by Colet Abedi
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
About the Author
The MAD LOVE Series
Acknowledgements
Sneak Peek of MAD LOVE
1
2
COPYRIGHT © 2017 by Colet Abedi
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Book Design: Shanoff Designs & Nina Grinstead
Photos: Robert Unger
Editing by Christine Estevez
“God created woman to tame man.”
-Voltaire
For my mother, Effat Abedi.
For your strength. Your faith. And love…
PROLOGUE
Fifteen Years Ago
I fell in love with Michael Sinclair when I was eight years old.
I can even remember the exact moment.
After years of being alone after the death of my father, my mother married one of the most eligible bachelors in London - Charles Edward Dalton Sinclair. He was wealthy, had an incredible pedigree, and adored my mother.
What was more, he also happened to have a son who was five years my senior. I was thrilled I was finally going to have a sibling. An older, protective brother. One who would cherish and look out for me. It was something I had dreamt about my whole life and it seemed as though my wish had finally been granted.
But God had a different plan.
My new stepbrother, Davis Sinclair, would quickly become the bane of my adolescent existence. My curse. He was everything but brotherly and caring.
In fact, I quickly became convinced he was the Antichrist.
After our parent’s marriage, I soon realized his biggest pleasure in life came from teasing me mercilessly and making me cry. Davis liked to see people suffer. There was a sickening type of joy that came over him when he saw someone’s pain. Since I was so young and naïve , I played right into my stepbrother’s evil machinations. It wasn’t until I was much older that I finally stopped the tears and learned the art of feigning indifference, which in turn, made Davis thankfully leave me alone.
But during my younger years, while I depended on my tears as a source of comfort, Davis’ cousin, Michael Sinclair was there to protect me.
I’ll never forget the moment he stepped into my life like a knight in shining armor when I was only eight, and he was sixteen.
It was a beautiful summer day in Surrey and I was outside playing with my dolls at my stepfather’s country estate.
“Shabby Abby!” Davis screamed at me in a shrill voice as I cried over the injustice of such an awful nickname. “Shabby Abby, are you crying like the flabby baby you are?”
He circled me and stuck out his tongue.
I covered my ears with my hands and tried to block out his tormenting words.
“Leave me alone!” I cried out.
“Shabby Abby!” Davis shouted with glee. “Shabby Abby, you’re so flabby! Flabby Shabby Abby! Flabby Shabby Abby!”
Looking back now, I must admit, I was on the flabby side.
To my mother’s horror, I was a chubby child, so much so, that she had put me on a strict diet. Unfortunately, it ended up backfiring, because it turned me into a closet eater. Chocolate, potato chips and fattening baked goods became my constant companion in the hiding spaces I would sneak off to. I stole food from the pantry whenever no one was paying attention to me, which wasn’t so great for my mother’s plan, because it just so happened no one ever paid any attention to me at all.
So there I was, surrounded by my dolls, remnants of cookie crumbs littered all over my uncomfortably tight pink dress, wishing Davis would somehow magically disappear.
And that’s when something even better than his disappearance happened.
“What’s going on out here?”
The sun was glaring in my eyes as I squinted up to see who had joined Davis. If it were one of his hideous friends, I was ready to take my dolls and go inside the house for a few hours and hide inside a dressing closet where they wouldn’t be able to find me.
“I’m here with Flabby Shabby Abby!” Davis declared proudly as he pointed at me like I was diseased.
There was a break from the bright sunlight as the clouds moved, and it was at that moment I stared into Michael Sinclair’s piercing blue eyes for the very first time.
He seemed as tall as the sun. And just as handsome as all the fairy-tale heroes I read about at night.
He leaned down next to me and took in my sad face. He reached out and brushed my cheek with the back of his large hand and gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Are you okay, Abby?”
“Are you Prince Charming?” I asked in awe. “Are you here to save me from my evil stepbrother?”
He smiled at me. “Do you need saving?”
“I do,” I told him as I nodded my head. “He’s very mean to me.”
“He is?” Michael asked sympathetically as I nodded.
“He makes me cry,” I admitted softly.
“Shut up, Flabby Abby!” Davis sneered. “You talk too much!”
Michael gave me a sweet smile before standing to his full height and turning his attention to my stepbrother.
“You need to stop teasing our Abby,” Michael told him sternly.
I watched Michael with wide eyes, half in love with him already.
“Or what?” Davis sneered at him. “What will you do?”
“Punch you in the face,” Michael informed him.
Davis shook his head and laughed, then for good measure stepped close to me and leaned in so that his face was only inches from mine.
