DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (28 page)

“Okay.
 
But call me if you need me.”

“I will.”

“I mean no
matter what.”

“I will,
Luke.”

Luke
nodded.
 
“Okay,” he said.
 
Then he looked at Crane one more time, looked
at Nikki, whom he just couldn’t read sometimes, and went back to the cold
confines of his small office.

Daniel
stared at Luke as he walked back to that office, and he could only shake his
head.
 
The way Nikki had him so crazy
sometimes he wondered why he didn’t just let Luke have her. They matched.
 
They were both impulsive and excitable and
ready to leap to conclusions at the drop of a hat.
 

But then he
looked at Nikki, at the woman who soothe him and angered him to heights he’d
never experienced.
 
And he knew he wasn’t
about to give her up.

“Where are
we going?” she asked as she grabbed her purse from her desk drawer.
 

“Away from
here.”

“I know
that, Daniel.
 
What about my car?”

“We’ll get
it later.”

Nikki paused
and stared at him.
 
Why she didn’t tell
him to take a hike with all of his demands she would never know.
 
But she didn’t tell him a thing.
 
She went right along with him.
 
She grabbed her briefcase with her purse and
then led him toward the exit doors.
 
Love, she thought.
 
All this shit
for love.

Luke
remained in his office, watching them as they left the building.
 
Watching that smooth asshole take Nikki away
to fill her up with lies of his fidelity.
 
And Nikki was so in love, and so naive, that she would believe anything
he told her.
 
Luke would give both arms
to be right where Daniel Crane was.
 
He
would give anything to have Nikki’s complete and unshakable loyalty.
 
But he would.
 
Luke believed in his soul that one day very soon the tables would turn
and he would take Daniel Crane’s place.
 
And Nikki would still be loyal, but she’d be completely and unshakably
loyal to him.
 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nikki leaned
back against the headrest of Daniel’s Jaguar and watched the dark road ahead.
 
What she thought was going to be a short
drive to his house turned out to be an hour-long trip through the back roads of
Indiana.
 
She turned her head toward him
and watched him as he drove.
 
He’d drive
slowly and then faster as if he was distracted, as if he was thinking about
some heavy duty issues and had forgotten that she was even in the car.
 
He took slow drags on his electronic
cigarette, listened to his jazz, and stared straight ahead.

Nikki had so
many questions to ask him that she felt as if she could burst if she didn’t get
some answers soon.
 
But she also knew she
had to hear him out first.
 
Was that
woman telling the truth when she called and told her story, or was it a pack of
lies?
 
And if it were true, if there were
indeed another woman, was it all true?
 
Was he really in love with her?
 
Did he really plan to marry her?
 

Nikki looked
away from him.
 
If he was in love with
that woman, who claimed to be that older, more sophisticated and experienced
kind of woman that used to turn him on, Nikki didn’t know how she would
respond.
 
Crying wasn’t cutting it.
 
She was through with the tears.
 
She made up her mind about that earlier, when
she interviewed the sister of a murder victim.
 
The woman was hurting bad, and was devastated that somebody could be so
cruel, but she didn’t shed a tear.
  
Nikki asked her about it.
 
How
could she be so strong in the face of so much tragedy?
 
But she didn’t flinch.
 
She talked about how her sister didn’t need
her tears because she was in a better place now.
 
And then she added:
 
“The murderer wins if I sit around
crying.
 
I loved my sister too much, and
have too much pride in myself, to let
him
win.”

They ended
up in Delmar, Indiana.
 
Delmar was a
small, wooded, lakeside town some fifty miles out of Wakefield, a town Nikki
never visited before.

Daniel
turned down a long, wooded, dark road that led to a small log cabin by the
lake.
 
The lake was beautiful to Nikki,
and so peaceful that just seeing it helped to calm her down.
 
Daniel looked out at the lake too, as if he
needed its’ calming force just as badly as Nikki, and then he got out of the
car.
 

Nikki leaned
back and watched him as he walked slowly around the front of the car, his suit
coat flapping with the heavy winds, his every step-down appearing to confirm
just how gut-wrenching his thought processes were, and she kept watching him as
he opened the passenger door.
 
He then
reached out his hand.
 
She stepped out of
the car, but she did not touch his hand.
 

Daniel
glared at Nikki as she stepped out, but he was determined to keep his
cool.
 
He closed the door behind her and
did not hesitate.
 
He began walking
toward the lake.
 
Nikki stood by the car,
but then felt foolish and followed him.
 

He stood at
the shoreline, where the water rammed up on the top of his dress shoes and then
backed off, and Nikki stood beside him.
 
He looked at her, as her arms were folded and her hair blew back with
the wind, and he took off his suit coat and placed it across her
shoulders.
 
She wrapped herself in the
coat that seemed to swallow her, and then she looked at him.

“Was that
woman telling me the truth?” she asked, desperately seeking some special words
that could take away the ache that had settled deep inside of her.
 

But Daniel,
as she should have expected, wouldn’t cooperate that easily.
 
