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. Though 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.
“You sure?”
“Positive. I’m just trying to figure something out.”
“Care to share?”
He shook his head. Women were very mysterious creatures, but there were certain mysteries that guys shouldn’t ask about. They should find out on their own, if and when the time came.
Nikki ran her tongue over her front teeth and shot him a Mona Lisa smile, as if she knew perfectly well what he was trying to figure out. She wasn’t stupid, after all, and he hadn’t been exactly subtle.
“Shall we?” asked Adam, running a finger around the inside of his collar. He held out his other hand and she placed hers into it. Such a small hand to wield so much power over a man.
They left her apartment and he helped her negotiate the stairs in her high heels, enjoying the flex of her calf muscles with each step. Then he led her to the car and opened her door for her.
“Where’s your Mustang?” she asked.
“I thought this ride suited you better,” he said smoothly.
“It’s beautiful.” She bent and then swiveled to lower herself into the Z-4, and he got a tantalizing glimpse of rear cleavage that stole all moisture from his mouth. Suddenly he was too thick-tongued to say, “No, you are.” Instead, he made sure her dress was inside the car before closing the door on those mile-long legs.
He rounded the front of the car and got into the driver’s side. He double-checked the gas, oil and fluid levels before easing out of the parking lot and into the Miami traffic. Leaving your date by the side of the road while you hitchhiked to a gas station was generally not considered a seductive move.
No sooner had he pulled out than his cell phone rang. “Watch this,” he said to Nikki, whose eyes had narrowed. And he pulled it out of his pocket, opened the glove box, and threw it inside. He shut and locked the box. “Happy?”
“Blissful,” she said. And she even put her hand on his knee. Adam’s hopes for the evening rose.
By the time they pulled into the drive of the Mandarin, her hand had slid higher. The valet-parking attendant was clearly dazzled as he helped Nikki, and only released her hand when Adam cleared his throat and jerked his head in the direction of the car.
The valet dispensed with, Adam slid his hand down Nikki’s nude, sun-kissed back to her waist. She shivered with pleasure, and he noted that with equal pleasure.
He felt a little bit like a high-school senior taking the hot girl of his dreams to the prom.
But he repressed the thought. It wasn’t smart of him even to remember the kid he’d been in high school, much less step back into his wild, irresponsible shoes.
Then Nikki looked up at him with those green-as-desire eyes of hers, and he fell into them. He forgot about everything but her.
15