Excerpt

The music was deafening and the dance floor heaving with writhing bodies.  Kevin felt his spirits lift as he headed for a vacant stool at one end of the long bar and waited to be served by the female bartender covering that section.  His eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness of the nightclub by the time she placed a Banks beer in front of him and he let them wander.

He saw her almost immediately, sitting at the bar, but facing away from it, dressed in a bronze halter dress which fitted her body like a second skin.  It was the unusual shade of her dress which initially caught his eye, but the way she filled it made them linger.  The colour was a perfect foil for her silky-looking dark skin.  She was a feast for the eye, her posture erect and ladylike as she sat on the high stool with her long legs crossed, still looking very much the little diva.  Several people stopped to chat with her as they came to the bar or went past, but she was definitely alone.

Sugar Daddy's probably too old to make it past the bouncers, Kevin thought unkindly as he watched her.  She was directly in his line-of-vision, with the dance floor behind her.

Engrossed in the aesthetic banquet, he was unaware that it was obvious where his eyes were trained, until Nigel came over and whispered, "Not that one, buddy!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I saw you checking her out!"  Nigel grinned, not taken in by Kevin's sudden stiff British manner.  "She looks like trouble to me.  You better don't mess with her."

"I was just looking," Kevin admitted, holding his hands up in defeat.

Just as he was about to ask Nigel if he knew who the woman was, a petite woman passed them and Nigel hurried after her.  Kevin chuckled softly, but understood the man's haste.  Even in heels the woman was not much taller than Nigel-he needed to grab her before some taller man did.

Like iron filings to a magnet, Kevin's eyes were involuntarily drawn back to the diva.  In the hour and a half he had been there she hadn't danced.  He was just wondering if sugar daddy had forbidden it when the DJ announced that it was ‘wuk up' time and started playing the soca classic: DN5's Winer Girls.

There was no way Kevin could have anticipated what happened next.  As the intro started playing she quickly downed the drink that she'd been delicately sipping, and was up and on the dance floor.

He had noted her fabulous body while she'd been sitting: full breasts, small waist and ample behind, but he had forgotten how tall she was.  And nothing in the way she had primly perched herself on the barstool had prepared him for the way she danced.  It was like night and day!

The words of the song were strangely appropriate-Kevin was certainly mesmerized as he watched her move, and although she was rotating her waist as if she had no bones in her body she still managed to look classy.

The song ended and another began, and another.  She danced each of the seven soca songs as energetically as she had done the first, her shoulder-length, straightened hair bouncing sexily around her head as she moved.  Much too soon for Kevin's liking, the DJ changed the style of music.

She stopped dancing, walked back over to the bar and once again perched elegantly on the high stool with her legs crossed.

Intrigued, Kevin walked over and sat on the conveniently unoccupied stool next to hers.  Leaning in close enough to be heard over the music he whispered, "Hello again."

She turned her head, her eyes widening in surprise and darting to the seat he had previously occupied.  So, she had seen him too.

"Hi!"  Her voice was as warm as the Caribbean sun.

"Can I buy you a drink?" he offered.

"I've got one, thank you."  She nodded her thanks as the bartender handed her a frosted glass as if on cue.

"Okay, the next one's on me."

"That won't be necessary."  She smiled as she said the words, but left him in no doubt that she meant them.  "I can get my own drinks, thank you."

"All I want to do is buy you a drink."

"And all I'm saying is that I can afford to buy my own," she responded, not attempting to mask her annoyance as she turned and looked him straight in the eye.

Stirred by the fire in her gaze, Kevin was almost tempted to stoke the flames a bit more.  Instead he quickly defused matters by extending his hand, "Kevin Williamson."

"Kimberley."  She didn't supply her surname or add a meaningless platitude like ‘pleased to meet you'.  She didn't seem very pleased with him at the moment.  Recalling the reason he had come over in the first place, he said, "That was some performance on the dance floor."

"Thanks."

"But why did you stop dancing when the DJ started playing Hip Hop?"

"Soca is my thing.  The best stress reliever in the world."

"I can't imagine you being stressed."  Rather he could more easily imagine her spending lazy days at beauty salons pampering herself or shopping for sexy outfits to ignite her sugar daddy's aging libido.  The man had seemed wealthy enough to keep her in the style she had obviously become accustomed.

"It's very stressful when you shatter people's dreams for a living."  She elaborated, with a smile, when she realized that he had no idea what she was talking about, "I work in the mortgage section of the bank."

So, his first impressions were wrong-she wasn't just a pampered mistress.

"So your trip to the UK was a business trip?" he inquired.

"No, it was a personal trip."

Ah!  Maybe not so wrong after all.  Sugar Daddy's trip had obviously been business.  Maybe she had come along as a fringe benefit.  Kevin had clients who used very inventive methods to claim the cost of taking their mistresses away on business trips.  Sugar daddy didn't seem the inventive type.  But then he hadn't seemed the type to have a young mistress either. 

"Do you always come here alone?" he asked, dismissing the unwanted thoughts of the older man.

"My friend Brenda and I usually come here or go to The Boatyard, but she's in St Lucia at the moment, enjoying the Jazz Festival."

"Didn't your sugar daddy object to you coming out alone tonight?"  Why he felt the need to remind the woman about her older lover he didn't know, but the idea of her in bed with the man irritated Kevin for some inexplicable reason.

***

"My sugar daddy?" Kimberley threw her head back and laughed out loud.  So, he had made the same mistake most people made on seeing her and her father together.  They were often thrown by the difference in skin tone and her father's noticeable affection, but once they got over their initial misconception they usually noted the resemblance.  Mischievously she asked, "Which one?"