The Guardian by Nicholas Sparks Page A

his mouth, he met her eyes. "Have I told you how lovely you look this evening?"
    "About a dozen times."
    "Do you want me to stop?"
    "No. Call me strange, but I sort of like life on the pedestal."
    Richard laughed. "I'll do my best to keep you there."
    They were at Pagini's, a cozy restaurant in Morehead City that smelled of fresh spice and drawn butter, the kind of place where the servers wore black and white and dinner was often cooked tableside. A bottle of Chardonnay sat in an ice bucket next to the table; the waiter had poured two glasses, and they glowed yellow in the soft light. He'd shown up at the door dressed in a linen jacket, holding a bouquet of roses and smelling faintly of cologne.
    "So tell me about your week," he said. "What exciting things happened while I was gone?"
    "You mean at work?"
    "Work, life, whatever. I want to know it all."
    "I should probably be asking you that question."
    "Why?"
    "Because," she said, "my life's not all that exciting. I work in a beauty salon in a small southern town, remember?" She spoke with good, brisk humor, as if to ward off sympathy. "Besides, I just realized that I don't know much about you."
    "Sure you do."
    "Not really. You haven't told me much about yourself yet. I don't even know what you do exactly."
    "I think I told you I'm a consultant, didn't I?"
    "Yeah, but you didn't go into a lot of detail."
    "That's because my job is boring."
    She pretended to look skeptical, and Richard thought for a moment. "Okay . . . what I do . . ." He paused. "Well, just think of me as the guy who, working behind the scenes, makes sure the bridge doesn't collapse."
    "That's not boring."
    "That's just a fancy way of saying I work with numbers all day. When it gets right down to it, I'm what most people would consider a nerd."
    She ran her eyes over him, thinking, I doubt that. "Is that what the meeting was about?"
    "What meeting?"
    "The one in Cleveland."
    "Oh . . . no," he said, shaking his head. "There's another project the company is getting ready to bid on in Florida, and there's a lot of research to do-cost projections, traffic projections, expected loads, things like that. They have their own people, of course, but they bring in consultants like me to make sure everything will go through the government bidding system without a hitch. You'd be amazed at the amount of work it takes before you can start a project. I'm single-handedly responsible for destroying vast tracts of timber, just for the paperwork required by the government, and right now I'm a little short staffed."
    Julie observed him in the dim light of the restaurant. His angular face, at once rugged and boyish, reminded her of men who made their living posing in cigarette advertisements. She tried, and failed, to picture what he might have looked like as a child.
    "What do you do in your spare time? Hobbies, I mean."
    "Not too much, really. Between work and trying to stay in shape, I don't have much time for anything else. I used to do a little photography, though. I took a few courses in college, and for a short time there, I actually considered making it my career. Even bought some equipment. But it's a tough way to pay the bills, unless you want to open a studio, and I had no desire to spend my weekends photographing weddings and bar mitzvahs, or kids whose parents dragged them in."
    "So you became an engineer instead."
    He nodded. For a moment the conversation hit a lull, and Julie reached for her wineglass.
    "And you're originally from Cleveland?" she asked.
    "No. I haven't been in Cleveland all that long. Just a year or so. Actually, I grew up in Denver and spent most of my life there."
    "What did your parents do?"
    "Dad worked at a chemical plant. And Mom was just a mom. In the beginning, anyway. You know, stay home, cook supper, keep the house clean, Leave It to Beaver kind of stuff. But after my dad died, she had to take a job as a maid. It didn't pay much, but she was somehow able to keep us going. To be honest, I