DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (16 page)

“One of them.”

“Me too.
 
Wow.
 
Me too.”

Daniel smiled.
 
Melanie appeared to him to have an
anxiousness about her, as if she was trying too hard.
 
And every little move he made, such as a simple
smile, seemed to encourage her more.
 

“So,” she said, seemingly excited that
they had something in common, “tell me a little more about yourself, Daniel.”

“Is this a job interview?”

“It might be.”

“I work at Dreeson.”

“I see.
 
And what is it you do at Dreeson?”

“A little of this, a little of that.”

Melanie smiled.
 
“Okay.
 
My bad.
 
Let me rephrase the
question.
 
What is your position with
Dreeson?”

“Senior vice president, that’s my
official position.”

“Senior Vice president of
Dreeson?
 
Oh my.
 
Now I am impressed.”

“What about you?”

But this wasn’t about her.
 
And Melanie wasn’t going to make it about
her.
 
“Tell me more,” she said.
 
“Did you spent your entire career with
Dreeson?”

“No, I’ve only been with them for the
past six years.”

“Oh.
 
Okay.
 
So what did you do before?”

“I was a judge before.”

“A judge?”
 
She smiled.
 
“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“What area of law?”

“Criminal.”

“A criminal court judge?
 
Doubly impressed.
 
For how long?”

“For about five years.”

“So why did you give up on your legal
career?
 
You just had enough?”

“Pretty much.
 
What about you?”

“Not nearly as impressive.
 
I’ve been an executive assistant most of my
career.
 
Did my four years at Sarah
Lawrence, then a stint with Northwestern’s B-school, where I almost got my MBA
but decided it was all so pretentious you know?
 
So I dropped out.
 
I recently left
Johnson Marketing where I was the executive assistant to the president there.”

“Why did you leave?”

She smiled.
 
“Is this a job interview?”

“It might be.”

“I left because the president was
ousted.
 
The ouster was wrong, I didn’t
agree with it, so I left.
 
Now I’m
weighing my options.”

Daniel nodded.
  
“A woman of principle.
 
And loyalty.
 
I like that.”

“Is that a job offer?” she asked with
a grin on her face.

Daniel hesitated.
 
For some reason his instincts were telling
him to just say no.
 
“I don’t know about
that,” he said.

“But you can always use a good
assistant, right?”

“Certainly.”

“Would you encourage me to apply?”

“No.”

Melanie didn’t expect that
response.
 
“Well, that’s honest,” she
said, smiling it off.
 
“Let’s put it this
way: am I welcome to apply?”

“Yes, of course you’re welcome.”

“Well there’s that.
 
But I truly don’t know what I’m going to do
at this point, DanieI.
 
I promised myself
that I would take my time for a change and weigh all options carefully.”

Daniel nodded.
 
“Good strategy.”

And then his cell phone rang.
 
He knew without checking the caller ID that
it was most probably Nikki, since she was one of only a few people who had his
private cell number.
 
“Hello?” he said
into his phone and glanced at Melanie.
 
She slowly moved away, to give him at least the appearance of some
privacy.
 
He liked that.

“Hello, is this Daniel Crane?”

There was a hesitation in Daniel’s
response.
 
The voice on the other end was
female, but it was a stranger’s voice.
 
“Yes,” he answered cautiously.

“This is Wakefield Memorial Hospital,
sir.
 
A Miss Nikki Graham asked that we
contact you.”

Daniel’s heart began to pound.
 
“Nikki?”

“Yes, sir.
 
There was an accident.
 
She’s okay.
 
She wanted to make sure I told you that. But she wants you to come.”

Daniel’s heart fell through his
shoe.
 
An accident.
 
Involving
Nikki
?
 
It felt like his worst fear realized.
 
Something had happened to Nikki!
 
He told the hospital staffer he was on his
way, put away his phone, and began hurrying out of the garden, completely
forgetting that Melanie was there.
 

It wasn’t until he was near the exit
did he realize his error.
 
He turned
quickly toward her. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I have to leave.”

“Is everything all right?” Melanie
yelled after him, but he was already on his way.

CHAPTER TEN

When Daniel arrived, Nikki was seated on
a gurney in what appeared to be a holding room inside the E.R..
 
He entered the room in his expensive white
tux, and presented as a stark contrast to Nikki’s hospital gown and socks.
 
He stood without movement when he first saw
her sitting there.
 

He walked over to her.
 
He placed his hands on the side of her arms
and looked over her entire body, from her feet to the crown of her head.
 
But for a tiny scratch on her forehead, she
appeared fine.
 

He exhaled.

“Where were you?” she asked him.

“Todd’s party, remember?
 
Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

He kissed her, on her small, almost
invisible scratch, and looked into her eyes.
 
She looked up at him, anxious for an answer, an answer she knew he
wasn’t about to give.
 

“What happened?” he asked.

Nikki rubbed his coat lapel.
 
“You’re wearing a tux.”

“Nikki.”

“Nothing happened,” she said, removing
her hand from his coat, knowing that he was going to have a fit if he really
knew what she had been up to.
 
“I told
them to tell you I was fine.”

Daniel glared at Nikki.
 
She knew him better than that.
 

“I was working on an assignment,
alright, just a tagalong, and then there was this police raid.
 
