He looked down at me.
“Yes,” he said dully.
My lips parted in a silent, heartsick gasp. Numbly, I let him go.
“So that is your big secret. The thing I expected from the beginning.” I tried to laugh, wiping my eyes. “How very boring.”
“It’s not like that.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, he scowled at me. “You think so little of my loyalty, even after all the time we’ve spent together?”
“But you said you love her,” I whispered. “You’ve never said that to me. Not once.”
I heard his intake of breath. “It’s not like that,” he repeated, setting his jaw. “Theresa is not my mistress.”
“Then what?” I choked out. “What secret could you possibly be keeping, that would hurt me worse than that?”
“I protect the people I love. At any cost.” His voice was bleak. I looked at him sharply, and saw the vulnerability in his eyes. The yearning. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “How I wish I could tell you everything.”
Our eyes locked. Held. I opened my lips to plead—
He shook his head and rose to his feet. The yearning in his expression shuttered. His face returned to the handsome mask I knew so well—powerful, ruthless and cold.
“Come,” he said. “Our time is short.”
After a silent luncheon on the lovely terrace of the parador, we walked through the gardens of the Alhambra, with their flowers and trees and wide lush pools. As beautiful and varied and wide as they were, they didn’t hold a candle to the gardens of Rohares, in my opinion. Though perhaps I was biased. Because the castle had become my home.
Alejandro held my hand tightly as we walked. I didn’t even try to resist. The truth was I wanted the comfort of his hand. It felt warm and strong in mine. Was it wrong of me to still want to believe? To trust him?
Yes. I was a fool. Any of the women’s magazines would have called me an idiot for not already being on my way to a lawyer’s office. And yet...
We met a guide who took us on a private tour. We walked through the graceful arcades of the Alhambra complex, through the lush terraces with their views of Granada in the valley below, past the blue pools hedged by myrtle, reflecting the wide blue sky. But in spite of the fact that I’d dreamed of visiting the Alhambra all my life, I barely noticed the beauty. As we walked through cavernous rooms, decorated with tile and geometric patterns and arabesques of Arabic calligraphy in plaster, beneath jaw-dropping ceilings soaring high above, of the sun and stars, my mind was scrambling, trying to put the clues together.
Why would Alejandro need to protect Maurine and Miguel? What could the secret be?
We had our picture taken together in the famous stone Court of the Lions, from the fourteenth century.
“No,” the guide laughed. “You are newlyweds. Stand closer.”
And so Alejandro put his arm around me. I looked up at his face, and again, I saw the yearning in his eyes. The yearning that matched my own.
“¡Perfecto! Now you look like lovers!”
As we left the Alhambra, I turned back to look at it one last time. It had been neglected over the years, vandalized, nearly blown up by Napoleon’s soldiers. But after all that, it stood tall and proud over Granada. Unbowed. Unbroken. And so beautiful now. So loved.
“We don’t need to see any more,” I whispered over the ache in my throat.
“You’re here. See it all.” Silently, Alejandro drove us down the mountain to the city. We visited the Capilla Real, the royal chapel, getting special permission for a private tour that took us immediately past the long line of tourists outside, past the gypsies begging on the streets and musicians busking along the crowded edges.
In the dark, quiet interior of the enormous stone chapel, I saw the tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella, who together had practically ruled the medieval world in their day, even before they’d sent Columbus in ships to the New World. Together, they’d finally ended seven hundred years of Moorish rule, laying siege to Granada and driving the last sultan, called Boabdil, from the city.
It was said that the reason he gave up without a fight was to prevent the destruction of his beloved Alhambra. And so he spent the rest of his life mocked, and in poverty, a sultan without a throne....
Alejandro came to stand beside me in the cool shadows of the royal crypt. “What are you thinking?”
I looked at him. “How loving the wrong thing—or the wrong person—can ruin your life,” I whispered.
“Sí,” he said quietly. He turned away. “Come. This place leaves me cold.”
Outside the echoes of the shadow-filled chapel, we were hit by the brilliant Spanish sunlight, the noise of tourists laughing and talking, the distant sound of music. Life.