And Daniel’s anger was unleashed too. “What’s wrong with you?” he yelled at her, his arm like steel around her waist, as if it was a protective shield. “Didn’t you see that car?”
Nikki was shook up. Her heart was pounding. She actually hadn’t seen that car until it was almost too late. “I was trying to get Miss Newsome’s attention,” she said.
“You almost got yourself killed, young lady, that’s what you almost got!” He was shook up too. And he knew his reaction was shrill, but for some reason he couldn’t help it. When he saw her step into the path of that car, his heart almost stopped. He nearly injured himself getting to her and getting her out of harm’s way. It felt as if somebody near and dear to him was about to be hurt, when he saw her in that car’s path.
He also realized, now that it was over, that he still had her slammed against him, and he still had his big arm gripped around her small waist.
Nikki realized it too. At first it was a comforting feeling. She was so shaken by what almost happened that she loved the fact that his arm was around her, and the back of her body was wedged against the front of his. It was a comforting feeling. But as the moments ticked by, and they remained as they were, the feeling changed. She began to feel, not only the warmth of his embrace, but the expansion of his penis. And it wasn’t just a swish of arousal, either, but an undeniably rock hard press into her flesh.
She immediately extricated herself from him. Their eyes met, which acknowledged what had taken place more than any words could have said, and then Daniel, to blunt his error, reached into his wallet and pulled out one of his business cards. “Write your address on the back of that card,” he ordered.
“I can go and get their mother,” Nikki said.
“Did I ask you to go and get their mother, Nikki?” Daniel snapped. Nikki was offended by his snappishness, but he couldn’t help it. His irritation had far more to do with his own frustration than any words she spoke. Because he couldn’t understand what was wrong with him. This girl had not only nearly given him a heart attack, but she had him aroused to the point of nearly tenting his pants! He’d been working so hard lately that it had been a while since he last had some. But he didn’t think it was an issue at all. Until now.
“I have to be in Fort Wayne within the hour,” he said, “but I’ll be back this evening. I’ll pick you up around eight, we’ll have some dinner and talk about these Newsome boys then.”
Truth was, he was going to fuck her tonight. He made up his mind just like that. He let her get away before, and he undoubtedly did her a favor when he did, but he wasn’t letting her get away again. Not with those breasts. Not with that ass. Not with that face. He had to have her.
Nikki felt the heat of his stare, too, and she questioned if discussing the Newsome boys was the real driving force behind this dinner invitation. She stared into his hazel eyes. There was something magnetic about this man, as if he was drawing her in, but what she couldn’t work out was what exactly he was drawing her in to. He had a sexual interest in her. She was used to guys coming onto her that way, and she knew what it looked like. Besides, his erections already proved that. But she saw more than just a sexual appetite when she looked into Daniel’s eyes. She saw more than that. And she decided that yes, she wanted to explore just what that more was. He’d already demonstrated his kindness. Even if he had some ulterior motive regarding her, he willing to hear her out, and potentially help Miss Newsome.
And besides, she thought, it took two to tango, and she wasn’t about to tango, or even tangle, with anyone.
She wrote down her address and cell phone number, and handed the card back to him.
Daniel pressed his keypad, got into his car, cranked up, and was about to drive away. But he pressed down his window. “You be careful going across that street,” he warned her.
Nikki almost smiled. What was this? High school? she wanted to ask. But she didn’t. If it wasn’t for him her lack of carefulness could have caused that car to knock her back into high school. “Yes, sir,” she said instead. And then carefully made her way across the street.
Daniel sat there watching her, like some idiot he felt, until she was safely across. Then he drove away.
Nikki was so thrilled that she could hardly contain her joy. “Miss Newsome!” she yelled as she ran toward the woman. “You’re not going to believe this, Miss Newsome!”
CHAPTER THREE
“No, girl, no.”
Nikki was in her bedroom, with her roommate and best friend Valton McDermott, at her side. She liked the outfit she had picked out, but he didn’t. At all.
He slung his long, black hair out of his handsome, golden-yellow face, and shook his head. “No,” he said again.
“What do you mean no?” she asked him. “This looks nice.”
“If you’re trying to look like a sack of manure, yes, it looks very nice,” Val said. “But if you’re trying to look sexy, or even just presentable, then it looks like shit.”
Nikki tossed the pantsuit at him. Piles of other clothes, the rejects, were spread over her bed as if she were a hoarder.
“I’m not trying to be a fashion plate, Val,” she said. “I’m just trying to pick something out to go to dinner. To a working dinner at that.”
“Yeah, right,” Val said. He knew what kind of working that man had in mind. “But you’re obviously interested in this man or you wouldn’t bother. I know your ass. You would have turned him down cold the way you usually do. So don’t even try it, Nikki. You need to wear a dress. A dress. Don’t you understand that?”
“No, I don’t understand that. Why is it so crucial that I wear a dress?”
“Because it is.”
“Why, Val?”
Val hesitated, as if he didn’t want to go into it. He was a slender man who always kept a pair of prescription shades on a black strap around his neck. He put on his shades. “Just wear one,” he said.
Nikki removed his shades. “Don’t cover up,” she said. “Why is it so important that I wear a dress?”
