Read Online DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN by Katherine Cachitorie, Mallory Monroe - Free Book Online Page B

waiting
for Daniel to open the door.   Daniel
smiled and got out too.  
    And just a few weeks ago he was
thinking he was going to have himself a one-night stand with Nikki Graham.   A one night stand with a sweetheart like her.   Then he smiled again and shook his head, as
he followed her into the showroom.   It
was a one-night stand all right.   A
one-night stand, he had a sneaking suspicion, that was going to last for
years.  
    If not his lifetime.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
    CHAPTER FIVE

 
    FOUR YEARS LATER

 
    “Hey, Hector !” Wade yelled as he muscled his way between stools at the
crowded bar.
    “Yeah?” Hector responded.   He was standing behind the bar counter
cleaning a tray of mugs.
    “What’s the lady having?”
    “What lady?”
    “The black chick sitting by herself.”
    Hector looked at the woman seated at
one of the far booths against the wall.   What distinguished her was the fact that she was the only person sitting
alone in his crowded bar.   She had papers
in front of her, and appeared to be looking over some notes, while everybody
else was taking advantage of their lunch break with festive talk and
laughter.   She was pretty enough, Hector
decided.   But nothing out of the ordinary.   He hadn’t noticed she was there until now.
    He looked back at Wade.   “How should I know what she’s drinking?   Go ask her yourself.”
    “Just give me two beers and cut the
commentary,” Wade replied.
    “You’re wasting your time with that
one,” a voice further over said.  
    Wade looked at him. Like Wade, he was
one of those young, white, super-ambitious upstarts who worked in downtown and
frequented Hector’s bar at lunchtime.   But unlike Wade, he already had a seat at the bar counter and a
drink.   He, in fact, seemed almost tipsy.
    “Oh, yeah?” Wade asked him, while
wondering how was that his business.
    “Oh, yeah,” the young man said,
nodding his head.   “She’s taken.”
    “So what?   We’re all taken.   To some degree.   What’s the big damn deal about her?”
    “She’s taken by the Crane.   She’s Daniel Crane’s old lady.”
    Wade frowned.   “Daniel Crane?   From over at Dreeson?”
    “One in the same,” the young man
replied, lifting his drink as if in a toast to an accurate answer.
    Most of the crowd in Hector’s Bar were
young executives who worked in the various businesses around downtown
Wakefield.   Those businesses kept the
town booming and helped land Wakefield on the best mid-sized towns list ten years running.   But there was no business anywhere in town,
or in the entire state of Indiana, that was larger and more highly-regarded
than the Dreeson Corporation.   Even Wade
interviewed there countless times, hoping to advance his career, but he never
even got a call back.
    “Who is she?” he asked the young man.
    “Her name’s Nikki Graham,” the young
man replied.   “Work as a reporter for the
Wakefield Gazette.   She’s supposed to be
pretty good at it too.   I wouldn’t know
that for a fact, but that’s what I heard.   She was on TV this morning.   She
apparently got into some kind of argument with the mayor.”
    “With the mayor?”
    “Yup.”
    That sweet young thang , Wade wanted to say.   Then he looked back at the young man at the
bar.   He was still doubtful.   “But I thought Crane was . . . I can’t see
him. . . I didn’t know he liked dark meat.”
    “He’s been liking it for years apparently.   Crane and that chick’s been together for years.”
    Wade looked at her again.   And he just couldn’t see it.   Her with Crane?   But she was Wade’s own age.   She couldn’t have been twenty-five yet.   Whereas Crane had to be in his forties, or
damn near it.   How could a girl that
young wrangle herself a man like that?   What did she have, Wade wondered, that could possibly be that special?
    Hector looked at him, but was grinning
as he did.   “Still wanna buy her