DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (26 page)

He looked at
her, ready to confess that love, but he thought he saw tears in her eyes.
 
He frowned as he lifted her up from his
shoulder and looked fully into her face.
 
And he was right.
 
She was
crying.
 
Her big, bright, expressive eyes
were filled with tears.
 
His heart
squeezed in agony.

“Honey,
what’s wrong?” he asked her in a soft, worried voice.
 
“Did I hurt you?”

But she
couldn’t say anything.
 
She looked so
anguish that Daniel’s heart began to pound.
 
“Nikki, what is it?
 
Nikki?”

She stood up
from his lap, his penis sliding out of her, and placed back on his big
shirt.
 
Then she went into the kitchen
and returned with the manila envelope.
 
She handed it to him.

“What is
this?” he asked.

“Somebody
slid it under your door,” she managed to say as she got onto the sofa.
 
She got on her knees and then sat on the back
of her legs.
 
She was still saturated,
and knew his cum was going to continue to release out of her, but she couldn’t
let this go a moment longer.
 
She had to
hear what he had to say.
 
Her heart was
depending on what he had to say.

Daniel slid
the contents of the envelope out.
 
When
he saw that they were Polaroid photographs, and the subject of those photographs
was one naked woman with long blonde hair and Dolly Parton size breasts, he
exhaled.
 
And stared at each and every
photo.
 
Nikki was staring at him so
intensely that her eyes appeared like glass.
 
Especially when he saw the postcard enclosed, and the note the woman had
apparently written on it.

I enclosed some of the pictures we took in
Florida
, the note read.
 
I’m
keeping the ones of you for my own enjoyment.
 
Give me a call so we can get together again.
 
I still get wet whenever I think about how you
did me.
 
Love, Jean.

Daniel
turned the postcard over.
 
It was indeed
a picture of the Miami skyline, and he had indeed been in Miami on his last
business trip.
 
Then he looked at Nikki.
 
The sadness in her eyes broke his heart.

“Who’s
Jean?” she asked him.
 
She was trying to
be strong, but he knew she wanted to collapse.

“I don’t
know.”

Nikki
frowned.
 
“But you know who the woman in
those pictures are?”

“I’ve never
seen this woman before in my life, Nikki.”
 
He looked back down at the pictures.
 
He would have remembered her if he had.
 
“I don’t know her.”

“Then why
would she be sending you naked pictures of herself?”

“Undoubtedly
to make you jealous.”

“But that
doesn’t make sense,” Nikki said, refusing to be confused like that.
 
“She didn’t know I was going to be here.
 
And if she wanted to make me jealous, why
didn’t she slide them under the door at my house, where she could be certain
that I’ll see them?
 
But if she wanted
you to see them, then she would have done what she did, and slid them under
your door.
 
For you to see.”

It sounded
logical, and Daniel never argued with logic.
 
But he did argue with assumptions.
 
“Did you mention to anybody that you were coming to my house today?
 
Anybody at all, Nikki?”

“No,” she
said quickly.

“Anybody,
Nikki?
 
Now I want you to think about
this.”

She thought
about it.
 
“I mean, I might have
mentioned it to Luke.”

Daniel
stared at her.
 
“Luke?” he asked.
 

“But that
was at lunchtime.
 
He wouldn’t have had
time to photograph some naked woman and do all of this.
 
Besides, he wouldn’t do something like this
anyway.
 
He’s a friend of mine, he
wouldn’t do this to me.”

Daniel took
note of her affection for Luke Finley.
 
Months ago he took note of her affection for Luke Finley.

But Nikki
went on.
 
“And how could he know about
Florida?
 
I didn’t even know him when you
went on that business trip to Florida.
 
And after we did meet, I never mentioned that trip to him.
 
Why would I?”

Daniel
tossed the photos back into the envelope.
 
He didn’t know what was going on, but he for damn sure was going to find
out.
 
