Finding Love Again E-Book

CHIOMA IWUNZE-IBIAM

• Herausgeber: CASSAVA REPUBLIC
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

For performance poet, radio broadcaster and recently jilted bride Kambi, the serene Obudu Mountain Resort is the perfect place to finish her poetry collection and heal her broken heart. But along comes Beba, the gorgeous, olive-skinned man from her past, who had rescued her from an attack several years ago. Back then, they came close to having a relationship but Kambi had pushed him away. In the lush mountain setting, can Kambi resist Beba's charms and keep up the pretence of being his fake fiancée in order to help him in his quest to find his mother? Or will a phony engagement be the key for Kambi to begin Finding Love Again?

Leseprobe

Finding Love Again

CHIOMA IWUNZE-IBIAM

Contents

Title PagePrologueOneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTenElevenTwelveThirteenFourteenFifteenSixteenAbout Chioma Iwunze-IbiamCopyright

Prologue

“With this ring, I thee wed,” the priest read.

Kambi tuned out the voices of the other couples who were reciting their vows. Her head ached. Bouquet in hand, she stood at the altar in her Daisy Bridals wedding gown, confused. The ceremony was almost over and her groom was yet to arrive, as was her maid of honour.

“You may now kiss the bride,” Kambi heard the priest say. Most of the congregation went wild with applause. Lifting her eyes, she stared at the other two couples with whom they’d had rehearsals. Kambi remembered the way the kisses had defined the men. The chubbier groom enveloped his bride’s lips with his mouth, so that Kambi feared that he might swallow her small face. While the other groom with knees slightly bowed held his bride closely, and brushed her lips with his lips before deepening the kiss. Kambi had always hoped her groom’s kiss would be the most memorable part of the wedding.

Tears welled up in her eyes. She turned backwards and saw her mother weeping into a handkerchief as Kambi’s sister, Diana, consoled her. Her father sat beside their mother, frowning. His arms were folded across his sturdy chest. Kambi knew her father had never really liked Victor. But she had gone along with the marriage arrangements because, in the beginning, he’d seemed a reasonable bachelor. Perhaps she’d been too fatalistic about the affair, especially with her mother harping on about the proverbial biological clock and nonsense like that.

A man, dressed in cream-coloured suit, walked down the aisle. Kambi craned her neck to see if her groom had arrived. Perhaps he had been stuck in traffic. It wouldn’t be too late, she thought. They could still plead with the priest to marry them, or they could reschedule. But, as the man drew nearer, she saw that he was Victor’s younger brother, the best man. She saw him whisper into Victor’s mother’s ear and then into Diana’s. The women screamed and snapped their fingers and wailed with hands clasped behind their heads. Kambi knew then that something had gone dreadfully wrong.

Diana’s twin boys – the pageboys – scuttled around the church aisle. Their mother caught them by the ears and led them to their father where he was sitting at the far end of the church. Kambi hadn’t expected him to accept her wedding invitation, considering that her sister had divorced him shortly after the birth of their sons.

While the priest blessed the other couples, she dropped her bouquet, lifted the frills of her gown and ran down the aisle.

“What’s going on?” she asked, dreading the worst. Why else was Victor’s mother covering her face with a handkerchief, crying and saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry”? And why else was the best man staring at her with bashful eyes and his head tilted to one side as though he was staring at a sick puppy? Why was he taking her aside and patting her hands?

“He’s not coming,” he said. Her jaw dropped. She nodded. Life isn’t over, she thought to herself. A large tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it off, not caring about the blusher the make-up artist had applied that morning. Her heart burned with rage and simmered with bitterness.

“Auntie Ambi, Auntie Ambi!” Diana’s twins yelled. They’d bolted from their father’s arms, and were scurrying towards Kambi. Most of the guests were leaving, and the church hall was getting rowdier. Kambi worried that her three-year-old nephews might not handle the crowd. But she could see their father trying to catch up with them.

