Page 102 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Money. Power. Paris. Odette Fontaine would seem to have ev­ery­thing she wanted. Why would she rock the boat by kid­nap­ping the heir to the throne?

“Your un­cle doesn’t seem to like her much.” The king’s re­ac­tion to Odette’s up­com­ing visit nagged at her. He was usu­ally so smooth and con­trolled. What­ever he felt about the woman ran deep.

“They had some kind of a ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ship soon af­ter Raul’s mother died. Maybe it ended badly?” Gabriel shrugged. “I don’t know much about it be­cause I was a baby then, of course. Mostly, I think Odette pesters Tío Luis to in­crease her com­pany’s share of the lily sap, and it ir­ri­tates him.”

“He hasn’t re­duced the amount of sap she gets re­cently, has he?”

“Not to my knowl­edge. Al­though I wasn’t pay­ing at­ten­tion for the last year or so.” His tone went bleak.

“No one could blame you for that.” Quinn made a men­tal note to check on the last sev­eral years of Ar­cham­beau con­tracts in the morn­ing.

“Why are you so in­ter­ested in my hon­orary aunt?” Gabriel asked. “You don’t think she was in­volved in the kid­nap­ping?”

“Just mak­ing con­nec­tions,” Quinn said. “That’s what I do.”

“That’s im­pos­si­ble. Raul and I have known her all our lives.” Gabriel’s tone was dis­mis­sive.

Quinn de­cided to push back. “I’ve heard there’s some sus­pi­cion she might be fund­ing that group of no­bles who wants to take back their lily fields.”

“That is dif­fer­ent. It’s busi­ness.” Gabriel shifted to look at her. “No one has proven that, have they?”

“Not that I know of, but Mikel only tells me what he thinks I need to know.”

“Mikel likes to keep his se­crets.” He blew out a sigh be­fore reach­ing out to tilt her chin to­ward him. “Let’s go back to fam­ily-night rules. No more pol­i­tics. No more talk about work.”

He low­ered his mouth to hers in a hot, se­duc­tive kiss. She for­got about ev­ery­thing ex­cept the press of his lips against her skin.

Later, she lay in the dark in her bed with Gabriel’s arm a com­fort­ing weight around her naked waist. His face was turned to­ward hers on the pil­low as he slept, while his breath ruf­fled her hair. She lightly traced the dragon tat­too writhing up his side.

The in­ten­sity of his beauty wrung her heart, mak­ing her eyes sting with tears.

The king might al­low her to come to din­ner. He might even find her con­ver­sa­tion ac­cept­able. But she did not have a fu­ture of din­ing in that el­e­gant din­ing room with its long and re­gal his­tory. Luis and Hélène and Lorenzo were tol­er­at­ing her as a pass­ing fancy of Gabriel’s. They knew he would come to his senses at some point and stop slum­ming with the Amer­i­can com­moner.

She snug­gled in closer to the warm wall of his bare chest, and his grip tight­ened on her waist even though his breath­ing con­tin­ued with the even­ness of sleep.

If only he would hold on to her for­ever.

Chap­ter 26

“You sus­pect Odette Fontaine?” Mikel’s eye­brows rose as he leaned back in his desk chair.

“Not sus­pect, ex­actly.” Quinn shifted on the an­tique chair in Mikel’s of­fice. “She’s an­other con­nec­tion to Paris for me to tug on. The king re­acted neg­a­tively when the duchess men­tioned her name. He doesn’t usu­ally do that.”

“He was among fam­ily, so he could al­low him­self to show his true feel­ings,” Mikel pointed out.

“I was there.” The un­wanted out­sider. “Do you know why he doesn’t like her? Is it per­sonal or busi­ness?”

For a mo­ment, her boss gazed across the room at the mu­ral of Acan­ti­lado Alto. Quinn won­dered what he was men­tally edit­ing out of his nar­ra­tive. “You un­der­stand that much of what I will tell you hap­pened be­fore I came to Cal­eva. El rey shared what he felt I needed to know so it’s lack­ing in…de­tail, shall we say.”

She nod­ded.

“Let me be­gin be­fore Odette Fontaine came into the pic­ture for con­text. Luis and Lorenzo be­came friends with Hélène be­gin­ning in high school. As they got older—in their early twen­ties—both Luis and Lorenzo fell in love with Hélène. To ev­ery­one’s shock, she chose Lorenzo.”

So that was why the king looked at the duchess the way you looked at an old photo that re­minded you of younger, hap­pier days. Quinn had won­dered about that at din­ner.

“That doesn’t seem to have worked out so well,” she ob­served.

Mikel shrugged. “Mar­riage is com­pli­cated. At any rate, about that time, Luis’s fa­ther, el Rey Carlo, was di­ag­nosed with glioblas­toma, which would im­pair his brain func­tion be­fore it killed him. Carlo wanted Luis set­tled in a mar­riage be­fore the king’s dis­ease hit its fi­nal stages. At that point, Luis was still bro­ken­hearted over Hélène’s choice, so he al­lowed his fa­ther to ar­range a union with Sofia, the daugh­ter of the Duke of Caste­lano. She be­came preg­nant shortly af­ter the wed­ding and gave birth to Raul. Then things got ugly.”

---