Crash into Me: A BWWM Russian Billionaire Romance (5 page)

Holding on to that hope, she eased her car to a stop at a red light and sighed, checking her reflection in the mirror. She reached for her purse to put on more lipstick and then jolted forward all of a sudden when something quite literally
slammed
into the back of her car.

For a moment she didn’t react, reduced to blinking and trying to catch her breath, a bit in shock. In all the years she’d been driving, she’d never been in an accident, and now there was a car pressed quite intimately into the back of hers.

Despite the fact that the light had turned green and they were in the middle of an intersection, the person driving the silver car behind hers was climbing out and waving his hands around angrily.

That spurred her into motion. She wasn’t hurt, more just rattled, but if this jerk was going to cop an attitude with her, then she was going to give him a run for his money. As soon as she stepped out of her car, waving for another car to go around them for crying out loud, she was assaulted by a rapid string of some language that she didn’t speak.

She did catch the words ‘stupid’ and ‘blind’, though, and that just ramped up her anger.

“Excuse me?” Emma snapped, cutting off the man’s rant. “
I’m
blind? Of the two of us here, which one couldn’t seem to grasp the meaning of a
red light
? Oh, that’s right. It was
you
. Those mean stop, for future reference, not slam into the back of the car ahead of you.”

“You stopped too quickly,” the man shot back.

“Oh
please
! I was stopped for a full ten seconds before you plowed into me. Don’t try and make this my fault.”

Emma put her hands on her hips and got a good look at the man in case she had to give his description to the police later. Of course he was taller than she was by a good foot, and he looked like he hadn’t slept or showered in days. Stubble was on his face, and his hair was in unruly dark curls that seemed to be in serious need of a brushing. His eyes were bloodshot as he glared at her, and she was going to have a field day with him if he had been driving drunk this early in the morning.

As if the car wasn’t enough of a giveaway, he was dressed in clothes that looked expensive even though they were wrinkled. Clearly this man had an abundance of money, even if he hadn’t been given any common sense to go along with it.

“This is a Porsche,” the man said, and his slow voice was accented with something that sounded Slavic and did nothing to improve Emma’s mood.

“And this is a Corolla,” she said, jabbing her finger at her own car. “And it, at one point, didn’t have a giant dent in the back of it!”

She was definitely yelling now, and the man winced, taking a step back from her. Good, Emma thought darkly. She wasn’t going to back down from this. Not when he was in the wrong, and she had been doing nothing but minding her own business and obeying the traffic laws.

Honking exploded into the air around them, drivers laying on their horns behind their two cars. The man turned around and made a rude gesture, muttering something under his breath.

Emma let out a slow breath and tried to use her head. They couldn’t just sit there where they were yelling at each other. That wasn’t going to fix anything.

“Hey,” she said, snapping her fingers in his direction. “We need to move.”

“Excuse me-”

She cut him off with a hand and a huff. “Out of the middle of the road? Because the honking isn’t going to stop, and you probably don’t want anyone calling the police on you while you look like that.”

Now he looked offended, and he opened his mouth to say something but then seemed to think better of it. “Fine. We’ll pull off the road,” he said.

“How benevolent of you,” Emma muttered and got back in her car. She winced at the sickening crunch that accompanied her pulling away from the Porsche and then sighed. The last thing she wanted to deal with was car repairs and having to pay for that, so she needed this guy to not be a complete jerk.

A glance in her rearview mirror showed that he was following her as she pulled off to the side of the busy highway, which was a good sign, she supposed. With a sigh, she cut the engine and got back out of the car, waiting for the guy to do the same.

When she did, she folded her arms and arched an eyebrow at him.

“Can you not start yelling again?” he asked, making a face. “My head hurts bad enough already.”

“That’s what you get for being drunk first thing in the morning,” Emma snapped. “And you started yelling first.”

He dipped his head, as if acknowledging that. “I’m not drunk first thing in the morning,” he said. “I was drunk last night. This is what’s known as a hangover.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, buddy,” Emma snapped. “I don’t care how hung over you are. You shouldn’t have been on the road if you can’t handle your car. Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Your
Porsche.
”

The man made a face, but there was something like a smile playing around his mouth. “Look,” he said. “We can stand here and insult each other all day, but you probably have somewhere to be, and to be honest I don’t want to. So, let’s make this easy, hm? You were right. It was my fault. I wasn’t paying attention, and I hit your car. I have insurance and all of that, but I’d like to simplify things further and just offer to pay for the damage to your car. We’ll cut out the middle man and just have it done, yes?”

Emma narrowed her eyes at him and chewed on her lip, unsure. She had insurance as well, but it would probably be a headache and a half trying to get it all taken care of. She’d have to prove that the accident wasn’t her fault and wait for things to happen with her insurance agent. Her premium might go up, and that was the last thing she wanted to deal with. His offer was honestly a godsend, but she had no idea if she could trust him to actually be honest about this.

He seemed to sense her hesitation, or just could read it on her face, because he lifted both hands in a gesture of peace. “I swear I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Here.” He hunted in his pocket for his wallet and then drew out a card before passing it to her. “My information.”

She looked at the shiny card, black type on a stark white background with nothing but the stylized image of a raven in the corner for decoration. “Alexei Alexandrov,” she read, and the name was followed by two phone numbers and an email address. “Russian?”

Alexei nodded. “Indeed. Don’t hold that against me, though, I had no choice in the matter.”

Emma snorted at that and rolled her eyes. “Believe me, I have enough to hold against you without your nationality even coming into play.”

