Page 29 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

An hour later, Quinn dropped a third empty beer bot­tle onto the thick grass and leaned back in the lounge chair. She took a deep breath, but the smell of the vaho hi­bis­cus sud­denly seemed ar­ti­fi­cial and alien. Pete’s visit had torn away her il­lu­sion of se­cu­rity. The past would catch up with her no mat­ter how far she ran.

To­mor­row she would have to tell Mikel about Pete’s visit. She didn’t want her boss to think she had any­thing to hide.

Self-pity slid through her, and for a minute, she let her­self wal­low. But when a tear slith­ered down her cheek, she scoured it off with the back of her hand and shoved out of the chair.

Grab­bing her three emp­ties from the grass, she headed for the back door, nearly drop­ping the bot­tles when her phone shrilled with the sound of the elec­tronic door­bell.

“If that’s Pete…” She fum­bled her cell out of her pocket and checked the video feed to see Gabriel propped against the rail­ing of her front steps, star­ing at the cam­era in a slightly un­fo­cused way. “Holy shit!”

Rac­ing into the kitchen, she dumped the bot­tles in the re­cy­cling bin. The door­bell squawked again. She wanted to check her hair in the pow­der room mir­ror, but her phone screeched an­other time, so she kept go­ing to the front door. “Keep your pants on, el duque!”

She yanked open the door and yelped. A horse stood at the foot of the steps, teth­ered to the rail­ing. “You brought your horse?”

She turned to find Gabriel smil­ing at her crookedly. “You can’t drink and drive, but there’s no law against drink­ing and rid­ing.”

He was drunk. Now she re­al­ized that he was us­ing the rail­ing to hold him­self up, his hip braced against it while his long denim-clad legs slanted out from un­der him at a slight an­gle. “You rode your horse into San Ig­na­cio, and no one stopped you?”

“I had to ex­plain that it wasn’t il­le­gal to a cou­ple of peo­ple, but then they un­der­stood.”

More likely they fig­ured out who they were deal­ing with. No one would dare to de­tain the Duke of Bencalor. She hoped they had let palace se­cu­rity know, be­cause she had no idea what to do with the horse.

“What hap­pened to your body­guard?” she asked, scan­ning the street again.

“I was on a se­cret mis­sion on horse­back, so I didn’t need one.” He listed side­ways on the rail­ing.

“You’d bet­ter come in­side be­fore you fall over,” she said, amazed he had stayed in the sad­dle. “Will your horse be okay out here?”

“He is a loyal beast. He will wait for me.” Gabriel tried to push him­self away from the rail­ing and stum­bled. Quinn caught him by his left arm to steady him, her fin­gers dig­ging into the hard swell of his bi­cep un­der the black cot­ton of his T-shirt. He stag­gered against her, his weight throw­ing her against the door­jamb and star­tling a grunt out of her.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, haul­ing him­self up­right by grab­bing the door­frame. “I’m very sorry. I just need to find my bal­ance. It’s here some­where.”

“You need a chair and some cof­fee,” Quinn said, wrap­ping his arm over her shoul­ders to steady him. “This way.”

It was im­pos­si­ble not to no­tice the heat and heft of his body as he leaned on her. She held on to his wrist to keep his arm in place and felt the strong beat of his pulse against her fin­ger­tips. The faint ex­otic fra­grance of his soap was over­laid by the odors of gar­lic and al­co­hol, yet she still wanted to bury her nose in his shirt and breathe in.

As the shock of his pres­ence wore off, she won­dered why the heck he had come to her house. In fact, how did he know where she lived? Scratch that, he was a royal duke. He had peo­ple who would find that in­for­ma­tion for him.

“I like your home,” Gabriel said, his words barely slurred.

“I’d be a lot more flat­tered if you were sober,” she said, guid­ing him in a less than straight line to the sec­tional in her liv­ing area.

“Be­ing drunk does not af­fect my…my aes­thetic judg­ment.” Gabriel sank onto the sofa with­out re­leas­ing his hold on her shoul­ders so she ended up sit­ting pressed against his side.

“Just all your other kinds of judg­ment, al­though I give you credit for say­ing ‘aes­thetic’ pretty clearly.” She at­tempted to dis­en­tan­gle her­self from his grip, but he pulled her in closer.

“Don’t leave me,” he said.

“I’m go­ing to make you some cof­fee.” She tried again to get up.

“I don’t want cof­fee.” He splayed his long fin­gers over her shoul­der so that one brushed over the up­per curve of her breast. Her nip­ple hard­ened with a tin­gle of plea­sure.

“Okay.” She turned within his grip and wedged one knee against his thigh to put some space be­tween their bod­ies. “Then why are you here?”

He tilted his head back against the cush­ion and draped his free arm over his eyes. “Why am I here?”

She’d had more ex­pe­ri­ence than she wanted with ine­bri­ated men. She needed to ask him an eas­ier ques­tion. “Where were you be­fore you came here?”

“At a bar. In Jaca.”

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