ROMANCING MO RYAN Read online

  Mo’s eyes stayed on her as he sat down. He was still too stunned to speak.

  Nikki noticed his distress, and she suspected she knew why he was suddenly so distressed. But she kept it professional. She kept going.

  “As I’m sure your office was informed, our series is all about local heroes. It’s all about people who do all they can to help their fellow man. Our board decided that you were one of those people, and my editor asked me to interview you. I just need to ask a few questions,” she added, and then looked at him. “If you’re ready?”

  His heart was still hammering. He had thought she was completely out of his system. It took months, and all kinds of nightmarish trials that distracted him and kept him up nights, but he thought her memory had faded to a point where it was only a vague recollection. Not because that week he spent with her wasn’t memorable. It was. In every way it was. But for his sake, for the sake of all of those men and women who came before him seeking justice, he had to get her out of his system.

  He thought he had succeeded.

  He thought wrong.

  But like Nikki, he, too, was a professional. He kept it together. “What would you like to know?” he asked her.

  Nikki swallowed hard, prayed her voice didn’t quiver. “From what I’ve read you are one of the few judges who almost always impose the maximum possible sentences. Your nickname is Judge Maximum because of that harshness. What our readers would like to know is this: if you’re so heroic, why don’t you ever show compassion for the people who come before you?”

  Mo Ryan looked at Nikki as if he could not believe she would ask such a question. “Why don’t I what?” he asked.

  “Why don’t you show compassion for those poor men and women who come before you seeking, not only justice, but mercy as well?”

  He stared at her, his heart hammering.

  She stared at him, her heart pounding. But she was determined to stay on point. “You haven’t answered my question,” she said.

  “You haven’t told me your name,” he replied.

  Nikki continued to stare at him. “You know my name,” she said.

  Mo swallowed hard. She was always so direct with people, always uninterested in anybody’s bullshit. She hadn’t changed a bit. “How have you been?” he asked her.

  She thought about this, as, he also remembered, was her way. “Not good,” she admitted.

  His heart dropped. “Why not?” he asked her.

  A faintness came across her face, a kind of you don’t tell me your sad stories, I won’t tell you mine acceptance.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “There’s no one thing to tell. It's just the general direction my life has taken, that’s all. It’s not been a good turn.” Then she looked at him. “What about you? How have things been going for you?”

  Mo moved his head side to side, as if it had gone either way. “Not good,” he said, and they both chuckled.

  “Neither one of us seemed to have set the world on fire,” Nikki mused with a smile.

  “Not at all,” Mo replied.

  And then they just sat there, allowing the conversation to stall. Remembering what it was they had remembered about each other. It was too much to digest for both of them, and neither knew what they wanted to do about it.

  For Nikki, it was a matter of timing. She was just trying to jumpstart her sinking career and the last thing she needed right now was the distraction of a man who’d already told her there was no future there.

  But for Mo it was the fear factor. It was the belief that Nikki could never be like all of the other women in his life. Those women gave him good conversation, good sex, and no commitments. After sex they went to their homes or he went to his, and he rarely gave them a second thought. He’d had only one encounter with Nikki, an encounter that wasn’t even a fait accompli, but not only did he give her a second thought, he couldn’t get her off of his mind for nearly a year! She wasn’t like those other women. He feared that he’d become so committed to Nikki, so devoted to her, that she’d do as his deceased wife had done, as every woman he’d ever become devoted to had done, and break his heart.

  “Where are you living?” he asked her.

  “Off Timuquana, near the air base.

  “Alone?”

  Nikki hesitated. “Yes.”

  “But you have a young man in your life?”

  Again Nikki hesitated. “No,” she said.

  Mo frowned. “Why not Nikki?”

  “Why not what?”

  “Why don’t you have somebody to help you out? To be there for you. To take care of you?”

  What was his problem, Nikki wondered? He was behaving as if he was offended that she was alone. “I take care of myself,” she said.

  And it was only then did Mo realize that he had gone too far. But Nikki did that to him. From the moment he first met her two years ago, he always felt that surge of protectiveness whenever she was in his presence.

  But Nikki couldn’t turn it off that easily. She felt a need to explain. He had hit a raw nerve. “It’s my choice to live alone,” she said.

  “So if a wonderful young man comes along, perfect for you, you wouldn’t be interested?”

  “That hasn’t happened so I can’t tell you what I’d be.”

  Mo stared at her. She got the feeling that her answer disturbed him. For some reason his reaction only made her feel combative. “What about you?” she asked him. “Your wife died, what? Almost four years ago now? Do you live alone?”

  Now it was Mo’s time to hesitate. “Yes,” he said.

  “But you have a girlfriend, right? That perfect person perfect for you?”

  Nikki could see a shade of sadness come into his eyes. “No,” he admitted.

  “So don’t criticize my leaky-ass boat when you’re in one, too. All right?”

  Mo smiled. The kid had guts. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. And he decided it was best to move on. “I believe in responsibility,” he said to her.

  Where did that come from, Nikki wondered. “Excuse me?”

  “You asked about my compassion. I show no compassion, as you call it, because I believe a man, or woman, has to be responsible for what they do. They have to pay for their sins.”

  Pay for their sins? What an odd way to put it, Nikki thought. Suddenly she wondered if he was talking about the defendants that went before him, or himself? “So you believe in justice only, with no regard for the situation?”

  “The situation is the crime itself.”

  “But that can’t be all it is,” Nikki declared. “It has to be context too. A mother who steals food for her starving children committed a crime, yes. She stole food. But the situation required her to steal. The way you seem to look at it, you’d declare she’s just as guilty as the man who breaks into somebody’s house and steals a computer.”

  Mo remembered her fire. He was glad to know she still had it. “I look at it the way the law requires me to look at it. And, yes, based on the law, she’s as guilty as the burglar.”

  Nikki didn’t like his answer. Phil had said his views sucked, but once she found out it was Mo Ryan, the man she thought of as generous and kind, she didn’t believe it. Now she wasn’t so sure. “But what about the circumstances?” she asked him. “Her children were starving.”

  “Then she should not have put her children in a position where they could starve.”

  Nikki could hardly believe it. He couldn’t possibly be that hard. “But what if it wasn’t her fault? What if she was abused as a child and ran away from home? What if she never could get an education because the trials of life never eased for her to pull it together? What if she was born in poverty and that’s all she knows? She’s blameless in this. Doesn’t she deserve some compassion?”

  The look on Nikki’s face, the sincerity in her massive eyes, cut Mo short. He uncrossed his legs, and leaned forward. “Yes,” he said.

  “But how can you say . . .” Now Nikki was thrown again. “You said yes?”

  “Yes, Nicole, I said yes. You’re correct, she deserves compassion.”

  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.