Page 6 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

No, he wanted a large shot of pitorro rum, but Mikel didn’t stock Puerto Ri­can moon­shine. He nod­ded, watch­ing as she rose again. She curled her slim shoul­ders in­ward and low­ered her chin as she walked, as though she didn’t want to dis­turb the air she passed through. No, as though she didn’t want to be no­ticed.

When she brought the crys­tal pitcher to the ta­ble from the cre­denza, she poured the wa­ter into his gob­let with­out spilling a drop, de­spite the ice cubes bob­bing and clink­ing against the sides.

He turned his head and caught her gaze.

“I waited ta­bles when I was in col­lege,” she said, some­how read­ing the ques­tion in his mind.

Her lap­top emit­ted a quiet ping. She set the pitcher back on the cre­denza and hus­tled back to her com­puter, pulling the drive from its port. He held out his hand, the faint scar on his wrist catch­ing his eye. Had Ko­dra tight­ened the zip tie that would mark Gabriel’s skin there for the rest of his life?

She leaned over the ta­ble with the flash drive held be­tween her fin­ger­tips. Her hands matched the rest of her: small and del­i­cate, the nails cut short with no burst of col­ored pol­ish to draw at­ten­tion. He moved his hand closer to her, and she dropped the sil­ver drive into his palm with­out touch­ing him.

He closed his fin­gers around the elec­tronic dossier on one frag­ment of his night­mares, the metal slightly warm from her grasp.

“I’ll ask Mikel to call you as soon as he re­turns to the of­fice,” Quinn said. “Do you have any ques­tions for me?”

Must I suf­fer through this again?

But he couldn’t voice that ques­tion, be­cause she had worked hard to find this man. “You’ve been very clear. I’ll read the rest on the flash drive.” He pushed him­self to his feet, the strange fa­tigue sap­ping his en­ergy.

She leaped up to hold the door open. “Thank you, Don Gabriel.”

He ges­tured to the ex­quis­ite tapas board that he had just no­ticed on the cre­denza. Some­one had gone to the trou­ble and ex­pense to have it there for him. “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to sam­ple some of the del­i­ca­cies. They look de­li­cious.”

“More left­overs for Emilia and me,” she said with a cheeky grin.

The chuckle that rose from his throat felt good…real. “Per­haps I should ask for take­out.”

“Sorry. You have to con­sume all tapas on premises.”

He passed close to her as he ap­proached the door. A waft of vanilla and lime with a touch of sugar rose from her gleam­ing hair. When he looked down, all he could see was the zigzag of her part. He wanted to cup her chin to tilt it up­ward so he could study her face in more de­tail.

He got his wish when she jerked up her head, her eyes wide with worry. “Would you re­ally like to take the tapas with you? We can do that.”

He held her gaze, find­ing golden lines light­ing her brown irises, short thick lashes, fine-pored skin with­out a touch of sun, and a full bot­tom lip that tempted his thumb to stroke it. She stared back at him, her gaze rov­ing over his face in re­turn. It was a fair ex­change, but he won­dered what she saw. Would she check his ear to see if there were vis­i­ble scars?

He broke the mo­ment with a shake of his head. “You and Emilia may en­joy all the tapas. I have lunch plans.” A lie, and his stom­ach clenched in a way that re­jected the idea of food.

She gave him a ten­ta­tive smile and took a step back­ward, a clear hint that she wanted him to exit the con­fer­ence room first.

He could sense her be­hind him as he walked down the hall to­ward the re­cep­tion area, partly from the whis­per of her foot­steps on the car­pet and partly from what seemed like a crackle of elec­tric­ity in the air. He rec­og­nized that as the charge of phys­i­cal at­trac­tion, but he dis­missed it as mis­placed, some spillover of adren­a­line from the storm her rev­e­la­tion had con­jured up in­side him.

Emilia hov­ered by the door, a look of con­cern shad­ow­ing her face when she saw him. “Mikel called to apol­o­gize for not be­ing here. His daugh­ter’s fever is just be­gin­ning to abate.”

“Please! Fam­ily is al­ways the first pri­or­ity. He has no apolo­gies to make.” Gabriel dredged up his most re­as­sur­ing smile, the one that said all was well. The one he’d per­fected to keep ev­ery­one from hov­er­ing over him.

Emilia’s anx­ious ex­pres­sion eased. “He wished to be here to dis­cuss the dis­cov­ery with you.”

“Quinn did an ex­cel­lent job,” he said.

Of ex­hum­ing mem­o­ries he’d worked hard to bury. But it wasn’t fair to blame her for that.

“I’m glad.” But Emilia cast a crit­i­cal glance to­ward Quinn, which he un­der­stood. Emilia was an old-school Cal­e­van with great re­spect for the hi­er­ar­chy and his­tory of the coun­try. Quinn’s Amer­i­can re­luc­tance to curtsy would not sit well with her.

Sud­denly, the ten­sion ed­dy­ing around the of­fice frayed his nerves. “Thank you. I will be in touch,” he mut­tered be­fore he strode to the door.

As he bolted out into the sun­light, the edges of the flash drive dug into his palm.

Chap­ter 3

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