Borrowing a Bachelor

by Karen Kendall

  Bas—thunk—tard! Thunk.

  Then she had to get down on her hands and knees with a wet dishrag to scrub the beer out of her rug. This required a whole different rhythm of fury, and she imagined, with twisted pleasure, that the rag was sandpaper and the rug was Mr. Jerk’s face.

  How dare he look at his phone while they were—

  What kind of person did something like that?

  And while he’d done intimate, highly erotic things to her, he still had never once kissed her on the lips. That was just weird. And wrong. And insulting.

  Not that she’d ever, ever, give him the chance to come near her lips again at this point. There were some things that a girl could not forgive. And rubbernecking at a cell phone during hot sex was definitely one of those things.

  She tossed the beer-soaked rag into her kitchen sink and stalked off to get her fluffy yellow terry robe with Tweetie Bird embroidered on the pocket.

  Then she stalked back into the kitchen and pulled out eggs, cream cheese and butter. She left them on the stovetop to warm to room temperature.

  She settled onto her much-abused sofa, the scene of the crime, and switched on the television. Half a bad sitcom later, Nikki meandered toward the bathroom and encountered Adam’s cell phone with her toe. She glared at it and fantasized about tossing it down the garbage disposal.

  But instead, she indulged her natural female curiosity—no, it was not nosiness—and looked at the screen.

  Test a.m.! Where R U?

  Hmm. Adam had said he was supposed to be somewhere. Studying, by the looks of this.

  He was a medical student. They did spend twenty of every twenty-four hours studying. And the guy had taken time to drive over to her apartment with flowers…

  No. She was not cutting him any slack. He had looked at his cell phone in the act!

  But. It wasn’t as if he’d dialed the thing, after all. It had rung. Then chirped. And then chirped again.

  She’d been distracted by it, too.

  As if programmed by the devil, the cursed thing rang again, in her hands. She almost dropped it.

  Instead, she pressed Talk.

  “Burke, where are you and your notes? We’ve been here almost an hour. Do you want us all to fail? What the hell, man?”

  Nikki chewed her lip.

  “Hel-lo? Adam?”

  “He’s not available right now,” she said.

  “Who is this?”

  “But he’s on his way.” And she clicked End Call, ignoring the masculine squawk on the other end of the line.

  Nikki had a mental tussle with herself as she washed her hands, then melted butter for her signature homemade graham cracker crust. She had every right to be angry. And she was.

  Was this how things had been every day in Aunt Dee’s marriage? Probably.

  With the back of a large, smooth spoon, she pressed the graham-cracker mixture flat into the bottom of her cheesecake pan. Adam’s cell phone rang again, but she ignored it.

  She wasn’t his secretary. She wasn’t even his girlfriend, or, God forbid, his starter-wife-in-training.

  She whipped the cream cheese with sugar, added the eggs one at a time, and then stirred in vanilla, fresh sliced peaches and a tablespoon or two of peach schnapps.

  Then she poured the mixture over the crust and slid it into the preheated oven.

  Adam’s cell phone rang again, and she sighed.

  She let it ring again before she answered. “Hello?”

  “Nikki?” Adam said tentatively.

  “No, it’s the Jolly Green Giant.”

  “I, uh— I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “If you want your phone back,” she said, “you can come by the office tomorrow. Call first. I’ll have Margaret give it to you.”

  A small silence ensued. “Okay,” Adam said, sounding defeated. “I guess there’s nothing else I can—”

  She shook her head, but of course he couldn’t see her.

  “Okay,” he said again. “Thanks. Goodbye.”

  “Yeah. Bye.”

  12

  NIKKI WORE TWO industrial-strength sports bras under her pink-and-black sweater the next day, and noted with satisfaction that they flattened her by at least two cup sizes. Unfortunately they were also hot, but that couldn’t be helped. She was not going to lose this job because her boss couldn’t help ogling two stupid bumps on her chest.

