DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN (36 page)

“You’ve got to fight back, honey.
 
You can’t go soft on me now.
 
If you don’t fight back, this thing can do
you in.
 
You hear me, Nikki?
 
Nikki?
 
Now come on, honey.
 
You aren’t
behaving like the woman I love.”

Nikki stared at Daniel, and all she could
think about were the nude photos she found at his home, and that phone call
from her, and the trip to New York he took with Melanie.
 
And she was still upset with him.
 
She didn’t want to hear a word he had to
say.
 
Was Jean behaving like the woman he
loved when she posed naked for him?
 
Was
Melanie?
 
Were any of his women?
 

She didn’t trust anybody anymore.

She got up from the patio, and went back to
bed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

As soon as Daniel arrived back at work the
next day and walked into his suite of offices, he could feel the stares.
 
Everybody looked away as he looked toward
them, and by the time he made it into his office, both Phillip and Whitney gave
him a minute, and then came rushing in.

“How bad is it?” Daniel asked them as he
stood behind his desk.
 
Whitney looked at
Phillip.

“We’re bleeding,” Phillip said.
 
“There’s no way around that.”

“Who would think Nikki, I mean, Miss Graham,
would do something like that?
 
I can’t
see her doing drugs, let alone getting caught up in any drug trafficking.”

Phillip looked at Daniel.
 
“I know it’s impossible and all that, but are
any of those allegations true?” he asked him without reservation.

Daniel didn’t hesitate.
 
“No.”

“No to which allegation?
 
Doing drugs or selling drugs?”

Daniel sighed and placed his hands on his
hips.
 
The idea of Nikki being accused of
such things.
 
“Both,” he said.

“Okay.
 
Good.
 
That’s good.
 
But as I said, we’re bleeding, those
accusations, even if untrue, certainly doesn’t help your chances with the
board.
 
The very reason they liked you
was because of your lack of controversy and drama.
 
But there’s still hope.”

“What hope?”
 
Whitney asked.
 
She felt
emboldened now that this involved Nikki.
 
She considered Nikki a friend.
 
“How can you claim there’s still hope?
 
Mr. Crane is already being crucified in public, and I mean totally
decimated if you listen to the local news, and you’re talking about hope?
 
Where’s the hope, Phil?
 
I say he should kiss that CEO job goodbye.”

“We aren’t kissing anything goodbye,” Phillip
said.
 
“I think you’re getting a little
ahead of yourself, Whitney.”

“Don’t talk to my secretary that way,” Daniel
admonished him, which relaxed Whitney even more.

“All I’m saying is that this can be
rectified.
 
You can go before the board,
tell them that you’ve cut all ties with Nikki, and promise them that there will
be no more drama about her situation.”

“No way,” Daniel said.
 
Even Whitney couldn’t believe what Phillip
was suggesting.

“Okay, I was just testing the waters.
 
But we still have a shot.
 
If the bad press eventually blows over.”

“And?” Daniel asked.

“And if the board is bold, and if the Street
doesn’t get antsy for an announcement in the meantime, then the chairman, who
loves you by the way, may hold over a decision on CEO.”

Daniel nodded his head, although every
instinct within him believed that the job that was once considered his to lose,
was already lost.

Val’s arrival that same day helped Nikki
tremendously.
 
Daniel had arranged it,
flying him in from Michigan, and Val lifted her spirit, not with assurances
that everything was going to be all right, but with guarantees that they were.
 
But she had to trust Daniel, he ultimately
said, even though Nikki knew trusting Daniel these days was not as simple as it
used to be.

It was late evening.
 
They were in the master bedroom of Nikki’s
townhouse.
 
Nikki was on the bed working a
crossword puzzle and occasionally watching the news on TV, while Val was in the
adjacent bathroom putting on his facial cream for the night.
 
And Nikki understood what he was saying.

“I get what you’re saying,” she said loud
enough for him to hear.
 
“But I don’t
know if I’ll ever have that same level of trust I used to have.”
 
Then she frowned.
 
“For anybody,” she added.

“I don’t know why not,” Val responded from
the bathroom.
 
“Yeah, some lady’s been
trying to claim that she’s got it going on with him and all that, but you
really don’t have any proof of that.”

“What about those photographs, Val?”

“Did you see Daniel’s face or body in even
one of those pictures?”

Nikki admitted that she did not.

“Then you don’t have any proof,” Val
repeated.
 
“Because trust me, if a female
really wanted to make you jealous, she’d have his naked ass plastered on every
picture she would have sent.
 
That is, if
she had pictures of his naked ass to send.
 
Which she didn’t.
 
And that’s why
she didn’t send them.”

Nikki pushed her reading glasses up on her
face.
 
“But that’s what I can’t get
past.
 
She claimed she was just sending
him some of the photos they took in Florida.
 
That’s what her postcard said.
 
So
why wouldn’t she send pictures of him?
 
She’d keep those pictures for herself and send him pictures of her naked
body.
 
Which is what she sent.
 
If she wanted to make me jealous, she would
have put the pictures under my door, not his.
 
How was she to know that I would be at Daniel’s that evening?”

“You said you told your boss that you were
going to Daniel’s.
 
And that boss has the
hots for you.
 
At least that’s what you
said.
 
Maybe he had a hand in all of
this.”

“Yeah, it’s crossed my mind a few times.
 
