Page 20 of Better Late Than Never

“Last night.” He slid his hands into his pockets. “I wanted to spend today checking out the city since I’d never been here.”

“Yeah? Where’d you go?”

“Pretty much everywhere TripAdvisor said to go. Plaza de España. The Alcazar. The cathedral.”

“No wonder you were sweltering. That’s a lot of walking.”

He chuckled. “No kidding. At least the cathedral was cool on the inside. I thought I was going to melt at Plaza de España.”

“Ugh, tell me about it. The first time I went there, I thought it would be smart to go during siesta. You know, since there’s nobody out and about.”

Connor glanced at me. “Yeah? How’d that go?”

I groaned and rolled my eyes. “That was the day I realizedwhysiesta is at two in the afternoon—because it’s thehottest fucking time of day.”

“Ooh. Okay, yeah. That makes sense. I think that’s when I was in the cathedral. It was hot as fuck outside, and everything was closed when I came out.”

I nodded. “Yep, that sounds like siesta.”

“I’ll get used to that one of these days.”

“Good luck with that.”

We turned a corner a block or so down from our hotels and followed a narrower street. Restaurants were still open and crowded, which made sense—it was 2230 on a Saturday night, so people were still eating dinner.

“What did you think of the cathedral?”

“It was big,” he said. “Like, I knew that, but holy shit…”

“Right? I made the mistake of going to that one before I went to the one in Cádiz. The one there was kind of a letdown after the big one here.”

“I could see that. I went to Cádiz a couple of weeks after I got to Rota, but I didn’t get to the cathedral because it was a Sunday. Nice city, though.”

“It is. I go there a lot. Some great restaurants.”

Connor nodded. “I ate at one of the cafés in the plaza outside the cathedral. I need to go back and try some others.” He glanced at me. “Any chance I can hit you up for some recommendations?”

“Of course.” I paused. “And fair warning? As you’re traveling around Spain, now that you’ve seen the cathedral here, a lot of the others will be kind of anticlimactic. Not just the one in Cádiz.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, they’re all cool, but once you’ve seen one, you’ve kind of seen them all, except for the ones that have somethingreallyunique going for them.”

“Like the big one they’re still building in Barcelona?”

“Sagrada Familia, yeah.”

“You been to that one?”

I nodded. “Several times.” I chuckled as I added, “Even though I don’t usually go to Barcelona for the architecture, I do still check it out once in a while.”

Connor laughed, and I almost tripped over my own stupid feet.

You are not going to have any trouble turning heads tonight, Lieutenant Commander. Holy shit.

Thankfully oblivious to my near stumble, he said, “During orientation when I got to Rota, they said something about this one cathedral somewhere that I want to check out. I can’t remember the name, but it’s like an old mosque that was turned into a cathedral?” He cocked his head. “Is that real, or did I hallucinate it because I was so jetlagged?”

I laughed. “It’s real. That’s the Mezquita in Córdoba.”

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