Tattered Tiara (The Bancrofts: Book 2)

By Brenda Barrett

Beware There Is A Rapist On Campus!

A series of rapes were happening on the Mount Faith University Campus. Natasha Rowe and her new partner, Tony Beaker, were working overtime to find out who the perpetrator of the crime could be.

Their case was not helped when reigning beauty queen, Deidra Durkheim, the senator's daughter, reported that she, too, was raped by her reluctant fiancé, Micah Bancroft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brenda Barrett
• Release date: Sep 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9789769556676

Brenda Barrett

Books have always been a big part of life for Jamaican born Brenda Barrett, she reports that she gets withdrawal symptoms if she does not consume at least two books per week. That is all she can manage these days, as her days are filled with writing, a natural progression from her love of reading. Currently, Brenda has several novels on the market, she writes predominantly in the historical fiction, Christian fiction, comedy and romance genres.Apart from writing fictional books, Brenda writes for her blogs blackhair101.com; where she gives hair care tips and fiwibooks.com, where she shares about her writing life.

Book preview

Tattered Tiara

By

Brenda Barrett

Published by Jamaica Treasures at Smashwords:

Copyright 2013 by Brenda Barrett

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Discover other titles in The Bancroft Family Series:

Homely Girl

Saving Face

Tattered Tiara

Private Dancer

Goodbye Lonely

Practice Run

Sense of Rumor

A Younger Man

Just to See Her

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Chapter One

The rain could be hypnotic, Micah thought as he stared through his room window at the patterns it made on the glass. He was supposed to go to a family reunion in two hours, where his father would announce, the not-so-secret secret, that Taj Jackson was his son.

All the family was going to be there. He hated family gatherings, but a trickle of happiness reminded him that he was no longer the eldest son and standard-bearer for his father.

He stretched. He could always remind his father that Taj was his eldest son whenever he spouted his nonsense about him not striving for higher education.

Micah laughed softly. He liked Taj and was happy that he was already accomplished in academia. He had been his father's sole challenger for the presidency. That should quiet the old man for a bit.

Thank God for Taj! Micah thought feelingly because the whole school system and pursuing of degrees was like a prison to him. For the first time since grade school days, when he brought home a 'D' in Mathematics, he was feeling a sense of ease.

He was the black sheep of the family; the one who didn't want to conform to what his father termed decency.

He was the one who wore dreadlocks; the one who preferred strumming on his guitar and singing than reading boring textbooks.

He was the one who had unacceptable friends who rode fast bikes and did wheelies in the streets. He was the one who couldn't sit still in church; who thought formal clothes were chafing. He was the one who laughed at his father when he started to pontificate in his pompous voice. He was the one—that Bancroft kid—who would amount to nothing, and he was fine with that.

A long time ago, when his parent's bellowing and cajoling had mattered, he had gotten a business degree—just for them, but he found no joy in it. His heart was with the land. He wanted to farm and to play music on his little guitar.

The rain slowed in its intensity, and the droplets on his window got sparser. He could hear the weeping willows that led up to his driveway, mournfully pick up their song, and then he heard a knocking.

Nobody visited him up here in the old house on the outskirts of Malvern, especially since the community thought it was haunted. Not even his mother, and she was the only family member that seemed to still care about his welfare.

He felt so secure in his reclusive nest that he didn't even have a peephole in the heavy oak door at the front of the three-bedroom house. It was a little drive to the top of the hill where the house was perched, and usually, he could easily see and hear whatever was making its way toward the house, long before it reached the house.

He dragged on an undershirt and cracked the front windows to see who was at the door.

He saw her car first, a late model red Mazda with her name on the license plate. It was Deidra, his forced fiancée.

How did she find out where he lived? He had not wanted her to find out.

He glanced at her as she stood there in a yellow raincoat; her long curly hair was dripping wet, and she looked as if she was shivering. She knocked on the door again, and he wondered if he should let her in. He didn't want to be in close confines with Deidra. She was a man-eater.

She had gotten it into her head that she wanted him and had forced her father, the wealthy senator and benefactor to Mount Faith University to help her make a wedding happen. Her father, Edward Durkheim, had contacted his father and the two had come to a medieval conclusion that Micah Bancroft would be a suitable partner for Deidra.

He glanced at her again. She had entered a beauty contest a few months ago and won. She deserved it, he thought grudgingly. Even though her father had sponsored the event, there was no denying that Deidra was, hands down, the prettiest woman on these hills with her dark brown chocolate eyes, her snub nose, her generous red lips, and her lean shapely curves which she endeavored to show to all and sundry in tight, short outfits. He wondered what was under her yellow raincoat and then stopped himself. At only nineteen, Deidra was a petulant teenager who needed to grow up. Why she was fixated on him, he didn't know.

He closed his hand over the doorknob. A war was raging in his head. Don't let her in your house. Don't let that sexy teenager who was running on hormones and who threw herself at you at every turn anywhere in your home.

