For the Love of His Life (8 page)

Veronica didn’t see Raul right away until she glanced toward the deck and saw him sitting at the same table as yesterday morning.

“Hi, I see you’re taking my advice and eating before we run,” she said conversationally as she leaned against the railing. She took a sip of the coffee she’d poured on the way by the pot.

He nodded. “Yes and I already had two cups of coffee. I’m going to need time to digest this before I can run.” He looked at her flour-dusted apron over her jeans. “You’re not ready yet, are you?”

She shook her head, smiling, “No. I just put the apple pies in the oven but I’ve got to make the glacé for the blueberry pies. By the time the apples are done, I’ll have the glacé made so I can assemble them and put the blueberry ones in the fridge. Then I’ll change and we can go.”

“So you figure about an hour or so?”

“Yup.”

“Good. I still remember most of what the personal trainer taught me to do when I was bulking up to play the secret agent in
Avenge
. I’m going to get started on a regimen of sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks and twisting lunges. I don’t want to over-do it today, but I’ve got to start somewhere. Then after we run I’ll do some stretching, swimming with you, then yoga to cool down.”

“Wow! You might not be awake when Jake comes to drive you into town to hit the bars. Maybe you’d better leave a note on the door telling him to knock extra-loudly.”

“Ha-ha. We’ll see. I may just cut down to only alternate nights in town, since I’ll be getting up so early in the day. Or come home earlier. But I’ve got a reputation to maintain and even up here, people notice I’m out in public having a good time. There were a couple of pictures of me in this week’s on-line
People
, showing me playing pool at the Crossroads. The tag-line said I was getting into the spirit of the north woods to get ready for my next big hit. It’s nice to know that I’m still newsworthy, though I wonder how much my agent had to pay to get someone to fly up here to take some pictures.”

Veronica shrugged. “Well I’ve got those pies to finish and you’ve got some exercising to do. See you out back by the lake in about an hour, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll be all hydrated and ready to go.”

He watched her as she walked back into the kitchen.

What a nice ass. It’s going to be a pleasure running behind that, as long as I can keep Big Rod from poking out the bottom of my running shorts. Hmm, I wonder what she would do if that happened?
He spent a few minutes imagining that scene before deciding he needed to think about something else.

He got up and headed out the door to walk quickly back to his cabin, having the one smoke he was allowing himself to have before running. He changed into running shorts and a tee-shirt, taking a second to admire himself in the mirror. Then he began to do the endless repetitions that the sadistic trainer had insisted he memorize. He’d written them down so he didn’t miss any muscle groups.

* * * *

An hour later, Veronica dropped a couple of towels on the rock she used as her table out by the lake. She leaned forward to get all of her hair over her head, then put it into the elastic to keep it out of her eyes while she ran. She didn’t hear Raul coming up behind her, but she felt him watching her as she quickly straightened up and turned to face him.

Raul was drinking from a water bottle as he rounded the tree that had blocked his view of his running partner until he was almost on top of her.

¡Dios mio!
Holy fucking shit! Woman if you don’t shop bending over in front of me, I’m not going to be responsible for what happens!
He cleared his throat to make speech possible. “Let me finish this bottle of water and we can get started.”

Veronica stared at him, nodding wordlessly.
Oh my God! He’s so much better-looking in person than he is on the big screen! No wonder they have him taking his clothes off in so many movies! He’s got great legs and a mighty impressive package in the front of those shorts! He’s all sweaty with his shirt sticking to him already. And his shoulders are so wide…where did those muscular arms come from? Lifting heavy beer glasses? I wonder if I can get him to run in front of me for a while, so I can see if his ass is as nice as the front of him.

Veronica cleared her throat. “Yeah, sure. You don’t look like you need to do any stretching before we head out and I was just finishing mine.”

Raul gulped the last of his water, capped the bottle and tossed it near the rock that held the towels.

“Let’s do this.”

Veronica smiled at him and began to trot along the path that led to the cabins. Raul followed her closely, but was so busy studying the rounded globes of her butt that he almost missed her turning off onto a trail he hadn’t noticed before. She picked up speed as they ran down an incline, and Raul fought against his body’s inclination to want to stop this foolishness and have a smoke. Gamely, he kept up with her for the entire run, slowing down and speeding up when she did.

When they emerged almost two hours later and slowed down to walk back to the lakeshore, Raul had to stop a few times to cough violently and spit onto the ground. He panted, his face dark red and his legs trembling visibly.

“Are you alright?” Veronica asked. “I tried to take it easy for your first day out, but today’s Friday and I usually do my longer runs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

Raul nodded before being overcome by another fit of coughing. He waved towards the water, “I’ll feel better once I’ve cooled down. Last one in is a rotten egg!”

They raced to the water and threw themselves into it. Veronica was prepared for how cold it was going to feel. Raul was not. He felt as though he’d been thrown into a bucket of ice water. He surfaced, coughing and choking.

“Holy shit! That’s freezing! How do you swim when your muscles contract like that?”

Veronica turned back and smiled as she swam a few strokes away from him at a leisurely pace.

“You get used to it. I actually prefer when it’s this cold. It cools me down quicker than later in the season when it’s as warm as bathwater.”

Raul shrugged his shoulders a few times then dove into the water again, to surface next to her.

“The only water I’ve ever swum in besides pools is the Pacific off the coast of California, and the Caribbean. Both of them are a hell of a lot warmer than this! It feels like you dump ice cubes in here!” He looked around suspiciously. “You don’t, do you?”

“Nope. But the ice only starts to melt off the lake in March and doesn’t really disappear entirely until April. It’s only mid-May, so it hasn’t had a chance to warm up yet.”

