Borrowing a Bachelor by Karen Kendall Page A

tonight is that I got laid off from my job and I haven’t started my new one yet.”
    They arrived at her car and she was evidently so angry that once again, she had trouble getting her key into the lock. Adam started to reach around her to help, but she smacked his arm.
    O-kay. He let her scratch up her paint.
    “Nikki,” he said. “I really am sorry. And in the interest of keeping the facts straight, I wouldn’t have…you know…if I thought you were a hooker.”
    “Go tell your lies to someone else.” She finally got the door unlocked and wrenched it open.
    “I would actually really like your number,” he said, even though he knew the request was futile.
    She froze and then turned to him with an expression of incredulity. “I know you didn’t just say that.”
    Adam shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. I did. And I’m serious.” And, inexplicably, he was. Something about her sweetness and her outrage—especially now that he’d gotten his head out of his ass and could see her clearly—appealed to him. The fact that she was crazy sexy, and obviously was not a stripper—or a hooker—didn’t hurt.
    She leaned her face close to his. “No, you’re insane. Not to mention brain-dead. You can’t possibly be in school—unless you’re studying fiction. ” She threw herself into the car and slammed the door.
    Adam opened and then closed his mouth. He fought the urge to tell her that he was in the top ten percent of his class in medical school, and eventually planned to specialize in oncology.
    It was completely alien, this urge, because he spent most of his time deliberately not telling women that he was in medical school.
    Why? Because, unfortunately, that information tended to create instant dollar signs in their eyes. They didn’t understand that after four years of med school, he’d do years of residency for worse pay than a lot of office managers received. And after that, he’d start at a lousy base physician’s rate, also crippled by close to a decade of student loans. On top of which was medical malpractice insurance.
    But most women didn’t have an inkling of any of this. They stuck to him like glue and began to try to do his laundry and bake him cookies and weird shit like that. Then they got resentful when he had no time for them because he had to study.
    So Adam kept his mouth clamped shut and stolidly accepted Nikki’s rage. He supposed he deserved it.
    Nikki turned the key and revved the engine.
    Gloomily, he wished for Dev’s delight and expertise in the fine art of insults. What would Dev have said to the fiction comment?
    Dev would have leaned in close to her and probably blown a ring of smelly cigar smoke around her head, letting it settle like a lasso around that long, sexy neck of hers. Then, the clever asshole would have come up with something brilliant and roped her back in like a baby calf.
    “Darlin’,” Dev would have drawled, “how right you are. I’m studying fiction and you’re the smart, sassy heroine of my dreams.”
    Then, once Nikki had made gagging noises, Dev would wink and add, “Now, what say you take off your clothes and give this villain a kiss before I tie you to those railroad tracks?”
    This might provoke a slap, whereupon—Adam had actually seen him do this successfully in a bar—Dev would commandeer the hand committing the violence, twirl Nikki into his arms, and smooch her soundly.
    Granted, he’d once gotten a stiletto heel stabbed through his instep after pulling this, but Dev being Dev, he’d claimed that it was worth it.
    Adam was so caught up in the extremely disturbing image of Dev kissing Nikki—and he, Adam, wanting to punch him in the nose for it—that he failed to notice that her VW Bug was poised to run him right over as he stood in the glare of its headlights.
    She rolled down the window. “Move or become a pancake,” she growled. “And don’t think I’ll take you to the E.R. this time, either. I wouldn’t even drag you by