“Shabby. Flabby. Abby,” he taunted me again. Except this time he crossed a line he was warned not to go near.
It happened so fast.
One second Davis was leaning in so close I could feel his breath on my skin and the next he was lifted up away from me and punched soundly in the face.
I watched in happiness as he flew through the sky and landed with a thud on the ground, a good distance away from me.
Michael Sinclair descended, loomed over him like an imposing young demigod and grabbed him angrily by his collar.
“You’ve been warned, Davis.”
Davis was too frightened to move. He could only nod his head in acknowledgment before he ran off like the devil was chasing him.
Michael turned to face me when Davis was gone and gave me the most beautiful smile I had ever seen in my life.
“If he bothers you again, Abigail,” he said to me, “I will beat him to a bloody pulp.”
And just like that.
I finally had a hero.
I decided right then and there when I grew up I would marry Michael Sinclair.
CHAPTER ONE
“I’d like a
tall, half-caff, soy latte with an extra shot, and cream at 120 degrees.”
WTF?
120 degrees?
“Did you get the order, Abby?” Ronald, my manager and boss at the coffee shop, asks.
“Yes,” I nod, even though I’m not so sure I’m capable of making the customer’s order. How does one make sure the coffee is exactly at 120 degrees? Is it even possible?
Ronald brushes his bright orange hair away from his pale, freckled face and squints his eyes. He does that a lot when he looks at me, like he’s sizing me up and doesn’t quite know if I’m capable.
Can I blame him?
Not quite.
Since I started this job a few weeks ago, I’ve been a complete disaster at it. It’s pathetic, really. At the age of twenty-three, this is my first real job—a barista at a coffee shop. And I am completely inept at it. The only reason why I’m still employed is because Ronald feels sorry for me.
“I’ve got this,” I tell him in what I hope is a confident voice.
I hear Paul, the other barista working today, snort, and I fight the urge to throw a scone at him.
I make my way to the counter where all the machines are lined up and grab a cup. Who knew that making a cup of coffee was actually so difficult to do? The new respect I have for baristas is astounding. I promise myself for the thousandth time I will never order an elaborate drink again.
“Maybe Paul should do this one? It’s a complicated order,” Ronald says nervously.
Perfect. My boss thinks I’m an absolute moron.
“If that’s what you prefer,” I say evenly. I know an impending disaster when I see it. The last thing I want to do is mess up another customer’s order.
I need this job.
It’s the first time in my life I’m on my own for money.
For better or worse, I’ve never had to worry about my finances until now. I’ve been blessed with a well-to-do family and come from a life of privilege. And up until a few months ago, when I broke my engagement with my absurdly wealthy Russian fiancé, I never thought I would have to worry about money.
I try not to think about that moment in my life but as usual, the memories creep up on me, and I find myself reliving what was without a doubt the worst time in my young existence.
My ex-fiancé Dimitri Lobonav-Dostyanevsky was handpicked by my mother to bring an end to, as she so eloquently put, my “lackadaisical” life. It’s not like my mother was far off at the time. After I graduated from St. Andrews University with a degree in history, I had never felt more lost. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. All my other schoolmates had clear paths mapped out in their minds, but me, I felt like I had been placed in a super car on a Formula One racetrack and didn’t know how to start my engine.
I came home to London after university and moved into the flat my father had left for me when he passed away when I was a baby. My stepfather had given me a monthly allowance, and my mother warned me to find my way. I had tried. I volunteered at different charities and actually enjoyed giving my time to the organizations, but it wasn’t enough. Not for my mother, whose sole mission in life was to see me marry well.
Since I wasn’t much of a dater, she took it upon herself to find my future husband. Enter Dimitri Lobonav-Dostyanevsky, my rich Russian oligarch. I had tried to like him. I really had. He was pleasant looking enough, was as rich as Midas, and really didn’t care what I did or whom I went out with. In fact, he pretty much left me alone, a condition I had grown acutely accustomed to over the years. Dimitri was forty-one and wanted a young wife who would stay home and give him children. My mother convinced me that it was enough. That I didn’t need love because if I married him, I would never have to worry about anything again. That my situation couldn’t get much better than this. She reminded me that there was a line of women waiting to take my place if I said no. At the time, her advice seemed logical and the right thing to do. So to my great shame, I was foolish enough to go along with it.
I was comforted by the fact that Dimitri felt the same way as me. We were both using each other. Neither of us was in love, we were just looking for a means to an end. And so I naïvely believed it would work.
He proposed with an enormous twenty-five-carat diamond ring that must have cost a small fortune. It was horrifyingly gaudy. I actually cringed when I saw it. It was too much and not my style at all. I only wore it when I would see him, which luckily was only a few times a week.
