Borrowing a Bachelor Read Online Free Page A

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