Borrowing a Bachelor by Karen Kendall

his shirt and shrugged into it.
    “You’ve got that on backward,” she told him.
    So he did. Adam found that he didn’t care, though. He really wanted to get this awful explanation over with. He sat on the bed again and ducked his head down on the pretext of putting on his boat shoes, which he could have slipped into easily. “Ah, Nikki. I don’t, you know—as a student—have much, ah, money.” He risked a peek upward.
    She’d drawn her eyebrows together. “I know the feeling. Neither do I.”
    Great. She wasn’t going to give him an inch, was she?
    “Yeah. Well, the thing is that I may have, ah, misunderstood the situation, here. I don’t know what you normally charge—”
    She stared at him, clearly perplexed. Then her face cleared. “Oh, I see what you’re getting at. Adam, the dance was free. It was me making things up to you for hurting your nose. I told you that.”
    “Well,” he said, feeling his face flame, “that’s very generous, but I know I need to, um, take care of you, so could you give me an indication of…?” His voice trailed off. Jesus, Joseph and Mary, how did you ask a woman what price her pussy was?
    “Take care of me?”
    Oh, come on. The girl couldn’t possibly be this stupid. He screwed up his courage and tried to make a joke out of it. “You know. For the rest. I mean, maybe you’ll give me a discount since I made you pretty happy, too, but what do I owe you for tonight?”
    All color drained out of her face, her mouth dropped open and her eyes went stormy.
    Adam cringed. Oh, shit. Is she not— Oh, shit upon shit upon shit.
    “I’m not a whore, you disgusting creep!”
    Not a hooker.
    Her face flashed ruddy-red now.
    Not a hooker, not a hooker, not a hooker. So what do you do now, Captain Brains? Adam’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. Probably because he had no words to get himself out of this colossal catastrophe.
    “S-sorry,” he croaked.
    “Yes, you are. You’re one sorry excuse for a man!” She whirled around and started for the door like a defensive end bull-rushing the quarterback.
    “Wait!” Adam said. “Where are you—”
    The door slammed on his verb.
    “—going?”
    He cursed. Regardless of his personal mortification, he could not let the girl go running around this neighborhood naked under a robe. Burke men made sure that women got home—or to their cars—safely, under any circumstances. His dad and his grandfather—not to mention his uncle—had drummed that into his head well before the age of twelve.
    Adam grabbed his thin wallet, her stilettos, skirt, tiny top and microscopic panties, then tore after her. “Nikki! Nikki, stop.”
    He caught up with her halfway across the parking lot.
    “Get away from me,” she snapped at him.
    As she spoke, a car came flying into the lot and they both had to jump aside.
    Nikki huddled into the bathrobe as if she were cold, even in the moist, hot evening air. She kept walking toward where she’d parked her car, under the scarce shelter of a pineapple palm.
    “Look, I humbly and sincerely apologize for insulting you. I didn’t think you were a hooker at first, but then you seemed to be waiting for something, and it hit me that maybe the something was money, and then I didn’t know what to do because I have less than a hundred bucks to my name—”
    Nikki raised her arm, keeping it straight, palm out. “Don’t talk to me.”
    He sighed and slipped his wallet into his back pocket. Then he extended his index finger, upon which was hung her lingerie and her high-heeled sandals. “You may want these.”
    She snatched them without a word, then the skirt and top, and stalked barefoot next to him as he loped along next to her like a jackass. “Why are you still here? Go away. ”
    “I’m walking you to your car.”
    “Yeah? What a freakin’ gentleman you are. Turn around and walk straight to hell, buddy.”
    Adam sighed.
    “And for your information, the only reason I was in that stupid cake