By Request Collection Part 3. Robyn Donald

to rest.

      He knocked again and turned the handle. Perhaps she’d fallen asleep on the bed. Despite his concern, Raul’s mouth kicked up at the idea of Luisa, tousled and soft from sleep.

      He stepped in and slammed to a stop.

      Time splintered.

      He stood frozen, bile rising as his numb mind absorbed details. Déjà vu smote him and he reeled.

       Yet this was worse. Far worse. This was Luisa …

      Luisa and Lukas.

      This clearly was no business meeting but something far more intimate.

      Luisa wore a tight tank top and flirty skirt, her hands curled round Lukas’ shoulders. Lukas, the man he would have trusted with his life! The man he’d trusted with Luisa.

      Lukas held her close in his embrace, arms wrapped possessively round her slim form. Their blond heads were just a kiss apart.

      Raul recalled his wife’s recent coolness, the way she left his bed and tried to distance herself. Had Raul been a coward, ignoring signs he didn’t want to see? Could Luisa have betrayed him as Ana had?

       It felt as if someone had reached in and ripped his heart out.

      Lukas had removed his jacket and tie. His collar was undone. Had Luisa done that? Had she used her nimble fingers to begin undressing him?

      Roaring pain blasted Raul. It battered like a mountain avalanche till he could barely stand upright. It clamped his chest in a vice so tight he couldn’t draw breath.

      An explosion of shattering glass at his feet roused him from sick shock. The couple before him whipped their heads round and noticed him.

      Fiery colour washed Luisa’s face and her hands dropped. Lukas straightened and released her, adjusting his collar.

      Raul’s brain filled with an image he couldn’t thrust away. Of Ana and his father, emerging from a state bedroom after his old man had taken Raul’s visitor on a personal tour. Ana had coloured and looked away. His father had stood straighter, fiddling with his cuffs.

      The beginning of their betrayal.

      Raul breathed deep. With an effort he cleared his whirling thoughts.

       This was Luisa and Lukas. Not Ana and his father.

      His heart thundered and adrenalin pumped in his blood, but sanity prevailed. He forced his stiff legs to move. Ignoring the churning in his belly, he prowled into the room.

      Raul watched Luisa’s bright flush fade and her skin pale to bone-white.

      ‘Luisa.’ His voice sounded unfamiliar.

      ‘Your Highness.’ Lukas hurried into speech. ‘I know this must look—’

      Raul slashed one silencing hand through the air. It was Luisa he needed to talk with.

      ‘But Your Highness … Raul …’

      Raul swung round, focusing on his secretary. Through all the years they’d worked together Lukas had been a stickler for formality, refusing Raul’s suggestion more than once that in private Lukas call him by name.

      Fear churned in Raul’s belly that Lukas should choose this moment to bridge that gap. To put them on equal footing.

      Why? Because he and Luisa …?

      No! Raul refused to let himself think it.

      Yet, like a spectre, the possibility hovered in the recesses of his brain, waiting to swamp him in a moment of weakness.

      ‘Leave us, Lukas.’

      His voice was harsh with shock and a fear greater than anything he’d known.

      Still Lukas didn’t move, but looked to Luisa who stood, fingers threading nervously before her.

      ‘Go, Lukas,’ she whispered. ‘It will be all right.’

      Finally, with lagging steps he left. Raul heard the door click quietly behind him. Yet still Luisa didn’t meet his eyes.

      Anxiety stretched each nerve to breaking point. He clenched his hands, forcing himself to wait till she was ready to talk.

      ‘It’s not what you think.’

      ‘You don’t know what I’m thinking.’ At this moment rational thought was almost beyond him. He was a mass of churning emotions. Only the voice that told him over and over that Luisa was different, was his, kept him sane.

      She lifted her head and met his gaze and the familiar sizzle in his veins eased a fraction of the desperate tension in his body.

      This was his Luisa. He refused to believe the worst.

      ‘Aren’t you going to ask about Lukas?’

      ‘I know you’ll tell me.’ He just prayed he was man enough to hear the truth.

      She paced away, her steps short, her eyes averted as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Fear knotted his brain.

      ‘He was helping me.’

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘He was teaching me to dance.’

      ‘Sorry?’ Raul stared, flummoxed by the unexpected response.

      ‘Teaching me to waltz, ready for the coronation ball.’ Luisa flashed him a challenging look. ‘At home our local dance was a disco in the school hall and I never learnt anything formal.’ She looked at a point over his shoulder. ‘It didn’t matter at our wedding because the country was in mourning and there was no dancing at the reception, but this time …’ She shrugged stiffly. ‘I didn’t want to disgrace you on your big day.’

      Raul frowned. There was something so intimate about the idea of teaching Luisa to waltz. Holding her in his arms and showing her how to move her body with his.

      ‘You could have asked me.’ Surely that was the sort of thing husbands did? He’d have revelled in it.

      What did it say about their marriage that she’d turned to his secretary to help her?

      Colour washed her throat and her mouth pursed. ‘And make it obvious there was another simple thing I couldn’t do? You have no idea how hard it’s been to try to get everything right—the protocol and customs and language—and still I make so many mistakes. Besides—’ she drew a shaky breath ‘—it’s so basic. How embarrassing not even to know how to waltz.’

      She blinked quickly and his heart compressed.

      ‘I don’t care if you can’t dance.’ His voice was rough as he stepped closer.

      ‘But I do. I wanted …’ She chewed her lip.

      ‘You thought anyone would care about your dancing ability? That I’d care? That’s absurd!’ Not after they’d shared so much. More than he’d shared with any other woman.

      ‘Absurd?’ She shook her head and spun away to pace the room again.

      Raul wanted to tug her into his arms but the way she wrapped her arms round her torso and her strained expression told him this wasn’t the time.

      ‘What’s really absurd is marrying someone you don’t know. Giving yourself to someone who’ll never care for you. Can never care for you because he never got over the woman who hurt him years ago.’

      Shock held Raul mute as her words lashed him. He couldn’t credit what he heard. Luisa believed he hadn’t got over Ana?

      ‘That’s not true!’

      He reached for her, took her arm, but she shrugged out of his grasp.

      Anguish lacerated him at her rejection.

      ‘Do you know how it feels knowing I wasn’t your first choice of wife,