Page 88 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She laid her cheek against his chest with a sigh. “It’s nice to be ap­pre­ci­ated.”

A pro­found sad­ness un­der­lay her words. He cra­dled her head in one hand as he stroked her back with the other. “What is it? What hap­pened to­day?”

She shook her­self loose from his em­brace, and he wanted to curse him­self.

“What hap­pened?” she re­peated his ques­tion with her hands on her hips. “First, your mother crashed my meet­ing with Raul. I com­pletely screwed up the curtsy/kiss thing with her. And I had no idea if she knew about us or not.” She slanted a look his way. “Does she know about us?”

“I left her a mes­sage this af­ter­noon.” He felt a twinge of guilt that he hadn’t tried to call her again.

She gave him a poke in the chest. “Your mother wants to take me out to lunch. I couldn’t tell if it’s a thank-you for con­vinc­ing you to take up your gui­tar again, or if she wanted to scope out the woman you’re sleep­ing with.”

“Know­ing my mother, it will be both.” He would call Ma­man tonight.

“And your un­cle Luis, the King of frickin’ Cal­eva, walked in on the same meet­ing and in­vited me to din­ner on Sun­day. At the frickin’ palace.”

She poked him again. This time, he grabbed her lit­tle hand and lifted it to kiss the knuck­les. “I am so sorry I wasn’t there.” He didn’t tell her that he would have paid a lot of money to see her ex­pres­sion.

“Luck­ily, Raul came to my res­cue and got me out of there. He also promised to keep me from be­ing seated by the king at din­ner. I wanted to hug him.”

Gabriel felt a tiny flare of jeal­ousy that his cousin had earned her grat­i­tude. “I would pre­fer that you didn’t.”

She laughed and gave his cheek a lit­tle pat. “That was metaphor­i­cal. Be­sides, I trust you to pro­tect me from your un­cle and your mother since you’re com­ing to din­ner at the palace too.”

“They’re just my fam­ily. They want to get to know you be­cause we are to­gether. That’s noth­ing out of the or­di­nary.”

“Are you kid­ding me?” She glared at him. “Meet­ing the par­ents is al­ways stress­ful. When the par­ents are a duke and duchess, and the un­cle is a king, the stress is mul­ti­plied by a thou­sand.” Her hand came up to flut­ter in the air. “No, make that a mil­lion.”

“Let me get you an­other beer,” he said.

“It would take more like a keg to get over this.”

He laughed be­fore he went to the kitchen and grabbed two beers from the re­frig­er­a­tor be­fore re­join­ing her on the pa­tio.

“Gra­cias,” she said, ac­cept­ing the beer and touch­ing it against his with a clink be­fore they both sat. She stared out into the gar­den as she said, “I’m go­ing to be out of the coun­try to­mor­row, so I’ll be home late.”

His at­ten­tion sharp­ened, and con­cern drilled into his chest. “Where are you go­ing? Who are you see­ing? Some­one con­nected with Dupont?”

“I can’t tell you.” She picked at the la­bel on her beer bot­tle. “It’s for work.”

“Which means it’s about my ab­duc­tion, so I have a right to that in­for­ma­tion.” He also needed to know how much dan­ger she would be in.

“Ev­ery­thing I do is about your ab­duc­tion. That’s my job. You know that.”

“That was be­fore Mikel put you on Dupont’s radar.” He placed his beer bot­tle on the ta­ble with an an­gry thunk.

Quinn turned to him with an equal anger. “Don’t blame Mikel. Dupont would have found me sooner or later.” She shoved her glasses down to pinch the bridge of her nose. “Shit! I knew this would get com­pli­cated.”

He was not go­ing to win this bat­tle. He would have to trust Mikel to keep her safe wher­ever she was go­ing. The man cer­tainly seemed ca­pa­ble of do­ing so.

“Lo siento. I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I need to let you do your job. I just want this to be over with. I want to go for­ward, not keep be­ing pulled into the past.”

She set­tled her glasses back on her nose and mut­tered, “The past al­ways catches up with you.”

That’s what was both­er­ing her. Some­thing from her past. Maybe he should have al­lowed his un­cle to tell him what it was.

No, he needed to hear it from Quinn.

Piv­ot­ing in her chair, she faced him, her brown eyes wide with de­ter­mi­na­tion. “There have to be bound­aries be­tween you as my client and you as my boyfriend. Oth­er­wise, this won’t work.”

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