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When everyone had a drink in hand, Luis spoke from his wing chair. “Gabriel, may I request that you play for us? I would like to hear this piece that Ms. Alejo is so excited about.”
Quinn expected to feel Gabriel stiffen beside her, but he nodded without hesitation. “I would be honored, Tío.”
“What piece is that?” Odette asked.
“Gabriel composed an original work, which he played for Ms. Alejo in New York.” Pride rang in Hélène’s voice. “She wishes to include it in her own performances.”
“Impressive,” Odette said with lifted eyebrows.
“Perdón.” Gabriel gave Quinn a peck on the cheek before he set down his glass of brandy and stood.
When he walked toward the corner of the room, Quinn was surprised to see his guitar case already there. Someone had known that Luis would ask him to play.
Gabriel carried the case to an armless wooden chair near the fireplace. The room went quiet as he placed the case flat on the floor. He looked up, smiling. “Go ahead and talk. I need to make sure my guitar is tuned.”
Quinn tried to keep her focus on Odette but found it impossible when Gabriel was intent on tuning his guitar, his dark hair framing the clean angles of his jaw and cheekbones, his long fingers plucking the strings and twisting the tuning pegs. He touched the instrument the way he had touched her body, with care and confidence. Heat shimmered through her.
He struck a loud chord, and conversation died again. “This is the piece Marisela wishes to play,” he said. “It has no title. It is simply emotion.”
His gaze turned inward as he began the progression of notes. He had poured all the despair and anger he’d felt about his kidnapping into the music. It was hard for Quinn to listen without wanting to wrap her arms around him and soothe his pain.
She glanced around the room to see everyone rapt, even Odette, although her face was unreadable. Hélène had tears standing in her eyes, while Luis’s and Lorenzo’s jaws were tight in exactly the same way. Raul’s hands squeezed into fists on the arms of his chair. They all knew where this music had come from and felt Gabriel’s anguish.
Gabriel hit the last quavering note of torment and raised his head while his listeners sat silent, still trapped in the vortex of sound and feeling.
“That was extraordinary,” Luis said, clapping his hands. “I understand why Ms. Alejo wants to perform it.”
The others joined the applause as Gabriel bowed from the chair in a brief acknowledgment. He held up a hand. “I would like to play another song, this one traditional flamenco.”
“Sí, toca más!” Raul called out. “Play more!”
Gabriel began with a flurry of notes in a minor key before he looked at Quinn and began to sing in Spanish. He had a lovely, smooth baritone, but he usually preferred to let his guitar speak for him, so she was startled. The song was slow, which gave her time to translate the lyrics as he sang.
At night, a man stood outside the house of the woman he loved and watched her sitting in the lighted window. She laughed and talked to someone he couldn’t see, but he knew he was the man she had married instead of him. It was a tale of longing and unrequited love, and Gabriel sang it while intertwining his gaze with Quinn’s.
Everything in her yearned toward him. She thrust her hands under her thighs to keep from reaching out to comfort him, to reassure him that she loved him too. He was so sad, so broken, so without hope. How could she leave him?
The last notes were a wordless howl of desolation, and she nearly howled with them.
As the sound died away, she could hear the others in the room exhale as though they’d been holding their breath the entire time.
Gabriel did not look away from her, his face set in stark lines that matched the song.
“Dios mío,” Raul said into the silence. “You’re breaking my heart here. Can’t you play something cheery?”
Gabriel turned toward his cousin, and Quinn slumped in relief. She felt hollowed out and miserable. Was that how she had made Gabriel feel?
“A drinking song!” Gabriel said, picking out a rollicking phrase. “Sing along, because you all know this one.”
Quinn watched in astonishment as everyone else in the room—including the king—joined in on a bawdy story about getting drunk and being turned down by a series of women. Even Odette knew the words and clapped along in the right rhythm when Gabriel drummed his fingers against his guitar.
When it ended in a round of cheers, Gabriel laughed and turned to her. “I’ll have to teach you that one, cariño mío. It’s a family favorite.”
“So I see,” she said, still in shock at seeing the king and Gabriel’s father belting out the raunchy chorus.
Gabriel slipped the guitar strap over his head and laid the instrument in its case.
“Muchas gracias, hijo mío,” Luis said. “That was much needed.”
