Anita looked at his earnest features longingly. She was on the verge of blurting out her biggest bombshell yet, just to see how he would take it, but something held her back. She slowly pulled her hand from his and massaged her temples.
"When are you going to act like the mature person you claim you are and give us a chance?" Vanley asked softly.
"I promised to go to the singles retreat with you, didn't I?" Anita said, "That's progress."
Vanley nodded. "I guess. Can I come to your house to see you sometime?"
No! Carol's voice shrieked in Anita's head before she could even formulate it herself.
She shook her head instead. "Let's take it one step at a time."
"What's your middle name?" Vanley asked, standing up. He looked a little disappointed that she refused to see him in a different environment.
"My middle name?" Anita flushed. "I don't have one."
"Really?" Vanley quirked his brow at her. "Your parents didn't give you a middle name?"
"Something like that," Anita said frowning. "Why'd you ask?"
"Just realized I didn't know it." Vanley said. "Mine is Christian. There was one time I was thinking of going by the name V.C. Bancroft."
"Sounds distinguished," Anita said, watching as he palmed the basket and headed to the door.
"I enjoyed having lunch with you," Vanley said, staring at her intensely before he walked out.
His intensity left her with a slight headache. Her heart was beating unevenly, and she felt a hot flush under her collar. She glanced down at the papers in front of her and gritted her teeth.
She was not going to indulge herself in 'what if' questions, like what if Vanley knew her secret and decided that he would stay with her anyway. She had work to do.
*****
When Vanley exited the office, Davia was at her desk. She looked at him and then at the basket and gave him a less than cheery hello. Vanley waved to her and headed through the door not catching the speculative look on her face.
Davia drummed her fingers on the desk after Vanley left. She always thought that Vanley and Anita were just good friends. She thought that Anita was like a mother figure to him. She almost laughed at her naiveté. That face coming out of Anita's office was not one of a man who had a platonic relationship with a woman. It was one of a love struck fool.
The thought made her angry and jealous. When Anita called her into the office, she barely heard what Anita said. She was looking at her in a completely new light. She assessed her boss, feature by feature. What was so attractive about her anyway? she thought resentfully. You could call her pretty if you squinted one eye tightly and tilted your head to the left; maybe it was the line of her neck, or the way her hair swung. She had healthy hair and smooth peanut butter looking skin, but for Vanley to be attracted to Anita, surely that couldn't be true. The thought wouldn't quit though, and she silently took the dictation of a letter that Anita was giving to her.
"These are the bare bones," Anita said to her in her husky professional voice. "Flesh it out and send it to me."
"Okay," Davia said abruptly and stood up. "Will there be anything else?"
Anita looked at her stony expression and shook her head. "No. Where's that happy smile of yours?"
Davia gave her a half smile. "Just one of those days, female issues." She tacked on carelessly.
Anita nodded. "Okay."
Davia huffed and went to her desk, banging the keys on the computer so loudly that she almost broke a nail. Her guy—the guy that she thought of as hers—was seeing her boss, an older woman. The inevitable comparison of herself to Anita started in her mind.
So Anita was forty and had a nice shape; she obviously worked for it and she drank green smoothies in the mornings for breakfast. She always had one of those in her hand. Her complexion was clear, but who could be sure? She always had on makeup, Davia thought waspishly.
She was also smart and worked hard and had a demanding high-powered job. Maybe that was what Vanley found so appealing. Maybe he found strong women a turn on. Davia looked at the business document in disgust. She had barely typed “Dear Sir/Madam”.
Next time she spoke to Vanley, she was going to have to find out about his mother. Maybe he had mommy issues, or maybe he just loved Anita for who she was. The thought made her bite her tongue, and she could taste the salty blood in her mouth.
That couldn't be it. She needed to know why he liked her boss and not her. Granted, they had just met, but she couldn't understand why he was going for Anita, of all the women in the world. He was still in his mid-twenties why saddle himself with Anita?