And I got, I suppose, because those activists
were running, I got trampled a little.”

Daniel frowned.
 
“You were trampled?”

She nodded, as her eyes showed signs
of wariness.
 
“Yes.”

“And what kind of assignment would
involve a police raid, and people running?”

“Luke wanted me to interview FAN---”

“Who?”

“A local group called FAN.
 
The Fresh Air Now activists.
 
Luke wanted me to interview them during one
of their message nights.”

Daniel frowned and shook his
head.
 
“Their what?”

“Message nights.”

“What’s a message night, Nikki?”

Nikki sighed.
 
“A message night is when FAN members get
together with paint and posters and make their views known.”

“They vandalize people’s property, in
other words?”

Nikki paused.
 
“Yes.”

“Why is this Luke sending you to
something like that?
 
Something illegal?”

“I wasn’t participating, Daniel.
 
I was just a reporter finding out why they
did what they did and what they hoped to accomplish.”

“Oh, that’s utter nonsense!
 
I could have answered those questions for
you.
 
They’re a ragtag band of radical
thugs who have no regard for the rule of law or the sanctity of private
property. They don’t like something, they destroy it.
 
You didn’t have to go out there and
practically get yourself killed to get those questions answered!”

“It wasn’t even that serious.
 
I didn’t practically get killed.”

“Thank God!
 
But it’s no thanks to that editor of
yours.”
 
Daniel’s cell phone began
ringing.
  
He exhaled and angrily grabbed
it from his inside coat pocket.
 

“I didn’t practically get killed,”
Nikki said again, as he flipped open his phone.
 
“That’s overstating it for real.”

“Yes, hello?” Daniel said harshly into
the phone.
 

It was Phillip Grayson.
 

“Hey, bud, what’s up?” he asked in his
usual lively voice.
 
“I’ve been looking
all over the place for you.
 
You’re
supposed to be here representing Dreeson, remember?”

“Yeah well, something came up,” Daniel
said with little punch, his stomach beginning to churn.

“Yeah, I figured something had
happened.
 
It’s not like you to just
leave like that.
 
What is it?”

Daniel glanced at Nikki again, who was
frustrating the hell out of him, and then he began pacing the room.
 
“My lady had a slight accident.
 
I was called away to the hospital.”

“Whoa.
 
An accident?
 
Nikki?
 
She okay?”

Daniel ended up against the side wall
beside the room’s entrance.
 
He leaned
against the wall and pressed the sole of his wingtip shoe against it.
 
“She’s okay, yes,” he said. “Thank God.”

“Yes, thank God,” Phillip echoed.
 
“But Nikki again, hun?
 
She’s an active woman, isn’t she?”

Daniel looked at Nikki, as she sighed
and folded her arms.
 
“Yeah,” he
said.
 
“That she is.”

The room’s door opened suddenly and
Luke Finley, in jeans and a parka, hurried in, walking past Daniel without
realizing he stood against the side wall.
 
“Nikki!” he said with a sigh of relief as he hurried to her hospital
bed.

“Hello, Luke,” Nikki said, trying to
smile, trying to quickly assure him that she was okay.
 
It seemed to her that he looked more worried
than Daniel.
 

“Ah, man, I am so sorry.
 
I am so sorry!”

“I’m all right.”

“You should hate me, Nick.
 
You should just hate me.
 
I had no idea the cops would show up.
 
I would have never sent you out there if I
had known that.”

“I know.”

He smiled and stared at her.
 
“Here I am putting you in harm’s way after
only two weeks back on the job,” he said, his round, blue eyes unable to
conceal his grave concern.
 
Then he
placed his hand on the side of her face and rubbed it.
 
Daniel looked up from his cell phone
conversation when he touched her.
 

“I’m fine, Luke, really,” she said as
she removed his hand.
 
She glanced at
Daniel.
 
She knew Luke meant well, but
she knew Daniel.

And Luke kept rubbing it in.
 
He allowed her to remove his hand from her
face, but he then placed it on her narrow shoulder.
 
“It’ll never happen again, sweetheart,” he
said to her. “I promise you that.”

“I’ll call you back,” Daniel said into
his cell phone and then flipped it shut.
 
On hearing a male’s voice behind him, Luke quickly removed his hand.

With the sole of his shoe, Daniel
pushed himself away from the back wall and then walked slowly toward Nikki’s
bed.
 
His security chief’s investigation
of Luke Finley turned up little controversy.
 
Never married, no children, no lawsuits or arrests.
 
The only information worth even mentioning
was the fact that Luke loved the ladies.
 
And he loved them excessively.
 
And
none of them had ever gotten close enough to him to so much as feel hurt when
he didn’t phone them back.
 
He changed
women the way other men changed clothes.

Luke turned toward Daniel and
attempted to smile.
 
What the security
chief failed to mention, Daniel immediately noticed, was just how good looking
the young man was.
 

“Well, hello there,” Luke said, in
what Daniel could easily see was an overcompensation. “I didn’t see you back
there, sir.
 
I’m Luke Finley.”
 
Luke extended his hand.

Daniel shook the hand, without putting
on fake smiles, but was staring instead at the man before him, looking deep
into his eyes, sizing him up on the strength of his lust for Nikki alone.