He didn’t have to dream of home | Chapter One: Part 2 of Forest Girl #ComingSoon #PreOrder #AAromance

It's 3 Weeks to release day! (I'm gearing up for my happy dance)

A huge thank you to those who came by the past two weeks to read the excerpts, and especially to all who left me a comment. I hope you enjoy this week's excerpt too.

If you missed the first two posts, here are the links:

• Prologue
• Chapter 1: part 1

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Esi Afriyie has been in love with Michael Yaw Badu since childhood. When he receives a scholarship to study in America, all hope seems lost ... until he returns to Ghana ten years later. An arranged marriage contracted by their families makes her dreams come true, but does the reality of being Mrs. Michael Badu live up to the fantasy?

Michael may have married Esi, but he is in love with someone else—Forest Girl, a mystery woman he encountered just once in the forest. His heart belongs to her, and he doesn't need his beautiful wife awakening his carnal desires. He is even willing to sacrifice his marriage for another encounter with Forest Girl.

Reality is not what either Esi or Michael imagined. Esi is disillusioned; Michael feels trapped.

Will Michael give in and allow his heart to discover a love that was always meant to be, before it's too late?

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Amazon US

Amazon UK 

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(and all other Amazon outlets)

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(more outlets coming soon)

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(PS. written in UK English)

Here's Chapter one: part two where we get to know more about Michael.

By the time he’d talked about his stay in America and subsequent return to Ghana, his new job at AgroChem, and his actual journey back to Ebinom, he’d spoken for over thirty minutes. His mother, in turn, told him about all the happenings since his departure; his brother, Sefah, taking over the duties of running the family farms, Serwaa still unmarried, his father’s transition into ancestry.

“It has been a year now. We have already done your father’s first anniversary assembly, since we were not sure when you would be arriving,” Maame Badu explained. “That’s the way of life. You are born one day, you fulfil the tasks you were put here to do, then Ɔdomankoma takes you back. It is a journey we all have to make someday.”

Michael’s heart shuddered. A sense of foreboding always lodged in his chest whenever his mother spoke of death as though she were ready to go any day, as if she wanted to go. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her.

“You’ll go to the cemetery with Sefah and Serwaa, and they will show you where we laid your father to rest. May his soul rest in peace.”

Michael nodded. Images of the man who had been his childhood hero—and still was—flashed through his mind. The man who had showed him how to hunt and skin his catch, who had taught him how to be a man. He missed his father. The shock he had felt upon receiving the letter informing him of his father’s death still lingered.

The old man hadn’t been sick, the letter had stated. Michael had been grateful for that. His father would have hated to have been ill for any period. It would have meant being weak and a burden to the people he was supposed to protect. No! Strong today, gone tomorrow. That was exactly how his father, the hero, would have chosen to go.

It hadn’t been possible to leave America at the time, but an opportunity had presented itself several months later, an opportunity to return home and test a fertiliser, Formula F, which he had helped develop.

When he and his mother finished talking, he dined with his family and distributed the gifts he had brought them.

The journey from Accra to Ebinom had been tedious. Preparation towards the trip had taken a lot out of him. By seven o’clock, he was ready to call it a night, so excusing himself, he kissed his mother’s cheek and retired to his room.

***

Moments later as Michael lay in bed, hands crossed beneath his head, eyes staring at the ceiling, he smiled a simple, noncommittal smile. The familiar smells, and the sound of crickets chirping outside filled him with joy. Home. He may have come from humble beginnings, but he’d always been proud of his heritage. “Humble beginnings do not diminish a man,” his father used to say. He’d kept those words in his heart.

He breathed a contended sigh.

Ten years ago, he had been an ordinary village boy who should have been satisfied with everything he had. He could have stopped schooling and worked on his father’s farms as Sefah had done, then get married and bear children.

However, he had wanted more. His desire to attain greater heights than his father had ever reached had propelled him and filled him with a yearning for something greater. He had wanted to point to himself someday, if not as somebody else’s hero, then as his own. At an early age, he’d been able to see how nature dictated their lives, how a little drought, locust attack, or bush fire could affect the harvest. Couldn’t something better than plain animal droppings or other local manure be used to toughen the crops against the vagaries of the weather, he had wondered.

At school, his favourite subject had been Agriculture where he had learnt about mechanised farming in the developed world. His fascination with how one country could produce enough to feed itself and many others had fuelled his desire to learn how such a feat could be achieved.

His Agricultural Science teacher had encouraged him. “Our village folk are too dependent on the food they get from the soil and the livestock they rear,” he’d often say.

Such words had watered the seed already planted in Michael’s mind. He not only strove to excel in his studies, but in every area he could; prefect for most of the time he’d been in secondary school, placing among the top three students in his class, and remaining one of the best athletes the school had ever produced.

He chuckled, remembering several girls vying for his love, but he hadn’t paid them any attention. Just when he’d finished his A-levels, destiny had favoured him—his uncle, Wↄfa Tawiah, in America had helped him obtain a visa to further his education. Michael would forever be grateful to him.

While studying for his masters in America, he had met Lena Brown-Ankrah, a Ghanaian undergraduate student and very attractive woman whose maturity and intelligence had immediately caught his attention, as had her chic fashion sense. Like every modern girl, she felt it her right to have whatever she wanted, but it was that very sense of determination which attracted him. He’d left her back in Accra where, by this time, she’d be back home from work, indulging in a glass of wine while preparing dinner.

He shifted to a more comfortable position, contemplating the changes he’d noticed.  Ebinom had expanded beyond its original borders. Had it become home to new settlers, or was it simply the result of expanding family units? The thought of growing families filled him with a strange yearning. He dismissed it immediately. With his upcoming project taking off soon, children were the last thing he needed to think about.

Bringing his mind back to the present, he took stock of his old room. His father’s house looked and felt more comfortable. Well…Sefah’s bed creaked, and Serwaa slept on a mattress on the floor, but even those were an improvement over the lumpy, straw mattresses and woven mats they’d had growing up.

  With these thoughts swirling in his mind, he finally welcomed sleep, and for the first time in a long while, he didn’t have to dream of home.

Did you enjoy this excerpt? Please, leave me a comment and remember to come back next week to meet my heroine, Esi. (Read Chapter 1: part 3)

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