ROMANCING MO RYAN (21 page)

They weren’t back a good hour when it started.
 
Mo was in the livingroom talking with some other men about the state of the American economy.
  
Carolyn and Nikki were in the dining room, along with Carolyn’s bridesmaids, going over some of the details of her wedding.
 
She asked that Nikki sit in on the get-together, and Nikki appreciated it, but her bridesmaids seemed very disturbed by Nikki’s presence.
 
They were civil with their disgust, they didn’t rag on her or anything, but those damn looks.
 
What is she doing here?
 
Why would we have anything to do with her?
 
And once, when Carolyn asked for Nikki’s input and Nikki gave her two cents, one of the bridesmaids could be heard whispering
, “Who does she think she is?”

But they couldn’t hold a candle to one woman’s look in particular.
 
She was a sudden entrance.
 
Carolyn had asked Nikki’s opinion on her song list.
 
Before she could respond, however, the front door opened and a woman walked in as if she was the home’s real owner.
 
She was tall, blonde, and bosomy, and had that supermodel thing going big time.
 
She had all the right curves, the red dress and heels, the gloves (yes, gloves) that she whipped off of her hands, and the look.
 
Sassy, confident, and drop dead gorgeous.
 
Nikki could only hope that she wasn’t the mysterious Desiree.

“Desiree!” Carolyn yelled and left Nikki’s side.
 
She ran to Desiree and Desiree ran to her.
 
Others, including all of the bridesmaids, started hurrying toward Desiree too, especially the men, who were almost knocking over their wives and girlfriends to get by her side.
 
If Mo was the man of the hour, she was the woman.
 
She was it.
 
Then she stopped hugging everybody and looked over at Mo.

“Monty,” she said with that grand smile of hers and held out her arms.

Everybody seemed to move aside and make room for Mo in the circle of Desiree admirers. When he made it to the woman’s side, she said, “Hi stranger,” with an almost fake-like force of excitement, and she rushed into his arms.
 
He grabbed hold of her and lifted her off the ground.
 
She tilted her head back and laughed that laugh of confidence, as if she knew she was pleasing everyone in sight and was going to milk it for all she could.

Mo eventually released her and her feet touched down again.
 
Then he looked at her entire body, slowly, painfully slow, it seemed to Nikki.
 
“You look wonderful, Desi,” he said to her.
 

“I didn’t know you would be here this soon,” she said.
 
“Carolyn, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Carolyn said, and the little hope Nikki had for Carolyn was gone.
 
She wasn’t on her side after all.
 
She knew she was coming with Mo.
 
Why would she want to surprise another woman when she knew she would be there?
 
Probably, Nikki thought, for the same reason that all those other females were giving her the cold shoulder.
 
Desiree, or
Desi
as Mo called her, wasn’t a loose fit in their world.
 
She fit right in.
 
Anybody who looked at her would not be surprised in the least if she became the wife of a Supreme Court Justice.
 
Whereas if Nikki became such a person, they’d probably be floored.

And Mo and Desiree looked great together.
 
Even Nikki had to admit that.
 
Both were tall and athletic and filled with that
can’t touch this
sex appeal that should have been bottled and sold.
 

“So how have you been?” she asked Mo.

“I’ve been good, Desi.”

“So I’ve heard.
 
Congrats, my dear.”
 
She said this and hugged him again.
 

Then she turned serious.
 
She knew how to play that role too.
 
“I’m so very proud of you, Monty.
 
Or should I say Justice Ryan?
 
You’ve worked so very hard your entire life.
 
It’s just so wonderful.
 
It’s just so you, you know what I’m saying?”
 
Everybody around her laughed.
 

Mo looked beyond the crowd to where Nikki sat.
 
“Nikki,” he called out.
 
“Could you come here. Please?”
 
Then he said to Desiree as she came: “I want you to meet someone.”

The bridesmaids, and even Desiree, seemed slightly put-off by Nikki’s arrival in the group.
 
They had apparently hoped Mo would just ignore her as they were all doing, and pretend she didn’t exist.
 

But Mo not only called her to him, he placed his hand around her waist when she came.
 
“Desi, I want you to meet my lady, Nikki Tarver.
 
Nikki, this is Desiree, an old friend.”

Well, Nikki thought as she smiled and extended her hand.
 
Mo certainly made it clear who was who.
 

“How are you, Desiree?” Nikki said politely.