He seemed less concerned about some woman
calling Nikki, and more concerned about Nikki’s reaction to that call.
 

“You’ve got
to learn to trust me, Nikki,” he said almost as if it were a warning.
 
“You have got to have enough confidence in me
to know what I will and will not do.”

“But is it
true?”

Daniel
frowned.
 
“Did you hear me?
 
Did you hear a word I just said?
 
Your behavior is destroying our relationship,
and you’d better understand that.”

Nikki looked
out across the dark lake again, as the wind caused it to ripple, and she knew
she couldn’t do it anymore.
 
Somebody
called her and told her either the truth or lies today and Daniel telling her
to just blindly trust him, without him even bothering to tell her what was
going on, wasn’t enough for her.
 
Not
anymore.
 
She lived her life believing in
truth, in following the facts, not the emotion, not the fiction, not that blind
kind of lovesick loyalty she’d been displaying ever since she hooked up with
him.
 

“Tell me
what’s going on, Daniel,” she said to him.
 
“Tell me what’s happening.”

He released
a long-winded sigh, as if he’d had it up to here.
 
“Nothing’s happening, Nikki.”

“But why would
a woman call me, out of the clear blue sky, if something wasn’t up?
 
Why would she send you those naked
photos?
 
Why would she just call me like
that, Daniel?”

“How am I
supposed to know why some woman would call you?”

“But she
knew about us.
 
She knew about the trips
you took.
 
She knew that you brought me
that townhouse.
 
She knew that you left
me at that hospital.
 
This isn’t some casual
bitch playing games, Daniel.
 
She knew
too much.”

Daniel
exhaled.
 
Then he looked at her.
 
And she was right.
 
She deserved his answers, not his
platitudes.
 
“I haven’t been in any five
year relationship with some female.
 
She’s lying.”

“Has any
woman ever gone on a business trip with you?”

“No.
 
She’s lying.”

“So what
you’re telling me is that you’ve never been with another woman since you’ve
been with me?
 
Is that what you’re
telling me?”

“I’m telling
you that the woman who phoned you today was lying.
 
I’m telling you that those naked photographs
were lies.
 
That’s what I’m telling you.
 
I’m in a relationship with you and nobody
else.
 
I love you and nobody else.
 
I don’t know what more you want from me!”

Nikki could
see his anguish, but that didn’t supplant hers.
 
“But what do you want from me?” she asked him.
 
“Do you want me to act like I didn’t get that
phone call from that lady today, or that I didn’t see those photos three days
ago?
 
Do you want me to just turn a blind
eye and close my ears and ignore it?
 
She
called me.
 
I didn’t call her.
 
This happened to me, I didn’t make this
happen!
 
And just telling me that you
don’t know what’s going on isn’t gonna cut it this time.
 
Not this time.
 
I’m not like you, Daniel.
 
People can’t just tell me something and I
just . . .”

“And you
just believe it?
 
Is that what you were
going to say, Nikki?
 
That woman told you
something.
 
You believed her.”

Nikki stared
at him.
 
A woman called her on the phone
claiming to be Daniel’s lover, and she believed her.
 
Just like that.
 
Those naked photos set it up, and that phone
call drove it home.
 
That was all it
took.
 
Words.
 
Words from a stranger’s mouth.
 
Yet every word this man that stood before her
spoke, this good man, a man who cared enough to drive her far away from the
maddening crowd, to get her to a place of calm, was questioned by her.
 
She believed a stranger, some woman she’d
never even met, and doubted her good man.
 
She knew women were after him.
 
She was no idiot.
 
She knew he had
to turn down offers daily. And he still came home to her.
 

And how
could she prove a negative?
 
How could
she prove that he
didn’t
cheat, or
that he
didn’t
ask the woman to marry
him?
 
She couldn’t prove it, and that
woman undoubtedly knew she couldn’t.

The sorrow
that Nikki felt, that she had so easily fallen into that old familiar trap,
caused her to suddenly feel lightheaded, and foolish, and so damn green, and
she couldn’t deal with it anymore.
 
The
tears that she declared were gone, returned.
 
And she fell, this time, in Daniel’s arms.

The cabin
was warm, as the wood crackled in the fireplace, and Nikki was lying in the
soft bed.
 
It was a sweet, rustic place,
she thought, with brick-lined walls and a big, moose head hanging over the
fireplace.
 
She could have done without
that ugly head to look at, but it fit the place.
 
Hunting rifles were in a large, glass case
and, oddly enough, given Daniel, a set of golf clubs were in a corner.
 
The furnishings were all leather, all grayish
brown and herculean, and the music in the background, jazz of course, relaxed
Nikki even beyond what she earlier thought possible.

Daniel came
to her with a cup of hot coffee.
 
She sat
up and rested her back against the headboard as she gladly took the coffee from
his hands.
 
He sat on the edge of the bed
and then leaned his body over her legs, his arm resting on the other side of
her, and smiled.
 
“Still cold in here to
you?”

“No, not at
all.
 
It feels great.
 
What about you?”