DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (9 page)

The secretary hesitated as if she
could not believe Nikki would ask such a question.
 
“At once,” she said, and hung up the phone.

Daniel Crane stepped off the elevator
on the top floor of the Dreeson Corporate headquarters building and made his way
to his suite of offices.
 
As soon as he
entered his suite and greeted his secretary after a weeklong absence, and spoke
to his extensive staff in the offices that surrounded his own, he made his
retreat.
 
His plan was to check his
numerous messages, pick up some necessary paperwork, and then head home.
 
But he wasn’t in his office five minutes
before Phillip Grayson, the Public Relations Director and a young man very much
in the know, was walking through his door.

“Make it quick, Phillip,” Daniel said
as he stood behind his desk shoving papers into his briefcase.
 
“I’m on my way out.
 
I wasn’t planning on coming by here at all.”

“Well welcome back, Daniel.
 
I was lost without you.”

Daniel chuckled and the two men
exchanged a warm glance.
 
Although their
relationship was a wary one, they still held each other in some regard.
 
But it was usually Phillip, the blond-haired,
blue-eyed twenty-something with dreams of rapid advancement, who often forced
the contact.
 
If left up to Daniel they
would rarely speak.

“I just wanted to make sure you knew,”
Phillip said.

“Knew what?” Daniel asked, his
attention completely on the papers he needed to take with him.
 
“That you’re lost without me?”

“I wanted to make sure you knew what
happened with Nikki.”

Daniel stopped shoving papers and
looked at the PR man.
 
“What happened
with Nikki?”

“Well, my friend, Miss Nikki Graham
managed to get herself into a major confrontation with the mayor today.”

Daniel frowned.
 
“She did
what
?”

“She got in a confrontation with the
mayor.”

“What kind of confrontation?”

“The kind that made him kick her out
of his press conference.
 
Oh, it was
bad.”

Daniel tossed the papers in his
briefcase and unbuttoned his suit coat.
 
He placed his hands on his hips.
 
He had just flown in from Florida and was all parts exhausted.
 
And now this.
 
“What was this confrontation about?” he asked.

“That road improvement plan of the
mayor’s.
 
Nikki seems to think there’s
not enough minority contractors involved in the process.
 
She and Todd Bainbridge went toe to toe about
it.”

Daniel dismissed Phillip’s description
because he knew of his director’s penchant for hyperbole.
 
But it was still disconcerting news.
 
Why the hell should she feel it necessary to
become the spokesperson for rich minority contractors?
 
They could fight their own battles.
 

“Okay, Phil,” he said to his
director.
 
“Thanks for letting me know.”

Phillip’s expression was one of
disappointment.
 
Was that it?
 
He’d just given Crane the heads up and all he
got in return was a generic thank-you?
 
He at least expected some real outpouring of gratitude from the man, or
at least some venting of frustration about that out-there girlfriend of
his.
 
But just thank-you?
 
That’s it?
 
Thank-you?

Daniel looked sternly at his
director.
 
He knew what he wanted from
him.
 
But he wasn’t getting it.
 
“I’ll talk to you later,” he said, making it
clear, by his eye contact alone, that the matter was over and he was, in fact,
being dismissed.
 
Daniel never discussed
details about his relationship with Nikki, and he certainly wasn’t about to
start now.
 

Phillip didn’t like it.
 
But what could he do about it?
 
Daniel wasn’t just the boss, he was Phillip’s
boss’s boss.

Phillip left.

And less than half an hour later,
Daniel was in his Jaguar, driving across the Tatem-Warren Bridge, fighting
anger and exhaustion on his way to Nikki’s house.

CHAPTER SIX

Daniel drove his pearl-white Jaguar
onto the narrow driveway of Nikki’s townhouse.
 
It was late evening in Wakefield, with an overcast sky, and Daniel, too,
was taking it slow.

He got out of his car, walked across
the sidewalk, and then slowly up the steps to her front door.
 
His oak-brown, Versace suit, a suit that
fitted his muscular frame with snug perfection, blew wildly in the wind.
 
His shoes were Italian import, too, shining
brightly as he walked up the steps.
 
And
with his wavy mane of dark-brown hair and his dazzling hazel eyes, and with his
tanned face stern but undeniably handsome, he struck a mighty pose.
 
Ever since he arrived in Wakefield, after
resigning his position as a criminal court judge in Florida, every unattached
female had tried to get their hooks in him.
 
He would date occasionally, including a couple of them he dated more
than a few times, yet it never went beyond a sexual interest for him.

But it would end up being Nikki, a
young, opinionated black woman, that would turn out to have that lasting
power.
 
