This was manipulation, plain and simple.
Over the music and her own laughter, she heard the unmistakable sound of Velcro being peeled, and suddenly Dev’s pizza-man shirt went flying past her. He dropped the pizza box on her coffee table and laced his fingers behind his neck, thrusting his own, er…pepperoni forward shamelessly in time to the music.
She averted her gaze to Adam’s face. He looked pained.
In Dev’s defense, he had a very nice chest and a flat, muscular tummy. But Nikki lunged for the pizza and ignored him, while Adam turned off the soundtrack.
“Okay, that’s enough, stripper-boy,” he said.
Dev stopped dancing, looking a little sheepish. “Aw, man. I didn’t even get to rip off my pants.”
“And I’m deeply thankful for that,” said Adam fervently.
Nikki opened the box and inhaled with appreciation. “You two,” she said, taking a slice, “are beyond pathetic.”
“We know,” Adam agreed. “But we really are desperate to apologize.”
Nikki raised her eyebrows, unable to say anything because her mouth was full of divine carbohydrates and salt and grease. She chewed and swallowed, having only one thing to say before she took a second bite. “Go ahead.”
“Right. We’ll do that. But Dev wants to put his shirt back on first, don’t you, Dev?”
“I do?”
“Yes. Would you want your girlfriend ogling my naked chest?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Dev pointed out.
“That is beside the point—”
“Neither do you, Adam,” Nikki said acidly.
Adam nodded. “Fair enough. But I hope to, er, change that in the next few minutes.”
“Really?” she said, around another bite of pizza. “How interesting.”
“Dev is going to apologize first,” Adam said. “Aren’t you, Dev? Then he’s going to go.”
“Mmm,” Nikki replied. “Well, if he’s your ride, then I hope he doesn’t go far.”
Adam sighed. “Dev?”
Devon haphazardly stuck his shirt back together and then slid to his knees in front of Nikki as if she were first base. “Babe,” he began.
She shook her head. “Not acceptable.”
“Doll?” asked Dev.
“Nope.”
“Queen Nikki?”
“Better.” She pulled a piece of melted cheese off her next slice and dripped it into her mouth.
“Okay. Queen Nikki, I most humbly and excruciatingly apologize for my dastardly, bastardly behavior. I hope that you can forgive me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you say this like you actually mean it?”
Dev nodded. “’Kay. Nikki, in all seriousness, I was a toxic, half-drunk asshole when I put up those pictures. I was trying to punk him. I didn’t think about the consequences to you, or to Adam. I’m really, really sorry.”
“Wow,” Nikki said in wondering tones. “I think you may not be acting.”
“I’m not acting, Nikki. And in fact, Adam and I went to see—”
“I’ll do that part, Dev. Thanks,” Adam said firmly. He stood up. “I’d like to be alone with Nikki now.”
“If that’s okay with her,” Nikki interjected. “After all, this is her apartment that you’ve invaded. You might want to ask.”
Adam took a deep breath and turned to face her. “Is it okay?”
She put the pizza down and wiped her hands on a tissue from the box on her coffee table. She shrugged, then nodded grudgingly.
Dev got to his feet and turned the silly cap around on his head so that the visor of it hung over his neck. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Nikki, I truly am sorry. And you can be sure that whatever I have to do to fix it, I will do. Okay?”
“I don’t think it’s fixable, Dev.” Her voice was quiet. “But I do appreciate your apology.”
He nodded and walked to the door.
“Even if you got in here by playing yet another trick on me,” she tossed after him.
Dev, his hand on the doorknob, looked over his shoulder and gave her a rueful wink. Then he left.
ADAM SAT NEXT TO Nikki on the couch. She’d never looked more beautiful to him than right now, in her torn jeans and mussed ponytail, still with sheet marks on her face. She had a pizza crumb lurking in the left corner of her mouth, where she got a dimple when she smiled.
She wasn’t smiling right now.
Acid churned through his stomach and took a running leap for his throat, but he swallowed and ignored it. “Nikki, we went and talked to the dean today.”
She stared at him. “And said what?”
“I made Dev tell him that he put your face and my face onto different bodies with Photoshop.”
Adam didn’t like the silence that ensued.
“So you lied,” she finally said.
Adam didn’t know how he’d expected her to react, but it wasn’t with this cool disdain. “Yes, we lied. But—”
“Why?”
He stared at her. “To smooth everything over. To get your job back for you.”
“You asked him to reinstate me?” Shock registered on her face.
Adam nodded. “He asked Margaret to get you on the phone before we’d even left the office.”
Nikki looked over at her answering machine, which was blinking. “That’s who the message is from, then,” she murmured.
Adam nodded. “Yes, probably. He thanked us for coming to talk to him face-to-face, and he was upset that he’d fired you unjustly.”
Nikki balled up the tissue in her hand and tucked her feet up under her on the sofa. “But he didn’t fire me unjustly,” she said. “That was me up there on the bulletin board in the G-string.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Regardless of how the pictures got up there, it was my unfortunate choice to dress like that, and Dean Trammel was within his rights to react the way he did.”
