ROMANCING MO RYAN Read Online Free Page B

 
    But she was already, three weeks in, well accustomed to the jabs.   And not just from Helen, either, but from the other handful of females who worked for the paper.  
    One of them, Andrea, came up to her desk and put her two cents in later that same morning.  
    “I agree with Helen,” she said quietly.   “You’re always showing cleavage, always wearing those short skirts.   That’s why these men be trying to hit on you.   It’s your own fault.   All you have to do is cover yourself up, and then they’ll leave you alone.”   She said this as if she really believed that.   “They don’t bother me and Helen.”
    Nikki glanced down, at the woman’s long, flower-child styled dress that draped down to her swollen ankles, at her hair pulled back in a severe bun, at her thick glasses.   Nikki knew she could have gotten cute, and said, I see why they don’t , but she didn’t go there.   She respected her elders.   It was her elders who didn’t respect her.
    “The point is,” Andrea went on, “you dress too provocative for me.”
    “I’m not dressing for you,” Nikki replied.  
    The woman gave Nikki a harsh look, although Nikki was only stating a fact, and then went on about her business.   Nikki could never understand why they seemed so obsessed with her appearance.   Were they coming from a good place of helpfulness, or an ugly place?   Was she really dressing as provocatively as they claimed, and she just didn’t see it?   Or was it pure jealousy they were spewing, merely because a young woman like her was suddenly on the scene?   Nikki didn’t know, but she went on about her business just the same, which included re-reading the article she wrote on Nathan Crump.   She hoped that that would be the end, at least for today, of these southern females and their obsession with her style.
    But it wasn’t the end.
    Still another female reporter approached her when she went into the break room to freshen-up her cup of coffee.  
    “You’re young and pretty,” the aging southern belle, a former cheerleader, said to her.   She was known for her rigid personality and her tight but tasteful wardrobe.   “And you have an attractiveness about you,” the older woman went on as if she was shouting a cheer.   “But you don’t have to dress like it.   Pull down that skirt.   Pull up the low-cut section of that blouse.   Give these men something to fantasize about.   Look at me, I’m stylish.   You can be like me!”   She added this as she pulled and tugged on the tight skirt of her tight suit that barely fitted her tight ass.
    Compared to the others, she did have some style.   But not the kind Nikki was interested in emulating.  
    She barely made it back to her desk, however, before that loud, grating voice of their city editor could be heard over the newsroom intercom.
    “Nikki Tarver!” he yelled.   “In my office!”
    Nikki sipped the last of her coffee, sat the cup back down, and hurried to his office.
    Phil Lopez was a stern, no nonsense man who chain-smoked cigars and complained endlessly about the sorry state of journalism in today’s society.   The twenty-four-hour cable news shows drove him nuts.   And the tabloids?   Forget about it.   They didn’t practice journalism, but hedonism, in his view.   Although he was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, the son of a Dominican mother and a Puerto Rican father, he was most proud of his Puerto Rican heritage, even to where he would lay the accent on thick when anybody had any doubts about his true ethnicity.  
    He was an older man with brownish gray hair that shagged down to his neck, watery brown eyes, a kind but aged face, and a body thin and frail from too much attention to his work and too little to himself.   Although most of the reporters found Phil’s almost ultra-liberalism a liability to the paper, Nikki found him to be a kindred spirit.
    “Sit down, Nick,” he said, and she quickly obliged.  
    He leaned