Читать книгу Borrowing a Bachelor - Karen Kendall - Страница 8

MEDICAL STUDENT ADAM Burke was deeply engrossed in his anatomy text when a size-twelve foot kicked it out of his hands. It flew up and banged him in the chest.

“Pull your head out, nerd! We have a bachelor party to go to. Ogling strippers is a much better way to study anatomy.”

Adam hated strip joints—the cheesiness of them and the overpriced drinks, just for starters. He groaned. “Devon, I have a killer exam on Monday. And it’s not on the finer points of silicone implants.”

“All work and no play will turn your hair prematurely gray,” Devon said, seizing the twenty-pound anatomy book and tossing it onto the king-size bed in their hotel room.

“No, you will. Where did you come from, anyway?” Adam frowned and then belatedly noticed the open door.

Devon followed his gaze and laughed. “Good detective work, Holmes. I can’t believe you didn’t hear me come in—you’re scary intense when you study.”

That was true—though there had been a time in high school, when he’d been “in love” with the class bad girl, during which Adam had been just as intense about screwing off to impress her. He’d tried his best to mess up his life.

“I have to be. You don’t get into, or through, med school without the ability to focus.” Adam, now twenty-five, ran a hand through his hair and reluctantly got up from the armchair he’d been sitting in. “Bachelor party, huh?” He said it without a trace of enthusiasm.

“Fire up, buddy. Mark’s getting married—going over to the Dark Side. We’re the groomsmen. We gotta send him off in style, with lots of drinks and lots of well-endowed women.”

Adam saw the glint in Devon’s eye. It told him that protesting would do no good. His only hope was to go to the damned party and wait the requisite hour or so until all the guys were so shit-faced that they wouldn’t notice him sneak out. He really didn’t have time for this.

Devon started to describe the various abilities of the “talent” that awaited them. “They’ve got this one chick who walks around with a selection of cigars tucked in her G-string. You get a lap dance while you choose one. Then another girl will hold your cigar for you between her hooters while girl number three bends over and lights it with a match between her teeth.”

“I can’t wait,” said Adam without a trace of sincerity.

“And that’s just the beginning. This place we’re going gets wild. Later, this other chick, the star attraction, will take it all off and do things that you can’t even imagine. She’s got a prehensile—”

“Enough. I get the picture.”

“No, really, she can pick up a lit cigar from an ashtray with her—”

“Gross. Dev—”

“—and bring it up to your mouth again. I once saw a guy—”

“Devon! Enough. And do you have any idea how unsanitary that is?”

“Dude. I’m not saying I’d smoke it again myself, just that it was a trip to watch.”

Blek. Adam would rather have a root canal. Not that he didn’t like naked women. But he liked them a little more wholesome than that. He wasn’t a fan of strippers and blatant womanly wiles. The whole scene was so far removed from his daily life, where most of the females he encountered wore either sweats, jeans or surgical scrubs—not fishnets or pasties.

Adam also didn’t care for most of the men who hung out at these clubs. They were generally either creeps or assholes. After they left the clubs, it wasn’t unusual for the former to use their fists to abuse themselves and the latter to use their fists to abuse others. Emergency rooms were full of bruised and bloody idiots who had limped out of bars.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Dev urged him. “You got ten minutes to grab a shower and pull yourself together.”

“I am together,” said Adam, looking at Devon’s spiky, product-laden hair and the chain around his neck. He looked like some kind of designer dog. “And at least I don’t have grease in my mop like some others I could mention. You’re the one who needs the shower. Also, if you’re going to wear a choke chain, where’s your rabies tag?”

“Grease? This is Pomade à l’Hommes, imported from Paris, and it costs a mint, thank you very much. I’m going to ignore your gratuitous comment about my—”

“Pomade a l’homosexual, more like,” Adam said, grinning.

