Page 23 of The Protector
“Why not?” I asked.
“Are your hands clean? If those books are centuries old they should be handled with extreme care.” She turned around and headed for her luggage. “Hang on, I have gloves you can use.”
“Gloves?” I shook my head. “It’s just books. I’m not going to wear gloves.” To demonstrate that I was serious I pulled a stack of books down from the shelves. “Let’s see what we have here.”
Christina puffed out a loud sigh but gave in and came back to see me put the seven books down on the table.
“Oh, I actually read that one,” I pointed to a book with a warship on the front. “It’s a Second World War story and there’s a lot of violence in it. I liked it.”
Christina’s fingers gently touched the cover of a book with a woman sandwiched between two men who were kissing her shoulder and neck. All three were topless.
“These books are forbidden,” she whispered.
“No, they’re not.”
She looked up at me with tension written on her face. “They are books of passion and violence.”
“Uh-huh.” I’d picked another book up with a soldier in full uniform who was holding a woman in his arms. “So?”
It was as if a panic grabbed Christina and she gathered all the books to put them back. “We shouldn’t be reading any of them. They’re dangerous.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, annoyed, when she grabbed the book from my hands. “Hey, that one looked interesting. The back said it was steamy; I like steamy.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s better if we pretend we didn’t see them.”
“You can pretend all you want,” I said and moved her out of my way to get the book I’d been looking at. “But if I’m going to be stuck in a room with you all day, I need something to distract me.”
“Are you really going to read that?” she asked.
“Yes, I am,” I said and sat down.
“Well, lucky for me, I brought suitable reading material so I won’t be poisoning my mind with those books.”
“Suit yourself,” I said and opened the book.
Christina
I didn’t want to sit next to Boulder so I took a seat on the bed and waited for it to fit around me, offering me support.
My reader was in my handbag; I put it on like a pair of glasses, activating the library by pushing a button on the side and navigating by looking left, right, up, down and blinking. The book I was currently reading came up in my field of vision and I started chapter nine.
“What are you reading?” Boulder asked me after about forty minutes.
“A historical tragedy about five sisters living in the early nineteenth century. They were oppressed by society, unable to inherit from their father, and threatened with the prospects of poverty if they didn’t marry. It’s really a very sad story.”
“What’s it called?”
“Pride and Prejudiceby an author called Jane Austen.”
“Oh, okay, you want to know what I’m reading?”
When I didn’t answer him, he suggested, “How about you read me something from your book and I read you something from mine?”
Minimizing my book in the lower right corner, I saw him clearly and felt provoked by his smug smile. “You think the content of your book will shock me,” I said. “But I’ll have you know that in my work I’ve seen many shocking things. I’m not an innocent, you know.”
“Define innocent.”
I removed my glasses. “I’ve heard and seen things.”
