ROMANCING MO RYAN (7 page)

At least he admitted it, she thought.
 
Then she thought again, and looked at him.
 
“But she won’t get it from you?” she asked.

Mo hesitated.
 
He wished he could live up to this image she had of the world.
 
But it wasn’t possible.
 
“No, she won’t,” he said.
 
“It’s my job to administer justice, not compassion.
 
And that’s what I do.”

“But how does it make you feel to be so hard-hearted?
 
That must be a lonely place to be.
 
Or do you surround yourself with likeminded folk who give you the façade of acceptance?”

He actually smiled, revealing dazzling white teeth.
 
But his smile wasn’t a lingering one, but short and abrupt, like he knew he was disappointing her.
 
“I think I’ve answered that question,” he said.

“But with respect Judge Ryan, that question goes to the heart of why I’m here.”
 
Nikki was all into it now.
 
She was no longer the young woman pining about a bygone day, but was now the feisty reporter getting on with it.
 
“You’ve been selected to be a part of our
Heroes
series.
 
I’m trying to find out why they would select you.
 
What is it about you, about how you care about and treat your fellow man, that makes you heroic?
 
Because frankly, based on what you’re telling me here, I don’t see it.”

Mo stared at her.
 
Her honesty still stunned him.
 
He glanced down, at her well-endowed chest, and back up into those huge eyes.
 
Was she still as uncorrupted as he had remembered her?

“How old are you, Nikki?” he asked her.

She was well aware of his stare, but she still refused to allow this interview to be about her.
 
“What does that have to do---”

“Will you please knock it off?” he snapped.
 
“What are you, twenty-two, twenty-three?
 
I don’t remember.”

Nikki sat erect.
 
He was so easily irritated now.
 
She wondered if it was the stress of being the senior judge in a division that tried all of the most heinous of crimes.
 
“I’m twenty-five,” she said.

“Yeah, just old enough to know it all.
 
Next question.”

Nikki was a little unhinged by his dismissiveness, as if that fondness for each other they shared years ago was a completely faded memory.
 
Which, she also acknowledged, was probably just as well.
 

She flipped through her writing pad, for her notes.
 
Mo looked down, at her breast again, breasts he remembered as if he had had them in his mouth yesterday.
 
And he also looked further down, at her crossed legs.
 
They were so shapely coming down out of that cute little skirt of hers, so toned and dark, that he had to cross his own legs, to hide his growing erection.

Nikki looked back up and saw that his eyes were, once again, assessing her body.
 
She wasn’t sure if she liked that he was remembering her that way.
 
“In many of the articles that I read on your judicial philosophy,” she said, “you always seemed to dismiss cold realities, such as minority complaints about racial profiling, as some sort of overreach by the minorities themselves.”
 
Nikki looked hard at him, because this aspect of his background did disturb her. “Why?”

“I’ve never dismissed racial profiling.”

“Then you acknowledge that it exists?”

“Of course it exists.”

Nikki didn’t expect that answer.
 
“Then why, in one case, did you refuse to even entertain the possibility that the defendant in a murder trial was stopped simply because he was a Hispanic male?
 
That his only so-called crime was that he was driving while brown?”

“Relevancy,” Mo said.

“Meaning?”

“That police stop of the defendant was ruled by me as not relevant to a material fact.”

“Not relevant?” Nikki said with a lilt in her voice.
 
“How can you say that?
 
It was totally relevant.
 
But for the fact that he was Latino, that cop wouldn’t have thought about stopping that automobile.”

“And that child’s body would not have been found in the trunk of that automobile, and a murderer would have been free to murder again.”
 

“But it’s a question of civil rights, Judge Ryan.
 
That’s why they say it’s better if ten guilty men go free, than for one innocent man to be imprisoned.”

He looked at Nikki with a curious frown.
 
“They say a lot of things,” he said, “that I don’t agree with.”

“But everybody agrees with it, Judge.
 
It’s the bedrock of our judicial system.”

He frowned again.
 
“Setting guilty men free isn’t the bedrock of anything.
 
Who told you that nonsense?”

Nikki sighed.
 
She felt as if she was in some chess match.
 
“It’s not the point that guilty men are set free,” she said, “but that innocent men are not wrongfully convicted.”

“Bullshit!” he said and stood up quickly.
 
“One hasn’t anything to do with the other.
 
It’s nonsense, Nicole.”
 
And then he pointed at her.
 
“Stop believing nonsense!”
 

He walked to a small coffee stand against the wall and prepared to pour himself a cup of coffee.
 
Nikki wanted to battle him back but she didn’t know what to say.
 
