DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (11 page)

“I was fired today.
 
I’ve never been fired before.”
 
She looked at him.
 
Her big, sweet eyes melted his heart.
 
“I may never get another job in journalism
again.
 
Who wants to hire a reporter who
can’t keep a job?”

Daniel smiled and rubbed the smooth
skin of her face with the back of his hand.
 
“If they have any sense at all,” he said, “they would hire you in a
heartbeat.”

“I’m not
that
good,” she said with a grin.

But Daniel didn’t crack a smile.
 
“Yes, you are,” he said as he rubbed her hair
again.
 
“And I don’t want you to ever
forget that.”

Nikki’s smile evaporated too, when she
saw his seriousness.
 

“I won’t,” she said.
 
And allowed him to pull her, once again, into
his tight embrace.

Cypress Road was pin-drop quiet at
midnight as all manner of activity that once dominated the landscape had packed
up and gone indoors.
 
Melanie Chandler, in
a dark blue, older model Corvette, sat peacefully in the shadows of the quiet
street, just across from Nikki Graham’s townhouse.
 
The car had dark tinted windows and
headlights that blared up and pointed out like two watchful eyeballs.
 
Like a lurking Peeping Tom.
 
And it was not there by accident, but there
because Daniel Graham’s Jaguar was there, parked on the driveway of his
girlfriend’s home.
 
A home, Melanie was
able to discover, he purchased for that girlfriend two years ago, as a gift for
her college graduation.

But as soon as it could be seen from
the street that the light in the upstairs room had gone out, and the man she
knew so well would not be coming out of that house tonight, Melanie clenched
her fist into a hard squeeze.
 
She
squeezed until her hand bled.
 
And
eventually her car, her dark blue lurking Corvette, slowly drove away.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Word that Daniel Crane was at the
Wakefield Gazette newspaper building spread like wildfire that next
morning.
 
By the time he made his way
into the newsroom, it was Daniel, not the latest breaking news, that was the
hot topic of conversation.

“As soon as they fired that girl,” one
female reporter said to a group of female reporters who were hanging out at her
newsroom desk, “I knew he wasn’t going to stand for it.”

“She got what she deserved,” another
female reporter chimed in.
 
“And I say
good riddance.”

“Wonder why he love her so much?” yet
another reporter asked.
 
“She’s a pretty
girl, I’ll give her that.
 
But she’s not
the prettiest girl.”

“Not by a long shot.”

“Not by a long shot,” the reporter
agreed with her colleague.
 
“And she’s so
young and wild.
 
Buck wild, if you ask
me.
 
He could do way better than her.”

“I hear he keeps her around because she
put it on him something fierce.”

“Oh, really now?
 
And how the hell would you know something
like that?”

“Because I know!
 
Why else would he still be with somebody like
Nikki Graham when that hunk of man can have any woman he wants?
 
Heck, I’m a happily married woman, and he can
have me!”

They all laughed.
 

“I think it’s sweet,” still another
female said.
 
“Wish I had a man who cared
about me like that.”

But Daniel never heard her praise, or
any of the other disparaging comments.
 
Because word had spread to the editor’s office also, to Joe Paulson’s
office.
 
And as soon as Daniel dawned the
doors of the newsroom, Joe, who happened to be Nikki’s immediate supervisor,
hurried out of his office, shook the man’s hand, and escorted him upstairs to
the office of the publisher.

“It’s so good to see you, Danny,” Herb
Poindexter said jovially as soon as Joe deposited Daniel and left.
 
Herb hurried from behind his desk and shook
Daniel’s hand.
 
“I haven’t seen you in a
month of Sundays, boy, where have you been keeping yourself?”

“It’s been a hectic few months.”

“It has, hasn’t it?” Herb said.
 
“I used to be able to be a silent partner at
my own newspaper, but with so much going on nowadays I find myself at this
place more than I am anywhere else.
 
Have
a seat, have a seat.”

Herb watched as Daniel unbuttoned his
tailored-to-perfection suit coat and took a seat.
 
