Page 8 of Raul
“Por supuesto,”Raul agreed. “But it’s Raul, notSeñor.”
“Right,” Erica said, picking up her pace to pull ahead of him.
So she wasn’t going to drop the formality. He took that as a challenge.
He had been correct about the view in front of him. She had muscles that flexed under the stretchy fabric of her trousers,but she also had some delicious curves that he would find pleasurable to cup his hands around.
For a few minutes, he simply enjoyed watching her march up the trail without apparent effort. Soon, though, he had to pay attention to his own footsteps as the trail became rocky and tilted sharply upward. The dark green leaves of the laurels and hollies added to the foggy dimness, and he kept his gaze down to avoid twisting his ankle on one of the roots snaking across the path.
Maybe his idea of rock climbing in the mountains wasn’t so lame after all.
Erica came to a sudden halt, staring down a trail that branched off from the one they were on.
Raul came up beside her. “Should we turn here?” He sounded more winded than he liked.
“No…it seems odd…” She shook her head and said more firmly, “No, but we’re almost to a good place to take a break.”
“A break sounds like an excellent idea,” Raul said, his leg muscles burning, although he wondered what she considered odd about the side trail. Since she had dismissed her concern, he let it go too.
“Water and protein bars will help,” she said with a quick grin before she launched herself upward again.
So would sitting down. He sucked in a breath and followed her shapely backside a little farther.
“Dario,” she called to the bodyguard ahead of them. “We’re going to take a break just beyond these trees.” As soon as Dario rejoined them, she plunged off the trail and led them all into the woods, following a narrow path through a grove of picconia and scattered viburnum. The forest thinned, and Raul stepped into a rocky clearing that offered a view out over the ghostly gray fog that they had climbed above. Now he could see the distantocean, sparkling blue in the early sunlight. A large gray naval vessel created a vee of wake as it cut through the sea.
Erica stood gazing at the vista, her lips curled in a tiny smile of wonder. He stopped beside her, and she flicked a quick glance at him. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked. “This is one reason I love hiking up here.”
He scanned the shoreline to find the U.S. military base, the most inland part of which was still obscured by the low-lying fog. “Is that an aircraft carrier coming in?”
She pulled a small pair of binoculars from her jacket pocket and lifted them to her face. “Youdohave good eyesight. It’s definitely a carrier.”
“Maybe they’ll offer jet rides off the deck,” Raul joked.
“If only,” she said with a sigh before swinging her pack off and setting it on a boulder. Producing a couple of plastic-wrapped protein bars from the pocket, she offered them to Raul. “Direct from the palace kitchen.”
He accepted them with an inward wince as she pulled out a brand-name bar for herself. His food would all be separate because it had been inspected for poison by security before being handed over to Erica. After Luis’s near death by thallium poisoning, Mikel was taking no chances.
Raul dropped his pack on the ground and perched on another boulder, ripping open the plastic and taking a bite of the protein bar. It was, of course, delicious.
“Make sure to drink plenty of water.” Erica pointed her water bottle at him. “You don’t realize how dehydrated you get hiking at altitude when you’re not used to it.”
So she had noticed him huffing and puffing, the result of too many meetings and not enough exercise. He should change that. With a mental sigh, he pulled his water bottle from the side pocket of his pack and took a long swig before devouring both protein bars.
Looking around, he noted that Dario and Pascal had taken up sentry positions, while Erica had disappeared. Bathroom break, possibly.
He let the sun’s growing warmth soak into him, fighting the temptation to slide down to the ground and fall asleep with his back propped against the boulder. Evidently, hewastired.
His eyelids drifted closed, and all the meetings Yvette had wiped off his schedule loomed in his mind, adding a new weight to his exhaustion. He would have a lot to catch up on when he got back. This so-called vacation had come at a bad time, when he had the extra obligations as Gabriel’s best man, as well as substituting for his cousin in working on DragonFest. He exhaled a long breath as stress set his stomach roiling.
He opened his eyes to focus on the ship, wondering where it had come from. It had gotten almost to the base before he realized that Erica hadn’t returned yet.
“Hey, Dario, shouldn’t Erica be back by now?” he called out.
“No se preocupe. She said she’d be gone for about fifteen minutes,” Dario said, checking his watch. “Pascal’s in contact with her.”
“Where did she go?” Raul asked.
“She said she wanted to check on something,” Dario said.