She started running their ages through her head: When he is forty-five Anita would be sixty, and Anita might not age well. Who knew how broken down she would look in the next couple of years.
She started typing guiltily when Anita exited her office. She was dressed in one of her tailored suits. Today it was green and it fitted her body perfectly. Davia looked down on her gray tweed suit and shuddered. She was the one who dressed like she was near retirement, not Anita. In fact, the suit she had on was a hand-me-down, straight from her grandmother's closet. She had appreciated it because it would be warm enough for the cool winds of January, but now she realized that it was boxy, furry, shapeless, and looked a hundred years old—her grandmother, a former postmistress, had made the suit for herself in the 70s.
She looked at Anita again. She was on her cell phone. Her hair swung forward as she talked in her even low-pitched voice. She oozed confidence and sophistication, even in the way she moved and laughed in that unaffected controlled way of hers.
Davia realized that if she were going to fight for Pastor Vanley Bancroft's attention and win, acting the ingénue would get her nowhere. The man obviously loved a certain maturity; she couldn't be a girly, giggly, country bumpkin type. She had to become sophisticated like the woman he obviously had a thing for.
"I am not going to be in for the rest of the evening," Anita said above Davia's bent head. "I am going to that Think Tank meeting with the other VP's. You can knock off early if you are having female issues as you said."
"Thank you," Davia said, bobbing her head up and down and cringing inwardly when Anita walked off. She couldn't afford to be bobbing her head. She needed to incline her neck in a graceful and sophisticated manner—she had so much to learn.
She tidied her desk while pondering whom she could ask to help her transition into a more sophisticated woman. All the persons she knew had either just graduated from school like herself and were looking for jobs or were older, unsophisticated labourers.
She was still pondering when she walked out of the building. It was three o'clock on a Thursday. She rarely left the office this early on a weekday.
She had gotten the job in the president's office because she had worked there as a student assistant when she had been doing her associate’s degrees in business. The job opening in the office of the VP of Administration had been a godsend for her, mostly because she did not have two dimes to rub together after paying tuition fees. She needed to live at home for a while to be able to save anything.
She had never really gone anywhere beyond these hills. Most of the people she grew up with either went to college or left to other parts of the country or the world. Rarely any of her batch mates were content to stay in the farming district. Therefore, she had nobody to really advise her on where to go in her quest to be more sophisticated than Anita Parkinson.
She almost bumped into Dr. Bancroft on her way down the stairs, so absorbed was she in her thoughts.
"Sorry, Sir," She said, mortified. One did not just bump into the president.
Bancroft looked at her coldly before recognition lit up his eyes. "Davia. How are you?"
He was standing beside a brown-haired girl with a Mohawk hairstyle. She was wearing jeans with holes at the knees and a tight black top with the words “I love Khaled” on the front.
"Fine, Sir." Davia stammered. At least he was smiling at her warmly
.
"This is my daughter, Jessica," Bancroft said to Davia.
Jessica waved at Davia without enthusiasm.
"She is almost the same age as you," Bancroft hissed at Jessica. "Look at you, and look at her."
He turned to Davia with a smile on his face. "Can you fix her?"
"Fix her?"
"Yes." Bancroft nodded. "Give her some tips on how to look like a modest young lady." His cell phone rang and he walked away leaving the two girls to stare at each other.
Jessica grinned. "Are you sure we are almost the same age? Why do you look so... er... mature in that suit? Looks like something my old granny would wear."
Davia frowned and looked down at the suit. "How did you know? It's actually my grandmother's suit. She used to be a postmistress."
Jessica chuckled.
"I was just thinking a while ago that I needed an upgrade." Davia shook her head. "More sophisticated clothes and shoes." She looked down at her sensible black work shoes with the almost flat heels. She had always worn flats so that she did not tower above men, but even if she wore heels, she wouldn't tower over Vanley, she thought gleefully.
