Protect Me (6 page)

If her
reactions hadn’t been trained so that her instinct was to hold her ground
rather than pull away, Hope would have shrunk back to huddle in her chair. She
stared at the two of them in confusion. They were so… concerned. About her. She
didn’t know what to think of it.

“Happy
birthday, Trinity,” she said quickly. She turned to Rick and frowned severely
at him. “Don’t you have something to say?”

Rick
blinked and finally glanced away from Hope, giving her a break from the
unrelenting concern. He gave Trinity a half-hearted grin. “Uh, right, have a
bonus.”

Hope
kicked him under the table. He yelped.

“Ow,
Jesus, what did I do?” he grumbled, reaching down to rub his shin.

Trinity
looked like she was trying not to laugh and failing. “Oh honey, if you’re
trying to house-train him, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Making this
one human will be more than your job’s worth, let me tell you.”

“Will
it now?” Hope said. She wondered just how much Trinity actually knew about her
job.

“What?
What’d I do?” Rick demanded, for all the world like a puppy that didn’t want to
be disciplined, but didn’t want to be ignored either.

He got
what he wanted though, since both of them turned back to him.

“You’re
supposed to wish her happy birthday,” Hope sighed.

“Oh.”
Rick looked surprised. Then he brightened. “I can do that. Happy birthday!” He
smiled hugely at Trinity, looking genuinely pleased with himself. Hope didn’t
know whether to laugh or cry.

Trinity
did though; she laughed and shook a spoon at him.

“I’ll
take that bonus,” she informed him. “Now, both of you find something to busy
yourselves with - out of my kitchen.”

They
wandered out of the kitchen together in amiable silence. Hope slipped her hands
into her pockets and Rick tucked one of those manila folders of notes under his
arm.

She
started to wander down toward the East Wing and was surprised when Rick
followed her.

“Are
you going to play video games again?” she asked, remembering his excuse (lie)
from the day before.

Rick
shook his head and caught her gaze with a grin.

“I have
some free time. I was thinking I’d show you around a bit more, if you’d like.”

Hope
couldn’t very well turn that down. “Sure,” she said, not bothering to mask the
surprise in her voice. “If you don’t have anything better to do.”

“Never,”
Rick said with another of those easy smiles. His dark eyes seemed to only see
her, and Hope wondered why he bothered with being kind. Wondered how many other
women he’d look at this way.

For
several minutes they strolled down the hall in companionable silence.

“Taking
me anywhere in particular?” Hope finally inquired. It was nice to be the one to
break the silence for once. A refreshing change of pace. Usually it was pushy
employers, or things exploding.

Rick
tapped a finger against his lips. “If you didn’t have anything in mind, then
yes, I had an idea.”

She let
him take the lead. There was a second when Rick passed her that his hand
trailed near her fingers and Hope thought that he was going to take her hand.
But maybe the pause was all in her imagination, because then he took that step
in front of her smoothly, like nothing had happened at all.

Hope
flicked the feeling away from her fingers and shook her head at herself behind
Rick’s back. Perhaps she needed to scare up a date in her nonexistent free
time, if she was getting this worked up over a client. She’d never been
attracted to someone just because they were out of bounds before.

Doesn’t
matter the reason you’re attracted,
she reminded herself.
He’s
still off limits.

“I
thought you might like this hall,” Rick said over his shoulder, and she focused
on his face. She tried not to remember what he’d looked like in this position
earlier, shirtless and tanned and imperfect enough to be interesting. “The
architecture, I mean - it’s modeled after neoclassicism.”

Hope
glanced at the high walls that rose up around her in varying shades of pale
stone.

“Honestly,
I have no idea what that means. I just like looking at pretty stuff,” she
admitted.

Somehow
it wasn’t insulting when Rick laughed and dropped back to walk by her shoulder
- he seemed to appreciate the honesty, and be more than willing to teach her.
He pointed at a raised image of vines and flowers that was carved into the
wall.

“See
that?” His breath brushed by the side of her face, close enough Hope knew he smelled
like tea. She needed to move away. She didn’t want to. “It’s called a low
relief. There’s a French name for it that gets used a lot but that’s kind of
pretentious, so whatever, basically it’s just an image projected out from the
wall that has a shallow depth. You see how the picture is isolated?”

Hope
looked at it dubiously. This sounded like an art history class.

“Well…
it stands out because it’s just one picture. There isn’t anything else on the
wall connected to it.”

“Exactly!”
Rick beamed. “Neoclassicism emphasizes the kind of features that are autonomous
unto themselves. Kind of like you.” He winked and moved ahead while Hope
lingered behind, memorizing the way the picture of vines and flowers looked on
the wall. She’d know what to look for next time, she thought, and smiled.

Ahead,
Rick was gesturing her to follow him over to a set of huge doors. There wasn’t
anything Neoclassicist about these, Hope thought drily. They stood out like a
sore thumb. Very pretty though.

"And
here..." Rick took hold of both handles of the double doors, and threw
them open with admirable dramatic flair, "is the library!"

Hope
stared into a huge, airy room with a floor-to-ceiling windows and bookcases
that stretched up to cover every wall entirely. They were crammed with
everything from obvious textbooks to what looked like the
Harry Potter
novels. A tasteful arrangement of sofas and chairs decorated the middle of the
room. It looked at once pristine and well-loved; the long white sofas appeared
to be new, but the brown leather chairs looked like they were often used. There
was a spiral sprawl of books on the coffee table in the middle that somehow
managed to look like it was actually in use rather than a feature in a
magazine.

