Until Noon

Until Noon

Desiree Holt
& Cerise DeLand

Book 4 in the Nemesis series.

Rebuilding her career, the last thing Pilar wants to see is her hot one-night stand

picking his way across the crime scene, lust and recognition heavy in his eyes. Pilar knows it’s imperative that she maintain a professional distance—but that would be a lot easier to do if she could forget the way his hands felt on her skin, or remember her mystery lover’s name.

Raul is in Montserrat to solve a murder. The last thing he expects is the woman who

has been monopolizing his dreams. Though she slipped away without a word, Pilar left

a scorching impression that no woman has come close to eclipsing. But between the

Russian mafia, an unsolved murder and millions of Euros of oil in play, Raul can’t

afford to be distracted. Still, he’s never turned away from a challenge—and Pilar is nothing if not challenging, in bed and out. Raul isn’t about to let her walk out again.

A Romantica®
erotic romance
from Ellora’s Cave

UNTIL NOON

Desiree Holt & Cerise DeLand

Desiree Holt & Cerise DeLand

Chapter One

Montserrat, Spain

Raul Cordona eased up on the gas pedal of his rental to climb the winding road to

the monastery near the summit of the mountain. He had visited this famous site as a

boy twice, once with his class and the last time with his mother. Remembering how

she’d gasped in delight when she’d entered the sanctuary, he smiled. He loved the

interior of the church, gilded with gold leaf that blinded the eyes. Inside, he always felt at peace.

Today he would feel none. True, Raul had been surprised by the phone call from

his boss Adam Malloy in Texas, asking him to end his vacation and seek clues to the

death of one of his friends. Adam was like all the other principals in the security firm of Nemesis—they respected their employees’ downtime and Raul had just helped finish a

case with two other associates. He deserved a break. But he understood Adam’s

concern.

Adam had told him the regional Catalan police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, had been

called to the scene. They suspected his friend’s death on this jagged mountainside

might not have been an accident. Raul was not only within driving distance of the

monastery just outside of Barcelona but was also an expert in homicide detection. As a former detective for Houston PD, Raul had seen scores of murders, analyzed them and

occasionally unraveled others’ plans for it. He’d even stopped one Mexican drug cartel henchman from killing his own
jefe
.

He pulled his SUV into the parking lot, killed the engine and allowed himself a

second to appreciate the stark beauty of the serrated mountains that spilled thousands of feet down to the rolling plain leading to the coast and Barcelona. Buttoning up his jacket, he noted one car surrounded by police tape. The victim’s perhaps? One

SmartCar stood in the last space to the right. The only other vehicles were four police cars and an ambulance parked at odd angles. Scanning the ridge of the mountain, he

saw a few people in police uniforms and got out of his car.

A brisk wind blew, chilling him to the bone. He hurried up the sidewalk, past the

candy factory, the souvenir shop and the church. No tourists wandered about, most

likely sent home by the police. At the end of the walkway, a policewoman stopped him

to ask for credentials.

He dug from his wallet his employee card for Nemesis but told her that her boss,

Homicide Detective Enrique Petron, had put his name on the list of those to be admitted to the cordoned-off area. She didn’t bother to check any paperwork, just waved him

toward a rock-strewn path.

4

Until Noon

He hurried on. Atop one ridge uniformed men stood in groups, talking. Another

man took pictures. A group of emergency medical techs stood on a different outcrop,

conferring, holding a stretcher between them. Climbing became more difficult with

each step. More weeds and stones obscured the path. Terrain like this made Raul glad

he’d worn hiking boots.

At the top of the ridge, the two stretcher-bearers saw him and pointed him down

the opposite side. He nodded in thanks and took the steep drop at a more careful pace.

At a small clearing, he paused. Below, three men assessed the position of the dead body at their feet. One of them was his boyhood friend Enrique Patron, the Spanish police

detective and the other two looked like they might be his assistants, Raul took one

good, hard look at the dead man. Sprawled in an ungainly pose, he looked like a rag

doll who’d been throw over the edge. Raul’s gut wrenched, the man’s broken corpse

tearing his sense of justice that a human being had died so violently.

His gaze caught on a sharp movement to the far right of the body. An attractive

brunette scrambled down the rock-strewn path, her long curls glistening in the dying

rays of the sun. The shimmer blinded him but revived visions of that same chocolate-

and-caramel-colored hair drifting through his fingers, sliding over his skin, teasing his cock.

No. Folly to think that she would be here.

He stepped forward, teetered on a slippery stone, then righted himself to stare at

her.

She picked her way down the gulley beneath the funicular with a catlike grace that

knocked his breath from his chest. He squinted. She couldn’t be his phantom lover. Yet she seemed the right height. Five-five or five-six. The right build. Ample breasts. Lithe figure. One that fit his own with a precision that had shocked him the one night he had enjoyed her over and over again. He wanted to shout at her, make her turn to face him so that he could consign her to his long list of women who never turned out to be his long-lost lover.

