Crash Into Me Read Free Page A

ache
form in the pit of my stomach.
    "Isn't
it a little presumptuous of you to think I have no plans? It is a Saturday
night."
    He
didn't seem bothered by the idea that I had plans or even had a boyfriend. I
had neither, but he couldn't know that.
    Turning
his head to face me, he looked at me with those soulful brown eyes. "Do
you have plans?" he asked with an innocence that made me smile.
    I
didn't want to admit that I, a young, available, attractive New York woman, had
no plans whatsoever on a Saturday night. I mean, I could have had plans. There
were men interested in me. Just not anyone I was interested in being interested
in me.
    But
he didn't need to know that.
    "I
did have things planned, if you need to know," I lied with enough attitude
to hopefully hide my fib.
    He
chuckled and pushed down on the gas, again throwing me back in my leather seat.
He never asked what my plans were and obviously didn't care. Talk about ego! As
if I had nothing better to do than speed up the Taconic.
    We
traveled in silence with the ghostly outline of the trees and the white line on
the side of the highway rushing by making me dizzy. The mood felt awkward, but
I didn't know what to say. Here I was racing toward some unknown place with a
man I barely knew in a car I'd only seen in ads in magazines and movies.
    I
only hoped I would be alive at the end of whatever this was.
    As
if he read my mind, he said, "Nina, relax. I don't plan to kill you and
leave bits and pieces of you along the side of the road."
    Terror
raced through my body. I turned in my seat to face him, tugging the seatbelt
away from my neck. "Who says that kind of thing? Jesus! Now I'm worried
you're actually going to do that. And how do you know what I'm thinking?"
    Once
again, he laughed at what I said. "Tell me about what you do when you
aren't hosting art shows."
    Slumping
back in my seat, I tried to calm myself. "I guess that's supposed to make
me relax?"
    He
turned to look at me for a moment and then turned back to face the road.
"No. It's supposed to tell me what you do when you're not hosting art
shows."
    "I
like to read, hang out with my friends, and paint."
    And
there it was. The truth of my life in one short sentence. I sounded like some
lame teenage girl who really spent her Saturday nights crocheting booties for
her cat.
    "What
do you paint?"
    "Whatever
I'm feeling."
    "Are
you a good artist?"
    "That's
usually in the eye of the beholder."
    He
arched one dark eyebrow and looked over at me. "Then I'll have to judge
your work for myself sometime."
    Why
was he talking like we were a couple or moving toward being that? We'd spent
all of an hour together and now he was making plans to see my artwork. Yet he
hadn't made any effort to even hold my hand or kiss me.
    What
was with this guy?
    "Are
we almost there?" I asked, uneasy about this entire thing.
    "Almost."
    As
if my question had been a cue, he took the next exit and in minutes we were in
the middle of pitch black nowhere. If I was worried before, now I was almost
terrified. Scenes from every horror movie I'd ever seen flashed through my
mind, all leading to the same ending. Me murdered and in pieces along an
isolated country road and my sister devastated because I had forgotten the one
thing she'd always told me not to do—get into cars with strangers. Ever since
her house was broken into and ransacked, she'd been nearly paranoid about
strangers, which I'd thought was a bit of an overreaction, but now I was
thinking she had the right idea.
    "Can
I ask a question and have you answer with more than one word or one sentence
that really says nothing?"
    He
stopped the car at a stop sign and turned to face me with a devastatingly sexy
grin on his face. "Yes."
    I
couldn't help roll my eyes. He was either the most insufferable person I'd ever
met or one of the funniest. I couldn't decide which. "Where are we going
and can you promise me you're not going to do anything awful to me?"
    "That's
two questions, Nina."
    The
car