“Um.
Wow? It's... nice,” she said, feeling Rick's eyes on her.

The
nice thing about Rick was that you didn't have to worry about figuring out what
he thought. He had no problems letting you know.

Rick
frowned and stared at her quizzically. "I was going for a
Beauty and
the Beast
moment here," he said, which meant nothing to her. "I
thought you'd be a little more excited."

She
stepped inside the room, because Rick seemed to want her to, and gazed around
at the shelves loaded with books.

"I'm
not really a big reader," she said, hating the hesitation in her voice.
"I wasn't very good at school, and now I'm busy." She'd always had
more important things to worry about than homework. And her mother certainly
hadn't cared. Hope reminded herself of those things, but it felt hollow. She
stared helplessly at the thousands upon thousands of books.

"That
right?" Hope glanced back at Rick; he was watching her with a soft look in
his eyes. "That's a shame. You're too smart not to read."

Hope
blinked. Smart? That phrase didn't sound familiar to her ears. Strong, yes.
Capable, absolutely. But she couldn’t remember a time anyone had described her
as intelligent before. Not ever.

Pride
bit her tongue and held her back from saying so. She stared at the calm
confidence on Rick's handsome face. Something in his expression gave her
courage.

"So…
what do you recommend?" she asked quietly.

Rick's
eyes lit up and he darted forward into the room. He went to one bookshelf first
and then hesitated, moved over to another. He poked around in the shelves in
the familiar way of a frequent visitor.

"Here."
He pulled an old, worn hardback off the shelf and handed it to her.

Hope
took it gently. She stared at it for a second, perplexed. Even she recognized
this one.

"
Jane
Eyre
? Really?”

Rick
cocked an eyebrow at her. "Yes?”

"Isn't
that a romance?" Hope wasn't sure if she was protesting him giving a
romance to her, or him knowing a romance well enough to recommend it. But it
was easier to make a case for the latter. "You like romance novels?"

Rick
didn't look put off in the least. He just grinned a little, his eyes catching
the sparkle of the afternoon sun filtering in through the huge windows.

"I
like good books. And Jane Eyre's a damn good book." His grin widened and
he smirked. "Besides, it seemed appropriate. An over-large mansion, a bright
young woman, a dashing, handsome, charming, clever..."

"Alright!"
Hope actually laughed a little and Rick joined in, the rich sound of his deep,
rolling laugh filling up the room that had seemed intimidatingly large a moment
ago.

There
was nowhere else she really had to be for the rest of the afternoon. So she
raised the book in a mock salute and settled down into one of the squashy
leather chairs. She didn’t kick off her shoes, but she did curl up in the chair
in a way so that her combat boots would dangle over the side. Hope tucked a
loose strand of hair behind her ear and flicked the book open to the first
page.

The
smell of tea and the sensation of a warm hand on her shoulder interrupted her
focus on the page.

“Nothing
sexier than a woman reading,” Rick’s voice, deeper than usual, said softly in
her ear.

Hope
didn’t move. She stared unseeingly at the page in front of her eyes, trying to
decide what to do. If she ignored him, she was certain that Rick would move
away. But if she turned to face him…

A hugely
loud alarm blared into the room and the book dropped from Hope’s hand.

CHAPTER FOUR

She was
on her feet in a fraction of a second.

“Get
down,” she hissed at Rick, her hand already on his shoulder and shoving him
toward the floor.

He
pulled away from her hand and raced toward the door. Hope was close on his
heels. She threw herself in front of him to block the doors.

“What
the hell are you doing?” she demanded.

“It’s
just the fire alarm!” Rick said, his face gone pale. “Shouldn’t be anything to
worry about.”

“Then
it shouldn’t be anything to worry about while you go to the panic room and wait
for me to figure out what’s going on,” Hope said calmly, watching the surprise
register on Rick’s face. As if she wouldn’t go looking for a panic room first
thing just because he didn’t tell her it existed.

Rick
pursed his lips and stared at her mutinously. Hope stared right back. She knew
they were fighting silently over something, but she had no idea what, because she
wanted to protect him and as far as she knew he wanted that too, she’d been
hired to protect him.

“Look,
just let me go check on something, alright? You can stay here and… call the
police or something.” His gaze darted around her body like he was hunting for a
way out. He wouldn’t find it.

“Absolutely
not,” Hope said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Unless you’ll tell me
where you want to go and why?”

“No, it
isn’t… can I just… fine, okay, fine.” It looked like it about killed him to say
it. Hope didn’t understand, but right now she didn’t have to.

She
took a firm hold on his upper arm and opened the door. The alarm was still
blaring in their ears. She dropped down to her knees, opened the door, and
cautiously looked out in both directions.

“What
are you doing?” Rick asked, sounding perplexed despite his annoyance.

“People
tend to look at eye level, not up or down,” Hope said under her breath. She
stood. “Clear.”

They
made their way through the halls slowly, with Hope taking appropriate care at
each corner and door. Thankfully there were actually three panic rooms in this
monstrosity of a house, and it only took five minutes for them to reach the
panic room in the East Wing.

“You
really did map this place out. I don’t think even I would’ve known how to get
here this fast,” Rick said in grudging admiration as Hope locked the door and
ignored him, pulling out her cell phone.

First
order of business - police. Second - Trinity.