“Fair enough,” he allowed. “Call me when you know how much the repairs will be, and I’ll see that it’s taken care of. And...I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”

Her eyebrows jumped up at that. “You’re sorry?”

“Yes. For making a mess of your morning. For running into your car. I haven’t been myself lately, but I’ve been trying very hard to limit the chaos to only affecting me. I’m sorry that I failed at that this morning.”

There was something heavy in his tone, and Emma blinked, finding herself feeling sorry for him without even knowing why, which was idiotic, but she couldn’t quite help herself. He looked a bit like a kicked puppy standing there, and she had to shake herself to keep from asking if there was anything she could do to help.

“Well,” she said instead. “Thanks for that. I’ll...be in touch.”

He nodded and then went back to his car (which, unfairly, was barely damaged at all; the paint was scuffed and his headlights would need some repair but other than that it was fine), waving at her before he drove away.

Emma stood there for a moment before she shook herself again and went to inspect the damage to her car. It had sounded worse than it was, and while the back end would need a lot of work before it would look the same, it didn’t seem like there was anything wrong with driving it. Honestly, she had half a mind to call in sick to work and just go back home and try to forget this day had ever happened, but it was still before nine, and she wasn’t going to let Monday defeat her like that.

Setting her jaw, she got back in her car and drove to work.

“Where have you been?” hissed Patricia as Emma came through the doors of Sapphire Gate headquarters. She was sitting behind Emma’s desk looking panicked, and Emma regretted not calling in at all.

Patricia was one of the in house editors, and she hated talking on the phone and dealing with people, so Emma knew that her being at the desk was uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said sincerely. “I should have called.”

Patricia jumped up from the chair like she was worried it would eat her, eyes wide. “They made me answer the phone.”

“I’m so sorry, Pat,” she said again. “If I had known they’d get you to cover, I definitely would have called in.”

“What happened? It’s not like you to be late. Are you okay?”

Emma nodded, dropping her purse on the desk and walking around it to sit in her chair. “Yeah. I just got into an accident on the way here.”

“Oh my god, Em! Are you alright?”

“Fine. My car, not so much, but it could have been worse. Some hung over moron with too much money plowed his Porsche into the back of my car at a red light. I might have yelled at him a bit.”

“Good,” Patricia said emphatically. “Some people shouldn’t be allowed to drive.” She shook her head and looked at Emma nervously. “Are you sure you’re okay to be here? If you need to leave, I can…”

Emma grinned at her and shook her head. “Thanks, Patricia, but I’m fine, I promise. You can go back to your cave, and I’ll handle this.”

She looked relieved, and Emma was touched that she’d offered in the first place, knowing how much her friend hated working the desk. “Well, if you’re sure,” Patricia said. “Let’s go out for lunch, okay? My treat.”

She agreed eagerly and then got to work, returning phone calls and making sure that people got the messages meant for them. It seemed like some kind of luck was on her side, since her boss was apparently out of the office for the rest of the day. She didn’t have to see him or try to explain her tardiness. Knowing him, he would try to make it out like it was her fault that some rich moron with a drinking problem had crashed his car into hers.

As if having money made it okay to be blind to the rest of the world.

“It does not,” she muttered under her breath and set about catching up on her morning.

When lunch time rolled around, Patricia extracted herself from her editing cave and came by the desk. The two of them went out for Chinese food in Patricia’s car after a small detour to see the damage that had been done to Emma’s.

“So what exactly happened?” Patricia asked as she dipped crispy noodles in the sweet and sour sauce on the table at the restaurant.

“I told you,” Emma said. “I was stopped at a red light, and a car ran into the back of mine. I turned around to see what was happening, and there was a silver Porsche right up on my bumper. Practically taking the place of my bumper actually.”

“Ooh, a Porsche,” Pat said with a grin. “At least he had good taste in cars.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “As if that matters. He was clearly heading home after a long night of partying or sleeping in someone else’s bed. I don’t care how nice his car was.”

“Was it badly damaged?”

“Patricia!”

“I’m just asking,” her friend insisted. “My dad used to have this old Porsche, you know. I swear he loved that thing more than he loved his family sometimes. Kept it in the garage and everyone else had to park their cars in the driveway. He didn’t even drive it, but he’d go out there every weekend and wash it and polish it up.”

Emma gave her friend a bemused look and shook her head. “Well, I’m sure your dad would have been appalled that some idiot wasn’t taking care of
his
Porsche. Honestly, if I had a car that looked like it cost as much as a small country, I’d be more careful with it.”

“That’s because you’re sensible,” Patricia pointed out. “Rich people rarely are.”

She couldn’t argue with that, even though Emma was sure that she didn’t know very many rich people at all. When the waitress came by, they placed their orders and handed their menus over. When Emma looked back at Patricia, she found that the other woman was staring at her with intent blue eyes.

“What?”

“I’m waiting for the rest of the story.”

“There
is
no story,” Emma insisted. “We got out of our cars, we yelled at each other, he made rude gestures at traffic. We got back in our cars and pulled off to the side of the road to talk.”

Patricia waggled her eyebrows. “What did you talk about?”

“The fact that he had just plowed into my car,” Emma said. “He apologized and offered to pay for the damages.”

“Outright?”

“Yeah. I’m sure it’s just a drop in the bucket for him, but.” She shrugged. “It’ll help me out, so I said yes. I’m supposed to get an estimate and then give him a call.” Emma fished the business card out of her purse and then handed it over.

Their drinks arrived while Patricia studied the card. “Alexandrov... that name sounds familiar for some reason.”