Private Dancer (The Bancrofts: Book 3)

by Barrett, Brenda

  Adrian watched her, feeling her pain, as if they were one. He knew that if he touched her he would be lost again, and tonight he was battling for self-control. He could not become involved with this new Cathy. If she broke his heart again he didn't know if he could mend.

  She stopped struggling to open the car door, and leaned against it and cried.

  Adrian watched her and made no move to intervene. He looked at the car instead. It was a late model BMW with some very impressive rims. Cathy had gotten what she wanted in life.

  "Was it worth it?" He asked her.

  Cathy didn't ask him what he meant; she knew all too well. She wiped her eyes with her hand, fumbled in her purse for her wet wipes and dragged one out.

  "Money over love? The world over God?" She twisted her lips. "No. It's not worth it, but I would have been okay if you didn't come back. Why did you come and look for me, Adrian?"

  "I thought…" Adrian cleared his throat. "I thought that I would make some allowance for your age. You know, when I left here you were just eighteen. We made mistakes, but those weren't mistakes that we couldn't work out. We were supposed to get married. I wanted that so badly." He clenched his fist. "You had a bad upbringing, but I always thought you had the willpower to rise above the circumstances and be a different person."

  Cathy sniffed uncomfortably. "Only to find out that I am just as your father said… a classless, money grubbing, dregs of society type."

  "My father was angry." Adrian shrugged. "He had every right to be at the time. You had no excuse to take his money a few weeks after and run away, though. You broke my heart." Adrian inhaled deeply. "It could have mended but then you smashed it with that mean little letter. You used your grandmother to deliver it and give me an earful."

  He shook his head. "That's all water under the bridge now though. I came to look for you because I had to."

  "And now that you have seen me?"

  "Now that I've seen you, I can say goodbye properly." Adrian's voice was getting husky. "Lay all of this madness to rest… move on with my life. After all, I am still young —too young to be mourning over a stripper."

  Cathy nodded. "You want closure?"

  "Something like that." Adrian's eyes roamed over her face. Even though her eyes were swollen and red, the deep brown color rimming her irises still reminded him of that amber stone that his grandmother had in her garden. They were pretty eyes. The children at her high school used to call them ‘puss eyes’.

  He wondered if he was telling the truth. Could he ever have closure with Cathy?

  "Well," Cathy's lips were dry and she licked them, "goodbye Adrian Bancroft."

  Adrian nodded and stepped away. "I need to get some sleep, I have a meeting tomorrow."

  Cathy looked down at the car door and then at her hands. They were trembling. "I won't have closure though," she said, looking at his retreating back.

  He stopped.

  "I didn't have that abortion."

  Adrian spun around. "What did you say?"

  She gave him a wan smile. "I had a girl, but I didn't want her growing up anywhere near my family or my lifestyle, so I gave her away."

  Adrian felt as if his world was spinning out of control. He heard her, but yet he didn't hear her.

  "You can't just tell me something like that and leave." He moved toward her as she got into the car.

  "I have to go." She looked on her watch. "I have to go home."

  "We need to talk about this!" Adrian shouted. "Where do you live?"

  Cathy wound down the window. "I am not telling you, Adrian. You are right, we need to forget what was between us and move on."

  She backed away from the parking lot and left him staring at the retreating car in shock.

  *****

  Adrian was livid. He was angrier than he could ever remember being. He didn't know where to start in his thoughts. He had been battling emotions back and forth all day, but this was the ultimate emotional wringer.

  He was so worked up that he went out onto the balcony of his room and stared out into the darkness. The early morning air was frigid. It reminded him of Mount Faith and his boyhood days when he would stand on his balcony at home, just like this, pining over Cathy Taylor.

  Inevitably, his thoughts took an unwanted trip down memory lane. His life basically started when Cathy walked into it. Everything else was hazy.