He looked at Nikki.
 
That anguish, that hurt, that disappointment
was still in her eyes.

“Come here,
babe,” he said to her.
 
She hesitated,
but she eventually moved and got onto his lap.
 
He bear hugged her.

“Look at me,”
he said to her.
 
She looked at him.
 
“I want you.
 
You, Nikki Graham.
 
You’re who I
want.
 
And I want you to understand how
committed I am to our relationship.
 
I’m
not going to do anything to compromise what we have.
 
You hear me?
 
I don’t know what this is about, but I promise you I’ll find out.
 
But I don’t know the woman and I don’t want
to know her.
 
I have you.
 
I don’t want anybody else.”

Nikki traced
his face with her finger.
 
She so wanted
to believe it.
 
But those photos!
 
She frowned.
 
“Do you love me, Daniel?” she asked him.

Daniel was
hurt by the question.
 
“Of course I love
you,” he said.
 
“Why would you ask me
something like that?
 
You know I love
you.
 
You’d better know it, Nikki.”

“And there’s
nobody else?”

“There’s no
one else,” he made clear.
 
He pulled her
closer against him.
 
“No one,” he said
again.

Nikki wasn’t
sure if she believed him or not.
 
But she
was certain that she didn’t want to lose him.
 
But it was a staggering, sober reality she was facing.
 
All she had was his denial.
 
Because he denied it firmly.
 
He denied it to her face.
 
She never knew him to be a liar, so she
decided to rest on that.
 
It was a thin
resting place, and she knew it.
 
But what
else could she do?
 
Google every female
named Jean?
 
Search the internet for a photograph
of a woman that looked like this person calling herself Jean?
 
That could take years.
 
Or she could do as she knew she had to do,
and hope and pray and trust and believe deep within her heart that he was
telling her the truth.

 
It was a tradeoff she never dreamed she’d
have to make.
 
She could see her friends
now calling her all kinds of crazy, and how she was a pure fool and just
dick-whipped, and they would be urging her, begging her, to walk away.
 
He’s a
dog
, they would proclaim.
 
One day he’s going to bite you
.
 

But talking
was cheap.
 
She was in love.
 
Walking away from Daniel, no matter how easy
it was to say it, was impossible.
 
And
she hated herself for allowing it to get this way.
 
But it was this way.

“I need to
clean up,” she said, as she got off of his lap, and headed for the bathroom.

The next
day, Daniel paid a visit to his jeweler, and picked out a ring.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Three days
later and it was turning out to be a particularly slow day for Nikki, as the
hours seemed to lumber by and no assignments had yet come up that required her
expertise.
 
At least none Luke wanted her
to cover.
 
“You’ll be wasting your time
on that story, Nikki,” he would say.
 
Or,
“I’m not about to send my best reporter on something that lame.”
 
It was always something.
 
Always an excuse to keep Nikki right under
his nose.
 
She wanted to confront him
about it, to tell him to hold on, he needed to get a life if he thought for a
second he’d be controlling an inch of hers, but she didn’t even go there with
Luke.
 
Ever since that riot he’d been
this way.
 
Overly cautious about every
story he assigned to her.
 
But today, she
thought, he was especially overdoing it.

She went to
the restroom.
 
When she returned to her
desk, one of her colleagues yelled that she had a call waiting on line
two.
 
Maybe it was a source with a juicy
tip, she thought excitedly as she hurried to her desk and took a seat.

She looked
at the Caller ID.
 
Unknown name and
number.
 
“Nikki Graham, may I help you?”
she said cheerfully as she picked up line two on her desk phone.

“Is this
Nikki Graham?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked.

“Yes.
 
May I help you?”

“How are
you, Nikki?”

The voice
was a slow, soft, female’s voice, a voice unknown to Nikki.
 
“I’m fine,” she said.
 
“May I help you?”

“It won’t
work.
 
You’ve got to understand that.”

