Page 134 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“It’s the duke.” A man dis­en­tan­gled him­self from a woman with very long legs and a very short skirt. When he stood, Quinn rec­og­nized the spiked plat­inum blond hair and tat­tooed face of Kyran Redda.

The rock star met them half­way, ex­tend­ing his hand. “Hey, man, good to meet you.” He smiled as Gabriel shook his hand, and Quinn felt the heat of his charisma. “Should I, like, bow or some­thing?”

Gabriel laughed and put his arm around Quinn’s waist to move her for­ward. “As my girl­friend, Quinn, ob­served, you all fought a war not to bow to dukes.”

Redda held out his hand to her. “A fel­low rev­o­lu­tion­ary? Nice to meet you, Quinn.” She felt the gui­tarist’s strength in his grip.

“It’s a plea­sure, Mr. Redda,” Quinn said.

“Call me Kyran. So, yeah, you want a drink?” Kyran asked, wav­ing to some­one across the room. “We’ve got ev­ery­thing.”

When they all had glasses of red wine, Kyran said, “Let’s go to the of­fice. It’s qui­eter there.” He nod­ded to an older man, also dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, who got up to fol­low them into a room with wood-pan­eled walls, a heavy ma­hogany part­ner’s desk, and a very mod­ern com­puter setup.

“This is my man­ager, Aaron Gold,” Kyran said as they set­tled around a cof­fee ta­ble. “He makes sure I don’t do any­thing stupid.”

Gold raised his bushy gray eye­brows. “Some of the time.”

Kyran waved off his man­ager’s com­ment, but Quinn could see the af­fec­tion be­tween the two. They were not just busi­ness part­ners. They were friends.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate you tak­ing the time to meet with me,” Gabriel said, set­ting his wine­glass on the ta­ble.

“Hey, I’ve never met a royal duke be­fore. It’s a his­toric mo­ment.” Kyran’s wide grin could make any­one feel like they were his best buddy. “Be­sides, I want a fa­vor from you.”

“From me?” Gabriel’s sur­prise was mo­men­tary. He an­swered with his own gor­geous smile. “It sounds as though we have a win-win sit­u­a­tion here. What ser­vice may I of­fer you?”

“Nope. You go first,” Kyran said, lean­ing back on the love seat and cross­ing his arms. The cut­off sleeves of his shirt showed the bulge of bi­ceps un­der the com­plex de­signs of his tat­toos. “I gotta hear what a duke wants with the likes of me.” He winked at Quinn, his strik­ing blue eyes sparkling with a gleam of mis­chief.

“Fair enough.” Gabriel sat tall while his voice took on a for­mal weight. “I come on be­half of King Luis IV of Cal­eva. He sends an in­vi­ta­tion for you to be the head­line per­former at the in­au­gu­ral Fes­ti­val de las Artes de Cal­eva ap­prox­i­mately eigh­teen months from now. We would be hon­ored by your pres­ence in our coun­try.”

Gabriel, clever man, was play­ing to Kyran’s fas­ci­na­tion with his ti­tle. Kyran straight­ened away from the back of the couch. “No shit! The king wants me to play?”

“He very much wishes to meet you, as well. You would be wel­come to stay in Castillo Dra­conago.”

Quinn sti­fled a snort as she pic­tured Kyran pad­ding along a stone cor­ri­dor in his bare feet.

“Me stay in the fuck­ing cas­tle!” He turned to his man­ager. “Aaron, I want to do this.”

The man­ager gave Gabriel a pierc­ing stare. “I think the king wishes to have a mas­sively suc­cess­ful star as a draw for his new mu­sic fest.”

“Por supuesto. Of course,” Gabriel said with an easy smile. “But we will treat Señor Redda and his band mem­bers like roy­alty. We are putting sig­nif­i­cant re­sources be­hind the fes­ti­val. It will be a high-pro­file event on an in­ter­na­tional level. Have you ever been to Cal­eva?”

“Once. Quite a while ago.” Aaron’s ex­pres­sion shifted to nos­tal­gia as a smile played around the cor­ners of his lips. “It’s not a bad place. Not bad at all.”

“Well, I haven’t been there,” Kyran said. “And I want to meet the king and stay in the cas­tle.”

Quinn couldn’t be­lieve how easy that had been.

“We’ll have to look at your tour sched­ule to see if we can fit it in,” Aaron said. “There’s still a lot to be ne­go­ti­ated.”

Kyran waved his hand again. “Blah, blah, blah. You’ll get it done. Have my peo­ple call his peo­ple. What­ever.” He drummed his long fin­gers on his thigh and grinned at Quinn. “I guess I have to bow to the king.”

“Trust me, you’ll want to. He’s very re­gal.” Quinn fig­ured she was al­lowed to speak now that the ne­go­ti­a­tions had con­cluded.

“What do you do? Curtsy?” Kyran asked. “Show me!”

Quinn nod­ded and stood. “Su Ma­jes­tad,” she mur­mured be­fore sink­ing into an ex­ag­ger­ated curtsy, hold­ing it for a long mo­ment, and straight­en­ing again.

Gabriel laughed. “She does not curtsy like that.”

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