“Okay.” Adam sucked in his cheeks, perplexed.
“Also, did you bother to ask me whether I wanted to work there, before you pulled this stunt?”
Uh-oh.
“It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t want your job back,” he said. “So no, I didn’t talk to you first—not that you would have let me, anyway.”
“I feel like a puppet.”
“What? Why?”
“And you’re pulling my strings, mine and the dean’s…”
“No,” he said hotly. “I’m trying to make things right, damn it!”
The words rang between them.
After a moment she sighed and reached out to touch his arm. “I know that. And I know that you’re sorry for what happened. But I’m overwhelmed right now and I feel upside down and inside out. And bringing me a pizza and a pack of well-intentioned lies can’t fix what’s broken.”
He could think of absolutely nothing to say. Finally he dredged up a question. “Did Gib stop by your mother’s bakery?”
Nikki nodded, and pursed her lips. “That’s another thing. I know you’re responsible for that, and there’s a part of me that wants to hug you and kiss you and fall in love with you because of it….”
Hey, sounded good to him.
“But there’s another part of me that says, whoa! Don’t fix my mom’s roof out of guilt. And that I don’t want to be beholden to you and what are you going to want in return?”
Anger kindled within him. “Now you’re being flat-out insulting. I don’t want anything in return. And I didn’t talk to Gib out of guilt. I spoke with him days ago, after you confided in me. And I did it simply because he knows all too well how hard single mothers have it—his aunt Randi is a single mom.
“If it’s any consolation to you, we fixed her roof and built her a screen porch, too. Gib and his dad and I worked with all of our fraternity brothers to do it—which, incidentally, is where the labor will come from next Saturday. Everyone’s taking the day to help.”
He folded his arms across his chest and glared at her. “A
nd just to set your mind at ease, none of the guys showed up at Gib’s aunt’s expecting to be serviced. None of them have asked for more than a glass of ice water in return.”
Nikki reddened under his gaze. Good. She deserved to squirm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was out of line.”
“Damn right you were.”
“But why are you doing this? You don’t even know my mom.”
Adam pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. How had solving Nikki’s problems become another problem? He didn’t understand.
“I know you,” he said. “And that’s good enough for me. I’m a guy. We like to fix things, especially for the women in our lives. It makes us feel useful. You could even say that it’s the way we express our love. Okay?”
Nikki’s gaze snapped to his. “What did you say?” she whispered.
He returned her gaze. “You heard me,” he said evenly. “Look, Nikki, I’m not going to propose marriage after knowing you for a week, but I have a feeling about us.”
Her mouth opened but no sound came out.
He took advantage of that and kissed her, thoroughly. The way she opened to him and melted beneath his mouth told him what he needed to know. “You don’t have to say anything in response, okay? I know your emotions are all over the place right now. But please, accept my apology and let me at least get that friggin’ roof done.”
He got up, closed the lid of the pizza box and cupped her chin in his hand. Then he dropped a kiss on top of her curly, blond head and made his exit while she stared after him, still mute.
23
NIKKI OPENED THE BAKERY by herself on Saturday, since her mother wanted to be home when the guys showed up to work on her roof.
She had listened to the message from Dean Trammel, which was polite and to the point. He apologized for jumping to conclusions and said that she was welcome back in his office. She’d called him, thanked him and asked for a few days to think things over.
Because, as she’d told Adam, she didn’t know how she felt about returning to work there. She’d been dismissed in disgrace and she was sure the reason for her firing had run like wildfire through the rest of the administrative staff. Did she really want to return and see people’s speculative eyes roaming her body?
Besides which, she felt that she’d be going back under false pretences, since Dev and Adam had lied for her. Were the benefits at the university worth it? Did she really want the job, or had she angled for it simply because she wanted the health insurance?
That was a tough one. Nikki certainly couldn’t say that she lived to file papers or to type letters or to deal with office mates like Margaret. But besides being committed to paying off her medical debt…what exactly did she live for?
You have your own life and your own dreams, Nikki.
Her mother had said that to her. Was she avoiding having to deal with her own future by worrying about her mother?
Of course not.
Well, maybe.
Oh, boy, was this hard to admit.
Yes.
So then what were her dreams, exactly?
Panic kicked in. She didn’t know. She was twenty-four years old, with a degree in business administration, and she had no clue what she wanted out of life, besides a family and her own business in something. Something that had to do with helping single moms.
And that was scary, because two-thirds of all new businesses failed within the first two years they were in operation.
And there, in that statement, lay her problem: fear.
Nikki groaned.
It was a little demoralizing to find out that the mother she’d enjoyed patronizing about sticking her head in the sand was, in fact, braver than she was.
Tara had started her own business without a college degree, and she’d done it with a toddler for a partner.
Nikki started the morning coffee for Sweetheart’s huge urns and then began mixing a bowl of batter for blueberry scones. Maybe, just maybe, Dev and Adam had done her a favor by getting her fired. Thanks to Adam, she now had a choice again and she could make it clear-eyed: go back to the safety of doing boring work for the university, or strike out on her own.