But although Herb was watching Daniel, he was
inwardly calculating a response.
 
How, he
wondered, should he handle this unexpected visit?
 
Herb was a tall, wiry man who fancied himself
a politician in the making.
 
He was a
brownnoser, a backslapper, a glad-hander.
 
He was whatever he needed to be to keep his name in superior standing in
the public eye until he decided what political direction he wanted to take.
 
Daniel, as second in command at Dreeson, was
always near the top of his need-to-please list of movers and shakers in the
community.
 

And he already knew why Daniel had
come.
 
But he couldn’t back down.
 
Nikki Graham was besmirching his good name,
and he couldn’t allow that.
 

“So how have you been?” he asked
Daniel as he sat in the chair beside him.

“I’ve been good,” Daniel said,
crossing his leg.
 
“Just got back in town
yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah?
 
Where from?”

“Florida.”

“Now that’s where I need to be.
 
Florida.
 
The sunshine state.
 
This joint
pain sometimes can be hell on earth.
 
That warm weather in Florida is probably just what I need.
 
But who has the time these days?”
 

“You’d better take the time.
 
Health is hard to regain once you lose it.”

“You speak the truth, my friend,” Herb
said.
 
“But you always have been a wise
man.
 
That’s why I’d been meaning to call
you.”
 
This was Herb’s detour into
distraction.
 
This was his chance to get
his pins in Daniel, and thereby any future political support, by getting one of
his in-laws in there first.
 
Besides,
Herb was among those in town who believed a young girl like Nikki Graham wasn’t
good for Daniel.
 
He believed that if
Daniel could just find that one right woman, he’d dump that child like a bad
habit.
 
And Herb knew just that right
woman.

“I wanted to call you,” he continued,
“because there’s this very nice lady I want you to meet.”

Daniel looked at Herb.
 
They went way back, back in the days when
they both served on the board at Alcoa.
 
But Daniel was offended.
 
They’d
never been close to such an extent where Herb should have felt comfortable
setting up dates for him.

Herb, seeing his resistance already,
addressed it.
 
“Before you turn me down,
just hear me out, okay?
 
I’m not trying
to interfere.
 
It’s just that the lady in
question is my sister-in-law.
 
My wife’s
sister.
 
She’s newly divorced and readily
available.
 
And when I say she’s a looker?
 
She’s a looker, Daniel, of the highest
order.
 
You should see her.
 
Tall, blonde, nicely stacked.”

“I’m not interested, Herb, but
thanks.”

“At least come to the house for dinner
one night, and see for yourself.”

“I’m not interested.”

“But she’s a ten, Daniel, and she’s
readily available.”

“But I’m not available, readily or
otherwise,” Daniel said firmly and looked Herb dead in the eyes.
 
“End of discussion.”

Any other man spoke to Herb Poindexter
that way and they’d be out of a job, or worse.
 
But this wasn’t any other man.
 
This was Daniel Crane, a man Herb knew wielded just enough power in town
to be dangerous.
 
He therefore
smiled.
 
“Okay, Danny, okay,” he
said.
 
“Enough of my matchmaking.
 
You’ll be sorry you didn’t hear me out, but
enough of that.
 
I know you didn’t come
all this way for that.
 
I know your
schedule is as busy as mine.”

Busier
, Daniel thought.
 
This little detour already had his staff
forced to reconfigure his entire schedule for today.
 
“I came,” Daniel said, “because of what
happened with Nikki yesterday.”

Herb expected as much, although why
the man even bothered still amazed him.
 
But Herb knew he had to play this exactly right.
 
He couldn’t afford to alienate Crane.
 
“Yeah, it was a terrible thing,” he
said.
 
“I couldn’t believe the level of
disrespect she showed our mayor.”

“You fired her.”

“Fired her?” Herb said.
 
“I haven’t fired her.
 
Not completely anyway.
 
All she has to do is apologize to the mayor,
and that’ll be the end of that.
 
She’ll
be right back at work and nobody will so much as bring back up that sordid
episode.”