  Not that the dean had said or done anything inappropriate, but she’d found herself in uncomfortable situations in the past, and one could never be too careful. And she suspected part of Margaret’s resentment of her stemmed from her looks.

  Nikki further diminished any residual sex appeal by wearing a pair of flat ballerina slippers instead of heels with her skirt. And once again, she tied her hair into a knot at the nape of her neck. If she had to, she’d even find some clear glasses. Whatever she had to do, she was going to stay employed and pay down her debt.

  She would not risk a repeat of what had happened at her last office job—borderline sexual harassment by an older man who then used a flimsy excuse to get rid of her when she made it clear she wasn’t interested.

  Nikki entered the office with a smile and the peaches-and-cream cheesecake she’d made the night before.

  Dean Trammel brightened when he saw it. “What’s that?”

  Margaret’s evil-looking brows snapped together as she growled the same question. “What’s that?”

  “This is one of my signature cheesecakes,” Nikki said. “I thought it might be nice with some coffee, for breakfast.”

  The dean rubbed his hands together. “Yum. I sure will have a piece.”

  Margaret muttered something under her breath about brownnosers and stomped off to cranky-pants headquarters.

  Nikki ignored her, went to the kitchenette and cut everyone a slice—there were two other assistants and an intern, all of whom seemed in danger of losing consciousness after the first bite. Moans of pleasure eddied out from every corner. Nikki enjoyed her coworkers’ reactions. She liked baking for friends every so often—she simply couldn’t picture herself doing it full-time, like her mother.

  Dean Trammel wiped his mouth with a napkin and took a sip of coffee. “You made this?”

  She nodded.

  “Are we voting Nikki a raise, everyone?” he joked.

  “Hear, hear!”

  Nikki felt heat rising to her cheeks. “I’m glad you like it,” she said. “I’m going to take a piece to Margaret.”

  Everyone exchanged uncomfortable glances and made excuses to leave the kitchen, toting their cheesecake and coffee with them.

  Nikki raised her chin, squared her shoulders and picked up the plate. Then she marched it into Margaret’s office. “Hi,” she said. “I thought you might like a piece of this.”

  Margaret bared her teeth. It looked like she wanted a piece of something, all right: a piece of Nikki’s dead carcass. “I don’t eat sweets.”

  “Oh, just one bite can’t hurt, can it?” Nikki set the plate down on her desk, along with a fork and a napkin.

  Margaret eyed the slice of cheesecake as if it were an old, stinky shoe. But in the face of Nikki’s pleasant, persistent smile, she sawed off a piece of it with the side of the fork and brought it up to her lips, her eyes narrowed.

  Nikki resisted the urge to say, “Choo-choo!”

  Margaret shoveled in the bite between her dry, scarlet lips. She chewed. And her eyes widened. An expression of exultation tried its best to dawn across her face before she slapped it back into the murky depths of her soul to cower again in the sludge.

  “Cheesecake,” she said, “is fattening.”

  Nikki shrugged. “Maybe a little bit.”

  Margaret glowered at her and pushed the plate away until it teetered at the edge of her desk. Did she expect Nikki to bus it back to the kitchenette? If so, she’d be disappointed.

  “Um, listen, Margaret. That boy who brought you the Perez scholarship application yesterday? Adam Burke? Well
, he left his phone by accident. Can I leave it in your care so that he can pick it up later?”

  “Why can’t he get it from you?”

  “Oh. Well. I took your warning about not fraternizing with students a bit seriously, then, didn’t I?” Nikki dropped the phone on her blotter. “Silly me.” With a little wave, she turned and left Mags’s office, making her way back to her own desk.

  It was just a tiny bit gratifying to hear the clink of a fork on china as soon as she was out of sight. Ha!

  ADAM USED A FELLOW STUDENT’S phone to call the dean’s office before going over there, as Nikki had instructed him to do. Her voice when she answered was cool and professional; she gave no hint of anger—which made him feel almost worse than if she had.

