Page 21 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“It’s far eas­ier to drive than a cheap Amer­i­can man­ual shift.”

“All right.” She flexed her fin­gers as she pic­tured them on the leather-wrapped steer­ing wheel. “You drink as much as you want, and I’ll drive home. Which means I’m not touch­ing a drop of al­co­hol.”

“You should take a taste of the Mon­tra­chet. It’s out of the or­di­nary.”

The waiter re­turned, and Gabriel went through the req­ui­site tast­ing of the wine. Per Gabriel’s in­struc­tion, the waiter poured just a splash of the white wine into Quinn’s glass, al­though he looked scan­dal­ized at the thought that she would not drink more.

Gabriel lifted his glass in the air be­tween them. “To respite. Thank you for com­ing to lunch with me.”

Quinn touched her glass to his. “To not wreck­ing the Spano.”

Gabriel laughed be­fore he set­tled back in his chair with his arm crooked lazily over the back. “Was one of your par­ents in the mil­i­tary?”

“The mil­i­tary?” Quinn couldn’t fig­ure out where that had come from, and she didn’t like the di­rec­tion this con­ver­sa­tion could go. “Why?”

“You said you moved con­stantly. That could in­di­cate a mil­i­tary ca­reer.”

“No, def­i­nitely not.” She was go­ing to have to give him some­thing more, or it would sound rude. “My fa­ther got rest­less if we stayed in one place too long. It was tough to go to a new school ev­ery six months or so.” Of course, now she un­der­stood that it had been that, or her fa­ther would have ended up in jail. In her younger days, though, she had been first be­wil­dered and then re­sent­ful.

“Your mother didn’t mind?”

“She died when I was young. Too young to re­mem­ber her,” she added to fore­stall the in­evitable ex­pres­sion of sym­pa­thy, since that was a lie, the same lie her fa­ther had told her when her mother had first aban­doned them.

He said it any­way. “I’m so sorry. Not hav­ing a mother must have made all the mov­ing even harder.”

“My fa­ther and I melded into sort of a unit, so it worked.” To her detri­ment even­tu­ally. “He was a lot of fun.” All true but not the whole story.

“I envy you. No one would de­scribe my fa­ther as fun. Or even mildly en­ter­tain­ing.”

“Trust me, there’s noth­ing to envy. Your fam­ily and mine ex­ist at op­po­site ends of ev­ery spec­trum there is.” His fam­ily lived by a code of honor and duty. Her fa­ther lived by what­ever was the eas­i­est way for him to have the things he wanted. He liked to paint him­self as a mod­ern-day Robin Hood be­cause he scammed only the rich, but he was a crim­i­nal, first and fore­most.

Gabriel’s eye­brows rose. She wished she had kept her mouth shut, be­cause now she’d piqued his cu­rios­ity. For­tu­nately, he gave her an apolo­getic look and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “My apolo­gies. Some­one from the palace is try­ing to reach me. It only vi­brates if it’s im­por­tant.”

“No wor­ries.”

He stood and walked to the French doors that led onto the empty ter­race. A blast of wind rip­pled the table­cloths as he opened one of the doors and closed it be­hind him. He walked into a shel­tered cor­ner and put his hand over one ear—the re­built one—be­fore lift­ing the phone to his in­tact ear. In­ter­est­ing. Was the ear still phys­i­cally un­com­fort­able, or had he made a psy­cho­log­i­cal choice?

Even in the cor­ner, the wind plas­tered his shirt and trousers against his body, out­lin­ing his pecs, abs, and thigh mus­cles. Heat prick­led through her to coil low in her belly. She wouldn’t act on the at­trac­tion, be­cause she wasn’t stupid enough to do that, but it dis­tracted her from her job.

Of course, it didn’t help that her job was all about him.

Chap­ter 8

“I’m sure Raul didn’t go to Italy,” Gabriel as­sured his un­cle. “He wouldn’t foul up Mikel’s op­er­a­tion.”

“Then where is he?” Luis asked. “He didn’t men­tion any­thing to you?”

Gabriel heard the edge of fear his un­cle was try­ing to con­ceal. His cousin had ditched his cell phone, slipped away from his body­guard, and van­ished. It wasn’t like the hy­per-re­spon­si­ble Raul to cause this kind of a com­mo­tion.

“Tío, Raul and I aren’t as close as we once were.” He was about to sug­gest call­ing Mikel when he re­mem­bered that the se­cu­rity ex­pert was at home with his sick daugh­ter. “There’s no rea­son to think any­thing bad has hap­pened to Raul, is there? No signs of strug­gle?”

“No,” his un­cle said. “The video cam­eras show that he left the palace un­der his own steam.”

Re­lief whis­pered through Gabriel. “I’m sure you’ve checked on all your cars, air­planes, and boats?”

“All ac­counted for,” his un­cle bit out.

“Horses?”

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