“I’m wonderful, thank-you,” Desi said with her grand smile again, although, up close, Nikki could see some venom underneath.
 

 
“She’s so cute,” Desiree said to Mo, as if Nikki was some little puppy he had found.

“So are you,” Nikki replied with fangs of her own, and one of the bridesmaids could take it no longer.

“Who does she think she is?” the bridesmaids said.
 
Although she was whispering to another bridesmaid, she said it loud enough that Nikki and others could easily hear it.

Mo certainly heard it.
 
And he immediately turned in the direction of the blue-eyed woman.
 
“She’s my lady,” he said, his stark blue eyes piercing hers.
 
“That’s who she is.”

The woman’s irritated look quickly turned embarrassed, and she looked to Desiree for help.
 
Desiree, however, was too busy trying to figure out her next move on this chess board to concern herself with some hapless bridesmaid.

“So,” Desiree said, and she said it in such a deadpan way that Nikki knew something negative was coming.
 
Desiree was going to try and belittle Nikki in Mo’s eyes so that she could regain the upper hand; so that she could reclaim the ground she thought she’d lost. It was a game.
 
All games.
 
“You’re from Jacksonville, too?” she asked Nikki.

Although the question was innocent enough, Nikki would bet her condo that it was just Desi’s warm-up act.
 
“Not originally, but I live there now, yes,” Nikki said, her smile still uncommonly grand.
 
And Desiree knew it too.
 
And it was eating her alive.

“What do you do in Jacksonville?”

“She’s a reporter,” Carolyn said as if she was proud of it.

“A reporter?” Desiree said.
 
“My.
 
Front line work, isn’t it?”

Nikki had to hesitate on that one.
 
“Excuse me?” she asked.
 
She had never heard her job described quite that way.
 
But Desiree knew what she was doing.
 
Desiree was winning again.
 

“What I mean to say,” Desiree said, “is that it’s an entry level position.
 
In other words, you’re not the managing editor or the publisher, correct?”

“The publisher owns the newspaper,” Nikki said.

“Correct.
 
And that’s not you.”

Nikki frowned.
 
“Of course it’s not me,” Nikki said with a smile although slight irritation was in her voice.
 
“I don’t understand your point.”

Desiree smiled and looked around. They all smiled back.
 
“I’ don’t have a point,” she said.
 
“None at all.
 
I was simply observing a very simple fact.
 
Some of us are testy, testy.”

Some in the crowd laughed.
 
Nikki wanted to ask them what was so damn funny, and Mo knew she wanted to, so he pulled her closer against him.

But Nikki’s smile returned, bigger and grander.
 
Desiree was surprised.
 
She didn’t expect a comeback.
 
“You’re right,” she said.
 
“I am so sorry.
 
This is too grand an occasion for testiness, now isn’t it?
 
So, tell me, Desiree, what it is that you do?”

Now Desiree’s smile began to weaken.
 
“What do you mean?”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I . . . I’m separated from my husband,” Desiree replied as if that was an obvious fact Nikki should have known.

“Oh, I see,” Nikki said.
 
“So you don’t have a career?”

Desiree hesitated.
 
“I don’t get your point.
 
Is there something wrong with not having a career?”

“No, not at all.
 
I just assumed, since you were surprised that I wasn’t the managing editor or publisher of the newspaper I work for, that surely you would have already obtained at least a similar status or higher in your own profession.
 
But you don’t have a profession.
 
Sorry.
 
My bad.”

Mo turned slightly away, with a smile on his face.
 
Nikki was a walking contradiction if he’d ever seen one.
 
In relationships and romance she was an inexperienced innocent, and terribly insecure because of that inexperience, but in every other aspect of her existence she was as feisty as a lion in a cage.

 
And she had won.
 
Because those females, although they didn’t want to admit it, had to smile too.
 
Of course Mo setting down that loudmouth bridesmaid didn’t hurt.
 
They figured if Mo liked Nikki, then she couldn’t be all bad.

Later that afternoon, however, when the younger set returned, Nikki began laughing and talking with them.
 
She had lost track of where Mo had gone off too, but she did see where Desiree was in the dining room hanging out with Carolyn and the bridesmaids.
 
As long as she wasn’t hanging around Mo, Nikki was cool.

After clowning around so hard that Nikki didn’t think she could have any more fun, Mindy, Wendy, and Jeremy invited her to take a swim with them in the pool out back.
 