"Ah," Jessica inclined her head. "Follow me. We can make a plan for your make over."
"But your father says I should fix you. Not the other way around."
"Don't mind him," Jessica said breezily. "He hates my new hairstyle. He thinks I look like a boy punk rocker. He was livid when he saw me just now. He's not thinking straight."
Davia grinned. "You don't look like a boy—punk rocker probably."
Jessica nodded. "I know. When I shaved the side of my head this morning, I regretted it almost instantly. I can't tell my Dad that though. He is livid now and won't listen to me."
They walked toward the library together.
"You know who would be perfect for this?" Jessica said, when they were seated around a table and she had gotten out her laptop. "Deidra, my sister-in-law. She is into fashion and stuff, but we don't have Deidra so we'll just have to wing it. We'll look at how you want to look and then replicate it."
They rifled through several sites and commented on the business wear.
"What's your budget like?" Jessica asked, pointing to a model in an Armani suit.
"Very limited," Davia said, naming a figure. "I could only afford that suit if I were to save all of my money for a year."
Jessica nodded. "No problem. What we can do is have a dressmaker replicate the style. I know two good ones. Well, my mother knows them; some of the stuff she wears are custom made, you know."
"Really?" Davia asked, surprised.
"Yes, my Mom believes in supporting the cottage industry and small businesses. It was annoying when I was little, but I see the reason for it now, and I see that it's going to come in handy for you. Let's just get the styles, and then we can get the materials and you are good to go."
"Thanks, Jessica," Davia said looking, over the images again and getting excited.
Jessica shrugged. "We are even. At least you allowed me to escape my Dad for a while. Now I am going to have to think up ways to cover this hairstyle when he is around."
Chapter Five
"Why do you have to go to St. Ann?" Carol whined as Anita dragged outfit after outfit from her closet.
"Because I promised Vanley that I would," Anita said, looking over a tank top and a skirt. "Do you think this is too close to neon green? I am not a bright color kind of person."
"I can't believe it." Carol was sitting at the corner of her bed. "You are going to just go to the beautiful parish and suck up the glorious sun and play around in the sea without me!"
"You should be in Kingston proving to the authorities that you are not a murderer." Anita shrugged. "You have been here for two weeks now. What are you waiting on?"
"I told you before that my alibi, Edward, is off the island. He'll be back in two weeks. He is an influential guy you know, who travels a lot."
"Edward, as in Edward Durkheim, the senator?" Anita asked combining two outfits and discarding them in disgust. She had loads of work clothes but hardly any for a singles retreat.
"Yes, Edward Durkheim," Carol said, cautiously. "Why?"
"I just know that he has a reputation for marrying at the drop of a hat, and that he is not averse to having an affair with married women."
"That's him," Carol giggled. "I tried calling him, but apparently the number is not roaming. I think of it as the affair number."
"The two of you are morally bankrupt," Anita said, folding up a yellow dress and stuffing it into her mini suitcase.
"Morally bankrupt?" Carol grinned. "Are we going to be discussing morals and ethics and little gray areas now, Anita? I've been dying to do that with you."
"No." Anita zipped up the suitcase. "You are not discussing anything with me. You are supposed to be in my past…living your life, far from me. If you ever dare breathe a word about anything, to anyone, I will immediately call the police."
"Okay," Carol said sullenly, "but you are going to have to tell your hearts desire, Vanley, about me one day."
"Shut it," Anita pointed at her warningly.
"Oh come on," Carol threw her hands over her head dramatically. "I am not the talkative type."
When Anita looked at her incredulously, she shrugged and grinned. "Tell me about Vanley."
"He's one of the subjects to be left alone," Anita said, pulling the suitcase toward the living room.
"So let me get this straight," Carol said walking behind her. "He's taking you to a hotel for a dirty weekend and you are ashamed of him. Is he like a janitor over at the school or something?"
"No." Anita gritted her teeth. "He is a pastor."