“Dude. You know better. I scored with number three hundred and twenty-six last month. That’s a lot of women since age fourteen…”

“Yeah. It makes me wonder when your dick’s gonna fall off and what you’re trying to prove.” Adam disappeared into the bathroom, ignoring the insults Devon hurled at him through the door. Devon didn’t have a gay bone in his body, but it was fun to rile him.

The quick hot shower cleared Adam’s brain of fog and snapped him awake, since the anatomy text had had a sedative effect in spite of his legendary focus. He wrapped the hotel towel around his waist and shaved, though he didn’t know why he bothered.

Then he threw on his clothes, cracked his knuckles like a caveman and girded his decidedly not inflamed loins for the evening.

NIKKI FINE STARED AT the huge, hollow plywood cake on wheels in front of her. It was frosted with spackle and house-paint in unfortunate shades of peach and blue, and it had seen better days. Scuffs and footprints marred the once-festive surface, and a big chunk of icing had chipped off one side.

She shook her head. “I can’t get in there,” she said. “I’m claustrophobic and I’m afraid of the dark.” Nobody had told her she’d be wheeled into the bachelor party this way. The inside of the cake might as well be a coffin as far as she was concerned. And was that a spiderweb down there? She shivered involuntarily.

Nikki always kept a tiny light plugged in next to her nightstand. Rationally she knew that there were no monsters under her bed. She was an adult, after all. But somehow she’d never outgrown her fear of total blackness in a room. And lately she’d had recurring nightmares about being buried alive after seeing a news story on the modus operandi of a particularly charming serial killer.

She was not getting into that small round box. No way.

Her neighbor Yvonne Morales blinked at her, tossing her glossy dark mane over her shoulder. Then she laughed. “Get over it, chica. You’ve been hired. Climb into the damn cake.”

“I can’t,” Nikki said for the third time.

Not even in the name of paying off her crushing debt could she get in there.

“You want to lose this job in the first hour you have it? What about all that whinin’ you did about being broke and needing to pay the minimum on your credit cards? What’s your problem?”

Nikki gulped. Small, dark places. That’s my problem. And total fear that I’m going to make an idiot out of myself in front of a hundred guys. Who was I kidding? I can’t moonlight as a stripper. “Look,” she said to Yvonne. “I kind of exaggerated my dancing skills. I can’t dance at all. I didn’t even make pep squad in high school.” In fact, she’d been mocked by the mean girls for even attempting it.

Hey, Nikki, you’re so fine, you’re so fine, hey, Nikki!

She pushed aside the painful memory and the chorus line of the song they’d used to torment her. How she’d hated her name back then.

Yvonne laughed. “You don’t gotta dance. You pop the top off the cake and wiggle around. Then pop your own top. The dumb-asses in the bar are all drunk, anyway. They couldn’t tell the difference between you and Britney Spears out there. Just shake it and smile and lick your lips a lot.”

The more she thought about it, the more Nikki realized exactly how bad an idea this was. “What if someone I know recognizes me?”

“In ten pounds of stage makeup, false eyelashes and pasties? I really don’t think so. And believe me, they will not be focused on your face.”

No, they would be focused on her breasts and her booty. No secret there. She flushed with humiliation as she remembered her experience at Yvonne’s waxing place.

C’mon, honey, we got to get you a Brazilian before tomorrow if you’re goin’ onstage in a G-string.

Nikki had had to take off all clothing—all—below her waist. Then she’d been ordered onto a platform table and told to spread ’em while a strange woman had smacked noisily on her gum and stared at what Yvonne would call her “box.”

Not only had the strange woman stared at it, she’d snipped at it with small scissors and then spread hot wax in highly embarrassing places with a wooden tongue-depressor. Far worse, she’d pressed muslin strips into the wax and then—

“Oww!” Nikki had shrieked.

The woman snapped her gum and rolled her eyes as she tossed the strip into the trash. Then she grinned evilly and grasped another.