Kambi turned back to the best man. “Why? Did he give any explanations at all?” she asked, and swallowed hard. It was clear that the knowledge she sought would come with its full dose of pain, so she braced herself. She imagined that knowing would erase the torture of wondering and groping endlessly in the dark for answers.

The best man shook his head and turned his face. From the side, he looked just like Victor: fair skin, shiny black beard, complete with pointed nose and thin lips.

“Oh,” she said. “Have you heard from Chinwe, my maid of honour?”

He nodded. “Chinwe and … and Victor have eloped,” he stuttered.

“The slut!” Diana yelled. Kambi hadn’t noticed her sister standing behind her.

Diana would have skinned Chinwe alive if she’d set eyes on her. But Kambi didn’t want any more drama. Not even from her tetchy sister who was charging around like an angry bull.

The other bridesmaids huddled round her, trying to comfort her. But she didn’t want to hear that everything would be fine and that Victor didn’t deserve her. She knew all those things and didn’t want to be reminded. Her friend Kaycee had the loudest voice. And she kept reaching out to wipe the tears that streamed from Kambi’s eyes.

The sky rumbled.

Kambi removed her veil and tossed it aside. She didn’t need a groom who could abandon her for her maid of dishonour. She moved away from the other bridesmaids. The twins stepped on the frills of her gown and grabbed her legs. She tripped on the frills, but didn’t fall.

“You look so lovely on your wedding day!” Ayobami sang, mimicking Brenda Fassie’s ‘Wedding Day’ hit song.

“No, she doesn’t. She looks like a crybaby,” Ayodeji said. They giggled. The bridesmaids had a hard time tearing the twins’ hands off the wedding gown. Diana pulled their ears and led them away.

Kambi muffled her sobs as she held up her gown and started to run out of the church.

“Hold her! Hold her before she does anything rash!” her mother yelled.

Shoes made clack-a-clack-clack noises in the church as the bridesmaids hurried towards her. But she dashed out before they could reach her.

This wasn’t the picture she’d had of her dream wedding since she was ten. Not like this: being chased by her bridesmaids as she ran out of the church in a bid to hide her face in shame. She hadn’t imagined her pageboys singing wedding songs in bad taste. Nor had she planned to pray that the ground would open its mouth and swallow her up.

In her dreams, she was always wearing a dazzling white gown and silver shoes while her handsome groom beamed as he said his vows. But things had turned out in the worst possible way. Being a realist, she believed white gowns were for virgins – and Chinwe, her slutty maid of dishonour, had concurred – which was why she was wearing a light pink ball gown. But the colour of her gown was not as important as her inner happiness and peace.

Had she tried to settle for a man who didn’t respect her? She couldn’t believe that, at 24, she had almost ended up in a miserable union with a man who probably had more dark sides than she could imagine.

Kambi kept running through the church garden lined by rows of ixora and hibiscus flowers. The sky roared and darkened as she ran towards the gate. Someone called her name but she didn’t look backwards or sideways. Her neck hurt. And her eyes too. Her heart was heavy with grief and disappointment and she felt exhausted.

Diana grabbed the frills of her gown. She stumbled, but Kaycee caught her by the arm so she didn’t fall. “You want to get killed?” Kambi wailed. Her mother hugged her but Kambi pushed her away.

Horns blared in the distance. She heard the screeching tyres. A cacophony of sounds filled her ears. Kambi’s legs weakened. The rain came down in a gentle drizzle and soaked her hair. Her head tilted up, her mouth opened. Her tongue tasted the rain.

They held her hands and led her to the car. She felt like a heifer being taken to the slaughterhouse.

Suddenly, the rain poured in sheets, washed her tears away, drenched her gown, and knocked her down on her knees.

One

To take a second chance as Victor’s fiancée? No way!

Fuming at this thought, Kambi frowned as she got out of the taxi. Her jaw tightened, as did her chest. After all the pain and embarrassment he had caused her, she couldn’t for the life of her imagine herself as Victor’s fiancée – again. Not for all the oil wells in the Niger Delta!

