Protect Me (19 page)

Then
she realized that Trinity probably didn’t have a clue what her self-absorbed
butt was talking about. After all, it’s not like Rick had been particularly
overt in his attentions, and she’d been around him so much by necessity. Hope
opened her mouth to explain.

But
then, maybe Rick’s attentions were more overt than she thought, because Trinity
grinned at her with complete comprehension in her brown eyes.

“Himself
has a lot of faults, but disloyalty isn’t one of them. Neither’s lying. If he
only wanted a casual thing, he’d tell you.” Trinity paused and a contemplative
look crossed her face. “Course, I’m assuming that’s not what you want. But you
don’t seem the type somehow. You look too steady for that.”

“I am,”
Hope said, all the while wondering what the hell Trinity meant. But she’d go
with it; the fact was, she wasn’t interested in anything casual. Not with Rick.

Trinity
nodded, satisfied. “Well, there you go then.” She flipped over something eggy
in a pan and hummed. Trauma sat well on her, Hope thought with some amusement.

Hope
wasn’t as easily convinced as her friend. She grabbed a cup of coffee and sat
back down at the table to stare into its rippling surface. It was so hard to
think about love - with Rick, no less - as something she could have. Every time
they got close it was sweet and steadying and perfect, and Hope couldn’t trust
that it could last. Or that Rick would want it to. People didn’t want to be
grounded by love, did they? People wanted screaming, violent passion.

She
just wanted Rick, hands in his pockets, smiling that easy smile at her like
Hope was the only person he ever wanted to see.

“I hope
you were talking about me,” Rick interrupted her thoughts from the doorway.

“We
weren’t,” Hope and Trinity chorused, and then grinned at each other.

Rick
heaved the sigh of a greatly misunderstood man and sat down at the table.

“I
ruined your dress,” Hope informed him.

“Not a
problem, darling. Like they say, dresses are made to be ruined.”

Hope
and Trinity exchanged raised eyebrows. “Do they really say that?”

Rick
grinned. “No. I’m hoping it’ll catch on, though.”

There
was a sheaf of papers in his hand and when Hope stole a glance at him, he
quirked a small smile at her. He didn’t look upset, just… cautious. Hope didn’t
regret turning him down (mostly) at the door last night, but the fact that Rick
wouldn’t hold it against her was another in the series of invisible strings
tying her to him. At the beginning there had been just a few bare threads of
affection. It would have been easy to break their hold. But now there were
hundreds and Hope wasn’t sure she could break away even if she wanted to.

Lost in
her thoughts, she ate breakfast mostly in silence while Trinity scolded Rick in
the background.

At some
point the liquid gold in her cup disappeared. Hope supposed she must have drunk
it. Then a hand appeared in her vision and she glanced up to see Rick standing
over her.

“If I
might escort my lady?” he grinned.

Her
hand was in his before she could think the better of it.

“I
don’t really have anywhere to go,” Hope noted as they walked out of the
kitchen. Trinity waved a cheery goodbye behind them, and Hope thought she saw
another wink thrown her way.

“Then
we’ll go to the library,” Rick said decisively. His fingers threaded through
hers without bothering to ask for permission. “It’s hard to go wrong in a
library.”

“You
just want me to finish that damnable book,” Hope grumbled, and he laughed.

“Watching
you read is definitely worth watching,” Rick teased. He flashed her a heated
look and she looked at her feet. She still wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
Everything seemed so difficult when she tried to put it all together in her
head: desire, companionship, love. Could you have everything at once and still
have it all be good?

They
reached the tall wooden doors. Practically before they were inside Rick was
shoving the doors closed again and crowding Hope against the wall, his hands
cupping her face and his eyes serious.
Oh
, Hope thought.
I really
should have seen that coming.

“Listen,
I would love to take my time with this, do things right. But frankly I have no
idea what’s going in that head of yours and I’m half-scared you’re going to
quit and just disappear off the map. So I need to talk to you now, before any
other stupid thing happens.” His dark eyes seemed to pierce straight through
her. Hope couldn’t imagine how Rick found it hard to read her, unless it was
because there was nothing there at all to see.

She
brought her hands up without any clear idea what to do with them; ended up
resting them halfway between his shoulders and neck, her thumbs grazing his
collarbone.

“I
don’t see how this can work,” she found herself saying, at odds with her body.
Hope had always trusted her body more than her mind.

Rick,
however, hadn’t. He took her words at face value; his shoulders slumped under
her fingers.

“Look,”
Rick said, sounding uncharacteristically frustrated, his eyebrows pulled down
into a dark frown, “I don’t know why you think this way. Why can’t you just
accept that I - Look. Everybody, including you, has a God-given right to be
loved.”

And he
probably believed that. It would be very easy for a gorgeous billionaire to
believe that.

Hope
allowed herself a brief low laugh. “God isn’t in the habit of giving me
rights,” she said dryly.

“I wasn’t
done,” Rick countered. His hands slid down her throat - remarkably, she let
him. He would probably never realize how much trust it took for Hope to let his
hands linger around the slim column of her neck. There were a thousand
different ways to kill a person with that kind of trust. And here she was,
offering herself up to someone like this, someone with the power to make her
drop everything and forget her training.

All the
arguments for and against were getting mixed up in her head. Hope couldn’t
remember exactly what she was protesting anymore.

"You
see a thousand gorgeous women every day," Hope said, throwing pride to the
wind and hoping that honesty would be enough. "Why me?"

