ROMANCING MO RYAN (9 page)

“Oh, yes he will.
 
He has to know you’re a journalist first, since your article made clear that you weren’t letting him off easy the way other reporters always do.
 
And he also knows he’s in deep shit image-wise right now.
 
He needs a straight-shooter like you to breathe some life into his ass.
 
I think he’ll have a lot to tell.”

Nikki looked at Phil and sighed.
 
He didn’t know what he was asking of her.
 
Here she was trying to see if she could build something up with Mo Ryan after all, and here Phil was offering her up to tear Mo Ryan down.
 
And she knew doing both at the same time would be damn-near impossible.
 
But it just seemed so hopeless.
 
It seemed as if she and Mo Ryan, whether they liked it or not, were just destined to keep tripping into each other.

But despite her article, and despite the Sheppard situation, he didn’t cancel their dinner date.
 
She, in fact, didn’t hear from him at all that day.
 
She attempted to phone his office, not only to confirm the date but to see if she could discuss the Sheppard case with him, but his secretary said he’d be in court until after five pm.
 
She didn’t bother to leave a message.
 
She assumed he wasn’t the kind of man who would cancel a date without notifying his date.
 
So she prepared herself.

She was dressed and ready and on time, thanks to Lance.
 
She didn’t want his help, she found the entire idea of Lance leaving his busy gallery to come help her prepare was absurd, but he insisted on coming over and selecting the exact right outfit for her to wear.

“You’re a very honest, sincere, hardworking girl,” he said to her, “but when it comes to your dress style, honey, you’re somewhere between a tween and Joan Rivers.
 
You’re all over the place!
 
You need pure sophistication tonight.
 
That’s what Judge Ryan is expecting to see tonight, and that’s what you’re going to show.”

“And you know this about Mo Ryan how?” Nikki asked as she lay across her bed watching Lance scour through every inch of her closet.
 

“I’ve heard things about him, okay,” Lance said, eyeing a low-cut dress that caused him to frown.
 
“Unlike you, I get around.”

“What things have you heard?” Nikki asked, interested.

“That he, you know,” Lance said.
 
His attention was completely focused on finding her the right outfit.

“That he what, Lanny?”

Lance glanced at her, surprised by the urgency in her voice.
 
When he saw that earnest look in her eyes, he turned toward her.
 
He really did love Nikki Tarver.
 
She was the most sincere, guileless human being he’d ever met.
 
“He likes the ladies, Nikki,” he said to her.

Nikki’s heart plunged.
 
“As in he has a lot of ladies?”

“I can’t say that, and neither can my sources,” Lance said as he turned back toward the closet and frowned.
 
“You need to get in here and clean out this closet, girl.
 
It’s ridiculous.” He began wiping his hand with his handkerchief.
 
Lance was a neat freak in the extreme.
 
From his tailored suits, to his petite body, to his low-cut afro, to even his art gallery and north side home, everything was always perfectly in place.
 
Nikki was clean, even Lance would admit that, but neat was another matter.
    

“Do your sources know if he has a special lady in his life right now?” Nikki asked him, ignoring, as usual, his admonition about her lack of neatness.

“No,” Lance said.
 
“Judge Ryan, from what they tell me, is a very private man.
 
All they know is that he’s been seen around town with various females.
 
And the one thing every one of them has in common is their sense of style.
 
There were no hobo bag carriers among them.”

“Was there any diversity among them?” Nikki asked.

“No, not at all.”
 

Nikki looked at Lance.
 
“Really?
 
So none of the women he’s been linked to in the past looks like me?”

“Not one, girl.
 
From what I’ve been told every one of his ladies have been tall, voluptuous beauty queens.”

“And not one of them black?”

Lance frowned.
 
“He’s dated black women.
 
What are you talking about?”

“But I thought you said none of his women looked like me, Lance!”

“They don’t look like you.
 
Just because you’re black, too, doesn’t mean they look like you.
 
These women I’m talking about are big, tall, voluptuous women around the judge’s age, Nikki.
 
You’re small, young, and average height, and more like the princess than the queen. Mo Ryan’s been known to favor the queens, honey.
 
Very experienced queens.
 
Whereas you’re practically a virgin.”

“
Practically
a virgin?
 
I am a virgin!”

“No you are not.
 
Not after what Mo Ryan himself did to you in that hotel room in Cleveland, no, girl, you are not.”