It didn’t matter that he had recently dumped her maid of dishonour – with whom he had eloped on their wedding day. Kambi couldn’t care enough to sympathise with them, especially with all the deadlines she had to meet.

She dragged her luggage to the beautiful gate of the Obudu Mountain Resort – her temporary place of refuge. Certainly, Victor wouldn’t stalk her up here. Or so she hoped, although, considering social media doesn’t allow people much privacy, he could probably find her anywhere. But she imagined that he wouldn’t go through the trouble of trailing her to a remote part of Cross River State. Again, she was happy that she wouldn’t have to spend her days and nights at the Love 100.5 FM radio station over the next couple of weeks, presenting boring programmes and reading (or editing) depressing news items. How wonderful life would be if she could just focus on completing her collection of poetry, due for submission in two weeks. Kambi looked at her watch and sighed. In a few hours, the skies would draw their curtains. And her agent would call her to find out how her writing was going.

Completing the manuscript would bring her one step closer to her ultimate goal – to be a published author, not just a performance poet.

She raised her chin as the first lines of a poem rang in her head.

Kissing the granite-like features of that face …

She paused.

Not the face of the uniformed guard at the gatepost,

Not the face of the nomad,

leading a herd of cattle up the hill.

Kambi shook her head like a hen shaking flies off its comb. She would have to wait until she was settled into her room. Then, she could write a poem.

For now, Kambi took in the attractions of the haven. The mountain was teeming with blogging material. From her experience, photographs helped readers connect more to her poems. This holiday was also a chance to mix work and play. Just what she had been looking for – an opportunity to escape from her chaotic life to the serenity of the Obudu Mountain Resort.

And what a tranquil, even romantic, place this was! Kambi gasped with admiration as she clicked away with her camera. Dragging her luggage past the gatepost, she photographed the sculpted cow’s head, the frothing natural spring and the bright-green hills beyond. Every fibre of her being was suffused with the giddiness she felt each time she had seen commercials of the Obudu Mountain Resort on television.

A cable car conveyed her from the tropical base of the mountain up into the more temperate mountaintop. For the entire four-kilometre journey, she looked up and down at the sparkly streams criss-crossing the gorges, at the wafting clouds, and at the flowers. She breathed in the clean mountain air and decided that this trip would be more fun than she had imagined. But fun in a quiet way, which was exactly what she needed.

A travel poem about my arrival.

“How high?” Kambi asked the cable car operator. “How high is this plateau?”

She inhaled the aroma of wet grass. Rushing streams flowed around the looming slopes of the Obudu plateau and cascaded down rough black rocks. Swiftly, they flowed onto the shallow gutters that lined the narrow curve up the fog-blanketed plateau.

“About 1,600 metres above sea level,” the cable car driver replied as they approached the reception.

Another downward glance revealed a steel-coloured giant anaconda on the grassy plateau. Clicking away with her camera, she gasped at the impressive gorges draped with undergrowth, trees and plants, and the endless S-shaped road that slithered up the mountain.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. The scenery was enthralling enough to erase remnants of the haunting memories of Victor’s betrayal. What a shattering experience that had been. She’d felt as though her confidence had been smashed against a wall. And, for a long time, all she had written were poems about life’s complexities, forgiveness and self-preservation. She hadn’t been able to trust her muse. In order to unlock more of her creative juices, she had sneaked out of Port Harcourt that morning before the first light of dawn appeared.

The sudden stop of the cable car caused her to jerk out of her reverie.

She picked up her luggage, thanked the cable operator – whose cap bore the insignia of the last mountain race competition – and stepped out into the reception.

A mask glared at her from the wall. Kambi had an eye for art. Victor had quarrelled with her over that (and most of her interests). He had such horrible taste in art, why had she agreed to marry him in the first place? She took photographs of a carving of a slouching old man leaning solemnly on a walking stick. The carving tilted slightly to the side of a bronze cow. Kambi clicked away.

“Welcome,” the receptionist said, as she leaned on the marble counter. “Is this your first time here?”

