DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (27 page)

She sat
back.
 
Taking it all in.
 
Jean, she said her name was.
 
The same name of the naked woman in those
photographs.
 
And she couldn’t help
it.
 
She began re-living every word: how
they met five years ago, how he wined and dined her, how he took her on his business
trips, how he only wanted Nikki for her body, how he was with that woman the
night he left Nikki at the hospital!

Suddenly she
had to get away, to get some air.
 

She pulled
her purse out of her desk drawer and began slinging items out of it, from combs
to compacts to her wallet, until her cell phone came up.
 
She grabbed the phone and moved quickly out
of the newsroom, moved as if she’d pass out if she didn’t get in a hurry, and
she stepped out of the heavy double doors and stood like a spooked basket case
on the sidewalk of Saint Germaine.
 

Her suit
coat was off and back inside the building, which meant she was wearing only her
slacks and sleeveless vest.
 
But the cold
didn’t bother her.
 
She was too excited.
 
She was too devastated by the horror of
another woman in Daniel’s life to even pay attention to the whip and whirl of
the wind outside.
 

She was so
outdone with that phone call that she actually forgot that his number was
programmed into her phone.
 
She pressed
his numbers so fast that she pressed the wrong numbers twice, causing her to
redial both times.
 
When she finally got
it right, and Whitney told her that Daniel was unavailable, her anger replaced
her fear.
 
“Listen to me, Whitney, and
you listen good.
 
I am not asking you to
put Daniel on this phone, I am telling you.
 
I don’t care if he’s in a meeting with President Obama, you get him on
this phone!
 
And you tell him that if he
choose not to receive my call he’ll be sorry, because I’ll come to his office
and show off my natural ass- you hear me?
 
I’ve got to talk to him!”

There was a
pause on the line as Whitney, Nikki was certain, was stunned that Nikki was
talking to her that way.
 
Then she asked
her to hold on.
 
Within a couple minutes
tops, Daniel was on the line.
 

“Nikki?” he
asked.
 
And as soon as she heard his
voice, that firm, hard voice of his, tears came to her eyes.
 

“Nikki?”

“She called
me,” Nikki said, her voice emotionally hoarse already.

There was a
hesitation in Daniel’s voice as well, which didn’t help.
 
“Who called you?”

“She said
she was your lover.
 
She said y’all been
together for five years.
 
Five years,
Daniel.
 
She said you want to marry her.
 
She even said she was with you that night you
left me at the hospital.”

“Who told
you this?”

“Jean,”
Nikki said and waited for his explanation.
 
But none came.
 
He didn’t explain
at all.
 
Not at all.
 
And his silence spoke volumes to Nikki.
 

She shook
her head.
 
What was she doing?
 
She felt like a pure fool standing out there
in the cold, feeling miserable and hurt, while he was playing dumb.
 
“You know what,” she decided to say, “nobody
told me anything.
 
Nobody at all.
 
Forget I even bothered calling your sorry
ass!”
 
And she killed the call.
 

The heavy
double doors of the Gazette building crept open, and Luke, as if on cue,
stepped out.
 
Nikki had, by now, drifted
away from the front door, to the end of the building.
 
She stood there, her back to Luke, her behind
round and firm underneath her tight pants.
 

Luke walked
slowly toward her, cautiously, until she turned his way.
 
Luke stared at her. “You okay?” he asked, but
as soon as he spoke, the sounds of welding metal from the salvage yard across
the street began to be heard, causing him to ask if she was okay again, this
time louder than his normal voice.

But Nikki
didn’t respond either time.

“You looked
pretty upset when you left out.
 
I was
just checking.”

Still
nothing from Nikki.

“Okay.
 
I know when I’m licked.
 
Didn’t mean to get in your business.”
 
He said this and then made a slow move to
turn around and leave.

“I got a
phone call,” Nikki said above the noise from the salvage yard.
 
Luke turned back around.
 
She and Luke had worked together for months
now.
 
She considered him, not just her
boss, but her friend.

“Some woman,
she wouldn’t give her name, phoned me.
 
He loves her, according to her.”

Luke
wondered if he should ask who the
he
was, just to show spontaneity, but found it unnecessary.
 
Daniel Crane was the center of Nikki’s
existence, and she knew he knew that.
 
“He
denies it, of course,” he said instead.

Nikki
frowned.
 
“Yes,” she said.
 
“I guess.
 
I don’t know.
 
I don’t care!
 
How could I have been so dumb?”

“Now hold
on, Nikki.
 
Don’t start beating yourself
up.
  
Just because some woman called
doesn’t mean it’s true.
 
She could have
been lying.”

Nikki let
out a sigh of frustration and then, as the tears threatened to return, turned
her back to Luke.
 

Luke looked
at her bone-thin back, and he wanted to reach out and touch her, but he knew he
couldn’t.
 
He was winning.
 
She was seeing that bastard Crane for who he
really was, and things were going his way.
 
But he had to tread lightly.

“I know
you’re upset, Nikki.
 
But you can’t,” he
said this still in his loud voice, but he stopped suddenly as the noise across
the street stopped too.
 
“You can’t let
something like this devastate you.”
  

Nikki looked
at Luke after he said that.
 
She looked
into his sympathetic, understanding, big blue eyes.
 
And they were so sympathetic, and so
understanding, that she couldn’t contain her emotions any longer.
 
The tears returned.
 
And she fell.
 
She fell into Luke Finley’s arms.

She spent
the remainder of the afternoon trying her best to stay busy.
 
And this time Luke did give her assignments,
as if he wanted to keep her busy too.
 
She covered a pro-life rally, interviewed the sister of a murder victim,
and then sat behind her desk writing up both stories although Luke had told her
long ago to take her behind home.
 

