DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (31 page)

It was Daniel’s Jaguar.
 
The engine cut off and then he slowly
emerged.
 
Nikki watched him.
 

“But another jarring truth is that I’m not
like you,” Val said.
 
“I hate being
alone.”

“I hear you, but being hurt is worse.”

“I know.
 
It’s tough.”

Nikki began walking back toward the bed.
 
“Daniel just drove up.”

“Uh-oh, now you’re ready to give me the brush
off.”

“I’ll call you back.”
 
Nikki said this as she began shutting down
her computer and removing it off of her bed.

“And you’re preaching to me?” Val asked.
 
“You’re doing the same thing.
 
Daniel shows up and suddenly your whole world
revolves around him.”

“It ain’t even like that.”

“Oh, yes, it is.”

Nikki hesitated.
 
Val was right.
 
It was exactly like that.
 
She sat back on her bed, her back against the
headboard.
 
“You know what?
 
You’re right.
 
You are absolutely right.” The doorbell began ringing.
 
“Now what were we talking about?”

Val laughed.
 
“Don’t even try it, Nikki.
 
Go on
and hang up because I know that’s what you’re dying to do.
 
I know you gots to be with your sweetie.”

“He has a key.
 
If I don’t answer the doorbell, he’ll use
it.
 
Now what were we talking about,
Val?”

“What you doing girl?”

“I thought you called to talk to me.”

“I did.”

The doorbell began ringing.
 
“Then talk.”

“Okay.
 
Dang.
 
Don’t take my head
off.
 
I was just trying to help your
trifling butt.”

“What were we talking about?”

“Bruce, of course.”

Nikki could hear the front door unlock and
Daniel entering in.
 
Val continued talking,
as she had requested, but Nikki only half-listened.
 

Daniel was on her mind.
 
He walked slowly, up her stairs, and by the
time he made it to the landing and appeared at her bedroom door, her heart was
racing.
 
He looked great, she thought, no
looks of worry about her absence in his life at all.
 
Maybe content was the word, as he stood in
her doorway, his hands in his pockets, his muscular body leaned against the
frame.
 
Uncertainty too.
 
That was what she saw when she looked at
him.
 
Contentment with uncertainty.
 
As if he still wasn’t sure if he should be
there.
 
She stayed away from him for two
weeks.
 
Two long weeks.
 
And he seemed the better for it.
 
That was sobering to Nikki.
 
And that was why she was glad she decided to
keep talking to Val.

“I still say you deserve better,” she said
into the phone.

“And I agree with you,” Val replied.
 
“And when better comes along I’ll take
it.
 
But in the meantime, and just in
case fairy tales really don’t come true, I’ll stick with Bruce.”

“It’s your life.”
 
Nikki said this and looked at Daniel.
 
He moved, seemingly reluctantly, away from
the door frame and across the room.
 
He
listened only slightly as Nikki continued running her mouth on the phone, all
but ignoring him.
 
He glanced out the
window, at the empty street in Nikki’s quiet neighborhood.
 
The rain was still pelting down, but less
dramatically now, but Daniel still felt that sense of dread that began to
overtake him when he got the call from the chairman.

He sat in the chair against the wall.
 
Nikki began laughing, as if her phone
companion was just cracking her up.
 
Daniel sat back and watched her; watched her lift her head back and rub
her shoulder, her V-neck nightgown revealing the top tip of her large
breasts.
 
It had been a long time since
he touched her, nearly two weeks now, and he wanted her so badly he could feel
it beneath the belt.
 
He crossed his
legs.
 
He knew Nikki.
 
It was no accident that he hadn’t heard from
her in weeks.
 
She had some serious
thinking to do and he respected that.
 
But enough was enough.

“Nikki?” he said in the midst of another
round of laughter from her.
 
She looked
at him and then placed her hand over the phone’s transmitter.
 
“Why don’t you tell your friend you’ll call
her back,” he said.

“It’s not a her,” Nikki said and then quickly
regretted that she had said it.
 
She
removed her hand from the phone.
 
“Listen, I have to talk to you later,” she said into the phone.

“No he ain’t demanding that you hang up from
me,” Val said.
 
“Put him on the phone,
girl.
 
I can handle Daniel Crane.”

“Okay.
 
Talk to you later.
 
Bye.”

Val laughed.
 
“We are so alike,” he said.
 
“Bye,
girl.”

Nikki hung up.
 
Then she looked at Daniel.
 
“Yes?” she said.

“How have you been doing?”

“Good.
 
What about you?”

Daniel nodded, with some hesitation.
 
“Okay,” he said.
 
Their eyes finally locked onto each
other.
 
Nikki wanted to jump from her bed
and run to him.
 
But she didn’t.
 
She finally worked up enough courage to
function without the constancy of Daniel in her every thought and action and
she wasn’t about to throw it all away just because he showed up.

“Why haven’t you called me?”

“Why haven’t you called me?”

“I didn’t know it was a contest.”

“I didn’t either.”

Daniel paused.
 
“I’m one of two finalists, Nikki.”

“Two finalists?
 
For what?”
 
Daniel didn’t respond.
 
“CEO?”

“Yes.”

It was stunning news.
 
She was able to smile.
 
“That’s great.
 
Congratulations.
 
You’ll be the top man at Dreeson?
 
That’s. . . You deserve it, Daniel.”

Daniel smiled.
 
“Thank-you.”

“Who’s the other guy?”

“Fastower.
 
