Borrowing a Bachelor

by Karen Kendall

  Dev had sent pictures.

  Pictures from the bachelor party.

  And what pictures they were…

  Nikki, exploding out of the cake. Nikki, bending over him, her breasts hanging only inches from his face. A close-up of his face, fixated on those breasts.

  Then a close-up of Nikki’s backside as she straddled him to inspect his nose. A close-up of the, er, underside of that same backside, G-string disappearing into her…ahem.

  The last photo was a full-body shot of her walking him out the door, her arm around him while he held ice to his nose.

  Adam closed his eyes. He didn’t want to look at these, and Dev needed to lose them immediately. They weren’t in the least bit funny. He deleted every picture and started to email Dev back to tell him to do the same, but looked up to see Dr. da Silva frowning at him. Shit.

  Adam slid the phone into his pocket and forced himself to concentrate. Most of the time, if ignored, Dev would find someone else to annoy.

  THE NEXT MORNING, Nikki was working her way through a stack of filing when the door to the dean’s office opened to reveal Adam, sheepishly holding her clean cake plate.

  “Hi,” he said, squinting at her suspiciously, as if he expected her to lob her keyboard at him.

  “Hello,” she said coolly. “Did you enjoy the cake?”

  He patted his stomach and rolled his eyes upward to indicate total euphoria. “Oh, maaan. That was the best cheesecake I’ve ever had. I do need to give Margaret back her plate, though.” He held it up.

  Margaret’s door was firmly closed.

  “It’s my plate,” Nikki said evenly. “And I made the cake.”

  He eyed her dubiously. Clearly, he thought she was lying. “Whatever you say, Nikki.” But he placed the platter on her desk.

  “Why do you think I was so mad that you got it?” she reasoned. “Why do you think I said that Mags couldn’t give it to you? It wasn’t hers to give.”

  He shrugged, still looking unconvinced.

  It did sound a little nuts to imply that someone had done what Margaret had done. It wasn’t normal. But then, with each year that passed for Nikki, she learned more about the strange psychoses of the human race.

  She sighed and dug a card out of her purse. “Here you go. This is my mom’s bakery. She makes the exact same cake—that’s how I learned to make it. Give it a try and you’ll see.”

  Adam took the card. “Thanks.” He shifted from foot to foot like a kid in the principal’s office. “Look…I really do want to apologize, again, for the other night.”

  She held up a hand, palm out, and shook her head.

  “No, listen to me. Please.” Adam cleared his throat. “We had a test yesterday morning. A tough one. I was supposed to supply the notes for my study group. But because of, you know, the whole weekend, I didn’t get them together. And the phone the other night— Well, that was them. My study group. I was horrified that I’d forgotten about the notes, about the meeting, about everything. So—not that it makes it any better, really—that’s what happened. It wasn’t that I was, uh, taking a call from another woman or something.”

  His eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses were intense and guileless. She believed him.

  “Is there another woman?”

  “No.”

  Really? Truly? No other women, for a guy that hot?

  “So,” he continued, “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, surprising herself. “And I probably shouldn’t have, uh, reacted the way I did.”

  His lips twitched. “The beer down my crack was a bit much.”

  “You should have seen me trying to get it out of the carpet.” But the corners of her mouth tugged up in response to him.

  “So did the exam go okay?” she asked.

  “No,” he said gloomily. “I got a C on it, and nobody in my group seems to be speaking to me, so I don’t think they did well, either.”

  She felt a surge of pity. “I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t believe I forgot—”

  “Why do you think you did?”

  Adam looked startled, then embarrassed. Red spread across his chest where his shirt revealed the skin, then crept up his neck and suffused his face.

  “Why?” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well, because I was thinking about you.”

  It was her turn to blush. “Really?”

  “No. I always buy flowers for girls I’m not thinking about.”

  “Well, what do you think about me now? After the beer down the butt crack and all?”

