She looked down at her current get-up and couldn’t really argue. Only the vitals were covered, and just to remind her of it a stinging insect bit her on the backside. “Ow!” Nikki exclaimed, slapping at it.
Behind the cocktail napkins, Adam’s eyes widened slightly, and he swallowed hard, averting them.
“I’d offer to pay for the, um, other talent and the round of drinks,” she said, “but I’m dead broke, which is why I even considered doing this.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Adam.
She led the way to her car, a powder-blue Volkswagen Beetle. “Where’s the nearest E.R.? Or minor emergency center? Do you know?”
“I’ll be fine. Really.”
Nikki looked at him doubtfully. “What if I broke your nose?”
“I don’t think it’s broken.”
“But it could be. And I’ve heard of all kinds of freak things that can happen—a bone fragment could pierce something in your brain, and boom! You’d be a vegetable.” She shuddered.
Adam laughed. The sound was reassuring but also annoying—he wasn’t taking her seriously. He was treating her like the dumb blonde she appeared to be.
“I’m serious. Look, you’re not a doctor,” she said in reasonable tones.
He cocked an eyebrow at her but didn’t argue.
“So why don’t we make sure that you’re okay?” she prodded.
“Not necessary. They’ll tell me to elevate the nose, keep an ice pack on it and take a couple of ibuprofen for the swelling. If a shard of bone had pierced my brain, I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you. So really, you can drop me at my hotel.”
Nikki gulped. She owed him a private dance in his hotel room, and she was none too eager to pay up. Any delay was a welcome one. “I’m sorry, but I insist that we get you checked out, if only for my peace of mind.”
Adam sighed. “Fine,” he said. “But it’s a waste of time.”
Wasting time sounded very good to her, especially if she could do it clothed. She dug her keys out of her purse and unlocked the Beetle. She opened the driver’s-side door, tossed her things onto the seat and found her shirt. She slid on a bra—red, of course—pulled the shirt over her head and tugged it into place as Adam rounded the car and got into the passenger seat.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she held her white denim miniskirt in front of her, and she could have sworn she heard a swift intake of breath as she raised her leg to step into it. She pulled it up over her hips and buttoned it at the waist.
There. Now she felt better. She still wore the skyscraper stilettos, but every woman in Miami wore those. Nikki tossed her purse into the backseat and slid behind the wheel. “Should I take you to Jackson Memorial?” she asked.
Adam shuddered. “No—the E.R. there will be full of gunshot wounds, auto-accident victims, ODs and God only knows what else. We’d wait all night.” After some thought, he gave her the name of a minor emergency center close by, and directed her to it.
The building, not surprisingly, was regulation stucco with a standard red-tile roof. Adam signed in, and they waited in a shabby but comfortable sitting area done in blues and greens. The only other people there were a shrunken old man with a severe cough and a young couple. The wife rocked back and forth, clutching her stomach.
Nikki shot her a sympathetic glance, but the woman closed her eyes and wiped perspiration from her forehead with a paper towel.
After inspecting the faux wood tables, the utterly uninteresting plants and the dog-eared magazines perched haphazardly in a small rack, Nikki had nowhere to look but at Adam.
“Heh,” she said idiotically.
He raised his eyebrows at her over the wad of blood-saturated cocktail napkins. “Did you say something?”
“No,” she supplied, even more idiotically.
Silence fell between them again.
Nikki fidgeted. “So…what do you do?” she blurted, to make conversation.
“I’m a student.”
“Of what?”
He dodged the question. “What do you do, Nikki? Besides, er…dancing?”
She felt a blush climbing her neck and then suffusing her face. “I told you—”
“Right. You’ve never done it before.” His tone was polite, but the inflection of his voice indicated that the jury was still out on whether he believed her or not.
“I’m starting a new job on Monday,” she announced defensively. “I’m an administrative assistant.”
He nodded and adjusted the napkins slightly, peering at her from behind them. His glasses were smudged, which wasn’t surprising. Lucky she hadn’t broken them when she’d whacked him. “Do you like office work?”
Was he trying to reconcile the image of her filing with the image of her popping out of the cake wearing a G-string? She sighed. “It’s okay. It’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life, but it pays the bills and it gives me medical insurance.” She’d never before realized what a crucial thing that was, even to a twenty-four-year-old in “perfect” health.
“Besides,” she added, “I got appendicitis out of the clear blue, and had to have emergency surgery when I
didn’t
have medical insurance. So I have huge debt from that.”
He made a sympathetic noise. “What do you really want to do?”
She felt suddenly defensive. He was clearly a brainy type, a grad student going to school for something special, something focused, while she… Nikki wrapped her arms around herself and hunched her shoulders.
What she wanted most in the long run was a husband and a family, but it seemed so unhip to say that. Yet, given her childhood with a single mom and the fact that she’d never known her father, that
was
her dream: domestic bliss.
She pictured rabid feminists chasing her with pitchforks and cringed. “I don’t know what I want to do, exactly…except that it involves having my own business.” And she’d love to somehow help single moms like her own mother.