“No apology,” Daniel said.

“Look, I know you stand by your lady.
 
But did you see that press conference?”

Daniel leaned back in the chair and
gently rubbed the top of his hair.
 
“I
didn’t see it, no.”

“You should see it, then maybe you’d
think twice about going all out for her.”

Daniel said nothing.
 
He knew her confrontation with the mayor was
bad.
 
Herb would not have fired her if it
wasn’t.
 
But he also knew that Herb, like
some of his other so-called friends, believed that Daniel could do far better
than a woman like Nikki.
 
She was too
young, they pointed out.
 
Too
inexperienced.
 
Too
something
, they would comment although they’d never verbalize to
his face just what that
something
was.

To them he deserved what they had:
either some air-headed beauty queen who stayed at home and produced boatloads
of babies, or some female power player who fed their egos by producing
boatloads of cash.
 
Nikki, they felt, was
just a gold-digging kid whose smarts and good looks managed to wrangle herself
the golden catch.
 
Daniel set them
straight from the beginning, even to the point of telling a few that they could
kiss his ass if they didn’t like his choice in mate, and those who remained in
his circle of friends did indeed cut it out.
 
But Herb was never in his circle of friends to begin with.

“All right I get it,” Herb finally
said when Daniel’s silent treatment forced him to give it up.
 
“You’re standing by her.
 
You’ve made that abundantly clear.
 
But she was awful.
 
I’m sorry, but she was.
 
She got into a shouting match with Todd
Bainbridge.
 
With the
mayor
,
Daniel.
 
I could not believe my
eyes.
 
That’s just not done and she
should know that.
 
She represents my
paper when she attend those pressers.
 
She’s not representing herself.
 
Hell, she represents you wherever she goes!
 
And for her to be behaving like that?
 
In my opinion she’s a young hothead who can’t
be tamed!”

“Since I have no intentions of taming
her,” Daniel said, “that’s not an issue for me.
 
She’s a fine reporter.
 
Your best
reporter, Herb, and you know it.
 
And the
fact that you would release her, when all she was doing was calling Todd out on
his bullshit, upsets me mightily.”

“But Danny, come on.
 
She was out of line.
 
All her black behind had to ---”

Herb realized he had misspoke.
 
He looked at Daniel.
 
Daniel was staring at him.

“She’s my lady,” Daniel said to him.
 
“Whether you or anybody else chose to accept
that fact is your business.
 
But she’s my
lady.”

“Listen, Danny, I fully understand---”

“When you disrespect her, you
disrespect me.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.
 
I was just saying. . .”
 
When it was clear that Daniel wasn’t going
along with his nonsense, he exhaled.
 
And
accepted.
 
“Okay, okay,” he said.
 
“She can come back.
 
All she has to do is apologize and we can---”

“No apology,” Daniel said
bluntly.
 
“That’s off the table.”

“Now, come on!
 
It’s not as if I’m making an unreasonable
request!
 
The mayor’s office has been
very good to my newspaper.
 
We get our
best leaked stories out of Todd’s office.
 
I can’t lose that kind of access.”

“She questioned the mayor’s policies,
Herb.
 
It wasn’t personal.
 
She did her job.
 
I will not have her apologizing to him or you
or anybody else for doing what she was supposed to do.”

Daniel knew he was coming on strong,
but he was never ambivalent when it came to Nikki.
 
Herb knew it.
 
He knew it when Nikki graduated college, and Herb approached him about
hiring her to work at the Gazette.
 
Daniel knew it was Herb’s way of attempting to get Daniel in his pocket,
so he made himself plain even then.
 
He
told Herb to hire her only if he felt she would be an asset to his paper.
 
If not, don’t hire her, Daniel had said.
 
But Daniel also made it clear that if he did
hire her, he had better be fair to her.
 
“If she doesn’t make the grade,” Daniel had
said at the time, “don’t let our relationship stop you from getting rid of her.
 
But be fair about it.
 
That’s all I’m asking.
 
If you hire her, you treat her right.”