Page 148 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“On the plane back here.” She twisted in her seat to look straight at her boss. “It had to hap­pen.”

“I sup­pose.” Was that sad­ness dark­en­ing his eyes? “Why now, though?”

His voice was so gen­tle that it un­der­mined the bar­rier she had built. “We were liv­ing in a bub­ble. A royal bub­ble. Gabriel, me, you, Raul, his par­ents. Even the king made it seem like this re­la­tion­ship was pos­si­ble.” She drew a bub­ble shape in the air with her hands. “But when I saw Gabriel out in the world, the bub­ble popped.” She spread her fin­gers apart to mimic an ex­plo­sion. “Kyran Redda, one of the most fa­mous mu­si­cians in the world, asked Gabriel to help him with a song he was work­ing on. Marisela Alejo played this in­cred­i­ble duet with him. She wants to work out a deal to per­form a piece that Gabriel com­posed.”

Quinn shook her head and con­tin­ued. “Gabriel is not just a duke, which is bad enough. He’s a su­perb mu­si­cian who will soon be on the world’s stages. He can’t have a girl­friend like me lurk­ing in the shad­ows. My past is too ugly. It will spill shit onto him.”

“Shit goes away. The me­dia cir­cus moves on.” Mikel tapped his fin­gers on the steer­ing wheel for a few silent sec­onds. “If you are con­cerned about your fa­ther, we can pro­tect him.”

“What do you mean?” Shock made her sit up straighter.

“I know you didn’t set up the cryp­tocur­rency scam. I wouldn’t hire a crim­i­nal, no mat­ter how tal­ented she was.” Mikel’s voice had that dry tone again.

“How do you know I didn’t do it?”

He raised an eye­brow. “Re­ally?”

Of course he would know. She had been an id­iot to think oth­er­wise. Her re­la­tion­ship with Mikel spun and re­set­tled at a dif­fer­ent an­gle. Was she more or less grate­ful to him now?

“Keep in mind,” Mikel con­tin­ued, “Gabriel’s un­cle is the king. He is quite pow­er­ful, not just on Cal­eva, but in the United States. Cal­eva hosts a strate­gi­cally im­por­tant U.S. mil­i­tary base.”

She knew that, of course, but hadn’t con­sid­ered what lever­age it gave Luis with her home coun­try. Hor­ror shud­dered through her at the idea of hav­ing the king muck around in the dung heap of her fa­ther’s ac­tions. “I would never ask him to cover for my fa­ther.”

“It is some­thing to fac­tor into your de­ci­sions,” Mikel said with an­noy­ing opaque­ness. He tapped the steer­ing wheel again. “I have to in­sist that you at­tend the din­ner with Odette. To com­pli­cate mat­ters, it has been moved to Finca de Bruma.” His face was tight with dis­ap­proval. “It would be dif­fi­cult to in­sert some­one else into such a pri­vate event at this point with­out arous­ing sus­pi­cions. I need you there.”

Sur­prise and pain tight­ened her shoul­der mus­cles. Sit­ting be­side Gabriel, pre­tend­ing they were fine, would be tor­ture. But she had learned all about duty and re­spon­si­bil­ity from his fam­ily. She owed them her best ef­forts.

“Of course,” she said, proud of how steady her voice was. “But will Gabriel agree to it?”

Mikel put the car in re­verse and backed out of the park­ing place. “He will do what is nec­es­sary.”

So they would suf­fer to­gether.

Chap­ter 34

Gabriel pinched off a bud from the Cal­e­van lily plant he knelt be­side. He hadn’t been able to sleep. With­out Quinn’s small body curled up be­side him, the bed felt vast and empty. When he closed his eyes, he saw the blood stain­ing her jeans and felt the agony of know­ing she was hurt be­cause of him.

What if the sniper’s bul­let had hit her?

That thought was tor­ment enough, but then he would re­mem­ber that he no longer had the right to love her, and his heart would feel as though it had been ripped from his body.

As soon as a dim line of light edged the shades of his room at the palace, he had thrown on jeans and a T-shirt and driven to the Valle de los Lirios.

In the ter­ri­ble days af­ter his ab­duc­tion, Gabriel would come here to es­cape the night­mare mem­o­ries. The care­ful, repet­i­tive task of prun­ing the lily buds re­quired enough at­ten­tion to fo­cus his mind in the present.

It wasn’t work­ing this time.

Quinn’s words kept crash­ing around in his brain. She said he would be fine. How could she be so wrong? She was the strong one, the one who had pushed him to get past his fear.

The dark, vol­canic soil grit­ted un­der his knees, re­mind­ing him of where he was. He leaned down to make sure he hadn’t missed any other buds in the soft dawn light. The plants needed one flower to sur­vive, but any ad­di­tional flow­ers drew en­ergy that was bet­ter used for grow­ing a longer stem. The longer the stem, the more of the nearly price­less savia—sap—that could be har­vested from it.

He found an­other bud, re­moved it, and tucked it into the can­vas pouch tied to his belt.

Ev­ery time he thought of Quinn go­ing to prison to spare her fa­ther, he wanted to stran­gle Bren­dan. How could he sub­ject his daugh­ter’s fierce, bright spirit to the hor­ror and in­dig­ni­ties of cap­tiv­ity? Gabriel knew first­hand how soul-dam­ag­ing it was. Maybe that was what had first drawn them to­gether, an un­con­scious un­der­stand­ing of those scars. Yet she did not be­lieve he could ac­cept her dark past.

The truth was that Quinn didn’t need him in the way Gabriel needed her. She had en­dured so much and faced it all on her own, while he had a pow­er­ful net­work of sup­port. No won­der she was so strong. She had to be.

He longed to be her sup­port, to lift some of her bur­dens off her small shoul­ders. He could pro­tect her and ease her life, if only she would al­low it.

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