“Because it’s easier for him to get you out of.”
Nikki looked at him with confusion in her eyes. “Easier for him to get me out of?”
“Yes, and don’t look at me like that. You know I’m telling the truth. Why else would the vice president of Dreeson want to take you out? No offense, but I mean think about it, Nikki.”
Nikki hadn’t thought about it. Not that blatantly. But he was right. He was absolutely right. She began looking through the piles of clothes on her bed, a morose look now on her face.
Now Val felt bad. “I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings,” he said.
“I know that.”
“But that had to cross your mind. Right?”
Nikki lifted up one of the rejected outfits: a pair of puce-colored trousers and a beige crisscross blouse. She stood in front of her bedroom mirror and held both garments up to her small body.
“Right, Nikki?” Val asked again. “You had to know when he asked you out he had sex on his mind. He had that slammin’ body of yours in his crosshairs. I mean, I’m gay and even I find that body of yours attractive.”
But Nikki had hoped that she and Daniel had connected on a different level. She knew there was a sexual connection, a strong one, but she had thought there was more to it than that. But who was she kidding, she now thought, as she looked at the outfit in the mirror. She saw how Daniel kept taking peeps at her. She saw how he got so aroused by her. But she saw something more, too, and she was going to focus on that. On the positive.
“I’ve decided to wear this outfit right here,” she said, tossed the outfit on the bed, and then headed for the adjacent bathroom. “And if that blouse and those pants don’t give him easy access, then tough. He’ll just have to work for it, won’t he?”
Val laughed. Nikki laughed too, although it didn’t quite capture her true mood.
But by the time she had showered and dressed, she was coming out of the bedroom in a form-fitting red dress
and equally alluring black high heels. Val really laughed when he met her in the hall and saw what she had ultimately decided to wear. “That’s my girl!” he said as he laughed.
But when the doorbell started ringing inside their small, two-bedroom apartment, Val began to beat his retreat. “I’d better hide,” he said.
Nikki frowned. “Hide? Why would you need to hide?”
“Because I know how men can be. Especially alpha-men. I don’t want to see those accusatory looks, and I don’t want him to think less of you just because you’re my friend.”
Nikki stared at her friend. Like her, he had a lot of pain in his past life. It was probably why they hit it off so easily. He had suffered untold physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his father, and was ultimately abandoned by both his parents. Nikki’s grandmother raised her when her parents chose drugs over parenthood, and although Granny was great, she passed away when Nikki was fourteen, leaving her to pretty much fend for herself. She and Val both had to constantly battle feelings of inadequacy every day of their lives. Especially Val.
She grabbed him by the arm. “Boy, you better come on to this door,” she said as she pulled him along with her toward the front door. “I want him to meet you.”
Val would have expected nothing less from a good-hearted person like Nikki, but he knew men better than she did. He’d been bullied all through high school because he was gay, and even now, in college, many guys still looked at him with disgust in their eyes. He was apprehensive despite Nikki’s confidence.
Especially when she opened that door and he saw what had to be one of the most sumptuous men he’d ever seen. And this was Nikki’s date? His brown hair was short, but thick, and dropped down along the forehead of a sculptured face of high cheekbones and dazzling hazel eyes. A tailored-to-perfection silk suit covered a body that appeared ripped with tight biceps and abs. Val looked sidelong at Nikki. When he had asked her how the man looked, she had said he looked okay. Okay? Jamie Foxx looked okay. Justin Timberlake looked okay. This man was the personification of elegance, posh, and drop-dead gorgeousness.
“Good evening,” Daniel said in that formal-sounding voice Nikki liked.
“Good evening,” Nikki replied, ignoring Val’s glare. “Would you like to come in?”
Daniel glanced at his wristwatch, a real Rolex, Val noticed, and shook his head. “I made a reservation. We’d better get going.”
“Okay, sure. I’ll just grab my jacket. But I wanted you to meet my roommate and best friend. This is Val McDermott. Val, this is Daniel Crane.” Nikki went to get her jacket after she said this.
“Hello, Daniel,” Val said nervously, expecting a look of disgust to suddenly appear on his face as he and Daniel shook hands.
“How are you?” Daniel asked.
“Very well, thank-you. And you?”
“I’m good. Little tired, but I’m good.”
“Yes, you can see little circles around your eyes.”
Daniel was a little taken by his honesty, but he was, after all, Nikki’s roommate and best friend. What did he expect. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s showing.”
“Not that it’s a bad show,” Val said with a smile, and Daniel laughed. “I was just pointing it out.”
“As so you should. Are you a student over at Brannon also?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Journalism too?”
“Right again.”
“Good for you,” Daniel said. “I’m sure you help keep Nikki out of trouble,” he added as Nikki returned with a short jean jacket.
“I try my best,” Val said, “but you know Nikki. She certainly doesn’t make it easy.”
Nikki hit Val. “Very funny,” she said with a smile as she stepped out on the stoop with Daniel. Daniel glanced down at her and placed his hand on the small of her back. He extended his other hand to Val. “Nice meeting you, young man.”
“You too, sir,” Val said with a grand smile on his face. Nikki, he felt, had won the lottery this time.