Something was wrong with her.
 
She didn’t feel like her usual self-assured self around him.
 
She had her feistiness still, but she didn’t have her fight.
 

And whenever he looked at her, whenever those startling blue eyes looked into her eyes, her heart would actually quiver.
 
It was unbelievable.
 
A man like that, with such archaic views that just listening to him sickened her, was turning her on.
 
Yes, they had a history, but it wasn’t
that
deep.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked as he poured himself one.
 
She didn’t respond.
 
For some reason she couldn’t.
 
He turned and looked at her.
 
She didn’t know what he saw exactly, but whatever it was it immediately softened him.
 
He poured another cup of coffee, walked up to her with both cups, and handed her one.

“Thanks,” she said and quickly took a sip.
 
He stood over her a few moments longer, his hand in his pocket, and she could smell his fresh cologne scent, and his masculinity, and could feel his sensuality.
 

She could also feel his stare above her.
 
Then just when it seemed unbearable and she might actually drop the cup of coffee from raw nerves alone, he walked to the front edge of his desk, and leaned against it.

“The beautiful thing about America,” he said softly, “is that we all have a right to disagree.”

She didn’t say anything.
 
She just sipped more coffee.
 
He was staring at her again as if there was some mystery about her that he just couldn’t figure out, and no matter how hard she tried to relax, she was uncomfortable as hell.
 
And remarkably she suddenly couldn’t think of a single interesting question to ask him.
 
And it had to be a clever question, not some
how do you like being a judge
crap, but one that would prove to him that she knew what she was doing too.
 
But the harder she tried to think of something, the more frustrated she became.
 

“How do you like being a judge?” she finally gave up and asked.
 

He sipped his coffee before answering.
 
“I like it fine,” he said.
 
His legs were outstretched, giving her an unobstructed view of those muscular thighs she remembered so well, and just how nicely packed his midsection really was.

When she realized her blunder, that she was actually assessing him now, her eyes moved up to his face.
 
He was staring at hers.
 
She wanted to smile it off, but she wasn’t comfortable enough to be that casual with him.
 
She decided to just get on with it.

“You don’t find it scary being a judge?” she asked him.

He studied her.
 
“Why would I find it scary?”

“You have the power of life and death in your hands.
 
I would think it would be terrifying.”

He didn’t say anything, he just began looking at her again, staring at her again, until the telephone on his desk rang again.
 
He leaned back to pick up the receiver.
 

While he talked on the phone, she wondered if there was any possibility that his heart could be hammering like hers.
 
Was her sudden intrusion in his life causing him to be as off balanced as she was?
 

But then she smiled.
 
There was something too smooth about Mo Ryan, too steeped in life experience, that the idea of him falling for somebody like her, somebody he undoubtedly saw as too young, too loud, and too liberal for his refined taste, was too ridiculous to even think about.
 
He had already told her they had no future together.
 
It was two years ago but it still spoke volumes to her.
 

And what about her?
 
The idea that she could fall for such a rigid ideologue as Mo Ryan was shaping up to be probably even more ridiculous.
 
But her eyes kept moving downward, to that rod between his legs.
 
He was so well-hung, she remembered just how well-endowed, that just seeing the fullness there, made that area between her own legs tingle.

He hung up the telephone and looked at her again.
 
At first he seemed taken aback by her, as if something about her look was perplexing the hell out of him, but then his facial expression shifted once more, and he settled back down.
 

“It’s a job that I have to do,” he finally said, answering a question she had forgotten she had asked.
 
“Fear doesn’t enter into it.”

“Even if your life and death decisions are wrong?”

“Fear doesn’t enter into it.
 
I do my job.”

“It’s always rewarding then?”

He hesitated.
 
“No, not always,” he said.
 
Hardly ever, he wanted to add.
 
But he didn’t.
 
She didn’t want to hear his sad stories.
 

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut this short,” he did say, however.
 
“That telephone call just made my docket a little more expansive.”

“Oh,” Nikki said and stood up too.
 
She walked up to the edge of the desk where he sat and handed him the coffee cup.
 
He placed it on his desk and then extended his hand to her.

“It was nice seeing you again, Nicole,” he said, determined to keep it formal.

She placed her hand in his.
 
And just the touch of his hand gave her an indescribably warm feeling, a feeling she hadn’t felt since the last time he touched her.
 
“It’s nice seeing you again too,” she said.

They held each other’s hand longer than they should have, which was strange too, and when she went to remove hers from his grasp, she could feel a hesitation in his release.
 
She looked into his eyes.
 
What could this mean?
 
Was he interested again?
 