“You don’t even know what he did to me at that convention,” Nikki pointed out.
 
“I didn’t give you those kinds of details.”

“You didn’t have to.
 
Your big-ass eyes, as usual, gave you away.
 
That man did everything he was big enough to do, except break through your maidenhead, in that hotel room.
 
You are practically a virgin just like a said, and the women he usually favors are practically hoes, just like I said.”

“Then why is he inviting me out, Mister Genius?”

Mo went back to his clothes search.
 
“As if you don’t know.”

“What?
 
I don’t know!”

Mo looked at her.
 
“Didn’t you tell me he had you naked in bed?”

“I should have never told you that, but yes, he did.”

“Well, there you go.”

“Oh, come on.
 
He’s had all of those other women naked in bed, too, I’ll bet you any amount of money.”

“Yeah, but they apparently don’t have your taste.”

“I thought you said they had immaculate taste compared to me.”

“That ain’t the taste I’m talking about,” Lance said with a smirk on his already quizzical face.

“Then what other taste do you mean. . .” When Nikki fully realized what he meant, she reached to throw her pillow at him.
 
“You nasty bastard!” she said with a laugh.

Lance laughed too, and ducked.

By the time Mo arrived at Nikki’s condo, Lance had gone.
 
But not before encouraging her to wear a sleek yellow dress that, once she tried it on, fit her as if it had been stitched onto her body.
 
The way Lance saw it, the dress would give stark definition to the few curves she did have.
 
“Because,” he added, “real men love curves.”

“For a gay guy,” Nikki said smilingly, “you sure know a lot about what men love.”

Lance looked at her, his handsome face lit up with mischief.
 
“
Duh
,” he said.
    

By the time Mo rang her doorbell, Nikki was ready.
 
She answered the door in the yellow dress Lance handpicked for her, with a green and yellow scarf tied in a slant around her neck, accented by red heels that matched her red, green, and yellow clutch.
 
She felt sexy and felt she looked sexy.
 
And, oddly enough, she couldn’t wait to see Mo’s reaction.

She opened the door and there he stood.
 
And it was her reaction that was most telling.
 
Because she was beyond pleased.
 
Sex appeal was coming out of the man’s pores.
 
It was a cool night and he was casually dressed this time, in a crew neck pullover shirt, a pair of dark brown dress trousers, and a leather bomber jacket.
 
He had a cigarette between his fingers and was just taking a puff when she opened the door.
 
He smiled awkwardly, as if she’d just caught him in an embarrassing moment, and tossed the cigarette to the ground.
 

She was surprised to see that a man of his intelligence would have a cigarette anywhere near him, but it wasn’t like she was dating Jesus.
 
She was dating a man, an imperfect, flawed man, who had his bad habits just like everybody else.
 

Her face, however, which could never hide a thing, apparently didn’t hide her surprise.
 
“I take an occasional puff when I’m stressed,” he said in answer to the questioning look on her face.
 
But his answer only provoked more questions.
 
Could a man with the power of determining life or death, as in Wade Sheppard’s case, be stressed about this date with her?
 
Then she dismissed it out of hand.
 
That couldn’t be the reason.
 
More probable was the fact that the Sheppard debacle had just come to light, and he was having a hard time dealing with the fact that he was the one who had sentenced an innocent man to death.
 
At least she hoped he would have felt stressed about it.

“To each his own,” she said and he smiled.
 
She had the urge to invite him in, but decided against it.
 
She wanted the royal treatment tonight.
 
Any man who had her hating just about every piece of clothing she owned simply because nothing seemed good enough for him, owed it to her.

She stepped out of her front door and just as she had silently hoped, his eyes immediately began perusing her body.
 
Normally she would have felt uncomfortable, what self-respecting woman wanted some man undressing her with his eyes?
 
But this time was different.
 
She wanted his attention.
 
She probably needed it.
 

Besides, Lance told her to be feminine.
 
When she asked what in the world did that mean, Lance made himself plain.
 
“Compliment the hell out of him,” he advised.

“I like that jacket,” she said as she closed the door.
 
Although she was taking a page out of Lance’s playbook, she wasn’t lying.
 
She did like how he looked tonight.

Mo looked down at his jacket.
 
“Oh, this old thing?” he said and they laughed.

They walked slowly toward the building’s parking lot.
 
He began drifting further back, and she knew then that it was his opportunity to check her out.
 