And although their relationship
was one of the most contentious he’d ever had, often with the kind of turmoil
that kept him up nights, it was also the most gratifying relationship he’d ever
experienced.
 
He loved her, not just
because she had that rare combination of smarts and irresistibility, but mainly
because she was all heart.
 
She was a
friend to the friendless.
 
She fought for
those least able to fight for themselves.
 
And he loved her for that.

But he was just about ready to
throttle her when he heard the news about her encounter with the mayor.
 
That was why he didn’t phone her
immediately.
 
That was why he slowed his
walk even now as he made it to her front door.
 
She was known as a loose cannon and a firebrand, a woman who spoke her
mind no matter what the consequences, but he was known as a hothead himself
when he was fired up enough.
 
So he knew
he couldn’t confront her without taking a serious set of deep breaths, and
slowing himself down.

But when he rang the doorbell and
received no response, and then turned the knob just to make sure she wasn’t up
to her old tricks again, and the door opened, he couldn’t take it slow a moment
longer.

He entered the townhome quickly,
closing and locking the door behind him as he yelled her name.
 
How many times did he have to tell her to
stop being so damn trusting?
 
Yes,
Wakefield wasn’t some crime-ridden big city.
 
Yes, she lived here all of her life.
 
But that didn’t give her license to pretend there were no assholes out
there.
 
There were plenty.
 
And it terrified Daniel to think that one of
them could have harmed his woman as easily as walking through her front door.

When she didn’t respond to him calling
her name, and she was not in the living room or the kitchen of the two-bedroom
home, he headed upstairs.

Nikki was upstairs turning off the
water tap and stepping out of the shower when she heard footsteps on the
landing.
 
She knew it was Daniel, because
he was the only somebody who had a key to her home, and she had already assumed
he would be coming over tonight.
 
She
also assumed, given what happened with the mayor earlier today, that he was
going to be pissed.
 

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going
to stand her ground.
 
Mayor Bainbridge
couldn’t continue to get away with his foolishness and somebody had to call him
out on it.
 
She wasn’t about to back down
just because she was the one who had the guts to do so.

She removed her shower cap, shaking
her head to release her shoulder-length hair as she did so, and pulled a towel
from the rack.
 
She was just about to
call his name, to ensure that it was indeed Daniel, when he called hers
instead.

“Nikki!” he called out with a voice
that had that impatient edge she knew so well.
 
“Nikki!”

“I’m in here!” she replied with a yell
of her own.

Daniel made his way across the
hardwood floor of her master bedroom, and onto the marbled tile of the adjacent
bath.
 
He hadn’t seen her in an entire
week, and had missed her terribly, but he was too upset with her to give such
sentiment a second thought.

Yet, as soon as he saw her, standing
there dripping wet, her big brown eyes looking up at him with the sincerity of
a loyal friend and the sensuality of a masterful seductress, he immediately
softened.
 
And remembered why he loved
her in the first place.

Nikki’s heart swelled, too, when he
appeared at her bathroom door.
 
And just
like every time she saw him, she was amazed that this very conservative,
distinguished-looking older man was
her
man.
 

Daniel leaned against the
doorjamb.
 
His tired eyes trailed down
the length of that naked brown body he often craved, from her sizeable breasts that
stood out taut and full, to her flat, toned stomach, to her gorgeously
unblemished legs.
 
She had that look he
loved and that only the most confident of women displayed: that look of
complete self-possession.
 
That look that
made clear that she was who she was and if you didn’t like it, then that was
your problem, not hers.
 

And just seeing her again, after an
entire week without seeing her at all, caused his heart to feel that sweet
warmth inside that no other woman had been able to elicit.

He told her at the very beginning of
their relationship that marriage was not going to happen.
 
And although she accepted his terms
wholeheartedly, something was beginning to change.
 
But oddly enough, it wasn’t changing in her,
it was changing in him.
 
He had expected
her to start pressuring him about marriage as the years came and went, even
though she knew at the start it wasn’t going to happen.
 
But she never pressured him at all.
 
She never even brought it up.
 
It was Daniel, to his own amazement, who was
actually giving marriage serious consideration.

“What time did you get back in town?”
she asked him.

“I just got back.”

“I called your cell phone.”

“I know you did.”

“Numerous times.”

“I know that too.”

“Why didn’t you call me back,
Daniel?
 
I could have wanted something
important.”

“Didn’t I tell you about leaving that
door unlocked?”

Nikki looked at him.
 
What
door
, she almost asked.
 
“I didn’t
realize I left it unlocked,” she finally said.
 
“I came in with an armful of groceries, and I thought I had gone back
and locked it.
 
I guess I forgot.”