  “I think that the next time we see each other,” he said seriously, “I should leave my cell phone in the car.”

  Nikki laughed, and found that once she started, she could not stop. He joined her.

  No doubt irritated by the noise, Margaret opened the door to the reception area and stuck her bony nose out.

  “Oh,” said Nikki, doing her best to be sober but failing miserably. “Adam came by to give you back your cake plate. He says you make the best cheesecake he’s ever tasted.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you do.” Adam said it with a perfectly straight face, as he picked up the platter and handed it to Margaret. Of course, he may not have made up his mind on whom to believe.

  “Why…thank you.” Margaret’s mouth worked and she carefully avoided looking at Nikki. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, young man.” A vein at her temple throbbed. She snatched the plate and backed out again, closing the door behind her.

  Adam raised an eyebrow.

  Nikki raised one right back at him. “I can recite the recipe by heart,” she said. “Ingredients—twenty-four ounces of softened cream cheese, four eggs, one egg yolk, three-quarters of a cup of sugar—”

  “Wait,” he said. “How do you get only the yolk out of an egg?”

  “Magic.”

  “No, really.”

  “Ancient Chinese secret.” She grinned at him.

  “Yeah? I saw a book once with some ancient Chinese secrets in it. Those people got into some amazingly contorted sexual positions—” he stopped at the look on Nikki’s face “—which of course I would never ask you to try,” he finished lamely.

  “No, of course not,” she agreed. She kept a smile on her face as she spoke her next words, to soften them a little bit. “Because despite the fact that you’re hot, I’m not interested in being a booty call when you have an occasional spare half hour, okay? Sorry.”

  14

  ADAM STARED AT HER, nonplussed. He rubbed at the back of his neck again. Hell, was he blushing for the tenth time today?

  “What? I never meant— That is to say, you’re not. I don’t think of you that way.”

  Nikki looked down at her desk, then up at him again without responding.

  “I want to take you out on a real date sometime. You know, dinner and a show.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Adam could have shot himself. Where was he going to get the money to take her out to a nice place? And more important, where was he going to get the time? Wasn’t the C on his test warning enough to stay away from her?

  He shoved that thought out of his mind. The money he could borrow from Dev, but the time he’d have to steal from other days. If he studied one hour later from Monday through Thursday, maybe he could justify a four-hour date on Friday.

  “Does it give you a stomachache to ask a girl to dinner?” Nikki asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You just got this pained expression on your face.”

  “I did? No. Of course not. I was thinking of…of a paper that I have due.”

  She shook her head.

  “So how about it?” he asked. “A date.”

  “Frankly, if you’re thinking about a paper even while you’re asking me, then it’s not a great idea, Adam. And you know I’m not supposed to fraternize with students.”

  “Oh, come on, Nikki. Give me another shot.”

  “Look, Adam,” she said, lowering her voice. “I need my job and we shouldn’t eve
n be talking about this here. Margaret is only a few steps away behind a thin door. Yes, she’s on the phone, so she can’t hear us, but still…this is crazy. I’m playing with fire and it needs to stop, and stop immediately. This isn’t like me.”

  “What isn’t?”

  She blew out a breath. “Being around you does something odd to me. I’m not sure how you do it, but you somehow remove all my filters. I don’t have sex with men I barely know. I don’t yell at people. I certainly don’t throw food at them. And yet, in the past few days I’ve done all of those things. Why?”

  He lifted his shoulders, unable to tell her. “I like the fact that you’re uninhibited.”

  “Well, I don’t. Clearly you’re not good for me. And I’m not going to lose my job over you. I’m sorry.”

  “You won’t.” He found himself arguing with her. “We’ll keep it away from the office. I promise.”

  “It’s a bad idea,” she repeated.

  “One date,” he insisted. “If it’s lousy, then I promise I’ll back off.”

  Nikki hesitated. Finally she said, “Adam, I shouldn’t do this, but as I said, you have a strange effect on me. I will go to dinner with you if you promise to leave your cell phone in the car and not think about school.”

