ROMANCING MO RYAN (18 page)

NINE

She was already falling hard for Mo, and Mo, it seemed to her, was getting there too.
 
He’d phone her every night, just to say hello, and they’d end up talking to midnight.
 
And on weekends they’d take long strolls around the River walk and watch the boats dock and sail in the marinas, or they’d drive over to Fernandina Beach for one of their famous festivals, or they’d just chill at his place, on his patio, where his backyard was the Atlantic Ocean.
 
It went on wonderfully ordinary like this for two solid months.
 

By the start of month three, however, Mo spent most of his weekends in Tallahassee.
 
He was preparing, with the governor’s team, for what everybody knew would be a grueling and contentious confirmation hearing.
 
The hearing wasn’t scheduled to convene for another three months, but they felt early prep was essential.
 
It seemed as if every liberal organization was opposing his nomination to the highest court in the state, and was throwing the kitchen sink of opposition at that nomination.
 
The governor, a staunch conservative himself, wanted Mo fully prepared.

But that preparation caused his time with Nikki to dwindle.
 
By the fourth month of their relationship she rarely saw him at all.
 
She understood why.
 
He had a jam-packed docket here in Jacksonville throughout the weekday, and he’d read and get up to speed on seemingly every court case ever written by night.
 
And then, on the weekends, he was in Tallahassee getting prepped by the governor’s team in some secure location, and he’d return to town, often exhausted, by Sunday evening.
 
He’d usually take Nikki out to dinner when he returned, make blinding love to her for hours that night, as if he was making up for lost time with one shot, and then she wouldn’t see him again for days on end.
 

One Sunday, however, when they were having dinner at the home of Mo’s best friends Jake and Myra Braswell, a dinner that Lance also attended, Mo casually told Nikki that he wanted her to request a week off work at the end of the month, and to otherwise clear her calendar.

They were in the parlor of Jake’s beautiful lakefront home in Ponte Vedra Beach.
 
Jake, a tall, muscular, good looking black man who, Nikki believed, might have been better looking and better built than even Mo, was behind his massive bar preparing drinks for his guests.
 
He had kindly dismissed his aging butler for the night, and was eagerly handling the chore himself.

Myra, Jake’s wife and the woman Nikki still had her suspicions about, was seated in the chair that flanked the sofa.
 
She looked gorgeous in a turquoise dress that highlighted her dark eyes, but she wore a tight smile on her face throughout the evening, a smile that didn’t fool Nikki nor Lance for a second.
 
She seemed, it seemed to them, to roundly disapprove of both of them.

But Jake was wonderful.
 
He seemed to like them and they certainly liked him already.
 
But that wife of his was another story.
 
When Mo told Nikki to take that week off and to clear her calendar, Lance immediately looked at Myra to gauge her reaction.
 
She was looking intensely at Mo.

But Nikki, who was seated on the sofa, with Mo on one side of her and Lance on the other, was the one who asked why.
 

But Jake interrupted them.
 
“Wait for me!” he yelled, as he grabbed his tray of prepared drinks and took them to his guests.
 
When everybody was served, he stood like some waiter, the tray at his side, and looked at Mo.
 

“All right, pal,” he said.
 
“Now you may proceed.”

Everybody laughed.
 

“Aren’t you bossy,” Mo said with a smile.
 
“I thought I was the quarterback of this team.”
 
He was referencing their football playing days at Florida State.
 
But Jake balked at even that suggestion.

“Quarterback my ass,” Jake said.
 
“All you did at FSU was pass the ball to me.
 
I ran that team.
 
Literally,” he added to laughter, referencing his running back position.
 
Then he looked at Nikki.
 
“Who do you think runs our little group here, Nicole?
 
Me or little Mo over there?”

They all laughed again.

“Since Mo used a football reference,” Nikki said, “I would have to say you.”

“
Nikki
!” Mo said smilingly, as he pretended to be hurt by Nikki’s response.

“Don’t
Nikki
her,” Jake admonished.
 
“She’s only telling the truth.
 
Keep going, sweetheart.”

Mo shook his head at his friend, a charming grin on his face. “You are such a master manipulator,” he said.

“Whatever it takes, babe,” Jake replied with an equally charming grin.

“What I was saying,” Nikki said, smiling too, “is that if football is the reference then yes, I would consider Jake to be the boss because he’s the one who had a successful career in the pros.”

“I love you,” Jake said to laughter.
 
“I love her, Monty.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you do.”