But as quickly as she looked at him, his desk phone rang again.
 
He leaned back, picked it up, but he kept Nikki’s hand in his.

As he spoke on the phone, they both stared into each other’s eyes.
 
And oddly enough, Nikki didn’t see a rigid ideologue there, she didn’t see harshness there, she saw compassion!
 
Just as she had seen it two years ago.
 
And it was that humanity, that kindness in his startling blue eyes, which made her know that this was the man she liked so completely in Cleveland.
 

He remembered her fondly too, as he held a conversation with a fellow judge on the telephone.
 
And the more he remembered her, and the more he stared into her beautiful, ginger-brown eyes, the more he smelled her sweet, perfume scent, felt her small, soft hand in his, the more he slowly moved her closer to him.

Nikki didn’t realize that those subtle tugs of her hand moved her so closer to him that her small body ended up standing squarely between his wide-open legs.
 
And as he stared at her while he conversed on the phone, and as she stared at him, he moved his hand out of her hand and placed it on the small of her back.
 
And then, to her amazement but not to her surprise, he pulled her against his rock-hard body and wrapped his arm completely around her waist.
  

Nikki felt a chill down her spine when he pulled her against him.
 
What were they thinking, she wondered?
 
This was supposed to be an interview, not some sex romp.
 

But it felt so good.
 
She hadn’t been touched so sensually by a man like this since the last time Mo had touched her.
 
And the thought of his touch, and what it meant to her back then, caused her to close her eyes, and lay her head on his shoulder.

Mo’s chest tightened when she allowed his embrace.
 
And when his conversation ended and he hung up the phone, he wrapped both arms around her and pulled her so closely that her stomach was wedged against his expanding manhood.
 
And he closed his eyes too.

“I’ve missed you,” he said softly against her ear.

Nikki leaned back from him, not enough to get out of his embrace, but enough to see him face to face.
 
That wonderful, entrancing sincerity in her eyes caused him to shudder.
 
“I’ve missed you too,” she admitted.
 

And he pulled her against him again, and she laid her head on his shoulder again.
 
What was it about this young woman, he wondered as he held her, that took him to such an emotional place that no other woman ever came close to taking him to?
 
He hadn’t seen her in two long years, but it felt as if their time in Cleveland happened only days ago.
 
And it also felt as if he had made, by not committing to her, by getting on that plane and flying away from her for what he thought would be forever, one of the biggest blunders of his life.

But just like their time in Cleveland, reality began to set in for both of them.
 
Nikki didn’t need this distraction and Mo didn’t need this drama.
 
But when she lifted her head off of his shoulder again, and they were face to face once more, he couldn’t just let her simply grab her things and go.
 
Not this time.

“Have dinner with me,” he blurted out.

Nikki stared at him.
 
Everything within her was saying that it was a bad idea.
 
This guy wasn’t that caring guy in Cleveland who rocked her world.
 
This guy was burdened down with responsibility, with views she found almost offensive, with an aura about him that made her know that if she went down that road with him again she would be all-in this time, whether he wanted her to or not.
 
When she could least afford to be all into anything other than getting her career back on track.
 

“You haven’t given me enough,” she said to him.

Mo’s heart dropped.
 
“Enough of what?” he asked cautiously, unnervingly.
 

“Information to give our readers your point of view.”

He relaxed.
 
“Then give them your point of view,” he said, his arms still around her, experiencing the softness of her.

“I’m for real, Mo.
 
I don’t see how I can justify to our readers why you should be recognized as one of this town’s heroes.”

“That makes two of us,” he said.
 
“Have dinner with me.”

Nikki studied him.
 
“When?” she asked.
 

“I can’t tonight,” he said and her antenna immediately went up.
 
Was it because he had a date with another female scheduled already?
 
“What about tomorrow night?”

No way should she have said yes.
 
Not with this guy.
 
Not when they’d only just met again and already her antenna had served her notice that there may be a lot of interference along the way.
 
No man this fine was completely without drama, without having every gorgeous, every aggressive woman around working overtime to get his rod into their reel.
 
And drama was the absolute last thing she needed right now.
 
She had to tell him no.

But she remembered how he pulled that rod out of her reel when he realized she was a virgin.
 
And how he held her all night long in such a loving embrace, and how she felt protected for the first time in her life.
 
And she loved that feeling.

“Yes,” she said.
 
“Tomorrow night is fine.”

Mo smiled.
 
She could see the lines of age slowly begin to appear on the sides of his tired eyes.
 
“Thank-you,” he said to her.
 
And pulled her into that warm, protective embrace she loved once again.