ROMANCING MO RYAN (26 page)

Nikki frowned.
 
“How can you say that?
 
Everything about your life is supposed to be my business.
 
Especially since we...”
 
She couldn’t go on.
 
It was a roller coaster ride being with this man.
 
Up and down.
 
Up and down.
 
Every time she turned around it was something else.
 
She thought their time together in the Florida Keys sealed the deal for them.
 
She was in love with him and he was in love with her.
 
Period.
 
The end.
 

But it didn’t seal anything.
 
He was still his mysterious self.
 
And she was still naive, believing fairy tales, embracing the good, completely overlooking the bad.

“You’re right,” she finally said.
 
“It’s none of my business.”

She said this and looked at him.
 
He didn’t know what to say.
 
Then something rather remarkable happened.
 
He began to explain himself.
 
“I had dinner with an old college friend of mine.
 
He and his wife are going through a rough patch and he just wanted somebody to talk with.
 
His name is Peter McCormick...”

“You don’t have to tell me his name.
 
It’s not my business, remember?
 
We’re two free individuals.
 
We can go out with whomever we care to hang with.
 
Right?”
 
He didn’t say anything.
 
She wasn’t sure, but it seemed to her that he didn’t like her line of reasoning at all.
 
That was why she kept it up.
 
“You want to have dinner with men, women, or whatever, you can.
 
That’s your thing.
 
I want to have dinner with men, I can.
 
That’s my thing.”

He leaned back and stretched his long legs all the way out.
 
She was on to something.
 
“What are you trying to say, Nikki?”

“I’m just stating the truth.
 
We’re free to do whatever the hell we wanna do and if I wanna accept some man’s invitation to dinner, a movie, what the hell ever, then I can.
 
That’s all I’m saying.
 
Because that’s what you just said.”

Mo’s heart hammered against his chest.
 
The idea of Nikki with some other man would devastate him.
 
“What man?” he asked her.

Nikki looked at him as if he had missed her entire point.
 
“What man?
 
What do you mean what man?
 
Any man.”

“You want to be with somebody else, is that what you’re trying to tell me, Nikki?”

She shook her head.
 
“What?”
 
He wouldn’t respond.
 
“What are you talking about, Mo?”

“What are
you
talking about?”

“I’m talking about Marlene Wingate and Tonya Wright.
 
That’s what!”

Nikki looked at him as soon as she made her pronouncement.
 
His expression at first didn’t change.
 
But then his memory kicked in and his entire countenance changed.
 
“Tonya Wright?” he asked.

“And Marlene Wingate, yes.”

“I don’t know a Marlene Wingate.”

“But you know Tonya Wright?”

“What is this about?”

“Just answer the question.”

“I will not just answer the question.
 
Why are you asking the question?”

She exhaled.
 
Here we go.
 
“They’re claiming that you sexually harassed them when they worked for you.”

He didn’t say anything.
 
“Tonya Wright is claiming that?”

“Yes.
 
They both are.”

He shook his head.
 
“It’s not true.”

“I need more than that, Mo.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s not good enough.
 
I talked to those women.
 
They’re no jilted lovers or political activists.
 
They’re just regular, hardworking females who think, based on what you did to them, that you aren’t fit to be a Supreme Court justice.
 
And guess what?
 
Maybe they’re right.”
 
He looked at her.
 
“You are going to have to tell me more than ‘it’s not true’ to get out of this one.”

Mo paused so long that Nikki almost spoke again, to try and get it through his thick skull that this was some serious shit they were up against.
 
Desiree and Key West paled by comparison to this shit.
 
But then he leaned forward, his elbows resting on his thighs.
 
“Tonya Wright clerked for me a while back,” he said.
 
“Five or six years ago.”

“Did you sleep with her?”

He paused.
 
“No,” he said.

“She said you did.”

“She’s lying.”

“She said you wanted to leave your imprint on her life.”
 
He glanced at her, and then looked away.
 
“When she wouldn’t go along, you started threatening to fire her.
 
So she went along.
 
One time.
 
And you fired her anyway.”

“That’s not true.”

“Why would she lie like that, Mo?
 
What does she have against you?”

“I didn’t think she had anything against me.”

“Then why would she lie?”

“I can’t answer that, Nikki.
 
But it’s a lie.”

“What about Marlene Wingate?”

“I told you I don’t know her.”

“She was this foolish kid you hired to help out your wife.”