  There was no sign of her when he walked in, though she’d been sitting at the reception desk the day before. She was probably at lunch.

  So he knocked on the partially open door behind the desk, and Margaret, the undead woman, looked up from her computer. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Adam Burke. I came to get my cell phone.”

  He tried not to stare, but Margaret-the-undead had a white smear across her upper lip, with what looked like graham cracker crumbs stuck to it.

  Completely oblivious of this, she smiled and motioned him to follow her.

  He did.

  “I looked over your essay for the scholarship,” she said. “It’s excellent.” A crumb fell onto the face of his phone as she handed it over to him, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

  “And your track record of volunteer work is very impressive.”

  “Er, thanks.”

  “Would you like some cheesecake, young man? I just baked one yesterday.”

  “I’d never turn down a slice of cheesecake, ma’am. What kind is it?”

  “Peaches and cream. My specialty.” And she led him into the kitchenette of the place, where sure enough, a third of a cake sat on a platter. “Shh, but I’ve had two slices already,” she told him. “I’d be grateful if you’d take the rest off my hands.”

  “Um, sure…” Starving medical school students didn’t turn down food. Especially not homemade food.

  She lifted the entire slab of cake, plate and all, and nested it into some aluminum foil. Then she folded that up into a neat package, gave him a plastic fork, and herded him toward the door.

  “Thank you very much,” Adam said. “This is so nice of you.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Margaret said.

  He almost told her about the smear and crumbs on her lip, but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. She might take it the wrong way. She’d see it herself soon enough.

  “I’ll show myself out,” he said.

  “All righty, then. You remind me a little of my nephew. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you on the scholarship.”

  “You’re too kind, ma’am.” As she turned and went back down the hallway, looking pleased, he exited into the reception area, only to run into Nikki.

  Like the day before, she was all business: hair in a bun, loose sweater, flat shoes.

  She was still beautiful, but she certainly didn’t look like the tousled sex goddess he’d had spread-eagle on the couch the night before.

  “Uh, hi,” he said, feeling a flush climb his cheeks at the memory of how they’d parted.

  “Hi.” She frowned. “What’s in the foil?”

  “Oh. That lady Margaret baked a cheesecake last night and she gave me the rest of it.”

  “She what?” Nikki came out of her chair, clearly outraged.

  Why, he didn’t know. It wasn’t as if it were her cheesecake, after all.

  “Give me that!” she said, rising to her feet.

  “Huh?”

  “Give me that cheesecake.”

  “No,” Adam said. “It’s mine. She gave it to me.”

  “She can’t give it to you—”

  “She made it, she can, and she did.” He strode to the door. “Jesus, woman. You may be hot, but you’re a little unbalanced.”

  Nikki’s cheeks flushed with anger and her eyes got stormy.

  Was this rabid PMS? Adam stared at her. “What’s your problem? You’re not the only one on the planet who can make a cheesecake. And since you’ve made it clear that I’ll never get one of yours, I’m darn well taking this one.” With that, Adam got to slam a door in her face, thank you very much. It felt good.

  But the cheesecake, which he wolfed down on the way to his next class, was even better.

  NIKKI REALIZED, as the remainder of her cake sailed out the door with that cell-phone-fixated jerk, that she hadn’t gotten one slice of it herself. She’d been too busy serving everyone else.

  Fuming, she forced herself to get back to work, typing letters and filing miscellaneous paperwork. She’d made that cake with her own hands, and not only had Margaret taken credit for it, but she’d given the rest of it away. How could she have done it? Margaret was evil. Downright rotten to the core.

  What a sad, bitter, venomous sack of estrogen she was. Nikki tried to let her anger go, tried to tell herself that the poor woman had nobody else upon whom to take out her life’s frustrations.

  She told herself to be the bigger person. And when she went to get another cup of coffee and saw Margaret with the white smear and crumbs across her upper lip, she tried not to be entertained. It was sort of awful, really, to witness the fact that nobody, not one person out of the entire office, had told the woman she needed to clean herself up.