  His family moved back to Jamaica when Adrian was six, his older brother Micah was eight, and their baby sister, Kylie, had just turned four and had a serious asthmatic condition. They would rush her to hospital so often that Adrian could remember granny suggesting that they prepare for the worst. His mother, Celeste, was very much occupied with her sickly child and relied heavily on him and Micah to look after Marcus, their baby brother, who was the youngest and three years old at the time.

  He didn't mind taking care of his siblings. His mother would lecture him that God had made him older so that he could look out for the younger siblings. He took those lectures seriously. Micah hadn't cared much about family and his parent's lectures, so Adrian found himself being responsible and was forced to set a good example.

  In effect, he was left to play the eldest role after his parents realized that Micah was a lost cause. He always strived to please his parents, especially his father, whom he regarded as somewhat of a hero.

  By the time he entered Munro School, an all-boys school, Micah's nickname for him was Sir Goody-two-shoes. It must have annoyed Micah how he never got into trouble. Adrian could see that now. Micah got all the cussing and the lectures but he was the perfect A-student and perpetual teacher's pet, and the one his parents made it known that they could rely on.

  He was good at church as well. He conducted the youth choir and was held up as the example to follow. Then he met Cathy.

  It had been raining that day and there was a tropical wave across the island. His father had sent Saunders, the family driver to pick him up from school because he had some conference meeting or the other. His mother was at a private clinic with Kylie again and he was practically left stranded at school. Saunders had driven down the hill towards Mount Faith when they passed a lone girl walking down the stretch of road in a yellow rain coat. She carried her knapsack to the front of her. She hung her head down bracing against the driving rain.

  "Stop!" he yelled to Saunders. Saunders hadn't been going fast because visibility was poor and it was hard to see through the fog and rain.

  When Saunders stopped, he could see in the car lights that she was barefooted and had her shoes clutched in her hand, and she was trembling from the cold. She didn't wanted to come into the car, but Saunders wouldn't move and she finally gave in.

  "Hi," Adrian said brightly. His voice had a nasty crack since he turned fifteen and he was waiting for it to turn into a smooth baritone soon.

  "Hi," the girl said and removed her raincoat hood. "Thank you for the lift." She was polite, sweet, and golden. Honey gold hair with honey gold eyes and skin to match. He felt as if he was sitting near the sun on a rainy day.

  "Where do you live?" Saunders asked, looking back at her. The windshield wipers were working overtime to remove the water.

  "Bramble," the girl said, her eyes wandering back to Adrian, who was looking at her as if he was awestruck.

  "You have a name girlie?" Saunders chuckled when he looked at Adrian's expression. "Seems as if our boy Adrian Bancroft is dumbstruck."

  "My name is Catherine Taylor," she said giggling and looking at Adrian. "Your mouth is slightly open Adrian. You can call me Cathy."

  Adrian closed his mouth with a snap then squeaked—his dratted voice had gone into an inappropriate high-pitched tenor—"do you want to take off the raincoat and put it in the back?"

  She nodded and shrugged off the raincoat. She was in a Mount Faith High School uniform.

  "For a minute I thought you were a Hampton girl,” Adrian said, referring to the all-girls school that was in the area."

  "My people can't afford it,
" Cathy said.

  "Taylor!" Saunders said suddenly. "I know that name. Are your folks the same set of people that the husband killed the wife and the son, and then hanged himself?"

  "That's us," Cathy said nodding. She showed no outward feelings to this, and Adrian looked at her sympathetically, "I am sorry to hear. That must be awful."

  "My grandmother, Miss Icy, says death is a part of life," she repeated stoically, "and it happened a long time ago, when I was just three. I only escaped being dead because I was at the market with my grandmother."

  Adrian looked at her properly then. Her hair was caught up in two fat plaits and wound round her head like a crown.

  "How old are you now?"

  "Twelve and a half." She flashed him a grin, her perfect teeth white in the semi-darkness.

  "I think God saved you for me," Adrian found himself saying aloud.

  Saunders had laughed, a honking sound coming out of his mouth, shaking his gray head in mirth.