“I’ll bet the fish line up to chomp on your lines, just so you’ll pull them out so they can warm up.” He shivered.”Being thrown into a frying pan sounds really good about now.”

Veronica floated on her back. “Yeah, but there’s the whole beheading and boning thing first. I don’t think you’d enjoy that so much.”

If I wasn’t so damn cold Big Rod would be glad to bone you, honey! Jesus Christ, it’s fucking cold! I think my balls have crawled up so far my sac is empty! I hope my boys remember the way back down!

Raul gave up trying to keep up with Veronica after a few minutes and retreated to the relative warmth of the shore where the light breeze made every hair on his body stand on end. He grabbed one of the towels and vigorously dried himself off while he watched her doing laps back and forth.

He sat on the rock and waited for her to be done, then wordlessly handed her the other towel when she got out of the water.

Her nipples look like they could cut glass. Shorts so wet they’re clinging to her mons…I wonder if she enjoys the feeling of the seam rubbing on her clit like it looks like it’s doing? If she just walked over here I’m at the right height to latch my mouth onto her…

“Too cold for you, huh?” Veronica teased while she pulled off the elastic and dried her hair.

Raul was hit with a sudden urge to stick his hands into that mass of silvery-gold curls. He wanted to bury his face in it. He’d recovered enough to want to bury more of himself in her, but he tried to get his mind off of that enough to talk to her.

“I suppose I’ll get used to it…maybe,” he began. “But I’m really looking forward to a long, hot shower right about now.”

She nodded. “Not only will it warm you up, but it will make your tired muscles feel good. You just gave them a really good workout, so you need to reward them.”

“I intend to.” He thought of other ways to reward his body and pushed his towel back onto his lap lest she notice the increased tightness in his damp shorts.

Veronica sat on a rock close to him while she combed her fingers through her hair to get rid of the snarls.

“How are you going to spend the rest of the day? Napping to get you ready for tonight’s partying?”

Raul tried not to glare at the relatively innocuous question, but he couldn’t keep his voice from sounding sharp.

“Uh, no. I’ve got a lot of reading and memorizing to do before Jared gets here. You have no idea how long it takes practicing to be able to say someone else’s words and make them convincingly sound like they were your idea.”

Her eyebrows rose at the acerbic tone in his voice, but one look at his exhausted demeanor made her chalk his attitude up to being tired after unaccustomed physical activity.

“Do you have the script as an actual manuscript? Or is it loaded onto some kind of e-reader?”

“It’s a manuscript…wait..what? You’ve heard of e-readers up here? What use would they be when you can’t get Wi-Fi anywhere?”

“We get it in the dining room, remember? And once you have books loaded onto them you don’t need Wi-Fi until you need more books.” She gave him a deliberately innocent look, batting her eyelashes. “Gosh, Mr. Big-Name Movie Star. Even us hicks up here know it’s the twenty-first century. We may choose to live life out of the fast lane, but we know it’s there. Why, most of us are even aware that Amazon isn’t just the name of a tribe of feminists who cut off one boob so they could be better archers.”

Raul rolled his eyes. “Okay. Truce. I need to get to that hot shower.”

Veronica got up. “Be sure to let me know what you think of the blueberry glacé pie. Some people say it’s one of my best.”

“So I won’t be seeing you again until tomorrow morning?”

“No. I have to head into town to dive into the books of that new client I interviewed yesterday. That’s going to take hours from what he said.” She began to walk back up toward the main building, “So you go do your work and I’ll do mine. See you in the morning, bright and early.”

Raul groaned. “These early mornings are going to kill me.”

“Not if you stop with the late nights.”

“The only time I really like to see early morning is if I’m still awake from the night before.”

Veronica shrugged. “Well, Mr. Movie Star, welcome to the reality that the rest of us have to live in. It’s how we pay the bills. Fortunately for you, you are only visiting here. Hopefully it won’t be that bad for you. Then you can head back to La-La land and resume your
normal
life.”

Raul was trying to think up a retort when she strode rapidly back up the path to the parking lot.

He got up and headed in the opposite direction to return to his cabin for the much-anticipated hot shower.

Chapter Seven

“Hey Tom, hit me with another Reverend Jack twins and coke.”

Raul had already had four doubles in less than four hours when he waved at the bartender for another one. Since it was close to midnight on a Saturday night, he knew it would take a few minutes, so he looked around at the crowd working hard at relaxing after their work week. There were some tourists he didn’t recognize, but he’d been told the real hordes of them didn’t usually arrive until late in June. He watched the locals, comfortable in their favorite watering hole, chatting with one another over the loud music of the jukebox. Some young men were shooting pool and had called to him twice already to come join them as he had before. But Raul uncharacteristically shook his head and went back to pretending his butt was glued to the barstool.

When I waved my arm that hurt. When I turn my body to look around my sides hurt. My butt hurts just sitting down! My glutes and quads hurt every time I get up to pee. It even hurts to breathe. That blonde bitch is trying to kill me! She said today’s run was shorter, but it sure didn’t seem like it!

Raul looked up morosely as the bartender put his fifth double onto a napkin in front of him, removing the empty glass and shaking his head.

“Rough day?” he asked, playing the sympathetic bartender role.

Raul sighed loudly to be heard over the music from the jukebox and nodded. “I started doing some training to get ready for the movie I’m up here to shoot. I figure it will take me about a month to get into bad-ass shape…that’s all it took me the last time.”

Tom grinned, “When you were in
Avenge Tastes Sweet
? You were really ripped then. That was a great flick. But I heard right after it that you were going to do a sequel. It’s been almost four years. Are you?”