Michael Fastower.
 
Well-credentialed, affable fellow from what I understand.”

“But he won’t beat you.”

“He might.”

“No way!
 
What he’s got that you don’t have?”

Daniel smiled.
 
“Youth.
 
He’s four years younger.
 
Sometimes
that matters.”

“That’s crazy.
 
You’re older and wiser and experienced in so
many different things.”

“If the selection committee is as positive as
you are, I’ll be a shoo-in.”

Nikki laughed.
 
“Now you’re talking right!”

Daniel looked at Nikki.
 
She looked gorgeous to him, sitting there, so
filled with life and vitality and such unbridled enthusiasm that it was almost
contagious.
 
“I miss you,” he finally
said to her.

Nikki didn’t respond.
 
She missed him too, more than he probably
realized.
 
But she had decided during her
time away from him that she was no longer wearing her feelings on her sleeve.

Daniel was disappointed by her lack of
response, but he decided to keep plugging at it.
 
“I’m used to getting four or five phone calls
from you every day, and then suddenly nothing.
 
Even Whitney was concerned.”

Nikki smiled.
 
“She would be.”

Daniel’s look turned decidedly serious.
 
“I’ve got to be in New York tomorrow.”

Nikki looked at him.
 
“For how long?”

“A few days.”

She asked for space, and he was giving it to
her.
 
But now it was beginning to feel
scary.
 
Like they were drifting
apart.
 
She didn’t want that.

And neither did he.
 

“Come here,” he said to her.

He had said those two words to Nikki many
times before, when he wanted to hold her or kiss her or lecture her.
 
And every time she jumped at his
command.
 
She went to him.
 
But not this time.
 
“I don’t see anything wrong with your two
legs,” she said.

Daniel couldn’t help but smile.
 
“Good answer,” he said as he stood and walked
to the side of her bed.
 
It was a change,
seeing Nikki like this, and he wasn’t sure yet if he liked what he saw.

He sat down on the edge of the bed.
 
He smelled like a combination of perfume and
masculinity.
 
A combination she
missed.
 

“Now,” he said as he sat down, “is that
better?”

“I guess,” she said.
 
She avoided eye contact.
 
He was too close now.
 
But he was the same old Daniel, who never
relented in his stare, who made her so nervous that she felt she had no choice
but to stare back.
 
And she did, looking
at his mouth first, and then into his eyes.
 
His soft, caring hazel eyes.
 
And
as soon as she did it, as soon as her bright brown eyes looked into his hazel
eyes, she wanted to cry.

His heart melted as tears appeared in her
eyes.
 
He leaned over to her and placed
his hands on either side of her face.
 
Then he kissed her, first on those eyes, and then on the mouth.
 
Her body pushed back against the bed’s
headboard as he kissed her hard, and all of her resistance, all of her need to
stay in control, to let him know that she’s no push-over any longer, flew away
like a feather on a paper airplane as soon as she felt the warmth of his lips
against hers.
 

She placed her arms around his body and
opened her mouth.
 
He slid his tongue
into hers and kissed her so desperately, so urgently, that she could feel the
bones of her back pressed hard as if glued against the headboard.
 
They kissed as if it had been years.
 
And then their lips finally parted, and their
tongues finally relaxed, their breathing became so labored that they continued
leaning against each other just to regain their composure.

“You miss me?” he asked her, his breathing
even more erratic than hers, his sweet breathe blowing cool air all over her
warm face.

“Yes,” she replied, and she could barely
speak.

“How much, Nikki?”

“I miss you so much.
 
More than you will ever know.”
 
She said this lovingly, and sadly, because it
was so true.
 
He looked at her with such
intensity, with such love and desire, that she grabbed hold of him again.
 
And he kissed her again.
 
Even harder, even more passionate, even more
desperately than before.
 
He had never
wanted her as much as he wanted her this very hour, and he had to have it in
the worse way.
 
That was why he forced
himself to break away, to stop kissing the woman he could have kissed all
night, but his need went deeper than a kiss.
 
He stood up and removed his coat and tie.
 

Nikki watched him, with thrill and
apprehension, with a sense of uselessness and a sense of awe.
 
She wished she was stronger; she wished she
could say no the way she did that night at his cabin, when the realization that
she was too needy, too damn dependent on this man, caused her to finally wake
up.
 

But she wasn’t there yet.
 
Because as she watched him, as she watched
him remove his coat, slip off his tie, his shirt, his T-shirt, and then
unbuckle his belt, she knew she was doing exactly as she planned not to do, and
was reentering a world she was trying to leave.
 
But she couldn’t leave.
 
She craved
him.
 
He was her drug of choice.
 
And as he laid her down, and lifted her gown
off of her body, she knew she was like a wiggling bait for the catch: hooked
again.

He kissed her face and her neck and her
breasts for the longest time, and then her stomach, and then he
tasted
her.
 
It was so exhilarating to her that she lifted
her body, as if carried on that wave of exhilaration, as his tongue massaged
deep within her.
 
She grabbed the sheet
and squeezed it tightly, and he lifted her thigh to get that perfect
angle.
 
Her body kept jerking with
excitement, too much excitement, and she finally closed her legs.
 
It was over, she thought.
 
It had to be over.
 
She didn’t know if she could take
anymore.
 

But it wasn’t over.
 
He was just getting started.
 
He stood up, staring at her, as if telling
her telepathically that more was coming, get ready for more, and then he
removed his pants and briefs.