Kambi nodded and read the tag on the receptionist’s white cotton long-sleeved shirt – ‘Mina’.

Mina stared at Kambi, as did some of the chatty men who sat on the sofa, and those who milled around the door. Kambi adjusted her jacket and caught a pair of eyes peering at her over the top of an opened Saturday Guardian newspaper. It was another Saturday!

Her phone beeped. A text message from her agent. Kambi’s heart pounded faster as she responded to the message. There was real trouble: a new deadline!

Kambi wondered if everyone knew of her misfortunes. Why else were they staring? It crossed her mind that people often stared at her unashamedly. She had a small waist which she tried to conceal but to no avail. Stripper-girl figure, her friend Kaycee usually joked. Whenever she wore a belt on a long, fitted shirt and pencil jeans, she got stares, like the ones she was receiving now. Once, she had been at a book reading where she spent time discussing Rudyard Kipling’s If with a popular poet. She had stormed out because the man kept staring at her breasts. Now, she forgot all about her agent and her mind flitted to the staring people. Why were they staring at her this time?

Flushed with embarrassment, she almost didn’t hear the receptionist when she spoke.

“Nice scarf,” the receptionist said, grinning. She was pointing to Kambi’s turquoise scarf.

Kambi touched the cloth around her neck. She smiled shyly, her eyes registering surprise. It had been a gift from her mother. “Thank you,” she said.

Kambi ran her finger down the laminated list and pointed to the chalet.

“It’s not occupied at the moment,” Mina said. Kambi filled in a form and looked out of the window.

Oh my God! It’s him. It’s Hunky Beba. She gasped and stared with her mouth open at the tall, broad-chested mixed-race man who had once fought off hoodlums and saved her from what could have been a life-threatening attack. But that was six years ago, and Kambi wondered whether to go out and say hello or to let it pass. She chose the latter.

Every time Kambi remembered that night in her first year at the university – that night when she had been waylaid along a lonely lane on her way back from a poetry performance, after she had tripped on a stump and fallen, she wondered where Hunky Beba had come from. She had asked him, in the course of their close friendship, and he’d said, “Heaven!” Later, she learned that he was an alumnus who was at the university to process his transcript. He needed to stay on campus for a few more days because the records officers were still processing his documents.

Kambi had thought of Hunky Beba as an angel. Before he went for his masters they had spent some time together. She began to admire his smile, his eyes, his calm demeanour, his intelligence, and experience. She loved the way he treated her with respect. But she had felt so overwhelmed by emotions that she decided to end the warm friendship that they had built. She had always been the cautious kind – choosing her priorities carefully. He, too, had said he was afraid of getting hurt. Orchestrating fights and quarrels: these were her strategies for discouraging him. Once, she had turned down his invitation to accompany him to a dinner party to meet some good friends of his. It was the only way she knew how to protect herself from emotional hurt – shielding herself from love. Back then, the thought of commitment made her feel stifled, as though strong hands were gripping her throat and blocking her windpipe. Then, she was young and naïve.

Now, there was the new deadline for the submission of her poetry collection to her agent, and she just couldn’t handle another distraction.

“Quite an attractive man, isn’t he?”

“Who?” Kambi replied, feigning ignorance. One look at him sent shivers down her spine.

Mina raised her chin towards the window where the man was standing, staring into the sky.

Handing Kambi a sheaf of papers, Mina smiled and said, “Please sign here.”

“Oh!” Kambi said with a wide smile. She signed the forms.

“No need to be shy. My half-brother has been alone a long time,” Mina chattered as she pointed the remote control at the mute television in the corner. “It’s good to know pretty women still find him attractive. Do you want me to hook you up?”

Bad idea. She took in Mina’s oval-shaped, dark-complexioned face. Mina was a pretty girl, but she shared only one feature with Beba – the pink, plump lips. Kambi was surprised; she hadn’t known he had half-siblings. She knew he was from Cross River state; she had also learned about his time as a Peace Corps volunteer, and that he had a degree in metallurgical engineering, but she hadn’t managed to learn much about his family.