Page 30 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She tried to re­mem­ber where the town of Jaca was lo­cated. She thought it was near the moun­tains, so he’d rid­den a fair dis­tance. “Who were you with at the bar?”

“My cousin. Raul. Found him on Pico de Luto. He needed a drink. So did I.”

“Where did Raul go af­ter the bar?”

Gabriel frowned. “Back to the palace?”

“Why did you come here in­stead?”

“To talk. Raul said I needed to talk to some­one. Mikel said I needed to talk to some­one. Ev­ery­one says it.”

So maybe this wasn’t a drunken booty visit. “About what?”

“What hap­pened. What I’m go­ing to do next.” He let his arm fall away from his face and turned his head on the cush­ion to look at her, pro­found sor­row etched on his face.

She wanted to kiss his fore­head, cra­dle his head against her chest, and tell him she would take care of him. It was a strangely ma­ter­nal im­pulse, con­sid­er­ing the way her nip­ples had re­acted to his touch.

“I think they mean you should talk to a ther­a­pist, not me.”

“I’ve done that.”

“Didn’t it help?”

“There are things I didn’t…couldn’t tell her.” His gaze grew in­tense. “But you know them al­ready. You know ev­ery­thing that hap­pened. I don’t have to ex­plain any­thing to you. I don’t have to go through it again.”

“What do you mean?” Un­ease rip­pled through her. She wasn’t in any way qual­i­fied to coach him through post-trau­matic stress dis­or­der. She still strug­gled with a touch of her own.

“Mikel hired you to find the kid­nap­pers, so you must have stud­ied the ab­duc­tion thor­oughly.”

How did he know that her sole job was to track down his ab­duc­tors? Mikel had said that no one but the king knew that. She was sup­posed to stay very low pro­file. “Mikel hired me to work for him.” She couldn’t quite lie.

The lines of his face hard­ened into a look of pure ar­ro­gance. “Don’t bull­shit me. No progress was made for months. You ar­rive and Mikel has two leads. And Raul swears that’s why you’re here.” The ar­ro­gance van­ished un­der a mask of care­ful neu­tral­ity. “Have you watched the videos?”

She wasn’t go­ing to make him tell her which videos he meant. “Yes. It was hard.”

“Be­cause I broke down.” His grip on her shoul­der tight­ened.

“Be­cause you went through hell twice—once in re­al­ity and once in the retelling. I have noth­ing but ad­mi­ra­tion for you.” He had an­swered ev­ery one of Mikel’s ques­tions with sear­ing hon­esty, never spar­ing him­self, all in ser­vice to find­ing the kid­nap­pers so Raul would not be en­dan­gered in the fu­ture.

Then the king had reined in Mikel be­cause he had be­come con­cerned about Gabriel’s men­tal and emo­tional well-be­ing. Quinn gave Luis credit for that. How­ever, she’d seen her boss’s frus­tra­tion when he’d ex­plained the sit­u­a­tion to her, some­thing he’d felt was nec­es­sary when he’d hired her so she would un­der­stand the po­lit­i­cal el­e­ments in­volved.

“I was not brave. I was ter­ri­fied. I did not de­serve a medal.”

“A bunch of men with guns hauled you away in a van. Any­one with half a brain would be ter­ri­fied. So if that’s what both­ers you about the sit­u­a­tion, I can as­sure you that your re­ac­tion was en­tirely nor­mal.” She was de­lib­er­ately acer­bic.

He shook his head, not in de­nial, but as though he was try­ing to clear it of the al­co­holic fog. “I should have done some­thing.”

“Like what? Thrown your­self out of the van at a stop­light even though your hands were tied and the doors were locked? Over­pow­ered five armed men when you had no weapon? Talked them into let­ting you go when clearly they had in­vested a lot of plan­ning and money in the kid­nap­ping?” She snorted. “I’m not clear what you think you could have done.”

He gave his head an­other shake. “I just lay there, frozen with fear.”

“I don’t see how what you were feel­ing makes a dif­fer­ence to the out­come.”

He re­leased her shoul­der and shifted on the couch so he could look di­rectly at her as he scowled. “You make me feel like an id­iot.”

“Good.” She soft­ened her tone. “What­ever your emo­tions were, you made a coura­geous de­ci­sion to put your­self in the kid­nap­pers’ hands. For all you knew, they might have killed you once they found out they had the wrong guy. That’s what the king gave you the medal for. Not for what was or wasn’t go­ing on in­side your head af­ter you got kid­napped.”

“That’s it!” He slammed one fist on the sofa cush­ion. “That’s why I shouldn’t have got­ten the medal. I did what any other Cal­e­van would have done. I pro­tected my prince.”

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