I looked around at the car and him and saw he was telling the truth. We hadn't crashed and I was still alive. Adrenaline coursed through my body, and my hands began to shake uncontrollably. Suddenly, I was overcome with emotion and lashed out at him as tears began to roll down my cheeks. "You're crazy! You're fucking crazy! You could have killed me!"
My crying startled him, and for just a moment he didn't possess that cool exterior he'd worn since the first moment I'd seen him. His brows knitted, as if he were in pain, and he leaned in toward me to press his forehead to mine. He cradled my face in his hands, instantly exciting me. Closing my eyes to mask my discomfort, I heard him say, "We only know how precious life is when he come close to death, Nina."
He sat back in his seat, and I turned to look at him, my emotions all a jumble. "Why did you want me to come with you tonight? Why did you come find me? I'm not like those women who were around you at the show. Why me?"
"Those women don't interest me. If they did, I could have any one of dozens right now."
Oddly, that made me jealous. I didn't even know this man, but the idea of him with anyone else bothered me.
Fighting back my insecurities, I said, "Maybe they like it when you nearly kill them, but I don't. Most ordinary women like me don't."
He stared straight ahead into the night and started the car again. "Don't underestimate yourself, Nina. You're anything but ordinary."
In truth, I didn't think I was ordinary, but it was nice to hear from someone other than yourself sometimes. My cheeks warmed at his compliment, making me happy the inside of the car was dim. He didn't need to think I was as infatuated with him as I already was.
Full of fake bravado, I said, "You have no idea what I am. And where the hell are we going?"
"I want to show you something. This is going to take a few, so why don't you enlighten me as to what you are," he said with a smile that made an 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.