Protect Me by Selma Wolfe Read Free Book Online

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