Read Online Pinups and Possibilities by Melinda Di Lorenzo - Free Book Online

were talking about you, actually.”
    “I want to talk about myself even less than I want to talk about your boss.”
    “Fine. What’s your boyfriend like?”
    Dammit. I needed him to stop asking me questions.
    “You don’t know when to stop, do you?”
    He shrugged. “Dogging people helps me get the job done. Have you been dancing long?”
    “You think that’s cute?”
    “What?”
    “Teasing me about what I do for work?”
    “I wasn’t teasing.”
    “Maybe not.” But you’re not asking about my boyfriend anymore, either, and that’s my real goal. “But just in case, I’ll answer your next set of questions in advance. Yes, I make good money. No, I’m really not a hooker, and yes, I realize that my body is a temple. Or has an expiry date. Or whatever it is that you think justifies telling me how to live my life.”
    “I was just trying to be nice. ” He sounded genuinely offended.
    Perfect.
    “By stealing my phone and my money and forcing me into a car against my will and then asking me personal questions about my life?”
    My exaggerated defensiveness finally seemed to strike a nerve. He pressed the clutch and jammed the gearshift from fourth to third, accelerating more quickly than could possibly be safe.
    “Honestly, Polly ,” he said over the roar of the engine. “I’m not the one who ripped off Cohen Blue. I tend to pay my debts on time. I was trying to take it easy on you because you’re just a girl—”
    “Just a girl?” I cut in.
    He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “But it’s clearly backfiring. So if you don’t mind, I’ll stop talking altogether and you can stop talking, too, and we’ll drive until I’m too tired to see, then we’ll have a rest and drive some more.”
    I opened my mouth, but I didn’t get a chance to call him out for his tirade. He shifted the Mustang back up to fourth gear and cranked the stereo before I could say another word.

Chapter Seven
Painter
    “What are you doing?” I asked.
    For the past five miles or more, the girl—Polly, as she insisted on being called—had been crossing and uncrossing her legs every thirty seconds.
    “Hmmm?”
    She looked up at me as if she’d forgotten I was there. That irritated me even more than the repeated movements. I nodded toward her legs and she flushed.
    “Sorry,” she muttered.
    I sighed and very nearly reciprocated her apology. Then she did it again. I gritted my teeth. It wasn’t so much the shifting motion that was bothering me. I was sure as hell used to unruly passengers and had been subjected to far worse. Kicks in the shins. Kicks in the balls. Hell, once I’d even been kicked in the teeth. What was really getting to me was that with every recross, her dress hiked up a little further, exposing a tantalizing amount of leg. She pulled the hem down a few times, but it was already back to midthigh. I was having a hard time keeping my eyes on the road. It amazed me, really, that she could elicit such a visceral response in me. Especially since all it took was a little bit of unintentionally exposed leg.
    From a girl you’ve already slept with, I growled at myself.
    She moved again, and the lacy bottom of her dress crept up another two inches.
    “Stop that!”
    She turned to glare at me. “I can’t.”
    “Why the hell not?”
    “If you must know, I have to pee. Badly.”
    I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m not stopping somewhere populated enough for you to make a run for it.”
    “I wasn’t going to ask you to. I wouldn’t even have brought up the fact that I have to go if you weren’t so short-tempered about my discomfort.”
    “Are you trying to set me off?” I demanded.
    “No.”
    Something in her expression made me think she was at least a little bit happyabout my agitated state, though. So I couldn’t resist an urge to knock the gleam out of her eye. I slammed on the brakes and swerved across two lanes to come to a crooked stop on the side of the dusty highway.
    To her credit, Polly