Nikki
hesitated.
 
“What won’t work?”

“He said you
were just a piece on the side for him.
 
I
asked him repeatedly and he told me you were just a piece of ass.
 
Now this new shit.”

Nikki
frowned.
 
“Who is this?”

“He’s my
man, you understand that?
 
Ain’t no
bubble gum ho like you taking my man away from me.”

Nikki could
feel her heart racing.
 
Who was she
talking about?
 
Luke?
 
Daniel
?
 
“Look, lady, I don’t know what you’re talking
about.”

“I know your
type.
 
Think you’re all that.
 
But your little magical charms will not be
working this time, slut.
 
I love him, you
understand me?
 
We were trying to make
our relationship work, and it was working.
 
He bought you that townhouse so that you wouldn’t always be over to his
house, so that we could spend more time together.
 
And now this new shit.
 
But it won’t work, not this time.”

It was
Daniel.
 
She was talking about
Daniel.
 
Nikki held onto the phone with
both hands, as if she needed the support.
 
“Who are you?”

“None of
your damn business, that’s who.
 
Don’t
worry about who I am.
 
Just leave him
alone.”

“Leave who
alone?
 
Daniel?”

“No.
 
Your other niggar.
 
Who do you think?”

Her use of
the N word cut Nikki short, especially since she sounded like a southern white
woman.
 
“You have a relationship with
Daniel?” she asked the woman.

“We love
each other, that’s what kind of relationship we have.
 
We met in Portland five years ago, and we’ve
been lovers since.
 
He wines and dines me
and makes love to me every night he can get away from you.
 
He takes me on most of his trips out of
town.
 
That’s when we love each other the
most.
 
When it’s just us far away from
you.
 
That trip he took to Florida, I was
with him.
 
We were together the night he
left you at that hospital.
 
The only
reason he went back to pick you up was because he didn’t want that other man to
take you home.
 
That’s the only reason.
 
He loves hitting that ass of yours and
doesn’t want anybody else getting a piece.
 
But that’s it.
 
That’s the only
reason he bothers with you at all.”

Nikki’s
heart dropped.
 
She used to always wonder
if her body, more than anything else, was what kept Daniel in her life.

“That’s
right,” the woman went on.
 
“He was with
me, fucking my brains out, while you were sitting around in some pathetic
hospital.
 
After we came, he did me
again.
 
Then he went to see about you.”

Nikki closed
her eyes.
 
This wasn’t happening.
 
Why was this woman calling her with all of
this foolishness?

“I’m his
woman,” the woman continued.
 
“We share
all the same interests.
 
We’re so much
alike.
 
And unlike with you, when it
comes to the bedroom, he doesn’t have to teach me a damn thing.
 
He loves that about me.
 
He just loves it.
 
And don’t fool yourself into thinking that
this is some one-sided affair and I’m just some crazy
Fatal Attraction
bitch,
because it’s nothing like that.
 
He loves
me.
 
You got it?
 
He plans to marry me one day.”

Nikki
frowned .
 
“Marry you?”

“That’s
right.
 
That’s why he hasn’t asked you
yet.
 
Because he has no intentions of
asking you!
 
He was going to propose to
me.
 
He even told me so.
 
‘Jean,’ he said, ‘you’re the woman for
me.
 
You’re the woman I want to be my
wife.’
 
But now you get caught in riots
and pull the sympathy card and he wants to wait a while longer.
 
Until he gets you settled back down.
 
But he’s marrying me, bitch.
 
I don’t care how long it takes.”

Nikki
exhaled.
 
She felt as if she could go to
pieces if she allowed herself to believe this woman.
 
“I don’t believe you,” she said firmly.

“And?
 
Don’t believe me then.
 
But you better stay away from Daniel!”

The phone
went dead.
 
“Wait!” Nikki said so loudly,
so desperately, that others in the newsroom looked her way.
 
She paused, and hung up too.