But Val, it was like two o’ clock when I told
Luke how I was going to cook dinner for Daniel at Daniel’s place.
 
He would have only had a few hours to find
some photos of some naked woman, to get a postcard of Florida even though I
never told him Daniel had ever gone on a business trip to Florida, and to write
up that postcard, find out where Daniel lived, slide the photos under his door,
no.
 
I can’t see it.”

Val had to agree.
 
“Me neither, to tell you the truth.”

“But that’s the least of my problems right
now, anyway,” Nikki said and leaned her head back against the headboard.

“You’ve got to trust Daniel, Nikki.”

“I know.
 
But it’s . . .”

“What about those lawyers he hired?
 
I mean, the man hired a
team
of lawyers for your ass.
 
That doesn’t
 
make you feel
better?”

“It does.
 
And I appreciate it, I really do.
 
And they all assured me that they would do everything in their power to
prove my innocence, but I still feel uneasy.”

“Why if they’re the best of the best and
they’re promising that you’ll beat this rap?”

“It’s because of what it’ll take to beat it,”
Nikki said.
 
“They’re promising that at
the end of the process I’ll be vindicated.
 
But I don’t want to go through the process at all.
 
Because juries can hand down some messed-up
verdicts, Val.
 
I’ve reported on enough
trials to know that for a fact.
 
And the
idea of having my fate in the hands of strangers like that, makes me feel as if
life as I knew it, will never be the same again.”

Val moved over to the bathroom door and
looked out at her, his handsome face half filled with cream and concern.
 
Nikki looked over at him.
 

“We’re going to be all right,” he promised
her.
 
“I’m staying right here with you
until this whole thing is resolved, you hear me?
 
You aren’t going to anybody’s prison, so get
that out of your head right now.
 
Daniel
Crane isn’t about to let anybody put his girl in anybody’s prison, okay?”

Nikki smiled.

“That man will have you in Australia
somewhere before he let them put you in any chains.
 
So stop going there, girl.”
 
Then his looked turned super-serious.
 
“I mean it.”

Nikki nodded her head and Val went back into
the bathroom, back up to the mirror, and continued his nightly ritual of making
sure every inch of his face was covered in cream.
 
He was known for having one of the smoothest
faces around, and he aimed to keep that reputation.

Nikki looked at the television screen just as
the weather report was coming on.
 
Cloudy
skies, the meteorologist said, with a seventy-percent chance of showers.
 
But not to worry, he added.
 
The showers will be mild.
 
Mild, he said.
 
Nikki wished.

But once the weather report was over, and
just as she was about to get back into her crossword, a picture appeared on the
screen and the name Michael Fastower appeared as the caption underneath.
 

“And now in business news tonight,” the
anchorman began, “corporate giant Michael Fastower has just been tapped to
become the president and CEO of Dreeson, beating out the company’s current vice
president to assume the top post.”

“No!” Nikki yelled, sitting erect.

“
No
what?” Val
yelled back from the bathroom.

The anchorman continued: “Daniel Crane, as
you may recall, was at one time considered the leading candidate for the job
until a string of bad publicity, including the arrest of his longtime
girlfriend on drug trafficking charges, greatly reduced his chances.
 
Dreeson released a statement praising
Fastower and promising that the company will continue to thrive. . .”

Nikki leaned her head back as the anchorman
continued.
 
“How could they do that?” she
yelled, and Val, his face white with cream, came into the bedroom.
 

“Girl, what’s your problem?
 
What are you talking about?”

“Fastower won.”

Val, who had no idea what Nikki was talking
about, decided to revert to form.
 
“Yo’
mama,” he said.

“Daniel was up for CEO of Dreeson.”

“I heard.”

“But they gave it to Michael Fastower.”
 
Nikki motioned toward the television screen.

Val looked just as the report on Fastower was
wrapping up.
 
“Really?” he asked.

“He lost because of me, Val.”

“Now you don’t know that.”

“I do know it!
 
They just said so on the news.
 
Damn!
 
Damn!
 
Damn!”

“Just settle down, Nikki.”

“Those assholes!
 
How can they do that to Daniel?
 
He wasn’t the one arrested.
 
I was.
 
And I wasn’t even considered his girlfriend anymore at the time.”

Val looked at her.
 
“Now that’s news to me.”

“We had some issues we were working out, you
knew about that.”

“Yeah, I knew about that.”

“What you didn’t know was that I didn’t think
we were ever getting back together.”

Val walked up to the bed and sat on it.
 
“Thanks for not telling me.”

“I just couldn’t talk about it, Val.
 
It was too painful to talk about.”

“What happened?”

Nikki hesitated.

“Tell me.”

“He took this female to New York with him and
didn’t bother to tell me about it.”

“He took a woman with him?”

“She was his assistant, but yeah.”

Val heard that qualifier.
 
“Now wait a minute.
 
She was his assistant?” He frowned.
 
“But if she was his assistant, what’s the
problem?”

“Then he ended up firing her while they were
there, so something happened.”

“Oh.
 
Well, yeah, something would have had to happen.
 
But how do you know it was of a sexual
nature?
 
What did Daniel say?”

Nikki paused.
 
“Nothing.”

“Nikki, you didn’t.
 
You mean to tell me you didn’t even confront
him?”

“I had all the proof I needed, Val.”

“So you didn’t even ask the man if it was
true?”

She paused.
 
“I asked, in a way.”

Val looked sidelong at her.
 
“In what way?”