Borrowing a Bachelor by Karen Kendall Page B

the back bumper.”
    Adam decided, especially given the polite nature of her request, to get the hell out of the way.

7
    DESPITE HER ANGER, Nikki was dead asleep at 2:17 a.m., when someone started pounding on her door. Someone who didn’t care if this was rude and obnoxious. Someone who was, despite Nikki’s attempts to ignore the noise, relentless.
    She had a bad feeling about who it might be. She crawled out of bed and pulled on a pair of shorts under the oversize Miami Dolphins T-shirt she’d worn to bed. Then wearily, blearily, she stumbled toward the door and put her eye to the peephole. She winced when she saw Yvonne standing outside.
    “Nikki, you open this door! I know you’re in there because your car’s in the parking lot. So open up.” Yvonne didn’t look happy. In fact, the brassy-red highlights in her black hair seemed to vibrate with rage.
    Nikki also noted the dark circles under her neighbor’s eyes, the smeared black eyeliner accentuating them, and the rusty-red lip gloss she wore. Her neighbor looked like nothing so much as a zombie ready to sink her teeth into Nikki’s flesh.
    It seemed a very bad idea to open the door to Yvonne of the Dead.
    But she started pounding on the painted metal again, and this time added screaming and cursing to her repertoire. The gist of the message, studded with F-bombs galore, was that Nikki had really screwed up and that she was going to answer for it.
    “Now open this door!”
    Nikki sighed. She was wide-awake anyway, and they might as well get this over with. It wasn’t going to be any more pleasant tomorrow or the next day.
    She reluctantly unfastened the security chain and slid back the bolt. Within seconds, Yvonne’s index finger was stabbing her in the chest.
    “Ow—”
    “What the hell were you doing back there at the bar? You freakin’ coldcock a guy and then leave? Do you know how bad you made me look? Do you?”
    “I didn’t coldcock him. I jumped out of the cake and he was standing sort of behind me, and my elbow slammed into his nose—”
    “Spare me the details, estupida bruta! Like I care.” Yvonne was literally spitting mad. Tiny drops of saliva flew from her mouth and spattered Nikki’s face. Ugh.
    Nikki removed Yvonne’s index finger from her breastbone and went into the kitchen for a paper towel. Undeterred, her neighbor followed her.
    “Do you even care that you made me look like a moron?” she asked. “That we had to deal with all the drunk, pissed-off, horny guys who then called the competition, so that we lost the business? Do you care that because of you, I forfeited not only my booking fee, but future gigs with my own goddamned cousin? ”
    Nikki wet a paper towel and mopped her face with it. “Yvonne,” she said quietly, “it was an accident. I never meant for any of this to happen. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Really.”
    “I don’t want your lame apology.”
    “Then what do you want?” Nikki asked, stung.
    “For starters, I want my money back, the money I loaned you. By the end of the day tomorrow—”
    Nikki’s stomach did a greasy slide. “But I don’t have it yet.”
    “I don’t care. Figure out a way to get it.”
    “Yvonne—”
    “You get it to me by five o’clock tomorrow, or I’m going to take it out of your ass. Understand?”
    Nikki was genuinely shocked. “Are you threatening me?”
    Yvonne poked her tongue into her cheek and folded her arms under her sizable breasts, which looked like twin torpedoes under her tight white tank top. “Nah, of course not. I’m just tellin’ you that come five-fifteen tomorrow and no money, me and Ricky gonna pay you a friendly little visit with some baseball bats we just got autographed by the Marlins.”
    Nikki shivered as, paradoxically, tiny bullets of sweat broke out at her hairline and under her arms. Ricky was Yvonne’s Cro-Magnon boyfriend. He had a protuberant brow and biceps the size of beer steins. He’d also done time for assault and battery