“This isn’t the same town you grew up
in, Nikki.
 
How many times do I have to
tell you that?
 
There are real nut-jobs
out there waiting for an opportunity.
 
Stop giving them an opportunity.”

“You act like I did it on
purpose.
 
I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“But you did it, that’s the point,
Nikki.
 
I want you to stop doing it.
 
You’re always out there defending everybody
else’s rights, defend yours a little better and stop being so
got
damn trusting.”

“Okay.”

“You hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you,” Nikki said.
 
Daniel could be so forceful when it came to
her safety that she couldn’t help but hear him loud and clear.
 
But it wasn’t always that way.
 
There used to be a time, early in their
relationship, when she wondered if he loved her at all.

It was mainly because of his actions
that filled her with doubt.
 
When they
first started dating four years ago, and he would frequently go out of town on
business trips, she would phone him every day, sometimes multiple times a day, just
to hear his voice.
 
Then she realized
something startling: she was always phoning him, but he rarely ever phoned
her.
 
So she stopped doing it.
 
And whenever he would return from those
trips, she used to go to his big, beautiful home and would cook him a big
dinner and wait for him in the most seductive clothing she owned.
 
He would be thrilled to see her, and would
make love to her on the spot, but she began to wonder if she was forcing the
issue.
 
So she stopped doing that too.

Although it didn’t exactly change him,
because he still rarely phoned, and he still came over only after he took care
of whatever he had to take care of, she felt that it matured her.
 
She wasn’t as obsessive about their
relationship the way she used to be.
 
She
felt she understood him better now.
 
He
was accustomed to women chasing him down.
 
He was accustomed to women as the aggressors for his affection.
 
They pounced while he rolled easy. But Nikki
knew she was the one who had his attention.
 
And she also knew, in order to keep his attention, she had to learn to
roll easy too.
 

It wasn’t a piece of cake, because
Daniel had already made it clear that forever, such as marriage, wasn’t in the
cards for them.
 
But she believed, if she
played her cards right, his heart could eventually change too.
 

That was why she never pressured
him.
 
She had the man so many of these
single ladies in town would give their right arm to have, and she wasn’t
letting her almost obsessive love for him, and her youth and inexperience,
cause her to lose him.
 
He was her first
romance, her one and only love, and she had to do this right to keep it that
way.
 

She wasn’t without her detractors,
however.
 
She had almost every female she
knew tell her time and time again that she was a pure fool if she thought that
a man who looked like Daniel Crane was going to remain faithful to her or any
other woman.
 
Even Val, who liked Daniel,
told her that.
 
But since she had no
evidence to back up any of their assertions, she let his affection speak for
itself.

Although she wondered more than a few
times, given how often he was out of town, given those many lonely nights she
had to endure, if he was spreading that affection around.

“I wasn’t sure if you would want to
eat when you came over tonight,” she said cautiously, “so I haven’t cook
anything yet.
 
But it won’t take me long
to whip something together.”

Daniel walked up to her, took the
towel from her, and began drying her body himself.
 
“Is it true?” he asked her in a soft voice.

Her first inclination was to answer
with a question of her own.
 
But that
would only beg the obvious.
 
She knew
what he was talking about.
 
“Yes,” she
said.

She could see that flash of anger in
his eyes.
 
He stopped wiping her and
looked at her.
 
“A shouting match with
the mayor, Nikki?
 
Really?”

“But you should have been at that
press conference, Daniel.
 
Mayor
Bainbridge knew what he was doing.
 
He
knows his plan is a joke.
 
He knows that
all of those minority set-aside contracts went to his cronies instead of
minorities.”

“You were out of line, Nikki.”

“Because I told the truth?”

“Because you argued with the mayor!”

“I didn’t argue with him.
 
I just pointed out the facts and he didn’t
like that I was pointing them out.
 
I
wasn’t out of line, how can you say that?
 
Todd Bainbridge knows what he’s doing, Daniel.
 
Not one minority contractor received a bid on
that better roads initiative, and that was no accident.”

“I know that.”

“Everybody knows that.
 
But nobody says a damn thing!
 
It was my job to point that out.”

Daniel didn’t respond.
 
He just stared at Nikki.

“I didn’t deserve to get raked over
the coals because I told the truth.
 
How
can you say that?”
  
Then she
hesitated.
 
“Even my editor got on my
case.
 
He said I insulted the mayor, that
I disrespected the mayor, and that wasn’t even true.
 
All I did was what any good journalist was
supposed to do and question why no minorities were getting any of those
contracts.
 
Minorities pay taxes too and
they’re entitled to reap the benefits when the city decides to spend those tax
dollars.
 
I pointed that out.”