Page 19 of Raul
Her father had been more about the challenges than the aesthetics of their trips, but even he had admitted this was a beautiful place.
“I understand why you love this.” He swept his cup around the horizon, sloshing some of his drink over the rim. “I can’t wait to climb again tomorrow.”
Her muscles tightened at the thought of sweating through another day of keeping the prince safe. When she had been assigned this job, she hadn’t realized how stressful it would be to hold the rope he was dangling from. Even with Dario as backup, she flinched every time Raul fell. Not that it wasn’t perfectly normal for a climber to do so, but she was responsible for returning him to the palace uninjured.
He, of course, wanted to try more difficult climbs every time.
“You can do the last two routes here tomorrow morning,” she said. “Then we’ll move to a different cliff for the afternoon.”
Raul took another sip of his drink and tilted his head back against the boulder to gaze up at the gold-and-pink-splashed sky. “I’m glad I came.”
A thrill of satisfaction ran through her. She had made Raul happy, even though he hadn’t wanted to come on this trip. She took a celebratory swig of cocktail and coughed.
“This stuff has a powerful kick,” Raul said with a nod. “I think I’m a little drunk.”
“As long as you don’t have a hangover tomorrow, that might be a good thing. It will relax your muscles so you aren’t as sore in the morning,” she said.
“Relaxed, yes! That was the purpose of this expedition.” Raul lifted his cup in a toast. “We have accomplished our goal.”
There was an undercurrent in his words that she couldn’t interpret. “I think that might be a contradiction,” she said. “Striving for the goal of relaxation doesn’t sound restful.”
“When you’ve forgotten how to have fun, you have to work at it.” Raul frowned into his cup. “I’m good at working.”
He was clearly drunk.
“You’re good at climbing too,” Erica said. “Which means you’re good at fun.” Her logic might not be quite right, because she was also a bit tipsy, but she wanted to wipe away his frown.
He sighed. “I used to be a professional at having a good time. Gabriel and I knew every dive bar within a ten-mile radius of Castillo Draconago. Sometimes we’d ride our horses to a bar, get roaring drunk, and barely be able to stay in the saddle on our way home. In fact, we both fell off a few times, but we were so relaxed that we didn’t break anything.” Raul’s smile of reminiscence softened the angles of his face.
According to the paparazzi photos, he had also dated a lot of beautiful women, escorting them on various red carpets, frolicking on yachts, cheering at sports championships, and displaying them on a variety of other occasions. She scowled at the view.
He looked devastatingly handsome in a tuxedo, although the pictures of him in a bathing suit that showed off the carved muscles of his bare chest and abs weren’t bad either. Especially the ones that displayed the dragon tattoo curling up his rib cage. Funny that she was remembering that now.
“There are quite a few dive bars around the military base,” she said to get her mind off his abs. “Although I never rode my horse to any of them, mostly because I don’t have a horse.”
“Good reason.” Raul’s smile vanished. “Gabri and I should have stuck to the bars here. Or ridden horses in Barcelona.”
“Horses in Barcelona?” Then it hit her. That was where Gabriel had been kidnapped.Mierda!She should have kept her mouth shut.
“The last time we had fun together,” Raul said, his face like granite.
Change the subject!“You must be very happy about his wedding.”
“Quinn saved him,” Raul said before he took a gulp of his cocktail. “I threw him to the wolves.”
She didn’t comment because she had no idea what to say to that.
“The fucking kidnappers wanted me,” Raul said. “But Gabri told them he was the prince. And I let him because the prince has a duty to Caleva to hold himself back from danger. I kept my mouth shut while they dragged him into a van and took him away to cut off his ear.”
Everyone in Caleva knew the story of Gabriel’s kidnapping, but not the details. Not this terrible revelation.
“I—you didn’t know they would cut off his ear,” she offered in cold comfort. “The kidnappers are to blame, not you.”
He turned a bleak gaze to her. “He stopped playing the guitar because he thought he couldn’t hear the music correctly any longer.Hostia,at one point, I was afraid he would commit suicide.”
She shouldn’t be hearing this. He would regret telling her in the morning, when he was sober. But while her heart broke for him, she was also flattered that he would trust her with his secret.
“But he didn’t, and now he’s marrying the love of his life,” she said. Such an outwardly mismatched couple, Quinn and Gabriel, yet it was clear they adored each other. You could almost bask in the warmth of their love when they were together. “He’s also playing his guitar all over the world, not to mention starting DragonFest, which is a huge success.”
