Page 123 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Mikel sat back in his chair. “You don’t need to look so ner­vous. If I thought there would be a prob­lem, I would post­pone the trip.”

She’d started to re­lax when Mikel said, “I’ve de­cided to present your case against Odette to the king this af­ter­noon. We’re meet­ing him at four o’clock at the palace.”

“We?” Quinn squeaked out.

“I will lay out the facts and sup­po­si­tions, but I want you there to fill in any de­tails the king might need clar­i­fi­ca­tion on.” Mikel gave her a faint smile. “You did a good job of con­vinc­ing me there’s enough smoke to look for a fire. Now we will need to per­suade el rey of the same.”

Shit. She’d rather face Dupont than the king. She swal­lowed hard. “Do you want me to pol­ish up the re­port I gave you?”

“I’ve al­ready taken care of that.” Her boss touched the knot of his tie. “It’s go­ing to re­quire some del­i­cate ma­neu­ver­ing, but I will try to get Luis to tell us more about his re­la­tion­ship with Made­moi­selle Fontaine. We need to know what set her off. He might give us some in­sight into that.”

“I as­sume you’ll do all the talk­ing, and I’ll just take men­tal notes?” In­ter­ro­gat­ing a king was way out­side her com­fort zone.

“If you have a ques­tion or need more in­for­ma­tion, you should not hes­i­tate to speak up. The king wants this in­ves­ti­ga­tion closed suc­cess­fully.”

It would need to be a very im­por­tant ques­tion for her to open her mouth with­out prompt­ing.

There was one other thing she didn’t want to talk about but needed to. Her boss had done her the cour­tesy of keep­ing her se­cret from ev­ery­one but the king. “Last night, I told Gabriel about my crim­i­nal record.”

The hard lines of Mikel’s face soft­ened a frac­tion. “When your fa­ther showed up here, I ex­pected you would have to.”

“I didn’t tell him about my fa­ther’s part in it.”

“I see,” Mikel said. “How did it go?”

“He’s much too for­giv­ing. And naïve. He thinks that my past won’t mat­ter to his fam­ily.”

“Per­haps, be­cause it is your his­tory and you lived through it, you ex­ag­ger­ate its im­por­tance.”

Mikel thought it wasn’t a big deal? Was he crazy? “Maybe if Gabriel was just a reg­u­lar per­son, his fam­ily could get past it. But he’s a royal duke. His par­ents and the king don’t want a crim­i­nal be­smirch­ing their no­ble name. And then there’s my fa­ther. Not a limb you want on your fam­ily tree.”

“You’re tak­ing the sins of your fa­ther onto your­self again?” His eye­brows were raised.

“I’m not, but the me­dia would.”

Mikel shrugged. “If it’s too much for you to face, I un­der­stand. You came here to get away from all that.”

“I can face it and then some.” She couldn’t let Mikel think she was wor­ried about her­self. “But Gabriel would try to pro­tect me, and it would tor­ment him when he couldn’t. The last thing I want is to add to his stress.”

“Per­haps you should al­low Gabriel to make that de­ci­sion. He has ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence with the me­dia, you know.”

“He is a hero. I’m a crim­i­nal.” She could blame her fear on me­dia ex­po­sure and the dis­ap­proval of Gabriel’s fam­ily, but deep down, she knew her­self to be un­wor­thy of such a man. That was the real prob­lem.

“Don’t you be­lieve in ab­so­lu­tion?” Mikel asked.

Not when she was still ly­ing to the man she loved.

Quinn sat in the ma­roon arm­chair be­side Mikel’s, try­ing to make her­self in­vis­i­ble. King Luis sat in a huge leather chair be­hind a mas­sive desk over which frilled drag­ons frol­icked among Cal­e­van lilies, all carved in some ex­otic, highly grained wood.

She’d seen the king be­ing a con­cerned fa­ther and un­cle on the jet. He had been a benev­o­lent host dur­ing her din­ner in the palace. To­day, Luis was def­i­nitely be­ing a king.

His navy suit fit him with­out a wrin­kle, and his yel­low tie glowed against a snow-white shirt. He wasn’t wear­ing a crown, but he held his head high as though a jew­eled di­a­dem en­cir­cled his brow.

He had greeted Mikel and her with a busi­nesslike dip of his chin and plunged right into the meet­ing. Mikel had warned her on the way to the palace that Luis was squeez­ing their meet­ing into his sched­ule, so there would be no small talk.

She tried not to cringe as Mikel laid out her skimpy case against Odette. Her boss did a mas­ter­ful job of high­light­ing the pat­tern of the con­nec­tions, but Quinn could see skep­ti­cism tight­en­ing the king’s jaw.

When Mikel fin­ished his sum­mary, the king raised his eye­brows. “That’s it?”

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