Page 121 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Who told you about Dupont com­ing here, Mikel or your fa­ther?”

“I get the same writ­ten brief­ing from Mikel that you and my fa­ther do.”

Mikel left a lot of de­tails out of those brief­ings, like the fact that Dupont had re­quested Quinn’s pres­ence at their meet­ing. “You and Tío Luis must dis­cuss the de­vel­op­ments, though.”

“Por supuesto.” Raul shifted in his chair. “Get to the point.”

Gabriel pulled the gui­tar strap over his head and set the in­stru­ment in its case on the floor. He and Raul used to talk about ev­ery­thing be­fore the kid­nap­ping. He’d trusted his cousin then. He should trust him now.

“Do you know about Quinn’s back­ground?” he asked.

Raul’s ex­pres­sion turned neu­tral. “What do you mean by ‘back­ground’? I know Mikel con­sid­ers her a ge­nius at track­ing down crim­i­nals.”

“I mean be­fore she came to Cal­eva. She told me about her past. Has your fa­ther told you?”

His cousin’s shoul­ders slumped in re­lief. “Thank God she told you. Yes, I know about her crim­i­nal record. Hon­estly, I thought Mikel was crazy to hire her, but he was right. Look at the re­sults she’s got­ten.”

“Do you also think I’m crazy to have fallen in love with her?” Gabriel didn’t bother to hide the sharp­ness of his ques­tion.

Raul held up his hands, palms out. “Truce, primo. I didn’t know her be­fore Mikel hired her.”

“And now?” Gabriel let the words crack like a whip.

“Now I un­der­stand what Mikel saw and what you see. It’s hard to imag­ine her com­mit­ting a crime. Did she tell you why she did it?”

“No.” But he didn’t in­tend to dis­cuss that with Raul. “She thinks her past will be an em­bar­rass­ment to me and to our fam­ily. That your fa­ther would not ac­cept her as any­thing more than my tem­po­rary girl­friend. I can­not con­vince her oth­er­wise.”

Raul’s eye­brows rose. “How much more than a tem­po­rary girl­friend are we talk­ing?”

“I love her. She un­der­stands not just the easy parts of me but also the dark ones. I can be all of my­self with her.” He had never put that into words be­fore, even to him­self.

“That makes you a very for­tu­nate man.” Raul’s re­sponse held a quiet long­ing. “Maybe her con­cern is also about her­self. If you pub­licly an­nounce that you’re se­ri­ous, the press will dig into ev­ery as­pect of her life. She might not want that.”

“Quinn is no cow­ard.” It was pos­si­ble she wouldn’t want to en­dure the hell the me­dia might put her through. She said she loved him, but her voice al­ways held a trace of sad­ness when she said it.

“Per­haps she’s pro­tect­ing some­one else.”

If she was pro­tect­ing some­one else, who was it?

“How much would it bother you if I wanted to marry her?” Gabriel asked point-blank.

“My opin­ion doesn’t mat­ter,” Raul said with care­ful neu­tral­ity.

“It does to me.” Gabriel pressed his hand to his chest. “You think like a prince, as well as like a brother.”

Raul tilted his head back to gaze up at the wooden beams of the ceil­ing. “You’re ask­ing me to wear a lot of hats here.”

“Wear a dif­fer­ent hat for each an­swer, then.”

His cousin low­ered his chin again. “As a prince, I wince at the po­ten­tial for neg­a­tive pub­lic­ity. She’s an Amer­i­can, which has its pros and cons. Some Cal­e­vans love hav­ing the U.S. mil­i­tary base on our is­land. Some want it gone. That fac­tion would make her a tar­get. Her crim­i­nal record would be a blot on our es­cutcheon, but she went to prison, so we could spin it that she’s paid her debt to so­ci­ety. The crown has weath­ered far worse scan­dals.” He sent a hard look at Gabriel. “How­ever, if there’s more to it than what we know, I can’t speak to that.”

“Granted.” Gabriel had gone through the same thought process.

“More im­por­tant is that you de­serve hap­pi­ness,” Raul said.

Anger surged through Gabriel. “Leave the kid­nap­ping out of this. I’m tired of be­ing pitied for what hap­pened.”

“Don’t be an ass­hole,” his cousin said. “I want you to be happy be­cause you’re the brother of my heart. Pa­ter and your par­ents want you to be happy be­cause they love you. They’ll do ev­ery­thing in their power to get through any is­sues about Quinn’s past.” Raul took a deep breath. “But, Gabri, I feel like none of us knows Quinn as well as we would like.”

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