Page 14 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She hadn’t ex­pected the duke to be avail­able so quickly, so she warned Emilia to ex­pect him and then put her head down to fin­ish the pre­sen­ta­tion at high speed.

Emilia leaned through the door to Quinn’s of­fice. “I’ve set up the con­fer­ence room with drinks and tapas again. I’ll greet him and bring him there.”

Quinn glanced at the clock on her com­puter. Fif­teen min­utes. “You’re the best,” she said. Emilia nod­ded, and Quinn went back to re­ar­rang­ing the pho­to­graphs for the third time.

When her phone alarm too­tled a ten-minute warn­ing, she scooped up her lap­top and raced into the con­fer­ence room, leav­ing the door open. It was lunchtime, and she was starv­ing, so she grabbed a cou­ple of cheese slices. She was still chew­ing when she heard the duke’s dis­tinc­tive voice. Shit! He was early.

Nearly chok­ing as she tried to swal­low the last bite of cheese, she fran­ti­cally clicked on the soft­ware that would con­nect her com­puter to the big screen. As Emilia’s voice came nearer, Quinn’s screen saver ap­peared on the wall dis­play.

She hadn’t had time to check the neat­ness of her hair or the clean­li­ness of her glasses, which tended to get smudged when she was work­ing hard.

When Emilia pre­ceded the duke into the con­fer­ence room, Quinn leaped to her feet, swip­ing at her mouth with the back of her hand in case any cheese crumbs clung there.

Not the most poised way to greet a royal duke.

“Don Gabriel, thank you so much for com­ing,” Quinn gasped out be­fore she came around the ta­ble to thrust out her hand.

The duke shook her hand with grave cer­e­mony, his grip warm and firm. “Just Gabriel, por fa­vor. We are work­ing to­gether af­ter all.”

Emilia gave Quinn her usual dis­ap­prov­ing frown and a warn­ing shake of her head be­fore she ex­ited, clos­ing the door softly be­hind her.

“Please.” Quinn waved to the chair where Gabriel had sat be­fore. Emilia had al­ready poured wa­ter into a gob­let and set it in place.

“Ah, I see we have tapas again,” Gabriel said as he sank into the chair. His po­lite smile was strained.

“Not to pres­sure you, but it would make Emilia happy if you ate some,” Quinn said, try­ing to ease the mood a lit­tle. She knew this was dis­turb­ing for him. “She co­erced the restau­rant across the street into mak­ing them, even though they don’t open for an­other six hours.”

“Only if you will join me.” He nudged the wooden tray to­ward her, the curls of pa­per-thin ham and scent of fresh, crusty bread mak­ing her sali­vate.

Her stom­ach growled at that mo­ment, and she coughed to try to cover it up.

He chuck­led, the sound rum­bling up from his throat like the low­est notes of a cello. He picked up one of the small plates and of­fered it to her.

“Gra­cias.” The amused glint in his sil­very eyes sent but­ter­fly wings flut­ter­ing through her chest, so she dropped her gaze to the plate. Mis­take. His long fin­gers cra­dled the dish in a way that made her imag­ine him touch­ing her in places she shouldn’t be think­ing about in a pro­fes­sional set­ting. Or any set­ting at all, given who he was.

Client! Duke! Hero!

She re­peated the mantra be­cause just one of those should be enough to douse all the in­ap­pro­pri­ate hots she felt for him. Maybe it was just a fas­ci­na­tion with some­thing she knew she couldn’t have.

Or be­cause she’d seen the in­tense emo­tion he could con­vey when he was play­ing the gui­tar in the videos she’d watched. He was so dif­fer­ent now, con­trolled and self-con­tained. Had the gui­tar been the only way he ex­pressed emo­tion back then, or had he shut down be­cause of the trauma of his kid­nap­ping? Ev­i­dently, he hadn’t played since then.

No one seemed to un­der­stand ex­actly why not, since the kid­nap­pers had spared his fin­gers. Their choice sur­prised her. It was much eas­ier and less risky to slice off a fin­ger than to sur­gi­cally re­move an en­tire ear. She had men­tally tagged that fact as sig­nif­i­cant to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

She pulled her at­ten­tion back to the ar­ray of tapas since the duke was wait­ing for her to make her se­lec­tion. Grab­bing a slice of bread, a cou­ple of pieces of cheese, and some ham, she set down her plate be­side her lap­top.

“You should have a churro too,” Gabriel said, ges­tur­ing to the fried sticks of dough crusted with sugar.

In fact, she loved them, but she’d been in a hurry. She reached for one, barely avoid­ing a col­li­sion with his hand as he did the same. She jerked her hand back and de­posited the churro on her plate. Touch­ing him would be a bad idea.

The duke made his choices with more de­lib­er­a­tion than she had. He ate a bite of bread, cheese, and chorizo and took a sip of wa­ter be­fore say­ing, “Once again, may I ask how—out of all the ear sur­geons in the world—you nar­rowed down the pos­si­bil­i­ties to just three?”

Quinn swal­lowed the last of her own ham as she tried to fig­ure out how much to tell him. Her cri­te­ria had a lot to do with the de­tails of his kid­nap­ping, so it might cause him more dis­tress. “Well, I had help. Mikel’s crunch­ers sorted through a lot of the data for me.”

“‘Crunch­ers’?”

“Sorry, that’s what I call the an­a­lysts at CSIC. They crunch data like no­body’s busi­ness.” She had a mo­ment of panic. Was Mikel’s use of re­sources at the Cen­tro de Se­guri­dad e In­teligen­cia de Cal­eva sup­posed to be a se­cret? She shrugged. Too late now.

“Ah.” Gabriel nod­ded, ap­par­ently un­con­cerned by the in­volve­ment of the gov­ern­ment’s of­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence agency. Of course, Mikel re­ported to no one but the king, so he could prob­a­bly do pretty much any­thing he wanted. At any rate, she sus­pected that Mikel in­ter­preted his job to mean that. “What data did they crunch?” he prod­ded.

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