep away from Nigerian men, African men in general. You can’t trust them. Unless you want to be wife number two or three. They all have multiple wives scattered everywhere. When you’re ready to settle down, and that’s a few years yet, find yourself a nice, white man.”
Ebun banged her head on the kitchen cupboard in exasperation. Her mother just didn’t get it.
Her mother might not have wanted to live as wife number two. But she’d known her father had another family and she’d still married him in the UK.
So why was Ebun left to pay for the choices her parents made?
Ebun puffed out and heavy breath. “Okay, Mum. It’s time for me to go. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Remember what I said. Just leave your father alone,” her mum said before saying goodbye.
Ebun stared again at one of the photographs of her sister and husband. In this one, the man stared at the camera—at Ebun, his dark eyes piercing and intense as if he saw her. As if he searched her soul to discover the desires of her heart. A handsome man, he stood as the best looking man she’d ever seen.