Page 111 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Gabriel raised a skep­ti­cal eye­brow at the lat­ter state­ment, but how could he refuse a fa­ther’s re­quest? “I’ll sug­gest that you and Quinn take your drinks out­side while I clean up. You’ll have to per­suade her to agree.”

When Quinn re­turned to the ta­ble, Gabriel handed her the opened wine bot­tle. “Go out on the pa­tio with your fa­ther while I han­dle the dishes. He should see the full moon while sur­rounded by the per­fume of vaho hi­bis­cus.”

She nar­rowed her eyes at him as she ac­cepted the bot­tle. “You’ll join us as soon as you’re done.”

“Por supuesto. Of course.” He gave her knee a quick squeeze of ap­proval. That had been eas­ier than he’d ex­pected.

Quinn went through the door Bren­dan held open for her, in­hal­ing the warm air sat­u­rated with flo­ral per­fume. Gabriel hadn’t fooled her. He had en­gi­neered this time alone with her fa­ther.

Bren­dan fol­lowed her out and stopped, clos­ing his eyes as he, too, drew in a deep breath. “You’ve found your­self a good place,” he said as he ex­haled. “And a good lad.”

She al­most laughed at him call­ing the Duke of Bencalor a lad. But one of the few things she se­cretly ad­mired about her fa­ther was his lack of awe about sta­tus like money, power, and ti­tle, pos­si­bly be­cause he eval­u­ated ev­ery­one as a mark. He wouldn’t care that Gabriel was royal or rich, ex­cept in or­der to part him from his money.

“I like it here.” Quinn sat and plunked the wine bot­tle on a side ta­ble. “So don’t screw it up for me.”

Of course, he al­ready had. Her stom­ach flipped again at the thought of ex­plain­ing her his­tory to Gabriel.

For once, Bren­dan made no ex­cuses. He reached into the overnight bag he’d brought with him from the liv­ing room and pulled out a thick, rub­ber-banded packet of Amer­i­can money. “This is the money Pete owes you.”

“He paid me back al­ready?” She took the packet from her fa­ther’s out­stretched hand.

“I’m tak­ing over his debt.” Bren­dan scowled. “He should never have bor­rowed from you, the poxy ee­jit.”

“This is your money?” Quinn bal­anced the heavy stack of bills on her open palm.

“No, it’s your money that Pete had no busi­ness tak­ing from you.”

She held her fa­ther’s gaze for a long mo­ment as she de­bated. Then she closed her fin­gers around the money. Her fa­ther owed her af­ter all.

“Thank you.” Bren­dan fid­geted with the han­dles of his bag. “I’m sorry to break my prom­ise not to come here, but once I heard Dupont had you in his sights, I had to. He’s an ugly cus­tomer, one of the ugli­est I’ve ever met. I needed to find a way to stop him.”

“Stop him from what?”

“Hurt­ing you.”

“He’d have to go through Mikel first.” Her boss would never let Dupont get to her.

“Af­ter meet­ing your boss, I feel some­what less con­cerned,” Bren­dan con­ceded. “Silva has a rep­u­ta­tion, but I needed to see for my­self.”

“What kind of rep­u­ta­tion?” It should be in­ter­est­ing to hear about Mikel from a crim­i­nal’s per­spec­tive.

Bren­dan shook his head. “He’s treated you well, so I’ll not speak ill of him.”

“Go ahead. Given the source, you won’t change my opin­ion of him.”

“He wasn’t al­ways on the right side of the law. His past… Well, let’s just say that it’s worse than mine.”

Had she sus­pected that? Maybe. Mikel’s eyes some­times went dark in a way that would frighten her if she didn’t trust him one hun­dred per­cent. “God knows I be­lieve in sec­ond chances,” she said. “Mikel’s given me one, so I can’t hold his past against him.”

“He still crosses the line when he needs to, Quin­nie. To be hon­est, that’s why I think he might be able to pro­tect you from Dupont.”

Quinn tilted her head back to stare at the stars. If some­one threat­ened Mikel’s daugh­ter, Quinn could imag­ine him cross­ing ev­ery line there was. That’s how pro­tec­tive he was as a fa­ther. Sud­denly, she didn’t want to hear any more about her boss. “He’s re­spon­si­ble for the safety of the royal fam­ily. He had bet­ter be good at pro­tect­ing peo­ple.”

“And that’s why I’m en­trust­ing him with your safety,” Bren­dan said eas­ily. “But let’s talk about pleas­an­ter top­ics. That young man of yours—”

“Is off-lim­its in this con­ver­sa­tion,” Quinn said, throw­ing a glance to­ward the closed French doors.

“All I was go­ing to say is that I like him.”

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