  Not think about school for a whole evening? It sounded really dangerous. And like bliss. “Done,” he said promptly. “You have yourself a deal.”

  “Do you think we can actually have a disaster-free dinner?”

  He thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said truthfully. “We don’t have a good track record so far. But I swear I will do my best to make it the most romantic dinner of your life.” And he would, too.

  Nikki looked pleased by that, if still cautious. “Okay.”

  He hoped that she would be dessert. Was it bad of him to imagine her in a whipped-cream bikini?

  Yeah, that was probably bad. “So, how about this Friday?”

  Hey, man, what happened to budgeting four hours of study time first? Friday is only two days away.

  “I could pretend to check my calendar,” Nikki said. “But then again, I happen to know that I’m free.”

  “Say, about seven-thirty?”

  “Sure. How should I dress?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that. You’d look good in a barrel with straps.”

  She smiled at that. “Thanks. Not helpful, but thanks. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Okay, Nikki. I’m looking forward to this very much.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  HIS ROYAL DEV-NESS wouldn’t answer the phone, which took inconvenience to new levels. Adam needed him to delete those pictures, and he needed to borrow money from him.

  But was it really borrowing when Dev had a way of forgetting huge bar tabs that got paid for him when he was plastered? He also had a way of forgetting that Adam had helped him move several times, helped him build out the bar that he currently owned and gotten him out of numerous jams over the course of Dev’s tumultuous twenty-nine years, one of which had involved duct tape, a ferret and a righteously angry transvestite in a full-length mink.

  In short, Dev still owed Adam, not vice versa, and probably would owe him for life.

  Devon obligingly returned his call at 3:00 a.m., when Adam had been asleep long enough to slip into REM. “’Lo?” he managed to say, once he’d found the phone.

  Raucous background music blistered his ears, even before Dev bellowed, “Dude!” into them.

  “Ugh.”

  “No, no, darlin’—that’s illegal in this state,” Dev said. “But I sure do like that tiger-striped bra.” Clearly he was at a club or party of some kind. “Now, lemme talk to my man Adam, here.”

  “Not your man,” Adam mumbled.

  Dev chortled. “When you need my money, you’re my man. No two ways about it, beeyotch.”

  “One of these days, Dev, you’re going to regret the way you treat me. One of these days…”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I got your message.” His voice dropped, and it sounded as though he’d entered a men’s room because of the echo. “You gotta get cash from the bar. I can’t wire anything right now.”

  That sounded ominous. But Adam really didn’t want to know about whatever shady business Dev had going on. “How do I get cash from the bar?”

  “It involves the back door, midnight and a pickle jar.”

  “Forget it. I am not getting arrested.”

  “Okay, okay, never mind. Let me think a minute.”

  Adam yawned.

  “Go to Mark,” Dev said, “and—”

  “Mark’s on his honeymoon, Einstein.”

  “Right, right…what was I thinking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Go to Pete. Ask him if he can pay back the G he borrowed from me a couple of months ago. Tell him I asked you to collect it. If he can’t come up with it all, tell him that’s okay. Take whatever he gives you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Great. Do I hear the magic word, buddy?”

  “Dev, why should I say the magic word when we have all loaned you money at different times and usually haven’t seen a dime of it back? You should say the magic word to me, for not making you my own personal cadaver to work on.”

  “Oh, details,” Dev said breezily.

  “Yeah, details. Talk to you later, buddy.”

  “Hey, you get those pics I sent? Pretty hot, huh?”

  “Lose them, Dev. I’m serious.”

  “Ha, ha, ha! Later.”

  “Later.” And Adam hung up the phone, praying that he could go back to sleep.

  ADAM SUCCEEDED IN getting five hundred dollars out of Pete, plus his leased BMW Z-4 for the weekend, in exchange for a promise to wash and wax it. He decided to splurge and take Nikki to Azul, a low-key but spectacular restaurant in Miami’s Mandarin Oriental.