Although they were laughing, Nikki glanced over at Myra.
 
She continued with that tight smile.
 

While Mo and Jake continued their banter, however, Lance whispered in Nikki’s ear.

“That woman hates your guts,” he said.

“I know,” Nikki whispered back.

“Are you sure she and Mo . . . you know?”

Nikki wasn’t sure about anything they did in the past, but she believed nothing was going on now.
 
Mo had even said as much.
 

“I’m sure,” she whispered back.
 

“Okay, okay,” Jake finally said to his best friend, “get on with it.
 
Why do you need Nikki to clear her calendar?”

“The wedding,” Mo said.

“Oh, right,” Jake said.
 
“Myra and I are flying down for the festivities the day of the event.”
 
And then, realizing what it meant for a private man like Mo Ryan to invite one of his lady friends anywhere near his family, Jake smiled.
 
“Oh,
right
,” he said, dragging out the one-syllable word, and this time he said it more conspiratorially.

“What wedding?” Nikki asked nervously.
 
Certainly not theirs, she knew, since even she didn’t think they were at that point in their relationship.

“My kid sister is getting married,” Mo said to her, “and I thought that would be a good time for you to come with me to Key West, to meet my family.”

“Ah,” Lance said with the biggest smile on his face.
 
“You want her to meet your mama.”

Both Jake and Mo laughed.
 
“Yes, Lance, that’s the idea.”
 
He’d had this time from work planned for nearly six months now, and even the governor’s office was honoring his request to take off that week.
 
He knew taking this huge step with Nikki was fraught with risk, and he had debated it in his mind for weeks on end.
 
But he also knew, given the way he felt about her, it was the logical next step to take.
 

Lance seemed to agree.
 
“He’s serious, girl,” he said to Nikki.
 

“Of course he’s serious,” Nikki said as if he’d said what should have already been the most obvious thing.
 
“We’ve slept together, of course he’s serious.”

Jake tried to hide his chuckle.
 
But Lance couldn’t even if he tried.
 
He looked sidelong at Nikki.
 
“And you think because he slept with you that automatically makes him serious?”

Nikki suddenly felt exposed for her lack of experience.
 
But that was exactly how she felt.
 
“Yes,” she said.

Lance shook his head.
 
“You still have a lot to learn, girl,” he said, and Jake could hold back no longer and broke out with his booming laugh.

Nikki was smiling too, although she was also a little terrified.
 
The idea of meeting Mo’s mother, and his family, was something she had been hoping for, and dreading, since she fell in love with him.
 

She looked at Myra, to see if she was at least pretending to be happy for them.
 
But even the pretense was gone.
 
Even her tight smile was gone.

Two weeks later and they were on the road.
 
It was approximately ten hours from Jacksonville to the Florida Keys and with the exception of a couple stops for gas and food, Mo drove nonstop all the way.
 
They were in his second Mercedes, his ‘good car’, as he called it, and it was a practically new, apple-red, Mercedes-Benz E 63 AMG.
 
Nikki knew it was one of those hundred-thousand dollar cars, but she was surprised that such a conservative man like Mo, however, would splurge like that.
 

She had arrived at his home early, before four a.m., and he took his pretty time coming downstairs to open the door.
 
She was dressed comfortably, in a green short set and sandals, ready to take on the Florida sun in style, while Mo opened the door wearing a brown suit and tie.
 
Nikki smiled and shook her head.
 
He looked as if he was leaving for a business trip rather than a vacation.

He seemed pleased when he saw her, however, as he pulled her across his threshold and wrapped her in his arms.
  

“You always smell so good,” she said to him when his arms went around her.

“Just be still and let me hold you for a moment,” he said to her, drinking up her always wonderful scent himself.
 
He’d been so busy getting his docket cleared and his prep work from Tallahassee compiled that he hadn’t spent a single day or night with Nikki in two weeks, not since Jake and Myra’s dinner party.
 
Now he just wanted to hold her.

They both seemed to understand that, by going on this trip together, they were about to take their relationship to that infamous next level.
 
Nikki expected this to be a make-or-break time for them.
 
Not just his conservative family’s reaction to her anything but conservativeness.
  
But she also expected this trip to be a time for her to see the other side of Mo.
 
Would he treat her differently in front of his family?
 
Would she feel differently about him after meeting his family?
 
Would they end the week as in love as they were before the week began, or would they realize that they were really too different in so many ways to ever make this relationship truly work?