  It was more awful, she had to admit, than that butt-headed Adam Burke running off to stuff his face with her cheesecake after treating her the way he had.

  Mags’s eyes slid away from hers as Nikki glowered at her. The woman stared fixedly at her computer screen and her fingers galloped ever faster across the keys.

  Nikki went into the kitchen and got a napkin. She glided with it into Margaret’s office and extended it to her. Then she tapped her own lip significantly, turned and left without saying a word—though she was sure that her good deed would not go unpunished.

  13

  THE CHEESECAKE HAD ALMOST sent Adam into orbit with his backpack full of books, but the score on his Foundations of Medicine test brought him back to earth with a bone-rattling thud.

  The number seven was not at all lucky when paired with another seven and staring up at him from a one-hundred-point exam. A seventy-seven was unacceptable and unpardonable.

  Dr. Antonio da Silva, the instructor, looked at him with concern in his dark, hooded eyes. “Como estas,” he asked. “Is everything all right, Adam?”

  Mortified, Adam nodded silently.

  This was what came of bachelor parties and self-indulgence with girls. He had no time for such things. He had no time for friendships outside med school, much less relationships with women. So it was a damn good thing that Nikki was unbalanced and angry with him.

  Because he didn’t seem to have the power to say no to her. When he looked at that face of hers, that body…he forgot all about classes like Brain and Behavior. He forgot about Grey’s Anatomy. He just wanted to get to know her anatomy. Up close and personal.

  He blinked the images away and stared again at the seventy-seven on top of his exam. There were vague mutterings of unhappiness from the rest of his study group, and they weren’t sparing with the dirty looks, either.

  Once per week, it was each of their turns to type up and synthesize the notes from this class’s lectures and readings, and he’d let them down. They probably weren’t happy with their scores, either. He’d have to find a way to make it up to them.

  Adam sat numb through the rest of the lecture, trying to focus but internally calculating what grades he needed to achieve for the rest of the semester to wipe out the awful seventy-seven. He’d be okay, but he couldn’t afford another slipup like this one. And the Perez scholarship only added to the pressure.

  A year’s tuition would make a huge dent in the crushing student loans Adam would gradu
ate with. People tended to think that upon graduation from med school, guys like him walked into instant practice and made half a million a year.

  If only that were true. Instead he would slave away as a resident for under 50k for three years first. Then he might take a modest step up from there. But unless and until he took on a lucrative specialty, he wouldn’t make much money—especially since he’d be paying staggering amounts in malpractice insurance premiums.

  The seventy-seven screamed, “Loser! Loser!” at him, without mercy. “Backslider!”

  He was furious with himself. It wasn’t a matter of innate competitiveness or wanting the status of graduating at the top of his class. His grade-point average was crucial to getting into the best specialty programs for oncology later on.

  Adam wanted to learn from the top professionals in the country, and those doctors wouldn’t bother with a slacker, a guy who couldn’t even master the basics. His whole future was at stake—and this time he was on his second chance. He didn’t kid himself that he’d get a third.

  He looked down at the awful number on the test again and felt not only that he’d let himself down, but had dishonored the memory of his grandfather.

  He shoved the test deep into his backpack, his undergrad college ring clinking against the now-clean plate from the cheesecake—he’d washed it in the men’s room.

  His morale sank even lower as he realized that he had to schlep the damn plate to the dean’s office, preferably while beautiful psycho-Nikki wasn’t there. He didn’t kid himself that Margaret had given him the plate.

  Though the sound on his errant cell phone was turned off for class, he felt it vibrate in his pocket. Adam ignored it. The last thing he needed was to have a chat with someone in the middle of da Silva’s lecture.

  Moments later, a muted ding signified that someone had sent an email. It was followed by four others. What? Who needed to reach him this badly?

  Adam eased the phone out of his pocket and peered at it, holding it carefully out of sight and under the desk that he sat at. His eyes widened, threatening to fall out of their sockets.