ROMANCING MO RYAN (14 page)
Authors: Mallory Monroe
Lance slammed his fist down on his desk, causing Nikki to jump in shock.
“I am so sick and tired of that holier than thou attitude of yours, Nikki, I declare I am!
Who do you think you’re fooling?
You’re Miss Truth, remember?
Miss Truth-at-all-cost-Nikki, remember?
Why don’t you face some of your own truth for a change?
Life without love is cold as ice, girl. It’s cold as ice!
And nothing can take the place of love, I don’t care how hard you try.
Yeah, you’ve got your little journalism degree and you work for a big-time newspaper.
And you can get your name in that paper every day of the week.
But in that midnight hour, when you’re so lonely you actually appreciate the tick of the clock on the wall, that journalism degree can’t hold you and protect you and tell you that everything’s gonna be all right.”
Tears were in Lance’s big, hazel eyes.
He wasn’t angry at her, but was scared for her; scared that she would wake up one day still searching for a love that probably passed her by years before.
“Yeah, it’s risky.
Yeah, your heart might get broken.
I’m a living example of just how many times a heart can break because, believe you me, mine has had more breaks than dropped glass.
But at least I’m living and learning, and making mistakes and learning all over again.
I’m living, Nikki.
What are you doing?”
Nikki realized exactly what he meant.
He’d told her enough times before.
Life without love is cold as ice, he was always telling her that.
But even if she was alone for the rest of her cold miserable life, she wasn’t going along with any man’s bullshit.
And the fact that Mo couldn’t have picked up a phone and gave her a call was bullshit in her eyes.
She hated the way she was feeling, that was all there was to it.
And if feeling this way was called love, then she couldn’t handle it.
She didn’t want any parts of it.
“I’d better go,” she said to Lance, and although he was still upset, he didn’t try to stop her.
She left.
She went home and got into bed.
Her energy level was zero.
She tried to fight it, she got up and got on her treadmill.
She watered her plants and dusted her furniture.
She tried to read, but she couldn’t.
She tried to dance with her aerobics tape, but her rhythm was off.
Lance’s voice kept echoing in her ear.
Life without love is cold as ice.
Over and over again.
And man did she have chills.
So she sat at the desk inside her home office and thought about it.
Her first instinct was always to believe the worse where men were concerned.
He had sex with her and hadn’t called her the day after or the day after that could only mean one thing to her: that she’d been played.
That she may as well get over it, and get on with it.
Only it wasn’t that simple.
And it was then that she fully understood why Andrea was so adamant about staying with her no-good man.
Not because he was no-good, but because he was her man.
And she knew that man.
And it wasn’t simple for Nikki for that same reason.
Because this was Mo she was talking about, not just some random guy.
This was the man she allowed to take her virginity. This was the man who held her in his arms, and showed her such care.
And she had to see him.
She had to hear from him that it was all an illusion.
She had to know.
She hated it, but she had to know.
She grabbed her hobo bag and car keys and left her condo.
It was after ten at night and she was wearing a pair of shorts and a Puma T-shirt, but she didn’t care.
She needed to see him face to face, so that he could tell her something.
She knew the odds were against her.
She knew the fact that he hadn’t bothered to phone her should have told her all she needed to know.
But she also believed she knew Mo Ryan.
And although his conservative-ass views drove her crazy, she never saw an ounce of cowardice in that man.
And only a coward, she believed, would sleep with a girl and dump her, without bothering to tell her why.
She drove around Neptune Beach before she worked up the courage to stop at his home.
His Mercedes was not in the garage, but was parked alone on the driveway, and his home was dark, with only the outside lamp near the front entranceway giving it any illumination.
It seemed like the kind of home that wouldn’t be kind to uninvited, love starved, panic stricken sisters like her, and her every instinct was to turn her behind around and go back to her comfortable, normal life.
But she wasn’t driven by instincts that night.
Passion, for the first time in her entire life, was driving her.
She rang his bell.
It took a while but the downstairs light inside the house eventually flicked on and, as her heart pounded almost uncontrollably, the front door was opened.
And there stood Mo Ryan, wrapping the straps of his green, silk robe around his waist, his large, hairy chest revealed in stunning detail.
“Nikki?” he asked as if she was the last person on earth he expected at his door, especially at this time of night.
Nikki just stood there.
It was as if the kind of person she said she’d never be was who she was at that moment in time.
