ROMANCING MO RYAN (5 page)

As soon as she arrived at her desk, however, Helen Jones got in what was becoming her usual jab.

“Good morning, Nikki,” she said.

“Good morning, Helen,” Nikki replied.

Nikki was, by more than twenty years, the youngest reporter the Gazette had on staff.
 
And many of her colleagues, particularly the females, found her dress style and her appearance in general a little too loud, too youthful, and a little too sexy for their taste.

Helen looked down, at the low cut of her cardigan, at her short skirt, at her long, silky hair in waves of curls and bounciness, and then back up into her eyes.
 
“You look,” Helen started, and then took a moment to think about it.
 
“Let me put it this way.
 
There’s a saying I tell my own daughters all the time.
 
Why would the man buy the cow, I tell them, when he can get the milk for free?”

Helen stared at Nikki, as if waiting for her to respond.

“Well?” Helen asked.

“Well what?” Nikki said.

“You dress provocatively, Nikki.”

Maybe to a fifty year old woman
, Nikki wanted to say.

“Well?” fifty-year-old Helen said again.
 
“Why should a man buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?”

“Maybe he’s buying the cow,” Nikki replied, “for the hamburgers and steaks he can get out of it, too.”

The men in the newsroom laughed.
 
Helen looked at Nikki angrily, and then turned back around to her own desk.

 
But Nikki ignored them all and turned on her computer.
 
She didn’t come all this way to Florida to pick fights with Helen Jones or anybody else.
 
She just wanted to do her job and prove to the Gazette, and to Phil Lopez, that hiring her wasn’t a bad decision.
 
That was why she did everything they asked her to do without batting an eye, even though all of her assignments had gone nowhere fast.
 

But she was already, three weeks in, well accustomed to the jabs.
 
And not just from Helen, either, but from the other handful of females who worked for the paper.
 

One of them, Andrea, came up to her desk and put her two cents in later that same morning.
 

“I agree with Helen,” she said quietly.
 
“You’re always showing cleavage, always wearing those short skirts.
 
That’s why these men be trying to hit on you.
 
It’s your own fault.
 
All you have to do is cover yourself up, and then they’ll leave you alone.”
 
She said this as if she really believed that.
 
“They don’t bother me and Helen.”

Nikki glanced down, at the woman’s long, flower-child styled dress that draped down to her swollen ankles, at her hair pulled back in a severe bun, at her thick glasses.
 
Nikki knew she could have gotten cute, and said,
I see why they don’t
, but she didn’t go there.
 
She respected her elders.
 
It was her elders who didn’t respect her.

“The point is,” Andrea went on, “you dress too provocative for me.”

“I’m not dressing for you,” Nikki replied.
 

The woman gave Nikki a harsh look, although Nikki was only stating a fact, and then went on about her business.
 
Nikki could never understand why they seemed so obsessed with her appearance.
 
Were they coming from a good place of helpfulness, or an ugly place?
 
Was she really dressing as provocatively as they claimed, and she just didn’t see it?
 
Or was it pure jealousy they were spewing, merely because a young woman like her was suddenly on the scene?
 
Nikki didn’t know, but she went on about her business just the same, which included re-reading the article she wrote on Nathan Crump.
 
She hoped that that would be the end, at least for today, of these southern females and their obsession with her style.

But it wasn’t the end.

Still another female reporter approached her when she went into the break room to freshen-up her cup of coffee.
 

“You’re young and pretty,” the aging southern belle, a former cheerleader, said to her.
 
She was known for her rigid personality and her tight but tasteful wardrobe.
 
“And you have an attractiveness about you,” the older woman went on as if she was shouting a cheer.
 
“But you don’t have to dress like it.
 
Pull down that skirt.
 
Pull up the low-cut section of that blouse.
 
Give these men something to fantasize about.
 
Look at me, I’m stylish.
 
You can be like me!”
 
She added this as she pulled and tugged on the tight skirt of her tight suit that barely fitted her tight ass.

Compared to the others, she did have some style.
 
But not the kind Nikki was interested in emulating.
 

She
barely made it back to her desk, however, before that loud, grating voice of their city editor could be heard over the newsroom intercom.

“Nikki Tarver!” he yelled.
 
“In my office!”

Nikki sipped the last of her coffee, sat the cup back down, and hurried to his office.

Phil Lopez was a stern, no nonsense man who chain-smoked cigars and complained endlessly about the sorry state of journalism in today’s society.
 
The twenty-four-hour cable news shows drove him nuts.
 
And the tabloids?
 
Forget about it.
 
They didn’t practice journalism, but hedonism, in his view.
 
Although he was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, the son of a Dominican mother and a Puerto Rican father, he was most proud of his Puerto Rican heritage, even to where he would lay the accent on thick when anybody had any doubts about his true ethnicity.
 

He was an older man with brownish gray hair that shagged down to his neck, watery brown eyes, a kind but aged face, and a body thin and frail from too much attention to his work and too little to himself.
 