He pictured her generous breasts, which were usually outlined in her too tight blouses; her perky firm butt, which was perfectly shaped in her short-shorts; her tiny waist, which he could span with both hands, and her creamy caramel legs, which went on forever.

He didn't want to lust after Deidra or like her, but she made it hard on a man. His hands slowly curved around the door handle and he smoothly released the latch.

He swung the door open and Deidra, who was turning to go, turned her big brown eyes on him.

I want you, she said simply. No hello. No preamble. She knew what she wanted. She walked toward him; her red lips were trembling slightly.

Micah stiffened at the doorway. His control was slipping. She unbuttoned her raincoat and slowly floated toward him—naked. Her firm body had no blemish or mark. He drunk her in and then swallowed convulsively.

Deidra, he said softly. Don't.

Deidra's eyes filled with tears. But why not? We are supposed to get married soon. I love you.

Micah stood like a sentry at his door. There was no way he could let her into his house. It would result in nothing but the carnal. His heart was saying do it. She is right. You can even marry her to appease your conscience. His head was shouting, no! This is all wrong.

We are not getting married, Micah said firmly, and I don't want you.

The lie hung in the air. She jerked back as if she was slapped. She grabbed the raincoat and slipped it back on.

You are mean and cold-hearted, and a prude, and gay! And you will pay! She almost slid on the gravel in her fast retreat. She grabbed the car door and swung it open.

If it's the last thing I do, I'll make you pay!

Micah stood at his front door, frozen. He had done the right thing in sending her away.

Deidra jumped into her car, a horrendous rage gripping her as she drove down the unpaved driveway of Micah Bancroft's house. She glanced in the rearview mirror and gasped. Her mascara was running; her mind forgot Micah for a minute and his refusal of her, and she hoped against hope that no one would see her so ragged and unkempt, with mascara running down her cheeks.

When she finally reached the main road she contemplated going home, which was three miles away, or going over to Mount Faith University, which was almost ten miles away—she did have a class now.

Just then, she remembered that, except for the raincoat she had on, she was naked. She decided to go home. Her father had bought her a house in Mount Faith because she had insisted that she did not want to live on dorm like a commoner. She was, after all, a queen, a beauty queen. He had readily agreed, as he did with anything she suggested.

She had just four more weeks with the title of Miss St. Elizabeth and then she would enter the Miss Jamaica competition. It was going to be a breeze for her. She had no doubt she would win. She was beautiful, and her father was a well-respected senator, and the organizers were cognizant of that.

Why on earth couldn't Micah Bancroft appreciate that she was beautiful?

She didn't even know why she liked him. After all, he was not the sort of guy she usually went for. She liked her men rugged, thickly muscled, and extremely handsome. Not too handsome though, she didn't want too much competition in the looks department.

But her traitorous heart had seen Micah Bancroft, with his leanly muscled almost gangly self, sitting nonchalantly at the front of the student business center her second day at the school two years ago, and just like that, her skin had caught fire.

She hadn't even known that his father was 'the Ryan Bancroft,' vice president of the school at the time, or that he was the first son. He had been in a rugged jeans with a tam perched precariously on his dreadlocks, and the graphic on his black t-shirt read 'take me or leave me, I don't care.'

He hadn't even looked at her when she had walked up to him, slowly and sinuously stretching her 5 ft 11-inch frame for best advantage. He had asked her if something was wrong with her back.

She had sullenly said no. He had shrugged and said, Okay because I know a good chiropractor.

Subtle clues didn't work with Micah and blatant in your face offerings of her body did not work either.

She sighed; overwhelmed with the thought that Micah didn't like her, and the feeling that she had a defect.

There were two cars parked in her driveway when she drove up. Her stepbrother and his darn friends again, Deidra thought churlishly. She barely tolerated James, and she hated his friends. They were immature and insane. They watched copious amounts of cartoons and giggled like little pre-schoolers at the antics of the animated things on the screen.

She had only agreed to her stepsister, Charlene, staying there, since she was finishing up the thesis for her master’s degree in agriculture, but her father had begged her to allow James to live there as well. He was the son of his third wife, with whom he was still on good terms.

Her father was on good terms with all his ex-wives. He somehow managed to convince them that breaking up with him was their fault and all five of them seemed to have believed it. Deidra had seen so many women come and go from Senator Edward Durkheim's life that she had taken to warning them on her first meeting with them. That usually resulted in her having a standoff with them and their offspring when they married her father. All of his exes lasted about two years. Her own mother, Tabitha, lasted the longest, a grand total of six years. She was never a wife because she preferred to be a mistress. She survived three wives and Edward's brief battle with impotence. She was now living in the Bahamas with her latest gentleman, a doctor. She had found motherhood tedious and had sent Deidra to live with her father when she was four, but Tabitha and Deidra were