Bad Girl Blues

by Brenda Barrett

  "With strings attached." Brigid sighed. "Another deal with another devil. Why can't I catch a break?"

  "This is a break," Thomas murmured, "though I am not too pleased with you characterizing me as a devil. I must say that this is the sweetest deal you'll ever be offered in your life. Take advantage of the bounties offered. I am a rich man. Use me, Brigid. I am willing to be used."

  "But I am not," Brigid said. "I want..."

  Her voice trailed away and she saw Nick in her mind’s eye, a disapproving glint in his eyes.

  I want Nick. I want to be a doctor. To be from a different family. To have a different mother. Not necessarily in that order.

  "You want what?" Thomas asked earnestly, because she hadn't dared itemize her list aloud.

  "I want... to forget everything that happened today," Brigid said. "I just don't want to think anymore. At least not today."

  "Done." Thomas gave her a warm smile. "I am planning a party in Portland this weekend. I recently bought a hotel there; well, it's a villa concept. Really rustic. I want to start bookings by the end of summer. I think I should go and check it out. Make sure that the staff is up to par before I hand it over to my management company. I think you will have a fabulous time there and best of all, you will not have to think. You'll just be required to enjoy yourself and take in the gorgeous view."

  *****

  After class Wednesday, Nick went to Sunrise Medical with an uncomfortable feeling dogging him all the way. After the stop at his grandfather's place on Monday he hadn't been able to sleep. Brigid's rejection had weighed on his mind.

  He had constructed a test. One which she had failed. He cringed at how happy he was when he saw her results but then he saw her crestfallen expression and that had made him feel as guilty as ever.

  He parked and then heaved a sigh. He had called her back to tell her he was sorry for that remark he had made about her personal life.

  He was jealous of her and it was screwing with his professionalism. Her rejection had hurt him on a level he didn't want to examine too closely.

  He headed to his office but slowed down in the busy lobby when he saw his aunt Pat speaking to Luca.

  "Hey Aunty, Luca." He went closer to them.

  Patricia looked at him and smiled. Aunt Pat was a pretty woman. His father said they had been extra protective of their little sister when she was younger because she had been a knockout. She still was very beautiful, especially on the inside, where it counted. He didn't know if there was another person on the planet as loving and altruistic as Pat was. She was just in her forties but she didn't look it. Her hair was cut into a full bell-like style and she had dyed it a reddish brown color. Her eyes were a warm chocolate brown and she smiled at him now. They lit up from the inside.

  "Oh honey, I got your message that you wanted to talk to me. I am heading up to Magnolia House so I decided to stop by. I heard you weren’t here but Luca was telling me about his engagement party."

  Luca nodded. "Yes. I popped the question. She said yes. We don't want to wait."

  "Congrats, man." Nick smiled and then added, "Again."

  Luca grinned. "This time I am marrying the right woman."

  Patricia smiled and nodded. "Looking forward to helping plan the wedding. You know, Casey was always my special little girl. You better take care of her, Luca Lawson. And I am looking forward to having you back in the family."

  Luca smiled. "I will take care of her, as she will take care of me. I am sure of it."

  "Well then," Patricia said, looking at Nick, "want us to go to your office and talk?"

  "Sure." Nick led the way to his office and closed the door after his aunt sat down.

  "This is nice," Patricia said looking around, "and spacious. You guys have a good thing going on here, and I see you have a few pieces of Helen's work on the walls."

  Nick pulled the blinds and let in some light, along with the view of a well-manicured garden. It was a small space but was packed with flowers.

  All the doctors' offices had a view of the garden and a fountain. It was supposed to be therapeutic.

  He looked through the window for a while. And stared at an orange hibiscus plant. It was almost the same shade as the dress Brigid had worn on Monday. He breathed in and then out slowly.

  When he spun around his aunt was looking at him with concern. "What's wrong, honey?"

  "Nothing." Nick pushed his hands in his pockets. "I am teaching a course at university for my mom."

