said quickly. ‘I don’t want you to do that. You can stay here as long as you like.’
‘It’s good of you to offer, but I’ll only stay if I get this job. If I don’t get it and can’t pay my own way, I’ll move back in with my parents.’
‘But—’
‘Right, I’m off. I’ll see you later,’ Kevin interrupted as he walked out, leaving Rupert to stew on his words, sure that they’d have the desired effect …
Chapter Twelve
Adrianna had finished her act and was now taking off the heavy stage make-up before redoing her eyes with a lighter touch. Vince would be here in half an hour to pick her up and she didn’t want to keep him waiting. He’d get annoyed if she did. Adrianna remembered the slap he’d given her just for talking to a bloke outside the club who’d asked for directions, and shivered. Her father had been a violent man too, and her childhood an unhappy one. She had been dragged from borough to borough as her parents dodged one rent man after another. Or sometimes it had been the police – her father preferred petty thieving to an honest day’s work.
‘If I had your looks,’ said Lola, one of the other strippers, as she stroked Adrianna’s fur coat, ‘I’d get myself a sugar daddy too.’
‘If you’re talking about the boss, you’re welcome to him.’
‘Is that right? Well, maybe I should tell him you said that.’
‘I’d deny it, and if you think he’ll believe you, over me, then go ahead,’ Adrianna said with a show of bravado. ‘He’ll be here soon to pick me up.’
‘If I wasn’t due on stage I would,’ Lola spat before quickly leaving the poky dressing room.
Adrianna knew from Lola’s hasty departure that it was an idle threat and got on with removing her make-up, thinking that she had to learn to keep her mouth shut. She knew the other girls thought she had it made, that Vince gave her everything, such as the fur coat, but little did they know that she longed for him to find someone else – another girl to take her place.
Adrianna knew she wasn’t anything like the confident, haughty stripper who performed on stage. She was far from being in control: instead Vince controlled her and she was too afraid of him to break away.
Her mind shied away from Vince and drifted back to her childhood. Her parents had moved so many times, and she had been to so many different schools, that friendships had been hard to form, let alone sustain. She had been an only child, a lonely child, one who lived inside her head with dreams of one day becoming a dancer. Adrianna could remember to this day where that dream had come from, but not the place. It had been one of the many boroughs they had lived in, their flat cramped, but it had been close to a school of dance.
Like a magnet she had been drawn to the sound of a piano playing and had sneaked inside to peep round the door that led into a hall. A class was in progress, or perhaps some sort of rehearsal, young girls dressed in white tutu skirts and ballet pumps. Adrianna smiled. To her it had looked magical as they danced in a circle, their arms raised in pretty arches. The circle then opened to reveal another girl who appeared so delicate, almost ethereal as she performed a series of pirouettes and arabesques.
Adrianna could recall being so enthralled that she had hurried home and begged to go to the school of dance, but that night they had crept out of the flat in the early hours, dodging the rent and yet another landlord.
With a sigh, Adrianna now applied her lipstick. Becoming a dancer had been an impossible dream, and by the age of fourteen all she had longed for was the chance to get away from the life her parents led. Her chance had come when she was fifteen. She had seen a live-in job advertised and she’d been taken on, but by the time she was sixteen she hated being a skivvy. It was then that the offer of a job in a shop with a room above it had come up and she had jumped at the chance.
Once again her thoughts were interrupted when one of the hostesses walked in, a note in her hand. ‘One of the blokes out front asked me to give you this.’
Without reading it, Adrianna screwed the note into a ball and threw it into the bin. ‘You know I don’t mix with the punters.’
‘I told him that, but he offered me a good few bob to give that to you and I wasn’t about to turn it down.’
‘More fool him.’
‘Yeah, there’s a mug born every minute, but I’d best get back out front.’
Adrianna’s smile was tight. It was still impossible to form friendships, Vince kept her too close to him for that, but even if she had the opportunity she knew that other women were jealous of her looks. The other girls in the club were proof of that and as Adrianna looked at her reflection in the mirror, she wished that she had never met the woman who had tempted her into becoming what she had called an exotic dancer. She’d been Ruth Canning then, a name she refused to use now and nearly nineteen years old. She’d been hard up, sick of working in shops or factories and it was the magical word dancing that had drawn her in.
It hadn’t been easy, but she’d managed to pay the woman for lessons. She’d learned the craft and learned it well, but it was a craft she now hated. It wasn’t because of the leering punters. She’d grown used to them and could blank them out. She hated being an exotic dancer, a stripper, because it had eventually brought her to the attention of Vincent Chase.
Ready to leave now, Adrianna flung her fur coat around her shoulders, thinking that just as she had longed to get away from her parents, she was now desperate to get away from Vince. Of course any chance of achieving that seemed impossible – another impossible dream.
After being inside for so long without sight of a beautiful woman, Kevin had began to wonder if he’d exaggerated Adrianna’s attractions in his mind. He hadn’t, and once again he’d been riveted by her performance. Sultry, sexy, cat-like, he relished the thought of taming her. However, paying a hostess to take her a note had been a waste of time. What he needed was a chance to be alone with Adrianna, a chance to turn on the charm, and with any luck when she left the club this time, Vince wouldn’t be around to pick her up.
Kevin swallowed the last of his drink and walked outside. Cars were parked along the road, but none of them looked occupied, the coast clear as he hung around.
Just fifteen minutes later Kevin’s patience was rewarded when Adrianna left by the side exit. Stepping forward with a smile on his face, he said, ‘Hello there, remember me?’
Kevin was only aware of her eyes rounding in panic before arms locked around him from behind. He struggled, but found himself spun around to face a man moving out of the shadows, his face contorted with anger.
‘Get back inside,’ Vince yelled at Adrianna. ‘I’ll deal with you later.’
Another of Vince’s heavies moved to the kerb, beckoned, and as a car pulled up, Vince climbed in the back, the heavy in the front. Kevin was then shoved from behind, forced inside to find himself trapped between Vince and the mountain of a bloke who’d held him.
‘Drive!’ Vince ordered.
Kevin thought quickly. ‘What’s going on, Vince? We go back a long way so why have you snatched me?’
Vince’s head snapped round, his hard, gimlet eyes studying Kevin for a moment before he said, ‘Nah,
