ROMANCING MO RYAN (32 page)

But Jameela French had a lot to say.
 
“We had an affair,” she said without being prompted.
 
“Didn’t we, Monty?
 
We were lovers.
 
I was your chief assistant and you were my lover.
 
It started out beautifully.
 
I loved you, oh how I loved you.
 
And you said you loved me and you didn’t know what you would do without me, all the same fairy tales you’re telling this young lady tonight.
 
You told it to me once.
 
And I believed you too.
 
What you failed to mention, however, was that you were married.
 
We talked an awful lot but somehow that little fact never came up.
 
And your wife was ill too?”

Tears were in Jameela’s eyes.
 
“How could you expect me to continue a relationship with you?
 
How could you think that I would stoop that low?
 
So I ended it, and I foolishly thought that was the end of it.
 
But you wouldn’t take no for an answer, would you, Mo?
 
You badgered me.
 
You called me at home.
 
You called my mother’s house.
 
You followed me around town.
 
And even after I quit that job you continued to hound me.
 
But I wanted to be a judge someday.
 
How could I admit to having an affair with a married man and expect my dream to come true?
 
And you knew it.
 
You knew my vulnerability.
 
Those other women were just plain naive, and you played on their naiveté.
 
But you played on my ambition.
 
And it worked.
 
Oh, how it worked.”

She took a moment.
 
Nikki looked at Mo, expecting him to be staring at Jameela.
 
But his eyes were completely trained on Nikki.

“I should have turned you in then.
 
Maybe the other victims would never have met you if I would have turned you in.
 
But I was weak, and wanted more out of life.
 
And you knew it.”

She wasn’t crying, but she sounded as if she were heart broken and angry and determined to finally exact her revenge.
 
She refused to be silent a moment longer.
 

Nikki looked at Mo.
 
His eyes were soft and sad, as if he saw through her, and had X-rayed every inch of her, and he finally could see just how diseased and wretched she really was.
 
And it was clear as day to Nikki that he didn’t care if she believed him or not.
 
It was over.
 
They were done.
 
She did what he had predicted she would do and even Jake, who barely knew her, predicted too.
 
She broke his heart.

He never said a word to Jameela French that night.
 
He didn’t even look in her direction.
 
He stared at Nikki longer, to make sure that she understood that there would be no second chance, and then he turned and walked out of her life.
   

Jameela left too, after telling Nikki how ill just seeing him again made her feel; how his refusal to so much as acknowledge that she once meant something to him, hurt her to her core.
 
But Nikki was too hurt herself to comfort Mo’s accuser.

Later the night, long after Mo, Jameela, and all other forms of life had left her home, Nikki phoned Mo at his.
 
His Voice Mail picked up.
 
She hung up.
 
She phoned him again, less than an hour later.
 
His Voice Mail picked up again.
 
She hung up again.

Mo was in his backyard, on the patio, listening to the whip and twirl of the waves, when his phone rang for the third time.
 
The Voice Mail clicked on again.
 
He fully expected her to hang up again.
 

But this time she didn’t.

“Mo, I know you. . . I’m calling because I know you think I did that to hurt you.
 
But I just wanted to let you know that I didn’t mean to hurt you.
 
That wasn’t what I intended to do at all.
 
I was just. . . I thought, if you saw her, you’d confront her and she wouldn’t be able to lie so easily to your face.
 
I was hoping that somehow we could get her to admit her lies.
 
But she didn’t . . . The way she talked it seemed so . . . true.”
 
A long pause.
 
“Now I’m more confused than I was before I invited her over.
 
And I can’t. . . I just . . I can’t . . .” Then there was another long pause, and she hung up.

Mo pressed a button on his phone, and heard her message all over again.

By the end of the week, after her story on Jameela French made headline news, the writing was on the wall.
 
Nikki was at work when the announcement came.
 

“He’s gonna do it!” Helen yelled, and everybody in the newsroom gathered around the TV.
 
Nikki stayed at her desk.
 
Her hands were trembling as she tried to type.
 
Her heart was pounding so strongly that she thought each beat could be heard.
 

