Chapter 3 #2
She led the way through the trees to the creek, walking a little way upstream to a quiet pool above a small waterfall. As she threaded through the rocks along the stream’s edge, fish flashed away in the cold, clear water.
Raul came up beside her and held out his hand for the bucket. “Do you trust me to fill it with water correctly?” His tone held an edge.
“Of course, Senor ,” she said, to remind him that she was just doing her job by taking care of him.
His jaw tightened, and his nostrils flared as he exhaled. “Erica, I would prefer that you not treat me like a prince for the duration of this expedition. I am just Raul. I will carry my full share of the equipment and the work.”
Just Raul with two dedicated bodyguards. She almost snorted.
“With all due respect, Raul ”—she emphasized his name ever so slightly—“I am your guide, which means that I am responsible for your well-being. That includes making sure you enjoy the hiking and are comfortable while camping.” And survive the rock climbing, God help me.
“I am treating you like any other person I might be hired to escort.”
“So that’s why I have the giant tent, cushy sleeping bag, and extra-thick sleeping pad, which required you to carry my tent poles?” Raul said.
“Yes.” She gave him a teasing smile. “To make you feel better, if it rains, we’ll stow all our belongings in your vestibule because it has the most room.”
He raked the fingers of one hand through his thick hair, leaving it temptingly rumpled. “This is supposed to be a vacation for me, time away from being the Prince of Caleva. If I am to relax, you need to stop giving me special privileges.”
“Oh.” Now she felt in the wrong. “I’ll do my best.” Within the bounds of safety.
“Don’t look so upset,” Raul said, the angle of his jaw softening into a half smile. “You’re doing a great job, but I would like you to relax a little too.”
“I don’t do relaxing,” she said. “Adrenaline junkie, remember?” And she was on duty.
“That’s fair.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps I could ask you to be more relaxed with me.” There was that insanely compelling smile, and it was directed at her in a way that was oddly intimate.
A little zing of attraction sparkled over her skin. Perfectly understandable and normal. He was a really good-looking man.
“ Bien , I’ll think of you as un tipo normal ,” she said without any truth. How could the prince ever be just a regular guy? He looked like a movie star and held the second most powerful position in her country.
“Muchas gracias,” he said before shaking the bucket open and dipping it in the water.
The stretchy fabric of his shirt outlined the muscles of his back and shoulders as they flexed with his motions. Erica couldn’t tear her gaze away from the impressive display, and a wash of heat surged through her. Not a good reaction. He was way out of her league.
She managed to look away just as he turned from the stream with the dripping bucket. A chime sounded from his pocket. He handed the bucket to her before he pulled out his satellite phone, tapping at the screen with his thumb.
“It’s from Yvette,” he said, going still as he read the message.
Erica’s attention was drawn to the slashing angles of his face, the straight blade of his nose, the winged eyebrows, and the sharp jaw.
He looked like a Dragón, for sure. However, Raul’s charisma was polished and warm, while His Majesty’s was more aloof and authoritative.
That wasn’t surprising, given their different roles.
But when Raul wasn’t being the perfect prince, Erica caught something darker underneath the facade. Like he didn’t sleep well at night. She shook her head at the thought.
“It seems as though a fair number of people would know about my trip here because of the special permissions necessary to visit this area of the mountains right now,” Raul said.
“The park service itself, of course. The local police, just in case. The search and rescue team.” His lip curled a little in self-mockery.
“I guess they don’t trust my rock-climbing skills.
Beyond that, the Centro de Investigación del Dragón de Caleva had to clear the expedition first. Evidently, if dragons had been nesting near the trail, we would have been required to take a different route.
Nor has anyone official been camping there. ”
“That certainly doesn’t narrow down who might have warned our wayward camper to leave due to our presence,” Erica said, starting toward the campsite. “Well, whoever was here is gone now, and evidently no nesting dragons were bothered.”
“I guess Calevan dragons can’t read signs,” Raul said with a slanting smile. “They don’t know they’re supposed to nest in that meadow.”