Carol gasped and put her hands over her breast. "A pastor!"
"And we are not going to a hotel for a dirty weekend, we are going to a singles retreat. Which means other pastors and single people will be there. We will hear about how to keep ourselves from sexual sins, have discussions, and check each other out in a Christian way—totally innocent and above board."
"Sounds boring," Carol mused, "I totally preferred the idea of you and a muscular janitor having a dirty weekend at one of those all inclusive hotels where the only thing you two hear are each others heavy breathing and the sound of the sea gently lapping the sand just beyond your door."
Anita closed her eyes and shook her head. "You are incorrigible."
"I know." Carol winked and then frowned, "What does incorrigible mean?"
Anita sighed. "Listen, Carol, take care of my dog; don't feed him any more chocolates, okay! And make sure my house stays in the condition I left it."
"Yes, Mommy," Carol said, batting her eyelashes. "Anything else?"
"No. That's it," Anita said, reluctant to leave Carol in her house for a whole weekend. She had already broken four glasses, spilled correction fluid on the guest room dresser, and made Chudney sick.
Just last week she had to check that her home insurance was up to date and covered for all disasters because Carol had tried to cook and almost burned down the kitchen. She took one last look at the house before she got into the car. She wasn't sure that it would still be there when she got back.
*****
Anita had agreed for Vanley to pick her up at the school. She did not expect that he would have other persons in the car. There were two guys and a girl sitting in the back, grinning—they looked ridiculously young. The guys looked like brothers, and the girl looked like she was in her teens. The girl could be her daughter. They were closer to Vanley's age. The thought almost paralyzed her as she stood beside the car, clutching her bag.
"Ready?" Vanley advanced to her with his loping stride and charming smile.
Anita almost shook her head and said no. What was she doing? Then the thought came to her that she could go back home but Carol was at her house. She swallowed.
She didn't want to have to explain to her uninvited houseguest why she was no longer going to the retreat. She didn't want Carol to know too much a
bout her life, especially anything to do with Vanley and his age. Carol would have a field day with that piece of information.
Vanley was looking at her, a small crease between his eyebrows.
"Oh no, Anita," he whispered, "don't tell me that you are changing your mind."
"Well... er... who are they?" Anita whispered fiercely. "You didn't tell me we were going to have company."
"They are last minute company," Vanley whispered back. "They are harmless, they won't bite."
"Maybe I shouldn't bother..."
Vanley closed one hand over her suitcase handle and tugged it gently. He held onto her hand, clasping it tightly and giving her a gentle tug. "You can do it."
"This thing is for young people," Anita said, walking behind him reluctantly. "Why on earth am I going?"
"Because you promised me," Vanley said, stowing her bag in the trunk of the car, "and you keep your promises."
Obviously, that was said in an effort to shame her into doing good. Anita walked to the front and smiled at the youngsters. "Hello," she said, getting into the car.
"Hello," they said with varying levels of cheerfulness.
"I am Anita." She felt obliged to introduce herself before Vanley came and said something linking her to the university and allowing them to speculate about her age.
"I am Joshua, and this is my brother, Joseph," one of the guys said. They both had similar grins and Anita nodded. Up close, it was hard to distinguish who was who.
The girl said, "And I am Rose. Are you Pastor Vanley's girlfriend?"
Anita almost sighed in relief at the question. At least she hadn't asked if she was his mother.
"No, I am not his girlfriend," she said quickly.
Vanley came into the vehicle. "To the beautiful parish we go. Want to pray for journeying mercies, Joseph?"
Joseph nodded and prayed.
The trip was lively. Anita had to give the passengers in the back credit. They looked young, but they didn't act it. They acted more mature than Carol! She was extremely grateful for that.
As they started to enter the parish of St. Ann, as usual, she felt a little lighter. She glanced over at Vanley. He was animatedly discussing the meaning of prayer with Joseph.
A Younger Man (Mount Faith Series: Book 7) Page 5