And that fact, and the fact that she was standing at that man’s door at this time of night at all, was devastating her.
Mo’s heart dropped.
He saw her devastation.
Her eyes hid nothing.
And he clasped her by her arm, and pulled her gently inside his home, closing the door on the cool night behind her.
Then he put his hands around her waist and pulled her to him.
She laid her head against his bare chest and she could feel the tears trickle down.
And even thought she never dreamed she’d be this person, she still felt safe in his arms.
Warm and protected.
As if she was finally coming out of the cold.
SEVEN
He held her and rubbed her hair and pulled her closer against him.
He never dreamed he’d find her in this state.
He’d only just got back in town a couple hours ago, and had every intention of getting together with her sometime tomorrow, but he should have known better.
Nikki wasn’t like any other woman he’d ever been with.
He should have phoned her, and checked on her.
He wasn’t accustomed to doing any such thing, and didn’t with her, but he should have known better.
He closed his eyes, pulled her closer against him in the foyer of his big, quiet home, angry with himself.
Nikki closed her eyes too as he held her.
It all was like a blur to her.
It was as if she was living somebody else’s life.
Was she becoming her mother, or her sisters?
Was she running down a man who already showed, by his neglect alone, that he really wasn’t that into her?
It had only been two days, and she knew that wasn’t a great passage of time, but he had slept her with.
He was the man who broke her in.
Didn’t he think the least he could have done was return her phone call?
That was when she moved back from his embrace, and stared at him.
She had to see that compassion, that caring that she always saw in his eyes.
“I came to your house,” she said honestly, “because I haven’t heard from you.”
“I know, baby,” Mo said, his arms still around her waist.
“I was going to phone you.”
“Then why didn’t you, Mo?” she asked him, searching his eyes. “I called and left two messages for you.
But I didn’t hear from you yesterday, I didn’t hear from you today.
Why didn’t you return my calls?”
Mo exhaled.
He had been out of town, at a meeting with the governor of Florida, a meeting he was not at liberty to discuss with anyone, and it pained him that he couldn’t tell her.
“It’s been a hectic couple days, Nikki,” he said.
“I had to take care of some business out of town and I just got back home a few hours ago.
I didn’t mean to neglect you.”
“But all you had to do was pick up a phone and tell me you were out of town, or that it was hectic.”
She remembered how Lance had, in essence, said the same thing to her.
It wasn’t malice on her part that she didn’t answer Lance’s phone calls.
But that wasn’t the point, either.
Lance hadn’t slept with her.
Mo had.
And for Nikki, a man who slept with her owed her a little more than an unspoken brush-off.
“I should have phoned, Nikki, but I didn’t.
I apologize for that.
Can you forgive me?”
“Is this the day after?” Nikki asked him.
“The day after?” Mo asked, but Nikki just stared at him.
And he knew exactly what she meant.
“Oh, honey,” he said, pulling her against him.
But she pulled back.
“I need to know,” she said firmly, wiping those stubborn tears away.
“You didn’t tell me what to expect.
Should I make something out of what happened two nights ago?
Or nothing at all?”
Mo stared at Nikki.
Stared at her for what seemed like to her to be an eternity.
And then he placed his arm around her waist and began walking her across his living room, up the stairs, and into his massive bedroom.
And he laid her in his bed.
The pillow was already indented, it was the same pillow he had, just moments before, laid his head.
His sheets were bright blue silk and she knew she was, just like two nights ago, lying where he had lain.
Without saying anything to her, he removed her shoes, and then her shorts, revealing her pink bikinis.
Although she could see his eyes stare at those panties, he didn’t hesitate in pulling the cover up on her.
And then he sat, with crossed legs, on the edge of the bed.
And as he sat there, staring down at her, she felt as if she was a patient etherized on a table, completely exposed and vulnerable.
But she stared back at him, at his beautiful, compassionate eyes.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald called it dissipation,” she said to him, her hand on the side of his gorgeous face.
“Dissipation?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“To turn something into nothing.”
Mo’s chest tightened.
He took her hand that was on the side of his face and kissed it.
“We won’t dissipate, Nikki.
I promise you that.”
Tears began to appear in Nikki’s eyes again.
“Why are you crying?” he asked her.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” she said, her face a mask of frustration.
He smiled and rubbed her hair.
“What do you think is happening?” he asked her.