But she paused, tipped her head. As if she heard his unspoken demand, she spun

and he had to grab a tree branch to keep from yelling at her. Her perfect oval face, her luminous dark eyes, her lips were all the right shape, color, size.
No. This can’t be.
His cock hardened, lengthened. Oh yes, every part of his body knew this woman.

Remembered the hours she had surrendered every bit of herself to him. Recalled how

he fit inside her hot creamy folds. In his thirty-four years, only this woman had made him instantly hard—and instantly brain dead. Stifling a curse of frustration, Raul

clenched his fist.

After one night with her—and two years hungering for her—this attraction should not
occur, Cordona.
She stepped out of your bed and your life without a word. Not goodbye. Not
thanks. Not even a good “fuck you”.

5

Desiree Holt & Cerise DeLand

But of course, he had fucked her. Thoroughly. Three times in the space of the few

hours when she had graced his bed in Brussels. And she had loved every mind-blowing

second of their encounter.

Just like I did.

“
Señor
Cordona,” Enrique Petron called to him from the bottom of the crevasse where the body of Tony Graham lay like a mangled heap of trash. “
Por favor.
” He beckoned as if the two of them had only recently become acquainted. “Come here, let

me ask you your opinion about this.”

Enrique and Raul had known each other for two decades, vacationed together

often, even partied with women together back in their teens when they were young,
loco
and stupid. They had met at school in Switzerland. A finishing secondary school for

young men, the Citadel of Bern was an elite private institution catering to the brightest offspring of Europe’s diplomatic corps. Raul’s father had been the
charge d’affair
in the Argentine Embassy to the Vatican, while Enrique’s served in the similar post for the

Spanish Embassy. Both older men were security experts, married to American women

and their sons had followed in their footsteps. Enrique was the senior detective on the regional Guardia Civil police force, while Raul had left his job three years ago in Houston homicide to track international killers for one of the most renowned global

security firms, Nemesis.

Flipping up his collar against the biting wind, Raul made his way down from the

craggy trail and praised his own foresight to wear warm clothes. The temperature at

this elevation could be twenty or more degrees cooler than along the sunny coast. When Adam Molloy had called him two hours ago from Houston to tell him about this death,

Raul had grabbed all his clothes and donned layers to keep him toasty.

“Tony Graham is…
was
a good friend of mine,” Adam had told Raul. “I just got a call from his wife that a few tourists spotted Tony’s body on a hillside in Montserrat.

We don’t know much yet but I’d like you to take a look at this for me. Nothing official for Nemesis. And I know you’re on vacation after that Paris job with Lane and Isabella, but you are the closest of our operatives to the scene.”

Raul had jumped on the opportunity to help Adam. Over the past few years, Adam

and his wife Nicole, one of the partners in Nemesis, had pulled quite a few strings for Raul. So before he hung up, he had asked Adam to send any info on Graham to his

phone. “A bio. Employment records. Anything you can tell me about his character. And

by the way, any idea what he was doing up in Montserrat in October?”

“Not much. His wife, Serena, just told me that he was on a job there in Barcelona.

Tony is a private investigator. Owns his own company headquartered in London. Two

partners. That’s all I know for now, but I’ll send over whatever I can get my hands on.

Thanks for this.”

“
No problemo.
” Minutes later, Raul had checked out of his beachside hotel north on the Costa Brava and sped south in his rental car to the mountaintop tourist attraction.

6

Until Noon

The tiny town approximately thirty miles outside
Barcelona had only a thousand residents. But high on the treacherous side of the serrated mountains, monks operated a one-thousand-year-old church, a school for boys, a printing press, a candy

manufacturing plant and one of the finest, highest net-worth art galleries in Europe.

Now in the thirty-degree chill factor, Raul shivered as he descended the slope.

Feigning indifference to the brunette who spoke with one of Enrique’s team, Raul

wondered what in god’s name she did for a living that she was allowed to poke around

at the crime scene of a murdered private investigator.
So much for bedding women whose
name you do not know.

At Raul’s approach, Enrique walked over to Graham’s body. When he spoke, his

voice was at a low pitch. “Notice anything odd about his position?”

“The head is turned at an odd angle.”

“
Sí.
That’s what I thought too. Even though he fell the distance from the top up there of say forty or fifty feet, would he die?”

“The terrain on this side is not as steep as on the north face. From up there, he

would have rolled. I think that means he would break a few bones. But a man so young

and fit could stop his fall. Don’t you agree?”

Enrique huffed, bending to examine the body and clucking his tongue.

Raul stole another glimpse of the woman who fascinated him.
Dios
, she was

luscious.

Enrique rose. “
Sí, sí.
I agree. How then would he break his neck that severely?”

“Where is your forensic analyst?” Raul asked, angry at himself for allowing the

woman to steal his attentions from business. “What does he say?”

Enrique bit off a Spanish epithet. “Not here yet. Still in bed with his new wife.”