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She winced. “That’s extreme.”
“He claims it’s normal because he’s lost his calluses.” Raul shrugged. “That’s plausible. However, he’s set a goal for himself that concerns me.”
“A goal?” She braced herself.
“He plans to play for the famous flamenco guitarist Marisela Alejo in a couple of weeks. If she says he’s lost his ear for the music, he will give up the guitar forever.” Raul smacked the bench with his hand. “He can’t expect to reach a high level of skill in a few weeks after months of not touching the strings. It’s not realistic. Think about the calluses alone! He needs them to play well.”
Yup, that had been her terrific advice about getting a second opinion. But she hadn’t intended for Gabriel to seek it in such an unreasonable time frame.
Raul heaved out a breath. “I am ecstatic that he has hope, but I’m terrified that it will be crushed by a negative comment from Alejo.”
“Shouldn’t he know that he needs longer to practice? I mean, he was playing at a professional level before the kidnapping.”
“He claims it’s not about how well his fingers work but about his ear, whether he is catching the nuances of the sound. He believes Alejo will be able to tell him that.” He curled his hand into a fist. “He’s just beginning to come out of his depression, to open up again. I can’t bear to lose him.” Raul ensnared her with his gaze as his tone turned persuasive. “Will you talk to him? Tell him he needs to give it more time?”
“Me? But I don’t know anything about playing the guitar.” She should have kept her mouth shut for that reason.
“He seems to trust you in a way I haven’t seen him trust anyone for a long while,” Raul said. “He would listen to you.”
“I’m just a sort of bartender, a stranger he can talk to without repercussions,” she said.
“It goes deeper than that. I think he feels that you know the darkest parts of his past. With you, he doesn’t have to pretend they don’t exist.”
Gabriel had said something similar, that he didn’t have to explain his experience to her. “But that doesn’t mean he’ll take my advice about the guitar.”
“Didn’t he already do so?” Raul’s tone hardened slightly.
Shit! How does he know?
“He came home from Lisbon all fired up to get his guitar out,” Raul continued. “You spent the most time with him, so it had to be something you said.”
Raul was guessing, but that didn’t matter since he was almost right. “It also came from the way he felt when he saw Kodra. That had nothing to do with me.”
“If you can’t persuade him to postpone his audition, will you at least go with him?” Raul pleaded. “He will need support.”
A prince was begging her to do something. That was a first. But what did Raul think she could do by being with Gabriel? “Where is he going?” she stalled.
“New York City. Alejo is doing a series of concerts there.”
They’d have to travel together again. A thrill of excitement rippled through her, but her sensible side smothered it with logistics and doubt.
“Am I supposed to randomly announce I want to go sightseeing in the Big Apple at the same time that Gabriel plans to go there?” The thought of returning to her home country sent an unexpected spasm of homesickness through her.
Raul smiled, clearly believing she had agreed to his insane request. “No worries about that. Mikel will figure out how to make it happen.”
The royal family relied on her boss for a lot. “I’ll try to talk Gabriel into slowing down the timetable.”
“Magnífico! Muchas gracias,” Raul said, his face lighting up.
“There’s one small practical problem,” Quinn said. “It’s hard for me to casually run into a royal duke, especially one who’s practicing the guitar like a fiend.”
“Mikel will take care of that too.” Raul stood, so Quinn did too. “I’ll let him know.”
Great. Now her boss was being sucked into her personal life. Or maybe the boundaries between her personal life and her professional life were becoming blurred in an unnerving way.
“I can’t promise I’ll succeed,” Quinn said, fidgeting with the gun’s magazine crammed in her pocket.
Raul skewered her with a gaze that she could almost feel. “I love Gabriel like a brother, and I would do anything to see him happy again. I am asking—no, beseeching—you to give it everything you have.”