Governor Gibson walked up to the podium and made it official.
 
“My administration has always been determined to fight sexual harassment wherever it rears its ugly head,” he said.
 
“I do not tolerate it.
 
I will not tolerate it.
 
I, therefore, by the powers invested in me, have no choice but to rescind the nomination of Mo Ryan to sit on our great state Supreme Court.”
 

The office, led by Phil and Helen, cheered.
 
The Gazette, they said, singlehandedly brought that conservative asshole down.
 
The Circuit Court was next, they said.
 
He should resign his current post there too.

Nikki’s stomach was knotted up all day.
 
The mood was festive in the office, but she wasn’t with it.
 
Especially when they had the nerve to start congratulating her.
 
Her.
 
The mouth of the south. Miss Truth-at-all-costs.
 
The slash and burn queen who slashed and burned the only man she ever loved.
 
Pardon her if she didn’t jump for joy.
 
Excuse her manners if she didn’t dance on the side of the road.
 
She wanted to die, not dance.
 
She wanted to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had done the right thing, not rejoice because the man she had loved had been fed to the wolves.
 
And she was the feeder.

Later that day Phil called her into his office.
 
He was so full of himself and his victory that she could hardly stomach him.
 

“What is it, Phil, I’ve got a lot to do.”

“I know you’re depressed, Nikki...”

“I’m not depressed.
 
I have a lot to do.”

“Okay, okay.
 
Don’t bite my head off.
 
I have some good news for a change.”

She looked at him.
 
What was his game now?

“Dinkle has approved my decision,” he said.

Nikki frowned.
 
“What decision?”

“I’m making you the Gazette’s newest assistant city editor.
 
Effective immediately.”

Nikki stared at him.
 
Was he insane?
 
“You’re what?”

“You’ve arrived, Nikki Tarver, that’s what.
 
You’ve been promoted.”

“I’ve been promoted?”

“Yes!”
 
He stood up.
 
“You’ve earned it.”

She stood up too.
 
“No, thanks,” she said.

Phil was dumbstruck.
 
“What?”

“I said no thanks.”

“Look, Nick, Ryan’s actions, not your stories, caused his downfall today, and you should be smart enough to understand that.”

Nikki stared at Phil.
 
“What if it’s not true?” she asked him.

“Here we go.”

“What if those women lied, Phil?”

“All three of them?”

“Yes!”

“Jameela French too?”

Nikki hesitated.
 
It was implausible, but it wasn’t impossible.
 
“Yes.”

“No, Nikki Tarver.
 
Hell no!
 
Don’t ever get to where facts fade into fiction because when that happens, we all might as well go home.
 
You followed the facts.
 
Those stories checked out.
 
That’s a fact.
 
Those women are credible.
 
That’s a fact.
 
Mo Ryan would have set back civil rights fifty years or more if he made it to the Supreme Court.
 
That’s a fact too, kid.
 
You followed the facts.
 
Now you’re vindicated.
 
You did the right thing.”

Nikki wanted to believe him.
 
She wanted to embrace every word he uttered.
 
She was just following the facts.
 
She was just doing her job.
 
Mo chose to remain silent.
 
He chose not to defend himself.
 
And in her world his silence could only mean guilt.
 

But she was the one feeling guilty.
 
She was the one feeling as if she had taken a knife and stabbed it through his heart, and then had the nerve to get angry when he chose to feel the hurt from that stab wound, rather than stab back.

When she drove up to her condo that evening, the weight of the world could have been on her shoulders.
 
She’d been offered a promotion, her career was on the upswing, but she felt as if she had just experienced a death.
 
She felt as if what used to matter to her almost exclusively, at the expense of all others, now was the distraction in her life.
 
And it barely mattered at all.

She got out of her car, grabbed her groceries and her hobo bag, and slowly, almost aimlessly, headed up the walkway toward her apartment.
 
She didn’t realize Mo was standing at her front door until she walked through the courtyard, around the bird bath, and saw him standing there.
 
Looking so gorgeous she could hardly believe her sight.
 
She stopped in her tracks.

