Page 105 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

But he had al­ready heard too much. He sounded very much the duke as he said, “This con­ver­sa­tion con­cerns your safety, a mat­ter that is very im­por­tant to me. I would like to stay.”

De­feated, Quinn nod­ded be­fore she turned to Bren­dan. “Sit.” She plunked down in the wicker chair across from her fa­ther. Gabriel folded him­self onto the love seat po­si­tioned be­tween them, in the cor­ner clos­est to Quinn, mak­ing his al­le­giance clear, even as his mouth pulled tight with dis­plea­sure.

Bren­dan sat for­ward with his el­bows braced on his knees. “Quin­nie, Jean-Pierre Dupont is a nasty char­ac­ter. One of the nas­ti­est I’ve ever en­coun­tered. You do not want his at­ten­tion fo­cused on you.”

“Too late for that,” Quinn said.

Gabriel made a sound that re­sem­bled a growl. “What does that mean?” he asked Quinn. “I thought Mikel took you to the meet­ing with Dupont only as an ob­server.”

She was dou­bly fu­ri­ous with her fa­ther—for break­ing his prom­ise to never set foot in Cal­eva and for up­set­ting Gabriel.

“Dupont al­ready knew who I am,” Quinn said.

“What do you mean who you are?” Gabriel per­sisted.

“He knew that I’m work­ing on your kid­nap­ping in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Gabriel swore in Span­ish.

“Hey, it’s not clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion that I work with Mikel and that Mikel works for the king,” Quinn pointed out. “Dupont must have made the con­nec­tion.” She wasn’t go­ing to share with Gabriel that Mikel didn’t be­lieve it had been that straight­for­ward.

“Your house is un­der sur­veil­lance.” Bren­dan made a wry face. “I’m guess­ing that your Mikel knows I’m here by now.”

“It doesn’t mat­ter. I’m go­ing to tell him,” Quinn said. “But I still don’t know why you’re here.”

“We should go in­side to dis­cuss this.” Her fa­ther pulled a small black box out of his pocket. “A bit of noise scram­bling that will keep our con­ver­sa­tion pri­vate in your house.”

Quinn stood and headed for the back door, as­sum­ing her fa­ther and Gabriel would fol­low. In­side, she headed straight for one of the arm­chairs and thumped down into it as the men filed in. Bren­dan sat on the sec­tional and fid­dled with the black box un­til a row of red lights on it turned green. He set it on the cof­fee ta­ble.

Gabriel set­tled on the part of the sec­tional at right an­gles to her fa­ther. It was a strate­gic lo­ca­tion since he could watch both of them from there. Quinn knew she wouldn’t get any­thing past his fo­cused gray gaze now. Lock­ing her eyes on him, she said, “This is part of my job, Gabriel. I want to make that clear.”

“I un­der­stand and will take that into con­sid­er­a­tion,” he said. “But you are part of my life, so I re­serve the right to be wor­ried about you.”

That was prob­a­bly the best she would get from him. Dukes were hard to con­trol. She al­most smiled at the thought, be­cause it was so weird for her to be hav­ing it.

“All right, Bren­dan, talk,” she said.

Her fa­ther sat for­ward. “I have lever­age over Dupont. I’m will­ing to give it to your boss.”

She winced as Gabriel stared at her fa­ther, his eyes nar­rowed in spec­u­la­tion. Did he think Bren­dan was a cop or a crook? It didn’t mat­ter. Quinn was go­ing to have to tell Gabriel the truth af­ter this. She hated Bren­dan even more at this mo­ment than she had when she was in jail.

“You’ll share the in­for­ma­tion with Mikel in re­turn for what?” she asked. There was al­ways a catch with her fa­ther.

Bren­dan had the nerve to look hurt. “In re­turn for keep­ing you safe. Dupont went to a lot of trou­ble to get that coin from me. He’s send­ing a se­ri­ous warn­ing.”

“What coin?” Gabriel asked with a sharp in­flec­tion.

“One of Dupont’s cronies won my lucky coin from me in a rigged card game,” Bren­dan said. “Dupont pre­sented it to Quinn at their meet­ing. He wanted to send a mes­sage to Mikel to lay off the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He made the mis­take of us­ing me to at­tempt to threaten my Quin­nie.”

Well, that showed Gabriel which side of the law Bren­dan was on.

Quinn shrugged one shoul­der in an in­sin­cere apol­ogy. “Since I didn’t know you were com­ing, I left your coin at the of­fice. Sorry.”

“Quin­nie, it’s worth thou­sands—well, that’s not im­por­tant,” Bren­dan said. “What is im­por­tant is to warn Dupont away from you.”

“Un min­uto,” Gabriel said, spear­ing Quinn with a look. “I thought it was Mikel’s idea for you to at­tend the meet­ing with Dupont. How did Dupont know you would be there?”

“He asked Mikel to bring me,” Quinn said. “I wasn’t go­ing to turn down the chance to get face-to-face with your ab­duc­tor. We learned a lot from that meet­ing.”

---