Erica returned a quick smile, but she wondered. Maybe the trespassing camper had scared the dragons away from their ideal nesting ground. That pissed her off.
“Is your assistant going to report the abandoned campsite to the guardas forestales ?” Erica asked.
“Yes,” Raul said, turning his head to study her for a moment. “You’re concerned about something.”
“That meadow is perfect for the dragons’ nests, and there aren’t many as appealing in this area of the mountains,” Erica said. “It’s strange that no dragon is using it when we’re right in the middle of mating season.”
“So what are you thinking?” he asked, coming to a stop.
Having those intense blue eyes boring into her made her thoughts scatter. “I don’t know exactly. It just worries me.”
“We’ll see what the forest rangers discover,” Raul said, gesturing for her to precede him where the path narrowed.
Back at camp, she made sure to put Raul to work filtering and boiling water over one of the two camp stoves while Pascal worked at the other one.
“Beef stroganoff, pork and rice, Texas chili, or chicken with quinoa and veggies?” Erica held up the pouches of freeze-dried food for Raul to see.
He eyed the offerings with mock horror. “No filet mignon and lobster tails?”
“I’ll go catch some crayfish in the stream,” she said. “But we don’t have butter to dip them in.”
He gave a crack of laughter. “I’ll take the chili, por favor .”
She handed him the pouch. “Good choice, although all of these are pretty tasty for backpacking meals.”
“You chose them?” he asked.
“No, your chef taste-tested them all. These were her top four.” Erica held up the remaining three. Mikel’s people had also checked every package to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. It was tougher to be a prince than people realized.
After the hot water was mixed in and allowed to heat and hydrate the food, Erica beckoned Raul to follow her. She had laid cushions on top of a couple of boulders near the edge of their site. “You can sit here and enjoy the view while you eat,” she said.
Dario and Pascal had declined her invitation to sit with the prince. They were concerned about potential trespassers and were patrolling the perimeter of the campsite.
“What do you think of the chili?” she asked.
He swallowed. “It’s not bad at all, although it would be better washed down with beer.”
“Beer is heavy and not essential like water.” Although she knew plenty of backpackers who hauled it along anyway.
“Maybe we could have a case air-dropped in,” he said with a grin. “Along with some butter for the crayfish.”
“I thought you wanted to get away from it all,” Erica said.
His smile vanished. “My father wanted me to get away from it all,” he muttered before shaking his head. “Forget I said that.”
“Did you say something? I didn’t hear it.” But she couldn’t forget that revealing flash of honesty. The prince didn’t want to be here. Why not?
He polished off the last of his chili and pinched the pouch closed. “What about dessert? Some crème br?lée perhaps?”
“Tonight’s menú de postres offers double chocolate chunk or cookies-and-cream protein bars, washed down with agua de las montanas ,” she said in her best imitation of a snooty waiter.
In truth, they all needed extra protein to keep their strength up for the hiking and climbing.
She held out her hand for his pouch and fork. “I’ll be right back.”
He surprised her by not objecting to her waiting on him. She placed their pouches in the trash bag, dropped their utensils into a bucket to wash later, and retrieved a selection of palace-made protein bars from her backpack.
When she returned to the prince, the setting sun painted the sky peach and pink with matching colors streaked across the distant ocean.
The fading light turned Raul’s sculpted profile golden where he perched beside her.
Another shiver of attraction shook her. He took a protein bar without even looking at the label and ripped the wrapping open before he blew out a long breath.
“I’m probably biased, but I think Caleva is the most beautiful country in the world. ”
“I’d be shocked if you weren’t biased,” Erica said. “However, I share your opinion.”
It also had the best-looking prince in the world. But she needed to stop thinking about him that way.
He chewed and drank in silence while gazing at the view, and it struck her that everything he surveyed was his.
She took in the expanse of land that included swaths of forest, checkerboard fields, crisscrossing roads, the buildings and houses of Ciudad Militar, and the huge U.S.
military base, where lights were beginning to wink on.