  Patricia nodded. "I heard. Your dad told me."

  Nick scratched his chin.

  "That's your nervous move," Patricia said, crossing her legs and leaning closer to him. "Are you in trouble or something?"

  "No." Nick inhaled. "Well, not sure if it's trouble. I have the worst fascination for one of my students."

  "Ah." Patricia smiled. "It's med school; she's an adult. What's the issue?"

  "She's Thomas' girlfriend." Nick sat down and drummed his hand on the table. "She's gorgeous. I mean, I can't describe it. There is her beauty and then there is something about her that fascinates me. She has this way about her; she's mysterious and complicated."

  Patricia's smile widened. "What's this gorgeous, fascinating creature’s name?"

  "Brigid Manderson," Nick said, looking at her closely. "Know her?"

  Patricia gasped and sat straighter in her chair. "Of course I know her. Brigid is one of my girls."

  "Your girls?" Nick asked. "What does that mean?"

  "One of my Magnolia House girls." Patricia was no longer smiling. "A couple of years ago I personally selected four girls to live in the new bungalow at Magnolia House. I wanted them to grow up as sisters. You know, to have a sense of family. I like to think of myself as their honorary mother. Simeon didn't like it, though. He thinks that I am over-compensating for my inability to conceive."

  Nick frowned. "So Brigid is an orphan?"

  "No." Patricia shook her head. "Not really. She has family. Her mother was a druggie prostitute. Brigid was born addicted to drugs. It affected her for a long time. She had a rough childhood.

  "When we got her she was returned by a foster family. The thing about Brigid was that families wanted her because she was an exceptionally pretty child but they couldn't keep her because of her behavioral issues. The drugs caused her to have attention deficit hyperactive disorder.

  "We had her in counseling and therapy for years. Brigid is a good example of not giving up on anyone. She is as far from who she was as a little girl as she can be now. She had such a rough start in life and now she is as focused as anybody I know. She just finished her first degree in Biochemistry."

  Nick blinked several times while his aunt was speaking. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. When he pictured Brigid in his head, that was not the type of background he had envisioned she'd have.

  "The truth is," Patricia said, looking downcast and a bit embarrassed, "Simeon doesn't like my attachment to them. I had to set up a phony scholarship to send Brigid through university.

  "A year ago he found out what I was doing. We had a major fight about it and Brigid lost her scholarship. I felt so helpless to help her after that but she got help in the form of her mother. Though I was a bit skeptical of her being with Sonia at first."

  "So you were helping the other girls too?" Nick asked. "Was that why Simeon flipped out?"

  "No." Patricia sighed. "Simeon was just being Simeon, really protective of me. He hates when I call them my girls too. Anyway, my other girls had been set up nicely; Casey had gotten a full scholarship.

  "Caitlin had her grand aunt paying her way. Hazel was not into academia; she wanted to go to chef school and I got a nice job for her, but Brigid couldn't have afforded university and I could not just leave her to fend for herself. So I made up this scholarship. She has no idea that I was the source of her scholarship. When Simeon stopped me last year it made things harder for her."

  Nick was still as his aunt talked. "So how is she paying for med school now?"


  Patricia frowned. "I had no idea that Brigid was doing med school. I thought that she would work for a year and maybe wait for a scholarship. Her grades have been great. If she's at med school, my guess would be that her mother is the one footing the bill."

  "The prostitute druggie!" Nick's eyes widened.

  Patricia shrugged. "Brigid assures me that her mother is no longer a prostitute or a druggie. She has a business now. It is doing well, I think."

  "What kind of business?" Nick asked belatedly. He had been thinking that maybe Thomas was footing Brigid's med school bill. It made much more sense to him now, why she was so super-aware of him and yet would choose to stay with his cousin. Thomas was bankrolling her.

  "It's an escort service," Patricia said, a pained look crossing her face.

