Page 89 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

He nod­ded, fear­ing to set a foot wrong in this con­ver­sa­tion. He loved Quinn’s prickly strength, but he didn’t al­ways know how to deal with it. The un­set­tling truth was that most of the women he’d known had gen­er­ated lit­tle fric­tion in their re­la­tion­ships. Had his po­si­tion made them ac­com­mo­date him more than was nor­mal? The thought shot dis­com­fort through him.

“I prom­ise to tell you ev­ery­thing I can—and that Mikel al­lows me to—when I am able to,” she said. “I would like you to ac­cept that with­out pres­sur­ing me.” She stretched out her hand but stopped short of touch­ing him. “I want to close this in­ves­ti­ga­tion as fast as pos­si­ble be­cause I hate the peo­ple who were so cruel to you. I hate them be­cause I care about you, but even if we were to­tal strangers, I would pur­sue them with the same com­mit­ment and fo­cus. Do you un­der­stand?”

He caught her hand and en­folded it in his. “I will prom­ise not to pres­sure you. How­ever, I must be al­lowed to ask ques­tions. If you can­not an­swer them, you say so, and I will let it go.” If he re­ally wanted to know, he would ask Mikel. The man had more re­spect for a royal duke than Quinn did. He lifted her hand to his lips to brush his lips over her knuck­les. “Let’s change the topic be­cause I have good news.”

Her face lit up. “I could use some.”

“Do you re­mem­ber when I made my drunken visit to your house? For which I apol­o­gize again.”

“That would be tough to for­get.” She grinned at him.

“You sug­gested that I start a mu­sic fes­ti­val on Cal­eva.”

“I did?” She thought a mo­ment. “Oh, yeah, I was try­ing to cheer you up, but you ve­toed it with a mar­tyred look on your face.”

“I wasn’t look­ing mar­tyred. I felt guilty be­cause my plan was to take some of the bur­den of gov­ern­ment off my un­cle’s shoul­ders. A mu­sic fes­ti­val felt more like adding to it with re­quire­ments for fund­ing, ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port, and who knows what else. It seemed like it would be more for my ben­e­fit than Cal­eva’s.”

She tapped the back of his hand with her fin­ger­tip. “Don’t you think Joan of Arc loved wear­ing ar­mor, car­ry­ing her ban­ner, and gal­lop­ing along in front of the French army? Come on, she was hav­ing a blast. That doesn’t mean that what she did was any less im­pres­sive.”

“Joan of Arc? Ah, a mar­tyr. Now I un­der­stand.” Gabriel gave the braid that fell over her shoul­der a tug. “Your mind works in fas­ci­nat­ing ways.”

“Stop stalling and tell me the good news,” she said.

“I de­cided you might be right about the fes­ti­val, so I broached the topic with my un­cle this af­ter­noon.” He paused for a touch of drama. “He is en­thu­si­as­tic about the idea.”

She gave a lit­tle crow of tri­umph. “Con­grat­u­la­tions! I pic­ture you dressed in black—look­ing very hot—wav­ing the ban­ner of Cal­e­van cul­ture as you ride around the world in the Dragon Jet.”

“I like the hot part.” He let his voice drop into a low rum­ble. Then he grew se­ri­ous. “I promised him a pro­posal in a week.”

“This is go­ing to be fun!” Quinn said, ex­cite­ment bub­bling in her voice.

“This is go­ing to be a lot of work, be­cause I have no idea how to cre­ate a mu­sic fes­ti­val.” The truth of that struck hard at him.

“We’ll worry about that later.” She waved a hand in dis­missal of the lo­gis­tics. “Tell me your con­cept.”

“My idea is to hold it in July when the weather is so glo­ri­ous. I want it to be world-class. It will be an honor to be in­vited to per­form here.”

“You could have art ex­hibits too. Maybe the art­work could speak to the mu­sic that’s be­ing per­formed.”

“I’ll have to add more venues for that.” But he liked that idea. “We’ll need to scat­ter events all over the is­land to ac­com­mo­date the scale I’m en­vi­sion­ing.”

“Build a new venue!” She drew a cir­cle in the air with her beer bot­tle. “A cen­ter that would en­com­pass all the arts.”

He laughed even as he pic­tured the struc­ture, made of basalt and steel, ris­ing from the plain out­side San Ig­na­cio. “I need to see if I can pull this off be­fore we start build­ing things.”

“Chicken and egg,” Quinn said. “They build Olympic sta­di­ums be­fore they know if they’ll make money. If you build it, they will come.”

The need to hold her be­came over­whelm­ing. He dropped his bot­tle on the grass and pulled her onto his lap, lov­ing the feel of her soft, curvy body in his arms. “You have given me so much. My mu­sic for my­self and now this new project for my coun­try.”

He low­ered his head to put all the joy and ten­der­ness he felt into a kiss.

Chap­ter 24

Mikel held the door so Quinn could slide into the limou­sine that had met them at the air­port in Zurich. She had been a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed that they hadn’t flown on the king’s pri­vate jet, but busi­ness class had not been too shabby. Also, they’d got­ten to skip a lot of lines at both air­ports be­cause they were on of­fi­cial busi­ness for the Cal­e­van crown.

A thrill of an­tic­i­pa­tion ran through her. The sur­geon was a weak link. They might shake loose some sig­nif­i­cant in­for­ma­tion from him.

“Danke, Emil,” Mikel said as the driver handed him a sil­ver brief­case. Her boss ducked into the car, and the driver closed the door be­hind him. Mikel hit the but­ton that closed the pri­vacy screen be­tween them and Emil.

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