Prologue

Steven is the CEO of Foresight with a glass lined office on the 23 floor of the Shard in downtown London. He has never married. He's allowed people to give him a casanova reputation even though no one has ever met one of his "escapades". They just can't imagine that a man of his stature doesn't have a line of women admirers. He tends to keep people at arms length, not letting anyone close enough to know the real him. Steven is never available on the weekends, unless it's an important business trip one of his competent employees can't handle. Other than that he does not deviate from his weekly visit to his family cottage just outside Castle Hedingham, Essex. Steven's weekends are devoted to caring for his ailing father suffering from dementia. He gives the live-in nurse the weekends off to recoup from the burden of 24/7 caregiving all week. He doesn't want to put his father in a home, although it would be so much easier not make the 60 mile drive every weekend. His father could be right in London and Steven could stop by after work and not feel so guilty every Sunday when he closes the front door behind him knowing his father is slipping further and further away. He already gets only small glimpses of lucidity. It's been a year since his father, talking in the middle of his favorite show, recounting a fishing trip Steven took him on ten years prior. Reciting every detail of the day including the promise Steven made to bring him back to that exact spot, which he never did due to his work load. Steven's father was not a kind man growing up. Losing his mother at a young age all the attention and verbal berating fell on him. Watching the struggles his parents went through, the fights over money, gave Steven the drive to never be in the same situation. His passion is what pushed him through grad school and all the long hours working his way up the ladder. His parents relationship is also what gave him his greatest fear, love. Their tumultuous relationship so burned into his reality that he could only see unhappy couples all around him. He is not going to end up as a statistic and lose half his equity. He tries desperately to convince himself that it isn't worth it, but snuggled at the bottom of his heart is a longing for a head of hair tickling his nose as he wakes in the morning to the love of his life perfectly formed to the side of his body and her head breathing deeply on his chest.