Approximately seventeen yelps later, her tormentor had made her roll over and assume an even more horrendous position…. Nikki closed her eyes simply thinking about it. She’d refused to speak to Yvonne once she emerged from the chamber of horrors, while her neighbor just laughed and laughed.

Nikki had raced home, submerged her lower half in a tub of cold water, clamped her knees and gulped a glass of wine without stopping to breathe. Then she’d poured another and popped four painkillers.

This morning the angry red bumps had faded to a nice pink blush, a perfect background for the tiny heart that now nestled at the apex of her legs. I am a fallen woman, Nikki thought. Now, do I really need to pop out of a cake and fall again? Right on my butt in front of a bunch of horny, drunken men?

No, I do not. Best to walk away from this cake and this terrible job and figure out a different way to pay my credit cards.

The balance on the cards haunted her and made her want to puke when she thought about it. And it wasn’t from irresponsibility, either—who could have foreseen that a perfectly healthy twenty-four-year-old would fall victim to appendicitis right after losing her job and declining to pay the huge hike in fees for COBRA?

It seemed beyond unfair. But she was the one who had been dumb enough to borrow money last month from Yvonne…to tide her over until her new job started.

Yvonne grasped Nikki by the upper arms and shook her—not so gently. “Get a grip, girlfriend. I put myself on the line for you. You can’t back out now or I’m gonna look bad and my manager will blame me when these guys call and complain. I do not need that, and I don’t have time to get somebody else over here to cover this event. So you move your little culo and climb into that cake before I slap you into next month.”

Nikki stiffened in surprise. Yvonne’s tone wasn’t so friendly and lighthearted anymore. Neither were Yvonne’s fingers as they dug into her flesh. And her eyes—they’d hardened to the point of glassiness.

Nikki should have known better than to trust a woman who’d succumbed to Miami’s latest in cosmetic surgery trends and gotten butt implants.

That friendly neighbor who had become a neighborly friend? She’d turned into Tonya Harding with PMS. What had Nikki gotten herself into?

“Do it,” Yvonne ordered, in a menacing voice. She looked utterly capable of going after Nikki’s knees with a tire iron.

That, combined with the fact that she had committed to tonight’s job, persuaded Nikki to raise her left foot in its ridiculously high spike heel and swing it over the edge of the wooden cake.

“Good girl,” said Yvonne.

Nikki refused to look at her. Good girl? I am dressed like a hooker and I’m walking around with a Brazilian. She straddled the edge of the cake and peered around, looking for any sign of the occupant of that spiderweb. Nothing with beady little eyes or more legs than her stared back.

Nikki swallowed hard.

“C’mon already,” Yvonne said, wearing a look of contempt and little else herself. She grabbed Nikki by the ankle that still dangled outside the wooden cake and shoved it in, knocking her off balance.

Nikki lurched and clutched wildly at the walls, finally sliding down into a nervous crouch. Her rear end felt unnaturally exposed and the G-string gave her a fierce wedgie that she didn’t have room to fix.

No spider, no spider, no spider, she repeated to herself. Nothing to be afraid of. Thirty seconds, a couple of minutes at most, then you’ll be wheeled into the party and you’ll jump out on cue. Breathe evenly. You can do this. Just for one night.

Because this was the last night, the only night, that she’d humiliate herself this way. Monday she started her new job. And she would deliver pizzas on the side, do data entry at night, sell cosmetics—whatever it took. She’d pay off her cards somehow. But not like this.

“I’ll be hanging in Ralph’s office,” Yvonne said. Ralph, her cousin, owned the strip club. “You can come get paid afterward.”

She shook her head as she stared unblinkingly at Nikki. “You’re actually scared. That’s pathetic. Get a smile on your face this second. Now, head down.”

Nikki produced a smile as genuine as a Vuitton bag on a New York street-vendor’s cart and bent forward. Then everything went terrifyingly black and airless as the lid crashed into place.

