Page 28 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Pete hadn’t read the fine print when he’d as­sumed she had un­earned in­come. “It’s not a prob­lem. I just don’t have that much cash ly­ing around. You have to put your money to work, you know.”

He smiled at the ref­er­ence to her fa­ther’s propen­sity to spend money with the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that it was just sit­ting around, do­ing no one any good. “Still, I feel badly ask­ing you to sell your in­vest­ments.”

“Well, I’d feel worse if I found out you’d got­ten your kneecaps bro­ken. The money is there, so don’t worry about it.” The gift to Pete would wipe out most of her sav­ings, but her salary gave her plenty to live on and then some.

With her back­ground, Mikel could have paid her well be­low mar­ket rate, and she’d told him that. His re­sponse had been that he wasn’t bas­ing her salary on her past but on her fu­ture. With that, he’d earned her undy­ing loy­alty…and he prob­a­bly knew it.

In fact, work­ing at Se­guri­dad Silva was even bet­ter than the po­si­tion she had lost back in the U.S. With Mikel, she had bet­ter ac­cess, bet­ter equip­ment, and fewer lim­i­ta­tions. It al­most made her feel that fate had not dealt her such a ter­ri­ble hand in forc­ing her to come to Cal­eva.

“Shall we draw up a loan doc­u­ment?” Pete asked. “I’m hop­ing you’ll give me a fam­ily dis­count on the in­ter­est rate.”

“No doc­u­ment. No in­ter­est. No rush on pay­ing it back.” He’d kept her out of the fos­ter sys­tem. She owed him. And she had al­ready writ­ten off the full amount of the so-called loan in her men­tal ledger since Pete wasn’t noted for his fi­nan­cial acu­men. She hes­i­tated a mo­ment. She hated to do this. “There’s just one con­di­tion.”

“Name it, lass.”

“You have twenty-four hours to leave Cal­eva.” She needed to let Pete know she meant busi­ness. He wasn’t good at keep­ing prom­ises. “If you aren’t gone by then, I will ask my boss to es­cort you out of the coun­try. My boss has in­flu­ence in very high places, so don’t doubt that I can make this hap­pen.”

His bushy eye­brows rose in sur­prise and hurt. “I’d thought to en­joy the sights since I’ve never been here be­fore. My flight home isn’t for an­other three days.”

“I’ll cover any penal­ties for chang­ing it.”

“This is about your fa­ther, isn’t it?” Pete said, a wily gleam in his eyes. “You’re afraid if you aren’t tough on me, he’ll think he can come here too.”

Quinn jerked back, al­though she shouldn’t have been sur­prised that Pete had fig­ured her out. Con men had to be good at read­ing peo­ple. “Would I be wrong?”

He con­sid­ered for a mo­ment and then heaved a sigh as though the weight of the world had set­tled on his big shoul­ders. “Eh, maybe not. I’ll go. Any­thing to make you happy, Quin­nie.”

She sagged in re­lief. Pete would carry the mes­sage back to her fa­ther, loud and clear.

“Just how high does your boss’s in­flu­ence reach?” Pete eyed her with cu­rios­ity.

“To the top.” Quinn locked her gaze on Pete’s. “All the way to the top.”

She wouldn’t share this with her un­cle, but she’d stud­ied enough his­tory to know that the fa­vor of kings was fickle. Mikel had used his in­flu­ence to over­rule the king’s ob­jec­tions to Quinn’s past. If she brought trou­ble to Cal­eva, Mikel would shoul­der the blame.

She owed her boss too much to let that hap­pen.

She reached for­ward to give Pete’s fore­arm a quick squeeze in apol­ogy. “I’ll just need the de­tails of how to get the money to you.”

His gaze shifted to the near­est vaho hi­bis­cus shrub. “Could you spot me a lit­tle cash right away?”

“Sure.” She stood and dusted off the knees of her jeans. “Pour your­self an­other drink while I go get it.”

Af­ter she re­trieved a thou­sand eu­ros in cash from the safe built into the wall be­hind her bath­room mir­ror, she jogged down the stairs to find Pete in the open area that en­com­passed the kitchen, din­ing, and liv­ing rooms. He stood in front of the dig­i­tal pic­ture frame she had on her man­tel, watch­ing the pho­tos that scrolled by in ran­dom or­der.

“That one of you and me ice skat­ing when you were a wee lass, do you re­mem­ber when that was?” he said, wip­ing at the cor­ner of his eye.

“I was five or six, I think.” She handed him the stack of hun­dred euro bills. “You told me I was go­ing to be the next Peggy Flem­ing. I had no idea who that was.”

“Show­ing my age, wasn’t I?” He held up the money. “Thank you for this and for get­ting me out of a tight cor­ner. I shouldn’t take it, but I can’t say no.”

She al­most laughed at his phras­ing, as though she’d forced the money on him. But that was Un­cle Pete. “I don’t mean to rush you out the door, but—”

“I know, I know. I’m cor­rupt com­pany.” But he laughed as he said it, which eased her guilt a lit­tle. He ges­tured for her to go ahead of him to the front door. Be­fore she opened it, she wrapped her arms around the big man, al­low­ing her­self to take com­fort in his warm, cigar smoke-scented strength, like the lit­tle girl she once had been. For a mo­ment, she sank into the il­lu­sion of be­ing pro­tected and safe.

Then she let go and stepped back into the lone­li­ness of adult­hood.

Chap­ter 10

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