There were loans available for women who started businesses. And yes, she could probably even cover major medical insurance out of such a business loan. She could cut her costs by moving in with her mother, just as Tara had lived with her parents when she’d started the bakery.
As for the cats peeing and digging in the plants, what if they designated one room as the garden room and moved all the plants in there?
One by one the pieces fell into place as Nikki mixed and baked and waited on customers. By the end of the day, when she flipped the sign on the door to Closed and locked the place up, she’d figured out everything except the particulars of what training programs her business was going to offer single moms, and what government subsidies might be available to help her help them. That would require some research.
She climbed into her car in a cloud of cinnamon, walnuts and vanilla and drove to her mother’s house, wondering if Adam and the guys would still be there. It was only a little after six when she pulled up outside, and sure enough, the roof was dotted with hot, sweaty, young torsos.
It was quite a sight, all that testosterone gleaming up there in the sun. Nikki shaded her eyes and looked for one chest in particular: Adam’s. And there he was, grinning at her, his thumbs hooked through the belt-loops of his snug, faded jeans.
That was no six-pack riding above his leather tool belt. It was more of an eight-pack. His chest and arms rippled with muscle. The guy might wear glasses, but he was no geek.
“Hi,” he said, pushing the glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “Is it warm out here, or is it you steaming up my lenses?”
She looked down at her batter-speckled T-shirt and the coffee stain on her thigh. “It’s all me,” she said dryly.
“I don’t suppose you two have any more cold water in the house?”
“It’s a good possibility. Would you like me to get you some?”
“Please.”
She nodded and went in the front door. “Mom?”
Tara didn’t answer, but her old Corolla was in the driveway.
“Mom?” Nikki heard a strange, faint noise from the kitchen and started running, past the burgundy wing chairs and the antique tea table and over the oriental rug that had been in the house for as long as she could remember. A cat meowed in the kitchen, followed by a human moan.
Nikki burst into the kitchen to find Tara lying on the floor, looking dazed. “Mom! Mom, what happened? Are you okay? Oh, my God,” she babbled, as she dropped to her knees beside her. The refrigerator door was wide open, and a chair lay overturned.
Tara struggled up to a sitting position, wincing in pain, and touched the back of her skull gingerly. “I think I hit my head.”
“How? Did you fall?”
Her mother nodded. “I—I got real dizzy again, honeybun, and I grabbed for the fridge door, but it opened and I went backward.”
“Oh, my God.” As frustration with her mother’s refusal to get checked by a doctor warred with love and concern, Nikki noticed that her mother’s pupils were larger than usual. “I don’t think you should move, okay?”
“Well, of course I’m going to move, Nicole. I can’t sit on the kitchen floor all day.” But when Tara tried to get to her feet, she wobbled. “Lord, am I dizzy.”
“Let me take your weight,” Nikki ordered. “Come on—we’re going to the sofa.” She half dragged her mother to the couch in the living room and settled her on it. “I’m going to call an ambulance.”
“No, sweetheart, you’re not. They called one for Mrs. Sorkin down the street when she fell, and she got a fifteen-hundred-dollar bill for a two-mile ride.”
“I don’t care. You need to go to the emergency room—”
“Forget it. This is a bump on the head, that’s all.”
“But you got dizzy enough this time that
you fell. You fainted, Mom. You could have a—” She stopped herself from saying brain tumor just in time.
“Get me some ice, honey. Stop making a big deal out of this.”
“It is a big deal.” Nikki ran to the kitchen and filled a plastic bag with ice cubes, then wrapped it in a dish towel. She took it to her mother and then ran for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Adam!” Nikki called. “Adam, please. I need your help down here. My mother fell and hit her head.”
In moments he was on the ground and hurrying toward her. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. She gets these dizzy spells. And this time she fell backward. She hit her head on the floor.”
“She’s conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, calm down. Let me take a look at her.” Adam touched her reassuringly on the shoulder, then apparently got a whiff of himself. He smelled pretty ripe, but so would any guy who’d been working on a roof all day.
Nikki took him inside and introduced him to her mother. “Mom, this is my friend Adam. He’s—”
“Dear Lord!” Her mother fanned herself with a magazine after getting a good look at Adam’s sweaty, bronzed chest and tool belt. “I think I’m going to faint again.”
“Mrs. Fine, I’m not a doctor, but—”
“You did stay at a Holiday Inn last night?” Tara said, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the hotel chain’s ads.
“He’s in medical school,” Nikki broke in.
Tara stopped fanning herself and glowered at him.
“I’d like to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.” Adam knelt beside her and put two fingers to the inside of her wrist.
“You’re training to become a quack?”
“Mom!”
Adam looked taken aback but laughed. “Well, for a lady who just took a big fall, you sure are a firecracker.”
“I don’t believe in doctors.”
“Mom, stop it,” said Nikki.
Adam’s eyebrows rose. “Well, it’s a good thing that I’m not one, then, isn’t it?”
Tara eyed him suspiciously, but then her gaze fell to his nude, sweaty chest again, distracting her from his evil future profession.
Borrowing a Bachelor Page 16