Page 101 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

When the servers be­gan to of­fer cof­fee, Hélène said, “Luis, Odette Fontaine is com­ing to visit us at Finca de Bruma. I thought you would want to know.”

Quinn’s work brain lit up.

The king’s loung­ing pos­ture didn’t change af­ter Hélène’s com­ment, yet all the an­gles of his face sharp­ened with ten­sion. “Ah, it has been a while since she has been to Cal­eva. Is this a so­cial visit?”

“As far as I’m con­cerned, it is. We ham­mered out all the con­trac­tual is­sues in Paris,” Hélène said.

“The last time I saw Tante Odette was at your birth­day party two years ago, Tante Hélène,” Raul said. “It will be in­ter­est­ing to catch up with her.”

“You just like all the lat­est hair prod­ucts she brings you for free,” Gabriel said, point­ing his fork in Raul’s di­rec­tion.

“Hey, I have to look good for the press con­fer­ences.” Raul pat­ted his glossy brown waves. Then he gave his fa­ther a pointed look. “We might want to talk pol­i­tics with her, as well.”

Luis took a sip of the brandy he’d been served with his cof­fee be­fore he nod­ded. “Hélène, if you prom­ise she won’t bad­ger me about her al­lot­ment of lily sap, Odette will be wel­come for din­ner here.”

“She will be very pleased by that,” Hélène said be­fore mak­ing a com­i­cal face. “Al­though you know Odette. I can tell her not to talk busi­ness, but she is quite ca­pa­ble of ig­nor­ing me.”

Luis waved a hand in dis­missal of her con­cern. “I’ll make sure to sign the of­fi­cial con­tract be­fore she ar­rives. That way, she can’t try to steal more medicine from the world’s de­men­tia pa­tients un­til next year.”

Hélène gri­maced at him but didn’t ar­gue.

Quinn filed away the con­ver­sa­tion in her mem­ory. Based on Luis’s less than cor­dial re­ac­tion, she wasn’t go­ing to ask any fur­ther ques­tions about Odette at the din­ner ta­ble.

Soon af­ter that con­ver­sa­tion, the king sig­naled that din­ner was over, and ev­ery­one rose from the ta­ble. Gabriel had got­ten the two of them ex­cused from the usual af­ter-din­ner gath­er­ing in the ad­join­ing salón.

She let Gabriel lead their farewells so she could just slide through the so­cial pro­to­cols with him. The king, how­ever, stopped her as she tried to stay in Gabriel’s shadow.

“Quinn, I look for­ward to you join­ing us again soon.” A faint smile tugged at his lips.

She won­dered how many week­ends she could beg Mikel to sched­ule busi­ness travel for to avoid an­other or­deal like this one. Then she re­al­ized she was, in fact, be­ing of­fered a huge com­pli­ment. “I would be hon­ored to be in­cluded in such a won­der­ful oc­ca­sion again.”

She could have sworn Luis sti­fled a snort, but he nod­ded in that ap­prov­ing way that made her feel like she had won a prize. “You’ll do fine, señorita.”

Once they were safely en­closed in the wel­come pri­vacy of the anony­mous sedan—Mikel had al­lowed them to de­part to­gether—Quinn blew out a long breath.

Gabriel leaned over to drop a kiss on her cheek, his lips warm. “You did great. Tío Luis liked you.”

“‘Like’ might be go­ing too far,” Quinn said, but a glow of pride warmed her.

“I’m sorry my fa­ther put you on the spot like that.” Gabriel frowned. “He can be a real ass­hole.”

“I think he was in­ter­ested in my opin­ion,” Quinn said. “It was kind of flat­ter­ing.”

Gabriel threw her a skep­ti­cal glance as their driver turned onto the road lead­ing away from the cas­tle. A black sedan pulled out to fol­low them at a dis­creet dis­tance. Mikel’s guardian an­gels.

“I don’t think your dad is ma­li­cious. He just isn’t so­cially grace­ful like ev­ery­one else in your fam­ily. He’s more a nerdy scholar type.”

Lorenzo had also watched his wife with a baf­fled long­ing that made Quinn feel sorry for him since Hélène seemed obliv­i­ous to his feel­ings. Gabriel had said his par­ents led sep­a­rate lives within their pub­lic mar­riage. Not sex­u­ally, of course. That was taboo.

“You’re very gen­er­ous.” Gabriel shrugged and took her hand. “Any­way, you sur­vived your first fam­ily din­ner.”

“Maybe it would have been bet­ter if the king hadn’t liked me.” Quinn sighed. “Then I wouldn’t have got­ten in­vited back.”

Gabriel laughed. “I pre­dict you’ll come to en­joy my fam­ily get-to­geth­ers.”

“Why don’t you pre­dict that hell will freeze over? It’s about as likely.” On the other hand, she might have learned some­thing use­ful tonight. “Tell me about your Tante Odette.”

“She’s not re­ally my aunt, you know. She’s a close fam­ily friend,” he said. “She and Ma­man met at uni­ver­sity in Paris. Ev­i­dently, Odette’s fam­ily was dys­func­tional, so she spent a lot of time here in Cal­eva back then. Then my mother got mar­ried, and Odette got a job at Ar­cham­beau, which was a rel­a­tively small cos­met­ics com­pany at the time. She fig­ured out the lily sap was good for women’s skin and con­vinced Tío Luis to sell the com­pany a small per­cent­age of the lily sap in an ex­clu­sive con­tract. That cat­a­pulted her to the po­si­tion of CEO. From that po­si­tion, she’s turned Ar­cham­beau into a top lux­ury brand.”

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