ADAM TRIED TO LOOK as enthusiastic as the other raucous, on-their-way-to-drunk guys at Mark’s bachelor party. He waved a beer around and even did a couple of tequila shots, but inwardly he sighed.

The only good thing about his rebel year in high school was that it had gotten the partying mostly out of his system—and then he’d had to pay a steep price to get his life back together. Not even the local junior college had wanted him until his persistence wore down the admissions people. He’d finally been able to transfer to a state university’s pre-med program, but only after two years of a solid 4.0 GPA.

He cast a surreptitious glance at his watch, making plans to sneak out and spend a passionate night back at the hotel with his anatomy text. And he cheered wildly and made ape noises with the rest of them as a bouncer wheeled in a giant, shopworn “cake.”

Mark’s round cheeks had flushed with alcohol, which turned his naturally ruddy complexion a dark red. His short, curly hair stuck up in tufts, courtesy of all the headlocks and noogies the guys had inflicted. He gazed at the cake expectantly, and the others moved like a herd to stand around the front of it.

Derek made coyote noises, as if he were howling at the moon. Pete grinned his good-natured, Mr. Customer Service grin and waited patiently. Gib stood, bowlegged as he always did, looking as though he’d produce a rope and lasso the girl as soon as she emerged. Jay lounged with his hands in his pockets, eyes almost crossed. He was probably writing a murder mystery in his head.

Adam rolled his own eyes and stepped around to the back of the wooden cake, since he figured watching their expressions would be a lot more fun than watching the skanky chick who’d jump out of it.

Joe Cocker’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” suddenly blared from the speakers in the room. How original. Adam turned an amused gaze toward Mark’s face and waited.

Then the top of the plywood confection exploded off. Adam had a brief impression of golden corkscrew curls and a gorgeous, smooth ass in a hot red G-string before a feminine elbow slammed into his nose. Pain seared him between the eyes, and his glasses damn near embedded into his forehead. Adam lurched backward from the impact, sliding through a pool of some spilled drink. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, with something cold and sticky seeping through his pants.

“Oh, God!” A distressed feminine voice floated down to him. “I knew something like this would happen!”

Was this a nightmare or a dream? Despite the pain, Adam registered that delectable ass again, facing him as she clambered out of the stupid cake, on legs that seemed to reach all the way to heaven. Funny how heaven looked a lot like the satin string that disappeared between her cheeks.

Correction. Heaven looked a lot like the barely restrained breasts that now swiveled toward him and bounced as she tottered over on her ridiculously high heels.

Adam’s eyes widened as she bent over him and dangled the breasts like ripe, luscious fruit above his face.

“I’m so, so, so sorry!” she said. “I told Yvonne I was claustrophobic. I told her not to make me get in there. Are you okay?”

He blinked. The guys were all falling over themselves laughing—especially Mark. Only Pete, Mr. Customer Service, called out—between knee-slaps—the same question. Was he okay?

Adam gazed up at the spectacular breasts again. And like a gift from the universe, they lowered closer to his face as he lay prone. “Yeah. I’m okay,” he said weakly, eyes glued helplessly to them.

The breasts heaved, and a sigh of feminine relief wafted down to him in the form of sweet, minty breath. “Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid I’d killed you.”

Manfully, Adam looked away from her breasts and focused instead on her face, which was a mistake, since he found himself drowning in her large, seawater-green eyes. Not even the fact that she wore awful false eyelashes and cauldron-black liner could change the loveliness of those eyes or the shocked concern they expressed.

Adam gingerly put a hand up to his nose to confirm that it was still there, and hadn’t been knocked through the backside of his skull. His hand came away bloody, and Cake Girl winced.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she said again, and to his consternation she burst into tears. Fat, heavy drops rolled down her cheeks, gathering mascara and makeup in their wake.

“Really, it’s okay,” Adam told her, struggling up onto his elbows. Her tears began to plop onto his head, and her distress grew.

“I’ll take you to the emergency room right away! You could have a concussion. Oh, God, why did I ever think I could do this? I should have known that if I tried to dance in public I’d murder someone.”