Although most of the reporters found Phil’s almost ultra-liberalism a liability to the paper, Nikki found him to be a kindred spirit.

“Sit down, Nick,” he said, and she quickly obliged.
 

He leaned down from his five-nine frame and sat on the edge of his desk.
 
He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
 
He was tired, as usual, from too many fifteen hour days, and simple matters, like giving an assignment, appeared to be exhausting.

“I liked your article on the death penalty,” he said.

“Then why did you return it?”

“Because, like most everything you write, it’s too judgmental.”

“You didn’t agree with it?”

“I agree with every word you wrote.
 
But that’s not the point.
 
You were supposed to be writing a balanced story on the grievances of the inmates on Florida’s Death Row, not an opinion piece on why the death penalty should be abolished.”

“But it’s the truth, Phil.
 
How can anybody be in favor of the death penalty in light of the fact that DNA is turning once condemned men out of prison left and right?
 
And the fact that minorities are over-represented isn’t an accident either.”

“Okay, okay,” Phil said as he threw up his hands.
 
“Just tighten it up a little and I’ll run it.
 
I didn’t bring you in for a sermon.
 
I’ve got an assignment.”

“Good,” Nikki said eagerly.

Phil smiled.
 
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?
 
I tell my other reporters they have an assignment and they ask why I’m not giving it to the other guy.”

“Unless it’s something major league.”

“Right,” Phil agreed.
 
“Well this one is with a major leaguer in our town, although it’s just another feature story for our
Local Heroes
series.”

Since her last assignment didn’t go so well, she was game.
 
“Who is it this time?”

Phil reached for a packet on his desk and handed it to Nikki.
 
“A local judge.
 
Montgomery Ryan.”

Nikki was about to open the file but stopped mid-open when she heard that name.
 
Her heart pounded.
 
She looked at Phil.
 
“Judge Ryan?” she asked him.

“Yeah, why?
 
You know him?”

If a man holding her in his arms all night long constituted knowledge. . .
 
“No, not really,” she said, attempting to shield her shock.
 
“But I thought he was a south Florida judge.”

Phil nodded.
 
“He was.
 
He moved here about a year ago when they appointed him senior judge of the criminal courts division.
 
I can’t stand him, to tell you the truth, and trust me, you won’t either.”

Nikki could hardly believe it.
 
Mo Ryan lived in Jacksonville too?
 
She opened the dossier.
 
“Why won’t I like him?” she asked casually as she saw, on the very first page, that gorgeous mug of the man that still haunted her dreams.
  

“He’s a conservative asshole, that’s why.
 
They call him Judge Maximum around here.”

Nikki looked at Phil.
 
“Judge Maximum?
 
Why?
 
Harsh sentencing?”

“Exactly.”

Somehow Nikki never thought of Mo as harsh.
 

“If he’s so harsh, what’s so heroic about him?” she asked.

Nikki could tell Phil thought nothing was heroic about him, and his response dripped with sarcasm.
 
“Mr. Lawrence Dinkle, our great managing editor, thought it would be a neat idea if we were to include him in our
Local Heroes
series anyway.”

“But why would Mr. Dinkle want his inclusion if he’s such a lightning rod in the community as you claim?”

“I
claim
my ass. You read that dossier, you’ll see.
 
This isn’t just any claim.
 
He shows no mercy.
 
But as to your question, the why is because our boss believes he’ll add some texture, as he calls it, to what everybody declares is our unabashed liberal bent.”

“Texture?”

“Yes.
 
And our boss has furthermore pointed out,” Phil continued, “that Judge Ryan happens to be a close, personal friend of Marshall London, the publisher of this very newspaper, and our boss’s boss.
 
So whether we like it or not, Ryan will be included.”

Nikki closed the file and stood up.
 
“When is he expecting me?
 
Did you tell his office it would be me?”

“Why would I tell them that?
 
They wouldn’t know you from Adam.
 
You just got here, remember?
 
But he’s expecting one of our reporters at eleven.
 
Which will be you.”

Nikki nodded, her heart still pounding.
 
“Okay,” she said.

“And Nick,” Phil said and she turned back around.
 
“Don’t let his good looks throw you.”

Nikki stared at Phil.
 
Did he know?
 
But he couldn’t.
 
“Why would his looks, good or otherwise, throw me?”

“Mo Ryan is a good looking guy, I’ll give him that, and most of these female reporters around here just melt whenever they interview him.
 
Consequently, they never get squat out of the guy. Lance told me you’re a tough cookie totally focused on doing your job.
 
I expect you to live up to your reputation.”

Phil was right, Nikki thought.
 
Even though she and Mo Ryan had this history together, it really only amounted to a week of friendship and a one-night stand that wasn’t even completely sexual.
 
She had a job to do, and history or no history she was going to do it right.

But as soon as she left Phil’s office she hurried for the bathroom, just in case somebody could hear the pounding of her heart.