Authors: Mallory Monroe
ROMANCING MO RYAN (4 page)
He laid down beside her and pulled her into his arms.
She lay her head on his shoulder and bathe in the warmth of those arms.
She knew he was different.
She could count on one finger the men that would come to this point, find out she was a virgin, and just stop.
But Mo not only cared, but he made the decision for both of them.
“You didn’t ask how I felt about it,” she said as he held her.
“I know,” he said, kissing her on the top of her head.
“I was ready.”
“That’s what you believe, yes.”
She looked at him.
“You don’t believe it?”
He looked down at her.
Honesty was what she wanted, honesty was what she would get.
“No, Nikki, I don’t,” he said.
“But how can you say that?
I was ready.
I said you could have your way with me.
I was more than ready.”
He smoothed down her hair.
“You were ready for me to make love to you,” he said bluntly, “but you’re nowhere near ready for what would follow.”
“The emotional side you mean?”
She was quick as a whip, he thought.
He was going to miss her so completely.
“Yes,” he said.
“Intellectually you think it’s going to be as simple as making love and then going your separate way.
But emotionally it would have been damn-near impossible for you, Nikki.
There was no way you were going to be able to forget the man who took your virginity.
Not after keeping it in that lock-box you kept it in for all this time.”
All what time
, Nikki wanted to ask.
She was only twenty-three.
But then she caught herself.
For an experienced man like Mo Ryan, who probably rarely fooled around with a virgin, she was long behind the pace.
Nikki stared at him.
“Do I have to forget you?” she asked him.
He closed his eyes.
He wanted to say no, she didn’t have to forget him at all, just as he would never forget her.
But he couldn’t do that to her.
He was no more emotionally ready to take on another torrid love affair than she was ready to handle one.
And Nikki wasn’t about to be his piece on the side.
She wouldn’t allow it, and neither would he.
“Yes,” he said, an ache in his heart as soon as he said it.
But it was the truth.
“You have to forget me, Nikki.”
Nikki studied him a moment longer. And somehow she knew he wasn’t sparing her anything.
Because their departure, his complete separation from her life, was going to be painful for her no matter which way the wind blew.
She laid her head back on his chest.
She was still staring, at what should have been her hopeful future ahead, but was really her own tears.
TWO
Two Years Later
She respected him, too.
Or at least she did before this interview.
He was a hero in the community, a civil rights icon turned successful businessman.
Her editor wanted her to interview him for inclusion in their newspaper’s ongoing
Local Heroes
series.
Since she had just gotten the job in Jacksonville, Florida, and had heard of the former NFL star even when she worked in Cleveland, she gladly accepted the assignment.
He was, she thought, a good choice.
Until, in the middle of their interview, he leaned back in the executive chair in his spacious office that overlooked a sweeping view of the Saint John’s River, and tried to hit on her.
“I’ve never met a reporter quite like you,” he said, and she was thinking it was a compliment given the probing questions she had just asked him.
But then he added with a lilt in his voice:
“You fine, girl, you know that?”
At first she just stared at him.
She wore reading glasses but her large brown eyes could be clearly seen. The brother was top-rate professional throughout their time together, reaffirming in her mind why he deserved his hero status.
His sudden lapse into a petty flirt surprised her.
Especially since she knew he was a married man.
She decided to ignore his lapse.
“If I can ask you a few more questions,” she requested, flipping through her notebook in search of the right question.
“I know my style is a little in-your-face,” he went on, ignoring her request.
“But I don’t believe in beating around any bushes.
I like you.
I think you’re fine.
I love your dark skin and your alluring lips and your brains too, I won’t overlook your smarts.”
He said this with a grin.
“I figure we can go out, spend some time together.
Spend the night together.
Get to know each other.”
Then he had the nerve to smile.
“Interested?” he asked.
She looked at him.
She looked hard at him through the prism of her clear-coated glasses.
“I’d rather eat nails,” she said without batting an eye.
He, of course, laughed.
“You are such a card, Nikki Tarver!
That’s why I like you.
But seriously, girl, let’s do this.
You won’t be disappointed.
Goodness knows I won’t,” he added, looking her up and down.