Mo walked up to her, his hands in the pockets of his pants, his suit coat flapped open.
 
And they stood there staring at each other for the longest time.

Then he took her groceries, and then her hand.

They moved around in her small kitchen like an old married couple.
 
Nikki made coffee and placed it on her small kitchen table while Mo put her groceries away.
 
From the time he had taken her hand to this time, not a word had been spoken.
 
She had fully expected him to lash out at her character, declaring her decision to invite Jameela French into her home to be nothing short of an all-out betrayal.
 
But he did no such thing.
 
He just finished putting the groceries away, and then sat down at the small kitchen table with a window view of the courtyard.
 
She poured him a cup of coffee, poured herself a cup, and then sat down at the tiny table too.

At first the silence remained.
 
Until she spoke.
 
“Why are you here, Mo?” she asked him, that sincere look blanketing her worried face.

Mo stared at her, at her sincerity, and then he looked back out of the window.
 
“You don’t know?” he asked her.
 
Then he sat his coffee cup on the saucer.
 
And looked at her again.
 
“I love you, that’s why.
 
Walking out on you isn’t as simple as walking out a door.
 
I had to be prepared to leave a part of my heart on the other side of that door, and I wasn’t prepared to do that.”

Nikki felt a sense of relief, but she also felt a sense of dread.
 
“They congratulated me at work for bringing you down,” she said.
 
“And that’s the way they put it.
 
They said the Gazette, my articles, brought you to your knees.”

Mo smiled.
 
“That crowd has always had a flare for the dramatic.”

“But that’s how I feel, Mo.
 
I feel as if I brought you down.
 
And you’re the last person on the face of this earth that I would want to do that to.
 
But I did it.
 
I wrote that story.”

“That story you wrote,” Mo said, “was the most objective piece of journalism you’ve ever wrote.”
 
He looked at her.
 
“I was proud of you, Nikki.”

Nikki’s heart swelled with emotion.
 
“I didn’t invite Jameela French into my home to hurt you, Mo.”

“I know that,” he replied softly.

“I thought---”

“I know what you thought, Nikki.
 
You thought she would have enough of a conscience that she couldn’t lie to my face.”

“I thought wrong.”

Mo looked at her.
 
“Yes, my darling, you thought wrong.
 
And at first that’s all I saw, your miscalculation.
 
But your heart was in the right place.
 
And I didn’t have to see that. I already knew that.”

Nikki smiled.
 
“Thank-you.”

Then more silence.
 

“Did the governor call you before he made his grand announcement?” she finally asked him.

Mo paused.
 
She had hit a nerve.
 
“No,” he said.
 
“They don’t call you, Nikki, when they’re through with you.
 
They just spit you out.
 
I wasn’t their golden boy anymore.
 
Now I was their problem.
 
And they had to get rid of their problem.”

Nikki shook her head.
 
“A bunch of conservative assholes,” Nikki said.
 
“I never like that governor anyway.”

“I wasn’t crazy about him, either,” Mo said, and they both laughed.
 

“Phil offered me a promotion,” Nikki said, “can you believe it?”

Mo sipped from his coffee and stared at her.
 
“What did you say?”

“What do you think?
 
I told him no way.”

“And tomorrow, when you get in that office, you’re going to tell him yes.”

“No way, Mo.
 
No way am I capitalizing on your pain.”

“You’re not capitalizing on anything.
 
You’re being smart.
 
You’re a journalist, Nikki, that’s all you’ve ever wanted to be.
 
You aren’t going to fall in love with me and then forget your passion.
 
You will accept that promotion and you will gladly accept it.
 
I’ll be fine.”

“Fine?
 
With your dream job up in smoke?
 
With your name scandalized?
 
And you know it won’t be long before the chief judge demands your resignation.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Mo said with a smile.
 
“He already has.”

Sometimes Nikki didn’t understand him.
 
“And you’re smiling why?” she asked him.

“Because you’re on my side, Nikki.
 
And I know you are.
 
When I weigh the good in my life versus the bad, I figure I still come out on top.”

And it was Nikki’s time to smile.