Rich
sighed. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. For someone who
spoke like he breathed, it was strange seeing him struggle for the right words.

"You're
right," he said finally. "I do."

Hope
glared at him a little, just a tiny bit that she couldn't hide. Her heart sunk.
Those weren't the right words at all, she thought.

For
some reason the corner of Rick's mouth quirked up in a smile.

"And
I've dated hundreds of them," he added.

Hope
dodged to the side and took two steps backward. The back of her mouth tasted
sick. She wished she could be anywhere but this room right now but she couldn't
leave; she had a responsibility. Don't mix business and pleasure, she swore
savagely at herself in her own head.

"But
here's the thing," Rick said. Hope looked at him out of the corner of her
eye; he stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels, shoulders
wide open, staring at her earnestly. "You know how they say talent is
cheap? It's the same with beauty. A gorgeous woman is a wonderful thing, but
pretty doesn't keep you warm at night, you know?"

He took
three steps toward her. Hope felt frozen in place even as the automatic parts
of her brain continued to scan the room. She felt split in two; capably
analyzing the security situation and helpless to move away from Rick.

A hand
touched her cheek and Hope bit back a gasp. Rick stared straight into her eyes,
all of his usual levity gone for a brief second.

"So
yes, Hope, you are beautiful. But it doesn't matter. I'm not looking at you
because you were gifted with perfect angles or ideal symmetry. When I say
you're beautiful, it's because I know your character, and when I look at you I
see it all over your face."

Hope
stared into his earnest green eyes for several moments, mesmerized. When she
spoke, she was surprised at the hoarseness of her own voice.

"Is
that all a roundabout way of saying you just think I'm pretty because you know
me?" There was a joking lilt to her words, but all she could think was
touch me, please. She would have reached out to him but she felt fragile for
some reason; like glass about to break.

Rick
reached up with his other hand to cradle her face. His touched snapped her back
and Hope realized she wasn't going to break. Rick's skin warmed her face and
suddenly she didn't feel weak anymore, she felt strong. The feel of Rick
touching her like this, tenderly, spent sparks flying through her body.

"I
don't know. Maybe," Rick said, his eyes still staring unwaveringly into
hers. "Does it matter?"

Tick
tock. Some things didn’t change out of context. Hope still recognized the sound
of a cocked gun; the point of no return.

"No,"
Hope whispered. "Kiss me."

Rick’s
mouth was hot on hers; wet and a little dirty, very experienced. For a second
Hope thought about resenting the way he threatened to sweep all her senses away
with something so small as his lips brushing against hers, but then Rick’s hand
came up and brushed her jaw right where it joined her throat. The feather light
touch stroked up her cheek and down her neck, as if to make sure that she was
really here.

Then
Hope stopped worrying and just kissed him back.

Kissing
Rick is frightening because he might not mean it, terrifying because she knows
he does.

But
Hope has never been one to run from danger. She’s more the type to hunt it down
and throw herself at it.

So she
surged forward and threw herself into Rick; let herself really participate in
the kiss for the first time since he’d started trying. His lips slid against
hers and Hope pushed up into it, the tantalizing contact turning into something
wet and deep that seared right down into to her bones.

“Oh,”
Rick said, sounding shocked and pleased in such a smooth combination of the two
that Hope knew only he could pull it off. She was barely listening, busy
pushing the jacket off his shoulders and fumbling with the buttons of his
shirt. The library probably wasn’t bugged, but it still wasn’t smart to do
anything in here. Hope knew rationally that they should move, but she wondered…

“Yes,”
Rick said quietly. He reached up to brush a strand of hair out of Hope’s eyes,
his touch feather-light in a way Hope herself left behind a long time ago. She
felt eager and clumsy, like she was pressing her fingerprints into his skin,
bruising the curve of his clever mouth with her kisses. “Yes to whatever you’re
thinking, to whatever you want.”

And
God, how was she supposed to cope with that?

Hope
tried to breathe and kiss Rick all at once; it didn’t go well. As Rick laughed
and pulled away slightly to give her space, the spine of a book on the shelves
caught her eye.

“Oh,”
Hope breathed, just like Rick had a minute ago, but not the same at all.

“What
is it?” His eyes followed hers and snagged on the same bright colors she’d
spotted. A frown creased over his forehead. “
Tribes of Africa
?”

She
took a step back, breathing still ragged, trying to force her brain to work in
ways it had never been accustomed to in the first place. One hand was still
bunched in Rick’s half-unbuttoned shirt. It didn’t want to let go.

“I…
yes. I just had a thought. Those men - the ones from the other night, but the
first break in as well. I know them.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Rick’s
eyebrows flew up.

“No, I
mean, not
know them
, but I know what they are. They’re Afrikaners. The
accents; they were trying to hide it, but that’s what it was. That’s - that’s
strange, isn’t it?” Mostly she wanted Rick to tell her it wasn’t so they could
go back to what they’d been doing before - but. Hope didn’t have a lot of
personal beliefs or morals or whatever you wanted to call them, but even she
knew this was something bigger than either of them.

Unfortunately,
Rick nodded slowly. His hands released their holds on her and Hope watched as
his expression turned calculating. She sighed.

Just a
minute for herself was too good to be true, she thought sourly before pulling
herself up short.
There will be time for this again. If I’m lucky.

Rick
was dragging his fingers through his hair and muttering snippets of words that
never made it into sentences. “That doesn’t - but if - maybe we could - Africa,
big place - still…” He turned to her with an inquisitive expression. “You were
there for three years. Do you have any contacts we could reach?”