“You’ve got it going on, you hear her?
You’re the finest looking sister I’ve ever seen.”
Nikki had a look of searing disappointment on her face.
This was only her third assignment since arriving in town.
And it was another big, fat zero.
She began stuffing her notebook back into her hobo bag.
As far as she was concerned, the interview was over.
Which was a shame.
She thought he had it together, when all he wanted to do was play games.
But she couldn’t play the game even if it was the only game in town.
Her decision to pack up and leave, however, surprised him.
“What?” he asked her, genuinely shocked.
“What’s wrong?
All I did was give you a compliment.
You can’t take a compliment?
You’re fine, that’s a fact.
You’re the finest looking female I’ve ever seen.
Another fact.”
“And you expect me to believe those facts?” she asked as she lifted the strap of her bag onto her narrow shoulder.
He hesitated.
His sexual propositions were normally met with a resounding
yes, name the place and time,
rather than this serious, almost hauntingly sincere look Nikki Tarver had in her big-ass eyes.
And it annoyed him.
“Yes, I expect you to believe them.
I’m speaking the truth!”
“And you’re truthfully telling me that you’ve never laid eyes on a woman finer than me?”
He smiled.
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“I’m the finest one?”
“The undisputed finest.
In my humble opinion.”
“Either you’re lying or you don’t get out much,” she said, heading for the door.
“Goodbye, Mr. Crump.”
Nathan Crump was angry.
Nobody talked to him like that.
Nikki glanced back and saw that anger.
But tough.
She wasn’t wasting her time on his or anybody else’s bullshit.
The way Nikki saw it, these guys knew what they were doing.
Lay a few lines on her.
Loosen her up.
Get her in bed.
That was their game and she wasn’t playing it.
Pure and simple.
She used to watch her mother in action.
After her father died when she was twelve years old, her mother played the game.
Thought she was good at it too.
Thought she wasn’t being played because she wanted it just as badly as the guy.
Until the guy left.
Then she’d cry all night long on Nikki’s little shoulders.
She’d cry and curse life and get angry with Nikki because little Nikki didn’t have the answers either.
Then that same mother would spend all day nursing her broken heart, vowing to never again let love make a fool out of her.
Until the next love of her life showed up.
Then the game was on again.
Nikki saw the game played on her sisters too, year after year after agonizing year.
Those outspoken, opinionated sisters of hers would fall into deep depressions with suicidal ideations because some man wouldn’t act right.
Please.
Who needed all of that drama?
Nikki figured she could do bad all by herself.
And, given her sputtering life and career, she was doing just that.
She arrived at the Jacksonville Gazette Newspaper building, early the next morning, barely on time.
She parked her aging Mustang in the half empty lot on the side of the rustic building, and hurried out.
Before relocating to Florida a month ago, she had been a star reporter with the Cleveland Dealer-Dispatch, and her career was on the fast track.
Until she referred to a city commissioner as one of the most blatantly corrupt politicians in history.
She was only quoting what his opponent had said, and had put those quotes in her story, but the commissioner took great offense.
He knew somebody, who knew somebody who knew the managing editor.
And when it was time for negotiations, that same editor refused to renew Nikki’s contract to work at the Dealer-Dispatch.
Although technically she wasn’t fired, because she was under contract, but it amounted to the same thing: she didn’t have a job.
If it hadn’t been for her best friend, Lance McKay, who lived here in Jacksonville and who begged his friend, an editor with the Gazette, to hire her, she didn’t know what she would have done.
But she thanked God when Phil Lopez, the editor, offered her the job.
She decided that a change of city and state would do her good, and arrived in Jacksonville ready to set this place on fire.
But she couldn’t even get to work on time.
Ever since her arrival, in fact, she’d been on the verge of lateness seemingly every morning.
She had a chance to be on time this time, however, if she hustled.
And she did, hurrying up the steps in her high-heeled shoes as if she had no time to waste, her hobo bag slinging on her shoulder as if it didn’t wear the ton it wore. She was dressed professional but stylish, in a pretty, low-cut pink cardigan, and a short, white skirt that draped down well above her shapely knees.