“I don’t know her.”

“She said you begged her to have sex with you since your wife couldn’t.
 
And after she did you suddenly didn’t need her services anymore.
 
Sounds familiar?”

“No.”

“We checked it out, Mo.
 
She did work for you just like she said.
 
And it lasted for less than a month, just like she said.”

“Do you know how many people have worked for me before?
 
How many people I hired to sit with my wife over all those years?
 
I went from nurses, to aides, to college kids and anybody else I hadn’t already used.
 
You expect me to remember all of them?”

“You remembered Tonya Wright.”

He paused.
 
“She was different.”

Nikki’s heart sunk.
 
He loved her?
 
Was that what made her different?
 
“What was different about her?” she asked him nervously, her energy drained.

“She had a good head on her shoulders and one of the best analytical minds I’d seen in somebody that young.
 
We had a lot of lively debates.
 
She was a sharp lady.”

His flattery of her angered Nikki.
 
“I see.
 
Sharp, was she?”

“Don’t use that tone with her,” Mo snapped.
 
“Yes, she was sharp.”

“Then if she was so sharp, so together, why did you fire her in less than three months?”

He hesitated.
 
Nikki was sharp too.
 

He stood up and walked over to the porch rail.
 
He leaned against the rail and turned toward Nikki, his hands in his pockets, his face concerned, nervous, uncharacteristically anxious.
 
“She wanted a relationship with me.”

Nikki stared at him.
 
“
She
wanted one with
you
?
 
But you didn’t want it?”

“That’s right.”

“She was smart?”

“Yes.”

“I saw her today and she’s attractive now, so I’m assuming she was attractive then?”

“Very.”

“And she was young?”

“Yes.”

“And available?”

“As far as I knew.”

“Then why wouldn’t you want a relationship with her?
 
She had the total package, the way you’re telling it.
 
Why wouldn’t you hook up with her?”

“Let me see.
 
Oh yeah, I was married.”
 
Mo said this and looked at Nikki.

It was a wonderful comment in Nikki’s ears, but she still had to be careful.
 
She had to keep her own emotions out of this.
 
“So you fired her because she kept coming onto
you
, because she kept harassing
you
?
 
Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“Prove it.”

Mo looked at her.
 
His facial expression went from sadness to disbelief to undeniable anger.
 
“You prove it!” he pointed his finger at her and yelled.
 
And then he walked away from her, went inside his home, and slammed the door behind him.

It was a bad night.
 
She tossed and turned, walked the floor, got in bed and tossed and turned some more.
 
Follow the facts, Nikki.
 
Not the fiction.
 
Not the emotions.
 
Not what you hope should be the answer, but what
is
the answer.
 
And Mo was wrong.
 
Sometimes the answer was obvious.
 
Sometimes that person you think so highly of, who could do no wrong in your eyes, who you just know has your back, doesn’t.
 

Two women.
 
Two very different women.
 
Neither knew the other.
 
Their stories checked out.
 
Those friends of Tonya Wright all confirmed it too.
 
She worked for him.
 
He kept harassing her.
 
But she was tough.
 
She held in there.
 
But then he threatened to fire her.
 
She could have fought it then.
 
She could have went to the chief judge and filed an official complaint.
 
She was a law student.
 
She knew her way around.
 
Why didn’t she do something!
 

Then there would be no story, no debate, no sleepless nights over a man Nikki never would have known because he wouldn’t have been the judge he was today and he wouldn’t have lectured journalists at that
Cleveland
convention and he would have never appeared in their
Local Heroes
series because his views wouldn’t have meant jack to the Gazette.

But Tonya Wright didn’t do anything.
 
She swept it under a rug.
 
Sleeping with him was her miscalculation.
 
Sleeping with him to get him off of her back got her in cahoots with him.
 
Firing her then was a piece of cake.
 
Her decision to sleep with him sealed the deal.
 
She couldn’t complain after that.
 
It would be like the prostitute who got raped.
 
All the evidence was there, and it was compelling, but who in hell would believe her?

Phil wasn’t surprised.
 
He sat behind his desk and stared at her.
 
She tried to justify her reasoning, insisting that the women told compelling stories but, in the end, she did not find them credible.
 
From Phil’s expression it was obvious that her face was betraying the truth.
 
She should have been telling him the truth, that those women were very credible and didn’t appear to have an ax to grind whatsoever.
 
But she couldn’t do that to Mo.