He didn’t comment on her appearance, however, he just walked quietly behind her.
 
But when they arrived at the door of his car, a pearl-white Mercedes Benz S-class, he didn’t seem pleased at all.

“Tight dress,” he said as he opened the passenger door for her.
 
They were a mere inch apart.

“You don’t like it?” she asked disappointedly.
 
“I put it on for you.”

Mo seemed surprised by her honesty.
 
Most women would rather die than admit such an obvious, but nonetheless rarely mentioned, fact.
 
But he loved that about her.
 
That wasn’t his issue.
 
His problem was more base.
 
Because if he could feast his eyes on every curve of her body within that skintight dress, so could every man in eyesight of her.
 
He loved the fact that he could do it, but he abhorred the fact that other men could too.

He didn’t say anything as he assisted her into the car, and closed the door.

Nikki felt confused when he closed the door.
 
Did she offend him or something?
 
Was she not supposed to admit that she put on this tight-behind dress to turn him on?
 
Her loose lips often got her into trouble, that was how she lost her job in Ohio, but she never thought her honesty would, too.
 

Mo couldn’t believe his reaction as he walked around the car toward the driver side door.
 
He never cared if a woman he was taking to dinner showed off her curves.
 
Not even when his deceased wife used to do it.
 
Then why the hell, he wondered, was he behaving like some insecure asshole now?
 
And at this stage in his life?
 
And with
her
?

He didn’t know why he felt so protective of Nikki, and so possessive.
 
His style, in the last few years, had always been to avoid vulnerable women because he didn’t want any emotional attachment.
 
That was why he only dated women who could take care of themselves.
 
Nikki could too, she’d been doing it just fine, thank-you, all of her adult life, but there was still something about her that was nothing like any woman he’d ever known.

When he sat down in his car and saw that sweet but bewildered look all over her face, his heart dropped.
 
He had hurt her.

“I’m sorry, Nikki,” he said heartfelt.
 
“I was just being an asshole, all right?
 
A super-sized asshole.
 
You look very stunning.
 
Very sexy,” he added with a smile, prompting her to smile too.
 
“But of course looking sexy was never your intention, right?”

“Wrong,” Nikki said honestly, and he laughed.
 

“You’re one of a kind, Nikki Tarver,” he said as he cranked up.
 
“One of a kind.”

The drive to the restaurant was deliberately slow as Mo was careful to obey all speeding laws, and neither one of them seemed particularly anxious to talk too much.
 
For Nikki it wasn’t a question of conversation.
 
She was too busy wondering why was she there at all.
 
She needed to be focused like a laser beam on her career, not on some man.
 
Especially not a man like Mo Ryan.
 
Even Lance had heard that he was a ladies man, and the ladies he preferred were nothing like her.
 
She understood why he singled her out in Cleveland.
 
It was more her brains than her body back then, and perhaps the pickings were too slim in Cleveland.
 
But why was he bothering with her now when he could have the exact kind of woman he preferred?
 
And why, she still wondered, was she bothering with him?

She knew Mo was different.
 
But she looked at him, wondering why was he different.
 
And why did her heart do odd things whenever he showed up?
 
He was no Mister Perfect.
 
He was good looking, no doubt about that, but so were dozens of other men who’d asked her out.
 
And they were young and eager men, ready to give her anything she desired if she’d only ask.
 
Ryan was almost fifteen years her senior, eager her ass, and wasn’t ready to do anything for her except get on her last nerve with his harsh, merciless views.
 

But nobody else made her heart flutter.
 
No-one else had her wishing that she hadn’t written so harshly about him in that Hero or Zero article.
 
Nobody else suddenly appeared in her dreams every time she lay down to sleep.

He took her to a jazz nightclub in Mayport called The Lighthouse.
 
A large, maple-toned woman named EttaMae Cunningham was on stage singing oldies but goodies when they arrived.
 
It wasn’t exactly a senior citizens crowd, but it was close.
 
But even that didn’t matter to Nikki.
 
It was the way Mo treated her that mattered more to her.
 
He not only opened her car door for her, which was huge, but he assisted her in and out, as if she was some delicate flower he wanted to protect.
 
And when they entered the restaurant, he placed his hand in the small of her back as the waitress escorted them to their table, as if he wanted the world to know that she was his.
 
She wasn’t, not by a long shot, but it felt good to Nikki just the same.