Baby, It's You Read Online Free

thunder and lightning. The longer she drove, the more the road wound around until she had no clue which direction she was going.
    She’d yanked off her veil and tossed it into the backseat about a hundred miles ago, but she was still stuck in her wedding dress. It was compressing her ribs so much that she couldn’t breathe, and if she didn’t get out of it soon, she was going to keel over and die. Why hadn’t she stopped at a McDonald’s and changed? She could have changed clothes, grabbed a Big Mac, and been back on the road in ten minutes, which meant that right now she’d be comfortable and full. Instead, she was incarcerated inside a wedding dress, starving, with no clue where on earth she was. She’d just been so hell-bent on getting to Austin that she hadn’t wanted to stop.
    Then she saw it. Up ahead. Or were her eyes playing tricks on her?
    No. It was real. Light glimmered faintly through the falling rain.
    Maybe it was a service station. Maybe one of those deluxe service stations where she could get a cup of coffee and a sub sandwich and a brownie for dessert and wait out the worst of the storm. Then she could ask directions, gas up, and eventually she’d get back to the freeway, then to whatever luxury hotel she could find. She would hand her keys to the valet, get a room, ditch this dress, soak in the Jacuzzi tub for about an hour, and then—
    All at once, something darted in front of her. Her mind barely registered deer before she wheeled the car hard to the right to miss it. As the startled animal scrambled away, Kari felt the bump and grind of the gravelly shoulder of the road beneath her tires. She tried to turn back, but her car slid sideways down a shallow embankment and smacked into a tree. The force of the impact slung her sideways, whipping her neck hard to one side and banging her head. The windshield shattered, and pellets of safety glass rained into the car like a shower of diamonds.
    And then everything went still.
    Strangely, the car was still running, but when she turned to see the tree trunk embedded into the passenger door, she realized she wasn’t going anywhere. She turned off the ignition, her hand shaking so hard she could barely hold onto the key. The engine died, leaving only the sound of the rain pounding against the car and her pulse throbbing inside her skull. With the windshield gone, rain hit the dashboard, bounced off, and splatted against her face.
    In a surge of frustration, she pounded the steering wheel and shouted a few curse words at the top of her lungs. When that didn’t unsmash her car and put it back up on the road, she clutched the steering wheel and dragged in a deep, ragged breath.
    Get a grip. Where’s your cell phone?
    She felt around on the dripping-wet seat, then on the floorboard beneath her feet, before she finally found it. She’d turned it off earlier to avoid the deluge of phone calls and texts she knew she’d get. When she turned it on now, she felt marginally better when it lit up and the car wasn’t completely dark.
    And she couldn’t get a signal.
    She tossed it to the seat beside her, wondering what in the world she was supposed to do now. She had yet to see anybody else on this godforsaken road. It was dark and cold and wet and her head hurt, and she was starting to get just a tiny bit scared. If she’d only stayed in Houston, she’d be at her reception right now. Clean and dry and eating and drinking and dancing and…
    And married.
    Then she saw it again in the distance. The light she’d seen right before going off the road. Where there was light, there was help, right? Unfortunately, it wasn’t coming to her. She had to go to it. But walk in this horrible storm?
    Then again, what was her alternative? She had no windshield so she was already drenched anyway. She might as well try to find help. And if she didn’t get out of this dress soon, it was going to squash the last breath right out of her.
    She grabbed her tote bag and stuffed her