  "So the mother is continuing with her old ways," Nick said, a look of distaste crossing his features. "Aren't escort services a fancy way of saying prostitution these days?"

  Patricia fidgeted uncomfortably after Nick said that. She cleared her throat. "Brigid would never get involved to the degree you are thinking, Nick."

  *****

  He saw his aunt out of the building shortly after she sprang up and said she had to attend a meeting at Magnolia House. He held the front door of the building open, kissed her perfumed cheeks and then went back to his office and stared at the hibiscus flower that rested on his window.

  Brigid's history was recycling in his mind. He dissected and inspected all the details and then came back to the information that was the most shocking for him. Her mother ran an escort business.

  What did that mean? Did the escorts sleep with their dates? That was how he knew it worked. He once had a patient who had gone into cardiac arrest while having sex with an escort in his hotel room. He had been called in to resuscitate the older gentleman. The escort had stayed behind to make sure he was okay. She had been surprisingly candid with her story.

  "He hired me for this," she had told Nick, winking at him. "How should I know gramps was not supposed to be having sex?"

  And then an insidious thought sprung up in his mind. Was that how Brigid and his cousin came to be together?

  He had asked her how they met and she had said through a mutual friend. His gut twisted with revulsion. The mutual friend could have been the escort agency that her mother ran. He was no prude but the thought of Brigid being an escort had plunged him into depression.

  He opened his laptop and typed in the search engine ‘escort agency Sonia’. He clicked on the first link and was forwarded to a site named Big Ed Girls. The site was filled with half naked pictures of girls in various stages of undress; dancehall music blared from the site.

  He quickly closed the page and swallowed. He waited for the revulsion to spread toward Brigid. He didn't want anything to do with her now.

  Not at all.

  Thomas was more than welcome to have her as his girlfriend. If you could call her a girlfriend.

  He breathed out deeply.

  This was the wake-up call he had needed to officially go back to normal. Brigid was not his type of girl. Could never be his type of girl, not in a million years. It was fortuitous that she had turned him down after he had boldly propositioned her like that.

  He was just thirty years old, after all, and there were plenty of women in his sphere who were a hundred times more suitable than Brigid. Women who weren't dating his cousin or sleeping with men for money.

  He wondered why he felt so crushed, as if all that was decent and innocent in the world was now dirty.

  His phone rang several times before he realized it. He picked it up absently.

  "Hey Nick." It was Thomas.

  "I can't talk to you right now Thomas," Nick said hoarsely.

  "No problem man." Thomas chuckled. "Just calling you for an invite to Mount Crest Villas this weekend. Aunt Marisol must have told you that I bought it."

  No, she did not, Nick wanted to snap.

  Before he could respond Thomas continued smoothly. "A couple of my friends and the other cousins were invited. I couldn't invite them and not you."

  "Thanks," Nick said, having no intention of spending a weekend anywhere near Thomas and his smug, bragging self and his prostitute girlfriend who still managed to look beautiful and innocent at the same time. How did she do that?

  She must have practiced it. Nick concluded; that kind of behavior must be coded in her DNA. He couldn't believe that he had fallen for her wide-eyed innocent looks. He couldn't believe that she had caused him to lose sleep. She had caused him to think about her more seriously than he had any other woman in recent memory.

  Why was she even doing med school? Was she planning to be a prostitute doctor? He found himself getting worked up and he didn't hear a word of what Thomas said until he cleared his throat loudly in Nick's ear.

  "Brigid will be there. She is living with me now, you know. Things are getting serious."

  Nick sat up straighter in his chair and squeezed the phone to his ear tighter. She was living with his cousin?

  He listened as Thomas harped on some more about Brigid, the love of his life. His knuckles were almost cramped with tension when he hung up the phone.

  Just then he decided that he was going to Mount Crest Villas for the weekend. A tiny piece of him wanted to test how loyal a partner Brigid was to his cousin, and he also wanted to know if seeing her again would have any effect on him at all.