Dimitri was generous and had opened a bank account for me to buy a new wardrobe and to plan our wedding. He told me to spare no expense and the bigger, louder, and more ostentatious, the happier he would be. I wondered if he even realized that I’d rather run from those three adjectives than toward. My mother, on the other hand, was another story altogether. She had lit up like a Christmas tree when she heard him say those words.
Bigger? Check.
Louder? Check.
Ostentatious? Check.
“Shall we ship in swans and have them running around on the estate?” she had asked me one evening while having dinner at Scott’s.
“The wedding is in December,” I argued. “And I’m pretty sure swans won’t just run around the estate, at least not the way you’re picturing in your head. They might even freeze to death. They migrate during the winter months.”
My mother waved off my concern.
“We’ll have heaters for them,” she said. “We take care of our animals, Abigail.”
It took all my years of discipline to refrain from rolling my eyes.
In my entire life, I had never even seen my mother change the water for our pets.
Regardless, I realized quickly this was something she could plan in her sleep and would have a ball doing, so I left it all to her. She became immersed in organizing the wedding of the century and thankfully ignored me.
But everything was just moving too fast.
And the only thoughts that kept going through my head were: Am I making the right choice? Is this my future?
Is.
This.
It?
But even with all of my reservations and fears, I had pushed all self-doubt out of my mind and blindly forged ahead. It was all fine and dandy, and I had even fooled myself into believing this marriage would be good for me.
And that’s when it all went to shit.
The second I was in Provence and had set eyes on Michael Sinclair after not seeing him since I was seventeen years old, everything inside my soul shifted. For years I had tricked myself into believing that it was only a child’s crush. That all the moments we shared together meant nothing. That he was an illusion I had conjured up in my head.
But I was so wrong.
Here was the man who had been my first kiss. Who had always been kind to me. Who was gorgeous beyond words. And who had made my heart race like a mad woman whenever he was near.
He made me feel alive.
And special.
Needed.
And in no way inadequate.
I had tried to push my feelings aside for him, and I had thought I did a good job until the night of a party that my best friend, Georgie, had thrown for me.
I’ll never forget it.
Dimitri loved skimpy, revealing clothes. He didn’t seem to mind if other men ogled me. In fact, it seemed to please him if his friends found me desirable, like he owned something that others coveted but couldn’t have. My brown hair had been curled and primped the way he preferred, and I had a thick layer of makeup on that made me feel like a wax figure at Madam Tussaud’s famous museum.
I had tried to be confident. But the face that stared back at me in the mirror was not one I recognized, and from the moment I arrived at the party all I had wanted to do was find a way to cover up my half-naked body. After chatting with a few of our guests, I had escaped into one of Georgie’s guest bedrooms.
I shut the door and blocked out the noise from the party, needing to escape from all the suffocating feelings that were slowly choking the
life out of me. It wasn’t like Dimitri would miss me. He was too busy texting and playing Candy Crush on his phone.
I took off the five-inch stiletto heels my stylist had paired with my minidress and found myself laying on the bed, wishing the party to be over. And my life, for that matter.
I didn’t know what I was doing with my future.
I felt as though I had lost all direction.
Like I didn’t even have a purpose.
And as destiny goes, that’s how Michael found me.
I heard the door slowly open, and I was annoyed that someone was about to invade my private moment.
“The room is occupied,” I called out without bothering to see who it was. If it was some couple looking to shag, they could bloody well find another place. The place was certainly big enough.
“Shouldn’t you be enjoying your party?”
I shot up from the bed when I heard Michael’s voice.
I tried not to think about how incredibly handsome he looked in his tailored black suit. He was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at him. Michael Sinclair had movie star good looks. He was tall, well over six feet, with longish, jet black hair that was mussed and always looked as though he had been up to no good in a bedroom. His bright blue eyes were like jewels shining out of his tanned and handsome face. His cheekbones were strong, his lips, full and sensual. His face was angular and masculine, his jawline perfect and his body… God, his body. It was long and lean, with slim hips and broad shoulders and a chest that was made to lick, kiss, or do any other type of dirty deed one could think of.
My blue eyes focused on his sensuous lips. I knew what they tasted like, considering he had been my very first make-out session. It was a moment he probably didn’t even recall since he had been so smashed.
But not me.
Me. I remembered every minute of it. Every detail. My back pushed up against a wall, his hands on either side of my face, his tall, hard body leaning down close to mine as he tasted what I willingly offered. The memory of that kiss had been my companion on many lonely nights.