Nikki, too, felt fortunate. She glanced back at him as Daniel ushered her to his car. She had that I told you so look on her face, while Val was giving her two thumps up with a snap and a wave. Daniel had treated him civilly. It was a small thing to most, but it was a big deal to Val.
Nikki too, felt well-treated. Especially when Daniel allowed her to move ahead of him as they walked through a narrow passageway that led to the parking lot. It was obvious to her that he was checking out her ass as she walked, but amazingly she was pleased that he was. She usually didn’t like men gawking at her. She hated it almost always. But for some reason she didn’t see Daniel as a gawker. That would have been beneath him, she felt.
Why she felt this way, however, was the question. She really didn’t know this man from Adam. What gave her the idea that he was somehow above the fray? Even Val, who loved her, believed that Daniel was only after her body. Why she didn’t believe it too, when she’d always believed it about every man she’d ever met in her entire life, was the million dollar question to her.
But even as he held her hand and sat her down in a car of posh leather seats that smelled spanking brand new, and his eyes roamed down to her breasts as he handed her the seat belt, she still had high hopes for him. And it wasn’t just because he was nice looking or rich or any of that. She’d had successful older men try to get next to her before. But it was him, she believed. Daniel Crane. The man who once broke his promise to her and, because of that alone, should have been the one she distrusted. But for some odd reason, as if reason itself had nothing to do with it, he was the one she trusted.
He took her to Skylar Bay, an upscale seafood restaurant on the lake, and their reserved table was one on the second deck outside, overlooking the marina. As the waitress stepped aside, Daniel held her seat for her. He was still taken by how beautiful Nikki looked tonight. He knew she was a pretty girl, and had an attractive body, but the way she looked tonight kind of blew his mind. In that red dress she no longer looked like a twenty-year-old college kid. She looked like a seductive woman with every curve in the right place and beauty exemplified in her.
Daniel had only dated a black woman once before. Caroline. She was a beauty also. But like most of the women in his past, his ex-wife chief among them, she turned out to be a cheater and a liar too, somebody who wanted what she wanted and saw him as a means to get it. She didn’t sour him on black women, because all the other women who had used him were white, but she did sour him on young women. She was young too. Not as young as Nikki. Caroline was only ten years his junior, whereas Nikki was more like fifteen or sixteen years his junior. But she was his first foray into dating a young woman, and his last foray. Until now.
Nikki had contrasting feelings as Daniel sat in the chair in front of her, placed their drink orders, and then put on his reading glasses to peruse the menu. She felt special to be on a date with a man like him. He was a hot commodity, the look on those females faces, who were all giving him some serious appraisals, told her so. But she also felt a little guilty. This was supposed to be all about the Newsome boys. She had told Miss Newsome about this date, and she was overjoyed with hopefulness. Would this former judge really be the one to finally help them? That was what was foremost on Miss Newsome’s mind, and should have been on her mind.
But it wasn’t. She was, in truth, a little smitten with Daniel Crane. Nobody would believe it. Nursemaid Nikki was her nickname at Brannon, mainly because she didn’t take any guff from those boys. But also because she never showed the least interest either. But now she was not only showing interest, but at the risk of harming the only hope Miss Newsome had. She took a deep breath. Focus, Nikki, Focus, she inwardly urged.
“This is nice,” she said as she looked around at the beautiful surroundings.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Daniel said, looking up from the menu. Oh, that red against her brown skin. Lovely, he thought. “You haven’t opened your menu.”
“Oh. No. Not yet.” She’d been too busy thin
king to think about food.
“They have an excellent lobster pescatore I want you to try.”
“Is it that good?”
“It’s rich, but it’s exquisite. You’re get a full lobster, you get crabmeat, you get shrimp and calamari, all on a bed of pasta.”
Nikki smiled. That sounded like a lot of food, but food was the last thing on her mind. “That could work,” she said. “If Val was here he would devour it. He likes food period.”
That reminded Daniel. “So Val, he’s your best friend?”
“My absolute best friend, that’s right.”
“And what he’s . . . he’s gay, right?”
Nikki smiled, and then laughed. “Yes, he’s gay.”
Daniel smiled too. “Just checking,” he said.
“What you thought he was my boyfriend or something?”
“No, not that.” Then Daniel looked at her. “Are you dating somebody right now? Not that it’s any of my business.”
“No, I’m not dating,” Nikki said. She wanted to ask him the same question, but couldn’t find the courage.
The waiter arrived with their drinks, took their dinner orders, and left. Daniel’s smartphone buzzed. He checked the text message.
Nikki knew it was now or never. Bring up the Newsome boys now before their conversation got too far afield. So she got down to it. “The thing is,” she said, “the trial is in less than a month. Do you think, Mr. Crane, that if we can manage to get an attorney on the case that he’ll be able to get some kind of delay?”
“It’s possible,” Daniel finally said, as he was still reading his text. Then he finished and put his phone away. “Depends on the attorney and if that attorney feels a continuance is needed.”
“But why wouldn’t he feel that way, Mr. Crane? He’ll need to get prepared and to interview witnesses.”
DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN Page 3