Free DANIEL'S GIRL: ROMANCING AN OLDER MAN by Katherine Cachitorie, Mallory Monroe

a
drink?” he asked.
    “Very funny,” Wade said without the
least bit of humor and moved away from the bar counter.   Hector and the other young man laughed.
    As Wade made his way around the
opposite side of the bar, in search of friendlier faces, Val made his way
inside of the bar, searching for Nikki.   He had to look just five booths back to see her waving him back.   He smiled and pressed through the crowd to
get to her side.
    “Nikki!” he said as she stood and they
hugged.  
    It was a playful hug, as Val rocked
her side to side, and then, when they stopped embracing, kissed her cheek to
cheek.  
    “What in the world took you so long?”
she asked him.   With his smooth, handsome
face, and his dreads framing that face, he looked as adorable to her as he’d
ever looked.   “I was about to file a missing
person’s report on your ass.”
    “Don’t even try that,” Val said, as he
removed his purse strap from his shoulder and slid onto the booth seat across
from her.   “Do you realize how tough it
is to find a parking space anywhere near Hector’s at lunchtime?”
    “And don’t you try that, ” Nikki shot back, sitting down
too.   “You’re an hour late.   It didn’t take you no hour to find a parking
spot, don’t even try it, Val.”
    Val grinned.   He could never get anything over on his old
friend.   “I made the wrong turn on Adams,
okay?   Satisfied?   Then I had to fight traffic and all of these
one-way streets to find my way back around.”
    “You were born and raised right in
this town.   Same as I was.   Yet you act as if you’ve been gone away from
this place for decades every time you come back to visit.”
    “And I barely have an hour to visit
this time before I have to keep it moving.”
    Nikki frowned.   “An hour?   But I set aside my entire afternoon for you.   I thought you were going to have a five-hour
layover?   I rarely get to see you since
you moved to Michigan anyway.   Now I only
get an hour?”
    “It’s my schizophrenic editor.   He made me change my plans.   He knew I had a layover here in Indiana on my
way to cover that big march in Atlanta.   But he wants me in Kentucky now, and he wants me there like yesterday.”
    The waiter arrived to take Val’s drink
order.   He looked at Nikki’s drink.   “What are you having?”
    “Diet Coke.”
    “Diet, Nikki?”
    “Yes, diet.   My thighs are getting kind of chunky.”
    Val looked at his best friend.   She had one of the prettiest faces around in
his view, with her big, brown, intelligent eyes, and her little button nose,
and her unblemished brown skin that even up close had that soft, velvety
texture.   And that body of hers?   He glanced down at that body.   She wore a pair of jeans, a silk blouse
tucked in, and a form-fitting blazer. On her worse day she would still be
considered small and shapely.   Especially
her thighs.   He looked at the
waiter.   “I’m not having what she’s having,” he said, to laughter from Nikki.
“Give me a scotch and soda, please.”
    “Scotch and soda, yes, sir,” the
waiter said, and left.
    “Diet,” Val said again, shaking his
head.   “I’m the one who needs to be
dieting.   And you have the nerve to
criticize your thighs?   Now if you want
to see a thigh,” he added, “I’ll show you a thigh.    And it will not be pretty and toned like
yours either.   But I get it.   You’ve got to stay all cute and tight for
that man of yours.   I get it.”
      “You don’t get anything if you think that’s
why I like diet sodas.”
    “Oh, girl, you know it’s true.   Daniel Crane is not the kind of man who will
tolerate you gaining an ounce of weight.   He just isn’t.”
    “You don’t know Daniel at all if you
think he’ll dump me if I gain some weight.”
    “I didn’t say he’ll dump you.   He’ll never dump you.   But it’s for damn sure he’ll make you lose
that weight.”
    Another misconception about Daniel,
Nikki