Nikki jumped at the chance to be around drama-free people like them.
 
She hurried upstairs to the bedroom she and Mo were assigned, changed into her two-piece, yellow bikini bathing suit, and hurried back downstairs.
 
The twins, along with Jeremy and a few others, were already in the pool.

To Nikki’s pleasant surprise, however, Mo was seated in a lounger in front of the pool, a glass of wine in his hand.
 
Although he didn’t have on any trunks, he did have on a pair of nice-fitting shorts and his shirt was completely opened, revealing his sexy washboard abs.

“Hey,” Nikki said when she walked over to him.

“Hey yourself,” Mo said.
 
He was so pleased to see that she was enjoying herself.
 
He was also pleased to see her in that swimsuit, if the way his eyes were scanning it was any indication.
 

“You like it?” Nikki asked him, turning around.

“Of course I do,” he said, taking her hand in his.
 
“You’re hot.”

Nikki smiled.
 
“So are you,” she said, looking at his muscular chest and those abs.
 

“You’re getting ready to take a swim?” Mo asked her, his thumb now rubbing across her knuckles.

“That’s the plan,” Nikki said.

He wanted to take her right back upstairs, get her naked, and bury his face between her legs.
 
But he knew there would be time for that, too.
 

“Good,” he said.
 
And then released her hand.
 
“Be careful,” he said.

Nikki smiled and dived into the pool with the others.
 

Mo enjoyed watching her swim.
 
And when they began playing pool volleyball, he couldn’t seem to watch any other player but Nikki.
 
That young lady was the one.
 
He probably suspected it way back in Cleveland, but now he knew it was true.
 
Nikki Tarver was the one woman he very well may want to spend the rest of his life with.
 
Time would tell, he knew, but if how he felt now was any indication of how he would feel some months from now, she was definitely the one.

“She fits right in, doesn’t she?” a voice just above his head said to him.
 
He glanced over, and saw that it was Desiree.

He looked back at Nikki.
 
“Yes, she does,” he replied.

“Playing with the kids like the kid she is.
 
What is she, Mo?
 
Twenty-one, twenty-two?”

Mo hesitated.
 
“No,” he said.
 

Desiree waited for more, but he gave her nothing more.
 

But Desiree plowed ahead.
 
“If your nomination is successful,” she said, “you’re going to need a very special lady, a very smart and savvy lady, to be by your side.
 
You do understand that, don’t you?”

Again Mo hesitated.
 
“Yes,” he said.

“I hardly think some child like that,” Desiree continued, “would fit the bill.”

Mo’s jaw tightened.

“I mean, look at her, Monty.
 
She’s playing volleyball with teenagers!
 
She’s practically a teenager herself!
 
What in the world can she give to you?”

Mo stood up, and sat his wine glass down.
 
“She gives me simple things, Desi.
 
Like honesty.
 
Integrity.
 
Truth.
 
Faithfulness.
 
And, oh yeah, love.
 
Little things like that.”
 

Desiree’s heart plunged.
 
He really loved that child?
 
Her
?
 
She shook her head.
 
“I didn’t mean---”

“Yes, you did,” Mo replied, having none of her fake ignorance.

Desiree swallowed hard.
 
Mo could see the regret in her eyes.
 
He exhaled.
 
“I’m sorry that I snapped at you, Desi,” he said.
 
“But Nikki is off limits.”

“I see,” Desiree said.
 
He knew she didn’t really see it at all, but he allowed the silence its room.
 
Then something did seem to dawn on her, and she stretched her already big blue eyes.

“You really like this girl, don’t you?” she asked him, as if she was just realizing it herself.

Mo looked over toward the pool, at Nikki.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“Very much.
 
I don’t think I’ve ever cared for anyone more.”

Desiree’s heart was breaking, as her hopes for a reunion with him seemed less likely, but she knew what she needed to do.
 
She needed to get him alone.
 
“Well,” she said, putting on that winning smile of hers again, “I’m happy for you, Monty, truly I am.
 
You deserve somebody special.”
 
Then she extended her hand.
 
“Friends again?”

Mo looked into her beautiful eyes, and then smiled himself.
 
“Always,” he said as he shook her hand.

“Okay, friend,” Desiree said in that wonderfully playful way of hers he always liked, “I need a ride home.”

He laughed.
 
“Are you serious?”

“I’m serious!
 
A friend dropped me off.
 