  Though it probably automatically cursed the date, he changed the sheets on his bed and flipped the striped comforter over to the non-grungy, olive-colored side. He even scrubbed the kitchen, took out the garbage and made sure he had two clean, chilled wineglasses for the champagne he stocked in the fridge. They weren’t flutes, but they’d have to suffice—if he succeeded in luring Nikki here to the bat cave. Which was a big if.

  He stuffed most of his books into the bedroom closet, along with the framed photo of a dog that Dev had given him to use for nefarious purposes. Adam shook his head. Dev had actually used it, along with a completely untrue sob story about the dog being run over, to get into the pants of a top fashion model. Worse, he’d then shared the story with pride and made copies of the dog for his buddies to use in similar situations.

  Adam showered, shaved and brushed his teeth for twice as long as he usually did. He even slapped on some aftershave. Then he dressed in his best shirt, a pair of dark pants, his good watch and dark shoes. The finishing touch was a pair of criminally expensive prescription sunglasses that he’d bought after winning several hands of poker against Dev. Adam saved them for special occasions, since he didn’t want to lose them.

  He felt very GQ as he strode out of the apartment whistling, tossing his keys up and catching them in his palm. The Beemer completed the picture of a sharply dressed Miami stud out on the town.

  Nobody would ever guess that he was reviewing theories of Circulation, Respiration and Regulation in his head as he drove the thirty minutes to Nikki’s. He looked waaay too cool for school.

  When Nikki opened the door to him, he refused to let his mouth drop open like a knucklehead, but he did stand there for a moment, enjoying the picture she presented.

  “Hello, gorgeous.” It was all he could manage.

  “Hi,” she said with a slow smile that made everything inside him percolate and steam. “You clean up pretty well yourself.”

  He lifted a pseudosuave eyebrow and then lowered his glasses, Miami-Vice style, to take her in.

  Nikki was gift-wrapped in a silky, cobalt-blue cocktail dress that stopped above the knee. Tho
ugh it was modest in the front, it did hint at her inviting cleavage through an opening shaped like a little keyhole.

  Her hair was blown smooth and straight; it looked infinitely seductive and glamorous in an almost 1940s way. She wore little makeup as far as he could tell—just mascara and a shimmery hot-pink lipstick.

  It was when she turned to get her bag and wrap that he almost slid down the doorjamb with his fist in his mouth to block the drool.

  Skin: there were smooth, tanned, vast expanses of it. The dress was backless and cut so low that if she’d been wearing even a thong, he’d have seen the top of it.

  She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. She couldn’t have been. And that ass…he remembered that perfect ass very, very well.

  As she undulated over to the kitchen counter, the dress moved with her, whispering along her curves and taunting him—as it would taunt every red-blooded man in the restaurant. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to take her out in public in that dress.

  And yet it pretended to be decent. It pretended to cover her, that wicked swath of silk. That devious creation.

  Adam’s gaze dropped to her long, bronzed legs and her slender feet, which were lightly criss-crossed with the silver leather straps of a pair of skyscraper heels. Her toenails were painted hot pink, like her lips.

  As she rummaged in her evening bag for something, his gaze traveled up to her naked back again, and noted the complete absence of anything resembling a bra under the dress. Now this, this was a mystery and he stepped right up to play detective.

  Nikki, as a D-cup kind of girl, had to wear a bra or risk causing traffic accidents and strokes. Yet there was no trace of a strap, and no mark of delineation across the front of the dress, which was made of thin silk. There were no high beams, so to speak, either. Not the slightest indication of nipple showed.

  How was this possible?

  Adam cocked his head and thought about it. He was still trying to solve the case when she turned around and eyed him quizzically.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Not at all. Not possible.” He reevaluated her more mountainous slopes, still perplexed, if pleasurably so.