  Surely, he was too fastidious to feel anything for a gold-digging escort who was bereft of any moral fortitude.

  Chapter Eleven

  Brigid had spent the last few days before the trip to the villa in a zombie-like state that had refused to wear off. True to his word, Thomas had given her all the space that she needed. He had spent most of his time talking with Sonia, who had remarkably rebounded from being kicked out of her house and business with another business plan to open a modeling agency.

  That's all she had been yammering about for the last few days. So far Thomas was entertaining Sonia's ideas with all the keenness and eagerness of a man who was confident that he was on the cusp of scoring a bigger prize.

  Brigid looked through the car window at the lush green foliage of Portland and listened to Sonia and Thomas as they chatted away.

  What was she doing here? At this place and time. She hadn't had the best start in life but she had found her way through. She had a degree, she was sort of in med school, she had a place to live and now this...nothing.

  But right here. She couldn't quite raise herself out of her self-induced inertia. And as soon as she pondered the question she stamped it down. She needed more time to assimilate everything.

  She had missed her class on Friday. There was no need to go now. She couldn't pay her summer school bill. She pressed her face to the car glass, glad for its warmth. Thomas had turned up the air conditioning so high she was close to shivering.

  They were heading to Mount Crest villas, overlooking the bluer-than-blue Blue Lagoon and a small island in the distance. When they drove up to the place. Sonia hopped out of the front seat of the car and chortled.

  "Now this is what I call gorgeous!"

  Brigid followed from the back much more slowly and had to agree. The place was nicely done, with several cottages spread throughout the property. They had names of birds on them. Some of the cottages went all the way back toward the beach. The place was liberally decorated with colorful shrubs and flowers and there were the unmistakable bird sounds.

  "How many cottages are here?" She looked up at Thomas, who had come to assist her. He casually placed his hand around her waist.

  She resisted the urge to shrug away. He was obviously biding his time, taking it slow. Touching her as if it were his right.

  He was looking around with pride now, pointing out the features of the place, his brown eyes alight with glee. He was a rich guy, he could buy anything, even her, and she was allowing it.

  The thought was something she had been wrestling with from the
first night she slept in one of his guest rooms.

  She was well and truly bought. No wonder Thomas was taking it for granted that she would have no problem with his casual touches. It was only a matter of time before she succumbed to him now. He was promising her a life of ease and a medical degree.

  "Fifteen." Thomas lowered his voice and looked at her, a small smile dancing across his lips. "The private white sand beach can be accessed by walking down the cliffs. Luckily, I put in stairs. So there'll be no problem for you accessing it."

  "You and I are in Hummingbird Cottage." Thomas twirled a lock of her curly hair around his fingers. "We have the best view of the bay from there, and an unobstructed view of Blue Lagoon. Don't worry," he whispered under his breath, "it is a two-bedroom cottage."

  Brigid relaxed but only marginally. Thomas' eyes were clinging to hers and he was giving her one of his hot looks, as if she was the only person in the world. It made her jittery and uncomfortable; she didn't want him like that. It would be perfect if she did; at least she could quell her conscience and use him as he had invited.

  Thomas lifted her cheek and stared at her searchingly. "You are so gorgeous and I am falling for you in a real way. I want you so much."

  Brigid swallowed and then shifted away.

  Thomas sighed. "You'll get there, Brigid, you'll want me too. You and I are going to be so good together."

  His caretaker, a lady he introduced as Pam, came from one of the cottages and had a brief conversation with Thomas. Brigid vaguely heard them talking about the staff and the weekend party and activities.

  She wondered idly who Thomas invited to his party. She was itching to go down to the beach and just lie in the sand with her feet in the water.

  She also wanted to shake the voice in her head that was urging her not to continue this madness with Thomas.

  *****

  The cottage was well furnished, as Brigid soon found out. She chose one of the rooms. Both of them seemed to be the same size and had an equally good view of the bay. They both had patios that overlooked the lagoon and the white sand beach below.