Okay, the land the military base stood on was leased to the United States, but it still belonged to Caleva.
What a heavy burden to be responsible for all this someday. The day, in fact, that his father died, which seemed especially unfair. She didn’t envy the prince.
He crumpled the empty plastic wrap in his long fingers. “I wonder what Ricardo el Rojo thought when he first caught sight of Caleva rising out of the sea.”
“Probably something along the lines of ‘ Gracias a Dios, there’s dry land at last!’” Erica said. “Wasn’t his ship hit by a storm and damaged pretty badly?”
Raul shot her a sardonic glance. “ Bien , what did he think when he came ashore and found giant frilled lizards, fields of red lilies, and beaches that glittered like diamonds in the sunlight?”
“Oh, you want poetic. I’m not good at that.
” She relented. “One time when I was sitting right here, a Calevan dragon climbed up on the boulder where you’re sitting, flared its frill at me, and then settled down for a nap.
The creature was about four feet long and the brightest green I have ever seen. ”
“You are a dragon whisperer, then,” Raul said.
“I had been sitting still for a while, so I guess it decided I was not a threat.” She had been trying to disentangle her grief at her father’s death from her anger that he could have prevented it, a task she hadn’t succeeded in even now.
When the dragon had slithered up, she realized that her shoulders were curled in as though to shield her breaking heart while tears ran down her face and soaked her trousers.
She had straightened up very slowly to avoid disturbing the beautiful creature.
“It hung out for quite a while. There was something magical about its trust in me.”
She had almost believed it was a sign sent by her father. Maybe an apology…except her father never apologized.
“Then you do appreciate the beauty in the natural world,” Raul said.
“Of course. I also enjoy pitting myself against it. Living off only what I carry on my back.” She shrugged. “I like the way it challenges me.”
When he wasn’t working, her father had loved to backpack, disappearing into the wild for days at a time while Erica stayed at home with her mother, bored to tears.
When she got old enough to understand where her father was going, she had begged him to take her too.
He had refused, saying he didn’t want to be slowed down by a girl.
That had walloped her in the gut, since she couldn’t change who she was.
But this was her only chance to prove herself worthy of his love—because she was terrified of the ocean he adored.
No matter how hard she fought it, fear seized her anytime she tried to force herself into the dark, dangerous depths of the sea.
Her father looked at her in disgust when she panicked and had to be pulled out of the water.
But she wouldn’t admit defeat in her quest to win his admiration.
She joined the school track team and trained like a fiend.
Some days, she was so sore and exhausted that she could barely climb into the bathtub to soak her screaming muscles.
When she won three events in the regional championships, she presented the medals to her father and waited for the congratulations, which didn’t come.
He just nodded, but he took her on his next backpacking trip.
The triumph had made her feet barely touch the trail as they hiked.
“Do you want to go back to the old days of living off the land?” Raul asked.
“ Caramba, no! I like civilization, but sometimes you need to be reminded that it’s a fragile shield,” she said. “Given time, nature would take it all back from us, you know.”
“Ah, you’re preparing for the apocalypse.” There was a gleam of teasing in Raul’s blue eyes.
No, she’d been trying desperately to gain her father’s approval. “If the apocalypse comes, I figure Caleva is pretty well-positioned to survive it,” she said.
“Or we’ll get bombed into oblivion because someone will want to wipe out the U.S. military base here.” Raul’s tone was cynical.
“There is always that possibility,” she agreed.
“ Ay, I am not good company tonight.” Raul shook his head. “Perhaps it is time to go to bed.”
He must be more fatigued by the hike than he let on. Maybe that explained his change of mood. “Tomorrow, we’ll get an early start so you can make your first climb.”
“I look forward to that.” He stood and brushed off his trousers before he gave her a regal nod. “Thank you for finding this beautiful campsite. I have enjoyed the view. And the company.”
She almost stood up to curtsy because he had transformed back into the prince. Funny that she preferred him as un tipo normal .