Page 100 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“I know a woman who is fan­tas­tic with stage light­ing and spe­cial ef­fects,” Fer­nanda said. “She could han­dle the tech­ni­cal side.”

“Maybe she could project im­ages of our lilies and drag­ons on the out­side of the con­cert venues. That would high­light our nat­u­ral her­itage as well,” Raul in­ter­jected.

Paris. Lilies. Quinn let the con­ver­sa­tion flow around her as con­nec­tions with Cal­eva clicked in her head. Gabriel’s mother ne­go­ti­ated the ex­clu­sive lily sap con­tract with the French cos­met­ics firm run by Odette Fontaine which was head­quar­tered in Paris. That’s why the duchess went to Paris on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. Quinn needed to find out more about who Hélène saw in the City of Light.

Maybe she could bring it up at that lunch Gabriel’s mother wanted to plan. That might keep the con­ver­sa­tion about Quinn and Gabriel’s re­la­tion­ship to a min­i­mum. She gri­maced at her plate as the lines be­tween her per­sonal and pro­fes­sional life blurred again.

“Gabriel, would you be in­ter­ested in a his­tor­i­cal com­po­nent to your fes­ti­val?” Lorenzo asked. “We have some in­ter­est­ing mu­si­cal manuscripts in the ar­chives. Per­haps an ex­hibit of the most sig­nif­i­cant ones?”

Quinn could tell that the duke was try­ing to make a con­nec­tion with his son, so she poked Gabriel’s an­kle with her toe in ad­mo­ni­tion.

“Thank you, Fa­ther,” Gabriel said. “That would add cul­tural con­text to our per­for­mances.”

“Per­haps you would re­view them with me,” Lorenzo said. “You could se­lect the ones you feel would be most rel­e­vant.”

An­other olive branch. Quinn gave Gabriel a tiny nudge of en­cour­age­ment with her el­bow.

“I would be happy to do so,” Gabriel said. “I have not vis­ited the ar­chives in too long.”

The con­ver­sa­tion was stiff, but Quinn was pleased with the out­come. Gabriel’s fa­ther wasn’t the ogre she had ex­pected.

“I’ll bet more than one mu­si­cian will come for the fes­ti­val and de­cide to stay awhile,” Fer­nanda in­ter­jected. “The beaches are ir­re­sistible.”

“And the vaho hi­bis­cus,” Quinn added, de­cid­ing that Gabriel needed a break from his fa­ther’s at­ten­tion. “They smell like heaven.”

“What about the seafood?” Raul in­ter­jected. “So fresh it’s prac­ti­cally still swim­ming.”

Ev­ery­one chimed in with their ideas about what made Cal­eva great. Luis men­tioned the clean air, cour­tesy of the is­land’s geo­ther­mal power. Quinn smiled. It was ex­actly what a king would care about, while ev­ery­one else fo­cused on more su­per­fi­cial at­trac­tions.

“Our drag­ons,” Lorenzo said, pro­nounc­ing it al­most in Span­ish. “They are unique and spec­tac­u­lar.”

“But it’s so rare to see one,” Fer­nanda pointed out. “We need more of them.”

“I’m work­ing on that,” Raul said with a glance at his fa­ther. “I’ve con­tacted sev­eral her­petol­o­gists about breed­ing pro­grams. Like Gabriel, I need to lure some out­side ex­perts here to Cal­eva.”

It seemed that the dis­tinc­tion be­tween fam­ily and work con­ver­sa­tion was blurred. Or maybe be­cause Quinn was there, they were keep­ing top­ics gen­eral so she could par­tic­i­pate.

A server whisked away Quinn’s din­ner plate and wine­glass. She al­most protested the loss of the wine be­fore she no­ticed an­other stemmed glass re­mained at her place. A server filled it with a pale golden wine. Of course they would change the wine to suit the course.

The pro­ces­sion of servers swarmed around the ta­ble, plac­ing plates of pie and ice cream in front of the din­ers.

Ap­ple pie.

Quinn looked up in sur­prise to see the king watch­ing her once again. An imp­ish amuse­ment sparkled in his eyes. “In your honor, señorita,” he said.

She saw where Raul got his charm, ex­cept it was even more po­tent in its ma­ture, re­gal form.

Then it dawned on her. The en­tire din­ner had been an all-Amer­i­can menu.

“Gra­cias, Su Ma­jes­tad,” she man­aged to say. “You honor me.”

He smiled and picked up his fork to plunge it into his slice of pie. “Not at all. It also hap­pens to be a fa­vorite of mine.”

She felt her­self slip­ping un­der Luis’s spell again, ex­cept this time she didn’t want to ride into bat­tle for him. She wanted to fall on her knees and thank him for his at­ten­tion.

Of course, the pie was the best she’d ever tasted, with a crust so but­tery and flaky she wanted to roll around in it. Add to that the rich depths of the vanilla ice cream a server scooped onto her plate, and she nearly had a food or­gasm.

She wasn’t the only per­son who ap­pre­ci­ated the dessert be­cause the con­ver­sa­tion grew desul­tory for the first cou­ple of min­utes as ev­ery­one dug into the dessert.

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