But she
wasn’t about to do that.
 
She wasn’t
about to go home and sit around crying her eyes out over some man who couldn’t
even be faithful to her.
 
No way, she
thought.
  
She wasn’t even trying to deal
with that craziness right now.
 
At least
at work she could focus on other people’s problems.
 
At least at work she was too busy delving
into other people’s lives to worry about just how pitiful her own life really
was.

But Daniel
showed up.
 
It was late, after six, and
Nikki was one of the few reporters still working inside the newsroom.
 
She was at her computer, pecking away
feverishly, when she saw, through her periphery, somebody approaching her
desk.
 
She glanced away from her computer
screen, to see who it was, but when she realized it was Daniel she did a double
take.

He was in a
gray suit and tie, and moved at a very deliberate pace.
 
His eyes looked at her with a hard, cold
stare, and they didn’t so much as blink or glance away.
 
He was upset and she could see it all over
his face.
 
He was the one with the bitch
on the side, but he was upset?
 
Nikki
wanted to puke.

Luke saw him
too.
 
He saw him from the prism of the
glass door in his office.
 
He stood up,
when Daniel walked past, and stood at his opened door for a better view.
 
He never figured Crane to be the type to show
up.
 
A woman bust a brother like that,
Luke figured he’d just accept his fate and move on to the next conquest.
 
But Luke knew better too.
 
Nikki was involved.
 
She was worth the trip.
 
Crane may have been a lot of things, but Luke
never figured him to be a fool.

Daniel stood
at Nikki’s desk without saying a word.
 
He had both hands in his pants pockets and was staring intensely at
her.
 
He looked drained and angry at the
same time, she thought, a man just one wrong word away from losing it, and she
tried to stare back, because he wasn’t about to lay some guilt trip on her as
if she did something wrong.
 

But looking
into those hazel eyes of his made her too emotional.
 
She loved him so much! She decided to get on
with it.
 
That staring routine, like he
was the great wise man and she was some hopeless case, wasn’t going to work
this time.

“Did you
come here for a reason, or just to stare at me?” she asked him.

He remained
still.
 
He didn’t so much as bat an eye.

“Which is
it?
 
To stare at me?
 
Is that it?
 
Because if it is I can tell you now that it won’t work.”

“What’s
wrong with you, Nikki?” he asked her, his face seemingly pained to understand
just what drives this woman sometimes.
  
“You receive a phone call from some woman you know nothing about, some
anonymous phone call, and that’s all it takes?”

“You can
minimize it all you want.
 
You can act
like it’s no big deal all you care to.
 
But I know better.”

“You don’t
know shit!”

Nikki
hesitated, surprised by Daniel’s tone.
 
But she couldn’t keep giving in so easily.
 
“I know more than you think,” she finally
said.

“You need to
stop it, Nikki, you understand me?
 
You
need to stop this nonsense right here and right now.”

“What
nonsense?
 
All I did was finally face the
truth.”

“What the
hell kind of truth do you keep talking about?!
 
That same truth some woman told you?
 
That kind?
 
Truth based on
lies?
 
But that’s all it takes with you,
isn’t it?
 
If it has the least
plausibility then you’re off and running.
 
That’s all you need.”
 

“Right.
 
That’s all I need.
 
You don’t do shit.
 
It’s all in my imagination.”

Daniel was
offended.
 
“Don’t you talk to me that
way.”

“I’ll talk
to you any way I damn well please!
 
Who
the hell are you?”

Daniel
sighed and folded his arms.
  
If she
didn’t wear him out he didn’t know what could.
 
“I don’t have a lot of patience, Nikki.
 
And you’re pushing it.”

“Then leave,
dammit.
 
I don’t have no patience
either!”

“All right,
that’s it,” Daniel said as he unfolded his arms.
 
“Get your things and let’s go.”

Nikki looked
at him as if he had fangs.
 
“What?”

“Get your
things and let’s go.”

“You must be
out of your mind.
 
I’m not about to go
anywhere with you!”

Daniel’s
anger came swiftly as he lunged over Nikki’s desk and pointed his finger within
an inch of her face.
 
“Get your things,
Nikki, and let’s go.
 
And I mean now!”

He grabbed
her by the arm and slung her to her feet.
 
He was boiling over with almost more anger than he could contain, and
everybody in the newsroom had stopped what they were doing to see the anger
unleashed.
 

Nikki knew
she had to do something.
 
She either had
to agree to go with Daniel, or boil in anger right along with him, because he
wasn’t going to just leave.
 

But then
Luke came out of his office as if he were some conquering hero coming to the
rescue, and that only made it worse.
 
The
last thing Nikki needed was to have Luke provoking Daniel, whose anger was
almost chilling when it was fully realized, and Luke was exactly the kind of
man who would love to see the big man fall.
 

But Nikki
wasn’t going to allow any escalation of this already bad scene.
 
And she was angry with herself because she
couldn’t even be upset with Daniel without defending him too. She still loved
the asshole.
 
She still wanted to believe
every word he said.
 
And that was why she
decided to go.
 

“I think you
need to leave this building, partner,” Luke said as he couldn’t seem to get to
Nikki’s side fast enough.

“It’s all
right, Luke,” she said, to head off his advance.
 
“We’re leaving now.”

“You don’t
have to go anywhere with him,” Luke said, staring at Daniel.
 
Daniel exhaled, his stomach boiling in
pain.
 

“I said it’s
okay,” Nikki said.
 
“Just go on back to
your office.
 
I’m fine.”

Luke stared
at Daniel, checking him out from head to toe, and then he looked at Nikki.
 
“You’re certain about that?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t
have to be afraid of him around here.”

“I know
that, Luke.
 
I’m not afraid.”