  Cathy had looked at Adrian with a wealth of maturity in her eyes. "Maybe," she had replied saucily, "maybe I was made just for you."

  *****

  Maybe. Adrian shivered violently; dragging himself from memory lane with difficulty. He closed the balcony door and went to sit on the bed. His eyes were gritty from fatigue. His cell phone was ringing.

  He groaned and looked at the clock. It was six o'clock. He suspected that it was his mother calling. He imagined that she had sat at the phone all night, and not hearing from him, had grown concerned.

  He grabbed up the phone. "Mom, I am sorry not to call when I got in."

  Celeste sighed. "I am so relieved to hear your voice. How was your flight?"

  "Uneventful." He replied wearily. "My life only got eventful when I came to Jamaica."

  "How?" Celeste asked with great interest.

  "I went to look for Cathy."

  "Ah son," Celeste said, "I thought you had let go of all that years ago."

  Adrian toyed with the idea of breaking the news to his mother that she was a grandmother, that Cathy was the mother of his child, that she was a stripper and the girlfriend of a thug, and that she had given away the child. He didn't even know what that meant. How did someone just give a child away?

  He settled for a nonchalant reply. "Some people you can't forget. For me, Cathy is one of them."

  "So what's going on at home?" he asked before his mother could ask him probing questions.

  "Well," Celeste said, "Micah bought that haunted house of his and is fixing it up. It actually looks good."

  "Good for him." Adrian smiled. "I think all Micah wants in life is to be left alone. A haunted house should prove a challenge."

  "He is pretty close to Taj," Celeste said, a puzzled tone in her voice. "I have never in all my life seen Micah get attached to another human being so quickly."

  "I am feeling almost jealous," Adrian responded. "I would really like to meet Taj."

  "Prepare to be shocked," Celeste said. "You two resemble greatly."

  "Maybe that's why Micah likes him so much." Adrian laughed, knowing that to be untrue. He and Micah had a torrid childhood that was filled with quarrels and fights, with Micah usually initiating most of the fighting because their personalities didn't quite mesh.

  "How's Dad?" Adrian asked.

  "Good." Celeste said. "Busy."

  "And Kylie?"

  "She has some love interest or the other and is supposedly hiding it from me." Celeste laughed. "But I'll find out who soon enough."

  "She's twenty four," Adrian said. "It's time she had a love interest."

  "That's so true. Kylie barely sees the light of day. She is always holed up in her room writing computer programs," Celeste said despairingly. I hardly see her anymore and we live in the same house!"

  She was silent for a while. "The same goes for Marcus. He hardly visits home. While you are in Kingston check up on him for me. He is running on the professional circuit and the boy hardly calls home."

  "I will do just that," Adrian said, a dull tension headache was taking over his head. "Tell Jess I carried her Khaled CD's as requested."

  He hung up the phone and set the alarm for ten o'clock. He needed to have a clear head for the meeting at eleven.

  Chapter Four

  Cathy had spent the better part of the early morning propped up on her headboard, staring blankly on the sterile white walls of the bedroom walls in her apartment. The two-bedroom place was done in monochrome with lots of glass around. It was a smaller version of the club and didn't feel like a home at all. Nanjo clearly had a thing for black and white decors. When she was here she couldn't escape her profession, or him, and the thought gave her a little jolt of depression.

  She had stepped into the house already depressed from her conversation with Adrian, and now she felt really down. She had tried and failed to come up with a reason for telling Adrian a lie. She felt so weighed down with guilt that it almost paralyzed her.

  She was still staring at the walls when Nanjo walked into the room with a smile on his face.

  "You are up early."

  "You are here early." Cathy replied, trying to inject some enthusiasm in her voice, but she felt like a husk of a thing, not even human. Tears threatened to spill over her eyelids. She was mired in lies. She felt dirty, unworthy, and unclean.

  "I have to go shower," she said in Nanjo's direction.

  He sat on the bed looking at her with concern. "What's wrong?"