She pictured a small business that gave her plenty of time to spend with her children. She wouldn’t be like her mom, who spent her days on her feet in a bakery and covered in flour, at the beck and call of other people.
But first, Nikki had to find and date the right guy. Meanwhile, she had to pay off her medical debt—and then there was the fact that her mom needed a new roof and had no way to pay for it. Meanwhile, Nikki’s own rent and monthly bills didn’t go away. How did
anyone
manage to save money, except rich doctor and lawyer types? It seemed impossible.
A nurse appeared and called Adam’s name. He got up and went with her through a door to the back, while unaccountably Nikki fixed her gaze on his buns. Granted, his pants were damp and stained, so he did look a little as though he’d messed himself.
But she happened to know that the stains were her fault, that they’d come from the floor of the bar…and the wet fabric clung provocatively to the shape of his rear end.
It was an exceptional one. Sitting on it and studying a lot hadn’t flattened it out at all.
“Nikki?”
In fact, it looked pretty muscular…especially as it turned to the side…
“Nikki.”
“Huh?” She pulled her gaze upward, and realized that Adam had turned, along with his butt, and was saying her name.
Mortification was becoming her constant companion.
3
AS HER CHEEKS CAUGHT on fire, Adam eyed her quizzically from behind the paper napkins. “I said that I should be right out.”
“Great!” Nikki said brightly, and quickly picked up one of the magazines, spreading it open and holding it in front of her face.
Idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot…
She dared to peek over the top of the magazine.
Adam’s mouth had quirked, and his eyebrows had lifted at her choice of reading material.
It wasn’t until he’d disappeared again that she looked at the cover:
Forbes.
Was he amused because he’d caught her staring at his ass, or because of her choice of magazine?
Why shouldn’t she read
Forbes?
Okay, it was a dry financial publication, but for all he knew, she could be passionately interested not only in his buns—she squirmed with embarrassment—but in money. In fact, she
was
passionate about money, as far as making some went. Immediately.
Her gaze fell on one of the topics highlighted on the cover: Securities and the Single Mom. Hmm… To take her mind off the fact that she still felt like a moron, she began to read.
By the time Adam came out with a blue-fabric, medically issued ice bag across his nose, Nikki had devoured the whole article and learned quite a bit in the process. There were all kinds of organizations and websites out there devoted to helping single moms not only with their finances, but with furthering their education—and she had the germ of a business idea.
The sight of her strip-assault victim brought her back to reality, though. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” He nodded. “It’s not broken.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” She put down the magazine.
He walked over to the little window to pay what he owed for the visit, and Nikki jumped up. Did she have enough space free on her MasterCard to pay?
Oh, God. She wasn’t sure. But she should make the offer. It was her moral obligation.
“Adam, let me take care of that. It’s the least I can do.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I
will
worry about it,” Nikki insisted, muttering a prayer to the credit gods under her breath. She gently nudged Adam aside. “Excuse me,” she said to the woman behind the window, “but I’d like to take care of his visit.”
Nikki handed her card to the woman with a smile, only barely refraining from tapping her nails nervously on the laminated countertop during what seemed an interminable wait.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but it didn’t go through.”
Mortified, Nikki rummaged in her handbag and came up with a ten-dollar bill that she’d had earmarked for eggs, bread and milk. “Here, how about if you take this and then run the card again, for the balance?”
At this point, Adam took over. He folded both card and bill back into Nikki’s hand and said, “I’ve got this. Thanks, but I’ve got it.” He handed a credit card to the lady.
Nikki wished that a convenient sinkhole would open up in the floor and swallow her whole. A tic started at her left eye, though she tried to rub it away.
Loser, loser, loser,
it seemed to say.
She struggled with her desire to go home and crawl under the covers, to block out this whole evening and the ridiculous idea that she, the fat kid they’d called Chubba Bubba in grade school and mocked even more in high school, could possibly dance in front of men for money.
Was she crazy? Had Yvonne dropped something in her drink to make her agree to do it?
But unfortunately, she’d made this nice boy with the bloody nose a promise, and her mom had brought her up that only scabs didn’t keep their promises.
Was it worse to be a scab than a loser? Nikki didn’t want to think about that too much.
“Okay,” she said to Adam once they were outside the door. “I promised you a private dance if you’d get me out of there. It’s the least I can do—
ow!
” Another South Florida mosquito evidently flew up her skirt and bit her on the butt, and she slapped at it, hard.
There was an audible gulp from her male companion. “That’s…not necessary,” he said, as if it cost him great effort. “Don’t worry about it.”
For a moment she was relieved and elated. Then her conscience got her again and Nikki raised her chin. “I hit you in the nose and then I made you a promise, and I’m going to keep it. Besides, I want to see you settled properly with your feet elevated and your head tipped back. So I’ll drive you to your hotel and make sure you’re comfortable…and…and then…we’ll just get it over with.”