Page 40 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

His smile al­lowed Quinn to an­swer him with a po­lite, “Humph.”

She re­mained seated be­cause Gabriel and Raul were still stand­ing in the aisle, talk­ing to each other in low voices. They were a strik­ing pair, the two tall men with the same strong-boned fa­cial fea­tures and air of self-con­fi­dence that had been bred into them for cen­turies.

“Aren’t you go­ing to or­der them to sleep?” Quinn asked.

“You have to pick your bat­tles. I sug­gest that you at least fol­low my rec­om­men­da­tion.”

Com­ing from her boss, that was an or­der. She stood and set her sights on a sin­gle chair just past the two men, try­ing to scoot around them with­out in­ter­rupt­ing their con­ver­sa­tion.

“Will you be able to sleep?” Gabriel asked, swing­ing around to face her.

“When my boss tells me to rest, I rest,” Quinn said, con­tin­u­ing to edge side­ways to­ward the seat. “Mikel is al­ways right.”

Raul made a wry face. “She has a point, Gabri. We should give it a shot.”

“You should have had more French toast. All those carbs make me drowsy,” Quinn said over her shoul­der as she reached her goal and plunked down in the seat.

Gabriel made a sharp ges­ture of frus­tra­tion be­fore he shrugged and hit a but­ton on the chair be­side where he stood. It whirred as the back went down, and the footrest came up. Quinn hit the same but­ton on her chair so that it stretched out. Gabriel must have also pushed the call but­ton be­cause the stew­ard ap­peared and pulled blan­kets and pil­lows out of wall cab­i­nets, dis­tribut­ing them to ev­ery­one ex­cept Mikel. Her boss still sat at the ta­ble, star­ing at his high-tech tablet. He was prob­a­bly try­ing to re­duce the amount of im­pro­vi­sa­tion they’d have to do.

Quinn turned to­ward the win­dow and snug­gled un­der the cloud-soft blan­ket. Gabriel was right. She would never be able to sleep.

Some­one shook her shoul­der, shat­ter­ing the pleas­ant dream she was im­mersed in. “Quinn, we’re start­ing our de­scent.” Gabriel’s warm bari­tone sounded right be­side her ear.

She rolled over to see him kneel­ing be­side her chair, his face level with hers. For a mo­ment, she stared straight into his eyes, so close that she could see streaks of blue and dark gray painted through the pale sil­ver. It was al­most like wak­ing up be­side him in bed.

She shoved her­self up onto her hip and threw off the blan­ket. “Thanks,” she said, hit­ting the but­ton to turn her bed back into a seat.

“Come sit with me again,” Gabriel said. “I can point out the sights of Lis­bon from the air.” He gri­maced. “And I could use the dis­trac­tion.”

He was away from his se­cure home base, and he might be fac­ing the per­son who had ter­ror­ized and mu­ti­lated him. The least she could do was sit be­side him. “I’d love to have an aerial tour guide.”

A look of re­lief crossed his face be­fore he stood and stepped back. When they had set­tled into the side-by-side chairs and fas­tened their seat belts, Gabriel said, “You slept.” His tone was a cross be­tween amaze­ment and envy.

“I’m good at that.” Her fa­ther wasn’t big on rou­tine, so she’d learned to fall asleep when­ever there was an op­por­tu­nity. “What’s that?” She pointed to a tall white tower with a statue on top.

He had to lean part­way across her to see out the win­dow, which meant that his smooth-shaven cheek and dark, glossy hair were within mere inches of her face. God, she wanted to touch both! The aroma of his soap teased her nos­trils, but there was more—un­der­ly­ing the cit­rusy tang was a warm, mas­cu­line scent that was dis­tinctly Gabriel’s own. She fought the urge to bury her nose in the an­gle where his neck joined his shoul­der.

“That’s the mon­u­ment of Christ the King. It was in­spired by the huge statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro. The bridge near it is called Ponte 25 de Abril. In­ter­est­ingly, it was built by an Amer­i­can com­pany.”

She forced her gaze back to the win­dow. “That ex­plains why it looks kind of like the Golden Gate Bridge. What’s the sig­nif­i­cance of April twenty-fifth?”

“It’s the date of the Car­na­tion Rev­o­lu­tion when the au­thor­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ment of Salazar was over­thrown. The river we’re fly­ing over is the Tagus.”

“I wasn’t ex­pect­ing all the wa­ter around Lis­bon. It’s quite beau­ti­ful.”

“Less so as we get closer to the air­port,” Gabriel said.

He pointed out a cou­ple of other fea­tures as the plane de­scended, and then the wheels whis­pered onto the tar­mac, and they raced down the run­way. They tax­ied straight into an­other pri­vate hangar, al­though this one was oc­cu­pied by three non­de­script cars. There was a flurry of ac­tiv­ity as Mikel as­signed them to their re­spec­tive rides and made sure their lug­gage got stowed in the trunks.

As he had in­di­cated, Mikel paired him­self with Raul, while he put her in the car with Gabriel. The third car would carry two women and two men, also dressed in ca­sual va­ca­tion cloth­ing. How­ever, they moved with brisk ef­fi­ciency and un­smil­ing ex­pres­sions that spoiled any at­tempt to pass as tourists. She was pretty sure she caught a glimpse of a gun un­der one woman’s wind­breaker.

Af­ter see­ing how strik­ing Gabriel and Raul looked to­gether, she un­der­stood why Mikel had split them up. Sep­a­rately, they were very at­trac­tive men. To­gether, the con­cen­tra­tion of charisma and al­most mir­ror-im­age good looks would draw un­wanted at­ten­tion.

“Your driv­ers and guards are wear­ing two-way ra­dios, so we will be in com­mu­ni­ca­tion at all times,” Mikel said. “Fol­low their in­struc­tions, please.” He turned to Quinn and tapped his ear. “Sound check.”

“Right.” The day be­fore, Mikel had given Quinn one of the minia­ture two-way ra­dios and an ear­piece. She dug it out of the pocket of her zip­pered gray sweat­shirt and wedged it in her ear.

“Test­ing.” Mikel’s voice came from in front of her and in­side her ear.

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