Page 137 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Weren’t you just a teenager then? She wouldn’t bow to a kid.”

He gave her a quizzi­cal look. “Peo­ple have bowed to me ever since I can re­mem­ber.”

“In Cal­eva, maybe.” She still couldn’t pic­ture an adult bow­ing to a four-year-old Gabriel.

He shrugged. “Marisela makes me feel like a mu­si­cian, not a royal. I value that.”

In an up­side-down way, it echoed her ex­pe­ri­ence with Mikel. Since her con­vic­tion, she had been la­beled a crim­i­nal, but Mikel had over­looked that. He had hired her for her tal­ent at track­ing bad guys and never men­tioned her record. “I un­der­stand. Hav­ing some­one see you for your­self is a gift.”

“Yes!” Gabriel slid his arm around her shoul­ders and pulled her against him. “You give me that gift too.”

She snug­gled into his warmth, but he was wrong. She was heart-wrench­ingly aware that he was a royal duke. Watch­ing some­one like Kyran Redda—a non-Cal­e­van and a su­per­star—re­act to Gabriel with awe re­minded her that the man she loved was far out of her league. She was go­ing to have to let him go.

“I plan to prac­tice for a cou­ple of hours when we get to the ho­tel,” Gabriel said. “There’s no rea­son for you to be stuck there, though. Vin­cent will take you any­where you want to go.”

“Only if he wants to get fired. Mikel gave strict or­ders about us stay­ing in the ho­tel room when we weren’t com­mit­ted else­where.”

“Madre de Dios, I hate that you are in dan­ger be­cause of me.” Frus­tra­tion vi­brated in his voice.

“I’m happy to stay in. It will be much more fun to hang around in a lux­ury suite at the Wooster 44. That’s an ex­pe­ri­ence not to be missed.” She wasn’t ly­ing. She had never heard of the ho­tel be­fore, so she had looked it up. It was so ex­clu­sive that only celebri­ties, world lead­ers, and, of course, royal dukes stayed there.

She cupped his cheek and smiled. “Be­sides, I have to check to make sure your fin­gers aren’t bleed­ing.”

“No work­ing, though.” He turned his face to kiss her palm. “You will soak in the whirlpool tub, drink­ing cham­pagne and sa­vor­ing the view of the Hud­son River.”

“Not to men­tion lis­ten­ing to you play the gui­tar, which is the best part.”

She in­ter­twined her fin­gers with Gabriel’s. She could hold on to him a lit­tle longer.

Chap­ter 32

The next morn­ing, they were back in the limo, on the way to meet with Marisela. The ten­sion rolling off Gabriel was so thick that Quinn felt like it fogged the in­te­rior of the car.

“If you want to talk, I’ll talk,” she said, stroking her hand over his thigh to sooth its ner­vous jig­gling. “But I un­der­stand if you pre­fer not to be dis­tracted.”

He blew out a breath and gave her a tight smile. “Sorry.”

“No apol­ogy nec­es­sary. I know this is im­por­tant to you.” Even if she thought that he shouldn’t put his fate in the hands of a vir­tual stranger.

He nod­ded and went silent again.

She gave his thigh a squeeze and let him fall back into his thoughts. Slid­ing her other hand into the cross-body bag she car­ried, she checked that the Glock was still po­si­tioned where she could grab it quickly.

Of course, Vin­cent was driv­ing them to the the­ater while An­neliese and the other two men were fol­low­ing them in a non­de­script sedan. All would stand guard while Gabriel was au­di­tion­ing. How­ever, Quinn wasn’t go­ing to take any chances that a ran­dom stage­hand might turn out to be on Dupont’s pay­roll.

She was more wor­ried about what Marisela would say to Gabriel, though. If the gui­tarist killed his hope, it would al­most be worse than an as­sas­sin’s bul­let. Quinn hoped the to­caora knew how much was rid­ing on her opin­ion to­day.

If she re­acted neg­a­tively, Quinn planned to do ev­ery­thing she could to per­suade Gabriel to ig­nore her. Yet she un­der­stood that per­form­ers and artists were per­fec­tion­ists. They could never live up to their own stan­dards, which might be why they needed to hear what other peo­ple thought of their work. It gave them some per­spec­tive.

She sighed softly.

Last night, Gabriel had wrapped him­self around her as though he were drown­ing. Maybe he felt like he was. To­day, he had dis­ap­peared into his own pri­vate world, shut­ting her out.

The limo coasted to a stop in front of the Teatro Lorca, the venue where Marisela Alejo was per­form­ing for the next two weeks. The to­caora had asked Gabriel to meet her there since she was in the midst of stage re­hearsals.

As in­structed, Quinn waited for Vin­cent to come around and open the door. Gabriel didn’t even seem to no­tice that they’d ar­rived. He was press­ing his fin­gers against the leather seat in an in­tri­cate pat­tern that meant he was play­ing through one of the pieces in his mind.

The door swung open, and Quinn scooted out in front of a Moor­ish Re­vival façade. The en­trance doors were framed by pointed arches with or­nate blue-and-white tile­work. An old-fash­ioned mar­quee an­nounced Marisela Alejo’s name in large black let­ters.

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