I didn’t bring my car.
 
But the girls are talking about going to check on their dresses and ugh.”

“Ah.
 
Boring.”

“Exactly.
 
So I was wondering, dear friend, if you could spare some time out of your busy schedule and give this old, old, old friend of yours a lift?”

Mo really didn’t want to go anywhere right now, but she was, as she rightly said, an old friend.
 
“Absolutely,” he said.

“Great,” Desiree said with that smile of hers again.
 
“I’ll say my goodbyes and meet you outside.”
 
Desiree said this as she hurried away.
 

Mo walked to the edge of the pool.
 
“Nikki!” he called out.

When Nikki swam over to him, he crotched down.
 
“Hey.”

“Hey, good looking.”
 
She was smiling too.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“I’m having a blast, are you kidding?”

Mo smiled.
 
“I’ve got to make a run.
 
I want you to go with me.”

Nikki wiped her hand over her wet face, a wet face that Mo found just adorable.
 
“Go where?” she asked him.

“Desi’s asked me to give her a lift home.
 
She didn’t bring her car.”

Nikki didn’t like the idea of Mo taking that witch anywhere, and she certainly didn’t like the idea of having to go too.
 
“Do I have to go?” she asked.

“Yes, you have to go.”

“But why?”

Mo thought about this.
 
“I think there’re some people around here, Desi chief among them, who still doesn’t realize who you are and what you mean to me.
 
I don’t want any misunderstandings.”

Nikki’s heart soared.
 
Mo, she was coming to realize, didn’t play games either.
 
She began getting out of the pool.
 
“She’s an ex-girlfriend, isn’t she?”

Mo smiled.
 
“Very perceptive of you.”

“And she’s cunning.”

“Even more perceptive.”

Nikki smiled too.
 
“I’ll go change,” she said.

Desiree wasn’t smiling, however, when she saw Mo come out of the front door with Nikki right in front of him.
 
She had no idea he’d bring that bitch too.
 
That was why she picked the moment she picked.
 
Nikki was in the pool, doing her own thing, and she and Mo could just slip away for a few hours.
 
She had already imagined him in her bed.
 

Mo and Nikki walked over to the passenger side of his Mercedes.
 
Desi was leaning against the door.
 

“Sorry it took so long,” he said to her as he opened the back passenger side door.

“Oh, that’s all right,” Desi said with her grandest of smiles, “I just got out here myself.”

Then she just stood there, as if Mo was opening the back door for Nikki.
 
When Desi realized he wasn’t about to put Nikki in any backseat of his, she smiled again but then crawled into that backseat.

Nikki smiled herself as Mo placed her into the front seat.

But Desi and those obnoxious bridesmaids, Nikki knew, were the least of her problems.
 
She had to meet the parents.
 
As in Mo’s parents.
 
And that was all Nikki thought about as Desi and Mo talked up a storm on the drive to Desi’s home.
 
Would they be pleased by their son’s selection, she wondered, or would they be worse than Desiree with that kind of nice nastiness she could never stomach?
 

She looked at Mo.
 
From where she sat he was something gorgeous to behold, even as casually dressed as he was in his shorts and polo shirt, and those dark shades that covered his beautiful eyes, and those adorable dimples that suddenly appeared whenever he smiled or even just talked.
 
Would they view him, as Nikki viewed him, and declare him far too good for the likes of her?
 
She hoped not.
 
It was one thing to be despised by somebody like Desiree, an old girlfriend with an ax to grind.
 
But to be despised by his own parents, parents he undoubtedly loved and cherished, would be devastating.

It was devastating.
 
Because as soon as they walked through the door of their home, and saw Nikki sitting there, she knew this would not end well.
 

She was in the living room of the family home, reading over some of the text messages she received from Phil and a few of the reporters working some of the assignments she left behind, assignments they had questions about.
 
Everybody had gone to their various places or even their own homes, and nobody was still at the home except her and Mo.
 
And Mo, at that time, was in the dining room on a business call with his law clerk.
 
The parents walked in, and there was Nikki sitting there.
 
Nikki was all they saw.

“May I help you?” the father asked in an aggressive tone, as he moved ahead of his small wife.
 
He was one of those white-haired take-charge types who appeared to be in his early sixties.
 
He wore a colorful golf shirt and cap, with pants that seemed straight out of the seventies, and he approached Nikki as if he were approaching an intruder.