Free Love and Honor: The Coltrane Saga, Book 7 by Patricia Hagan Page B

against falling in love.
    The he received the invitation from King Alfonso for a gala weekend at the royal palace in Madrid. The festivities were being held in honor of visiting royalty from Denmark. Kurt accepted the invitation. It was a fateful decision, for that was when the seductive Princess Nedjelja came into his life, to mesmerize him with her deep indigo eyes and with her passion to melt away his resolve never to fall in love. She was sunshine and light, happiness and mirth. She brought him more joy than he’d ever believed possible, despite her many, and ever-changing, moods. She could be childlike and playful one moment, petulant and willful the next. She was capricious, headstrong, and spoiled. He had never met anyone like her, and it did not bother him at all that she was so experienced in lovemaking, boldly teaching him how to please her in ways that other women of her class might be too inhibited to enjoy. She hypnotized him completely, rendering him helpless to her charms.
    She took him to the top of the mountain of ecstasy…then threw him mercilessly down to the pits of heartache and despair.
    She had told him that she was going into Valencia to shop. He had planned to spend the time working on his ledgers, but later decided that it was too nice a day to waste indoors. So he rode over to where he was building what his beloved fondly called their Palace of Love. Nothing was happening at the moment, because they were waiting for special pink marble to be shipped from Italy before starting the construction of the outer walls. Kurt was puzzled to see two horses tethered outside a storage shed—one of those horses being the golden palomino he had given his princess.
    His raging brain battled with his heart, pleading for reason. He had forced himself to move slowly, to dismount a good distance away and walk. But when he was perhaps still a hundred yards from the shed, he heard the unmistakable moans of pleasure that Nedjelja could never suppress.
    Instant fury consumed him. He kicked open the door, reeling at the sight of the two naked bodies, tangled together on the floor. They stared up at him in frozen surprise. Everything that happened after that seemed but the shadows of a nightmare—glimpses of horror. Mercifully he was not quite able to recall every lurid detail. He had grabbed the man, a migrant worker from nearby vineyards, and beaten him senseless. He probably would have killed him had Nedjelja not grabbed a nearby shovel and hit him soundly over the head. Later, when he had awakened, the man was gone. Nedjelja had remained behind, not to beg forgiveness, but to tell him what a fool he was. Did he really think that he was man enough to satisfy her? She had laughed in his face. No man lived who could give her all she wanted. That very morning, before she had left on her fictional shopping trip, Kurt had made love to her twice, yet it was not enough.
    Even with the throbbing pain and the blood oozing from her blow, he had managed to counter with a jeer of his own—did she really think that he believed her to be a true princess? He had known all along that she was not of royal blood. She was actually a member of the middle class—social climbing by using a phony royal title to gain acceptance. Kurt had known this because he made it his business to know everything about everyone he dealt with, but he’d loved her just the same.
    She had paled beneath his verbal assault, toppled from her pedestal. Kurt silently admitted however, that she was victor, for she had torn down the wall he had built around himself…and made him fall in love with her.
    Enough reminiscing, Kurt chided himself now, looking once more toward the pens. Maybe the man he was looking for was hanging around down there. He cantered over in that direction.
    Kurt saw her even before he reached the wooden corral. She was sitting on a top rung, and her reddish-gold hair streamed down her back, gleaming in the midmorning sun. She was wearing