That got through to him. It slashed straight through everything else he had been feeling, stabbed straight to the heart. And in that moment he knew that, two years before, he had made the worst, most appalling mistake of his life.
There had always been something he had kept coming back to, something he hadn’t been able to quite put his finger on, and it had disturbed him, nagged at him throughout the past two years. Now he knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d cleared the whole matter up. And if he had been wrong, then he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to Isabelle.
‘I don’t want to forget it,’ he muttered harshly.
Isabelle didn’t know how to take that.
‘Oh, Luis, mi marido, mi amor…’
‘No!’
He couldn’t bear those words. Not now. Not when he feared that he had wronged her so badly.
Pushing himself to his feet, he swung halfway across the room, needing to put a physical distance between them that matched the emotional one he had let grow because of his stupid hurt pride.
‘Don’t call me that. Not now.’
Isabelle knew her mistake as soon as the words had left her lips, and desperately, hopelessly, wished them back, knowing there was no chance of salvation.
Beside her she had felt Luis’s hard length tense, freezing in shock, and then, agonisingly, the immediate, inevitable swift withdrawal, the movement away that spelled out his rejection, tearing her heart in two.
‘Luis, mi marido, mi amor…’ The first few words of Spanish he had taught her. The most important words, he had said. If she never learned any other phrases, then these would do. They would say all she ever needed to say to keep him happy.
But one night she had used those words and known they would
never have the same effect again. That even if she handed her heart to him at the same time, he would never, ever believe that she loved him.
They had been the last words she had shouted after him on that dreadful night when he had arrived back unexpectedly and found her and Rob, in bed together. She had tried to explain but he had turned from her as he was doing now, his eyes dark with rejection. And so she had screamed the only words she had thought might bring him back.
But they had had as little effect as they were having now. His face had closed up, steel shutters seeming to slam shut behind his eyes, cutting him off from her completely. And he had walked out of her life—for good, it had seemed.
The words swung round and round in Luis’s head, gaining a new and terrible bitterness with every repetition.
My husband, my love… Once he had longed to hear her say them as often as she could. He would have sworn that he would never grow tired of them. That he could never hear anything that would have made him happier.
Until one bitter dawn when he had heard her shout them after him down a long, shadowy hotel corridor as he’d walked away from the terrible sight of her and her lover in bed together.
He hadn’t been able to bear to stay a second longer then. He had had to get away—fast—just as he had to now. If he stayed, then he would surely give himself away completely, by letting her know just how he was feeling. And the truth was that he was such a mess, such a knot of tangled emotions deep inside, that he didn’t know what to say to her.
‘L-Luis…’ Isabelle tried, but her voice failed her completely, shrivelling into nothing as he turned back to her and she saw the tightness of every muscle in his face, the blank, opaque eyes.
‘Perdón,’ he said stiffly. ‘Forgive me, but I cannot…’
My husband, my love. But if he had loved her enough he would have stayed. He would have listened. He would have trusted.
He had done no such thing. He had failed her. And now he would have to live with his conscience for having wronged her so badly.
‘You were right, Isabella,’ he went on harshly. ‘Perhaps we should forget the whole thing. I will not trouble you again.’
Not until he could prove to her that he believed in her the way she needed him to.
‘But, Luis…’ Isabelle began, but she was speaking to empty air.
Without even another glance in her direction, Luis had marched from the room and she could only stare in silent desperation as the door swung to behind him.
‘Forgive me, but I cannot…’ His cold, stiff words seemed to hang in the air, freezing, like the cruel hand that gripped her heart.
‘I cannot…’ What? If he could never forget what had happened, then what possible hope of a future was there?