  She glanced at the reptile tail on his neck and thought uncharitably that he was a bit like a dragon, breathing fire when he was crossed.

  "I am...er...not well," Cathy said shakily. "I might be coming down with something."

  Nanjo grabbed her arm as she was about to go to the bathroom.

  "Don't lie to me, Cat."

  Cathy looked at him miserably. "I have a lot on my mind and I really feel unwell."

  Nanjo released her arm and contemplatively watched as she walked off.

  She spent almost an hour in the shower and he could swear he heard sobs.

  "What's on your mind?" he asked her as she came back into the room with a towel wrapped around her.

  Cathy sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. She watched him from the corner of her eyes. He had removed all of his jewelry and the grills from his teeth—he looked almost human. She was tempted to confess her secret to him, but she couldn't. Nanjo had a mercurial temper, and his reactions to things were uncertain even at the best of times. She must be messed up in the head to even think of revealing that part of herself to him.

  For the past three years, she had being living a lie and hiding her true self. That was the only way she could have survived.

  "I am just over-tired," she said to him instead.

  He looked at her swollen eyes and got up from the bed. "Don't come by the club later."

  But I need the money! She wanted to scream. He paid all his dancers generously and they were allowed to keep their tips, and he usually didn't ask her what she did with her money.

  She had saved up quite a bit over the last three years. Her bank balance was healthy but not healthy enough to quit on, especially now that she had some serious responsibilities to take care of.

  Nanjo was watching her like a hawk. He pushed his hand in his pocket and rocked on his heel. He was feeling tired himself, though he had reassured Juan Feliz that his side was not the one with the mole, he wasn't so confident and he had the weird feeling that he was being watched, somehow. Last year when that happened, he had fired all his closest employees, leaving Natty and Banga from his close circle. Those two he couldn't afford to let go.

  Added to all of that, he was suspicious of how Cat was acting. She didn't know anything about his business so she couldn't be a mole. He could only conclude that her mood and crying had to do with that guy -- that slick looking uptown fellow who came by the club asking for her.

  "What was this guy, Adrian Bancroft, to you?"

  Cathy swallowed. She contemplated no
t answering but Nanjo could sniff a lie a far way off, and she was not in the frame of mind to argue with him.

  "He was my first love," Cathy said simply.

  "Ah," Nanjo said jealously. "That makes sense. When he saw that you were dancing he looked crushed. Tell me about him."

  "There's really nothing much to tell," Cathy said guardedly. "He is the son of the president of Mount Faith University."

  Nanjo snapped his fingers. "So he is one of those educated fools who don't understand how the real world works."

  Cathy wanted to rebut but resisted. "We lived in the same area. Eventually started going to the same church."

  "Church?" Nanjo asked, grinning at her wickedly. "You went to church? You were one of those brainwashed people who believe that there is a big guy in the sky that cares about you?"

  Cathy regarded him fiercely. "There is a God. He is real."

  "And yet, here you are, a stripper," Nanjo snared. "If there is a God, why are you dancing around poles for a living, or depending on me for your luxuries? Shouldn't I be your god, Cat, because God surely is not supplying all your needs?"

  He walked over to her, tilted her chin up, and glared down at her. "What do people do when they get gifts from God, Cat… thank them. I came here expecting to get a thank you, but all I am hearing is about a man who you knew when you were a little girl in the country."

  "Don't do this Nanjo," Cathy said fearfully. "Whether we believe in him or not does not negate that God is. I am dancing around poles because it is my fault. I made that choice. I am the one who turned my back on God, forgot my faith, and embraced this life. Maybe it is time I went back to God."

  Nanjo laughed. "And to that guy... do you think I am a fool, Cat? And to think, just a few hours ago I was thinking of marrying you… thinking of having children with you. He released her chin violently. I am going to kill him!"

  "No!" Cathy said fiercely.

  "If Adrian Bancroft comes near you again he's a dead man. Got that?" Nanjo slung at her bitterly. "You! Belong. To. Me!"