“I’m not dead,” Adam reassured her. But he almost had a heart attack as she straddled him in the high heels and then crouched down to take his face between her small, soft hands. She peered intently into his eyes, now raining black, inky tears onto his face.

They left pale white streaks down her heavily made-up face and he didn’t think he’d ever seen someone so beautiful look quite so pathetic. She sniffed woefully.

Of course, the rest of the guys could see nothing but their evening’s entertainment hovering provocatively over him. They leered enviously at the picture Adam and Cake Girl made, eyes fixated on her luscious bottom with its disappearing G-string. For some reason that bothered him. Vaguely, he noticed Dev snapping pictures with his cell phone.

“I’ve never done this before,” the girl sobbed.

Poor thing. She was truly upset. “What,” he teased. “You’ve never coldcocked a man before? It’s fun. See?”

“Of course I’ve never—” Briefly, she looked indignant. “What I meant was that I’ve never, um, stripped before. And I don’t know how to do it properly, and because of that I’ve hurt you—but I had to get out of there. I just had to! I was coming unglued.”

Adam struggled to sit up more, which brought him nose to, er, nipples. Or two inches of shadowy cleavage, depending on which way he looked. She removed her hands from his cheeks and moved back self-consciously.

“Well, I can assure you that none of the men here want you to strip properly.” He winked. “They’d much rather you did it improperly.”

Her lush mouth worked for a moment. Then she stood so that his eyes now met her—Oh, Christ. A tiny scrap of satin covered it, and it looked so sweetly beckoning. His mouth went dry and he averted his gaze.

She grabbed a handful of cocktail napkins and brought her breasts back to eye-level as she crouched again and gently held the napkins to his nose. “What can I do to make this up to you?”

Oh, honey. Don’t you know better than to ask a man that question? Adam swallowed with difficulty and tried yet again to reassure her. “Really, it’s okay. Calm down.”

“It’s not okay. I can’t calm down. And Yvonne is going to kill me now for sure. In the first hour of my employment.” She put a hand over her mouth as a thought occurred to her and she gazed at him in horror. “Oh, my God. You’re not going to sue me, are you?”

Adam shot her a wry grin. No, suing was not what I had in mind, sweetheart. But it rhymes.

He shook his head, which was a big mistake, since it made his nose throb like crazy.

“But I shouldn’t even be thinking about me. Come on. We need to go straight to the emergency room. You could be seriously injured, could have a concussion—”

“From a blow to the nose?” Adam laughed.

“Anything’s possible. My friend Becca once ran smack into a stop-sign pole because, you know, she was talking to someone over her shoulder? And she knocked herself out cold. So please, please, please let me take you to a doctor and make sure you’re okay.”

Her agitation was almost endearing. Adam finally made it to a full sitting position and reiterated that he was fine.

“C’mon, darlin’!” Gib bellowed drunkenly. “Show us what you’ve got! Shake it. Somebody start the music again.”

“Emergency room,” she pleaded, her eyes locked on Adam’s and strangely intense.

“But I don’t need—”

“Please,” she said piteously.

“But—”

She leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t make me get out there and dance. I can’t do it tonight. I just can’t. I’ll throw up.”

Her breasts nestled against his chest and her lush lips moved inches from his own. Adam felt the room begin to spin as all the blood in his body rushed south from his throbbing nose to his groin. His willpower spiraled down with it.

“Please,” she said again. “I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll dance privately, just for you….”

Only a complete pig would take advantage of this situation and exploit the poor woman, Adam’s big head told him.

Too bad he was now listening to the little head. She broke your nose, dude. And she’s a stripper. She does this a lot, no matter what she says. Why not have a private dancer, just for tonight?

Adam got to his feet, conscious of the fact that because of the spilled drink on the floor, he looked as if he’d messed his pants. He pretended to be dazed. “Guys,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I need to have my head examined.”