Page 126 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Quinn and Mikel had leaped to their feet as soon as the king had be­gun to rise.

“Thank you for giv­ing us your time,” Mikel said with his sig­na­ture al­most bow. “Bue­nas tardes, Señor.”

Quinn curt­sied be­cause the aura of king­ship per­me­ated the air in the room.

No min­ion ap­peared to usher them out of the palace be­cause she was with Mikel. He pointed out a cou­ple of in­ter­est­ing art­works as they walked down the long hall to a pri­vate exit but made no com­ment on the meet­ing. Quinn fol­lowed his lead, fig­ur­ing the palace had ears.

Once they were set­tled in his SUV, Mikel said in a sat­is­fied tone, “That went well.”

“Ex­cept he said my case has holes an ocean liner could sail through,” Quinn pointed out.

“He agreed to the most im­por­tant el­e­ment of our pre­sen­ta­tion—threat­en­ing Fontaine with a re­duc­tion of the pre­cious lily sap.”

“Did you think he wouldn’t?” The king seemed to trust Mikel im­plic­itly.

Mikel shrugged as he drove through the palace gate. “I thought it would take more per­suad­ing.”

“I ex­pected him to be more shocked by our sug­ges­tion that Odette was the in­sti­ga­tor. I was when I started to con­nect the dots,” Quinn said. “What­ever made him end their re­la­tion­ship must have been pretty bad, or he wouldn’t have even con­sid­ered the idea that she was be­hind the kid­nap­ping.”

Now that Quinn had the rough dates for when the king and Odette were in­volved all those years ago, she was go­ing to fo­cus on the woman’s life im­me­di­ately af­ter their af­fair ended.

“You’ll brief Gabriel on the sit­u­a­tion with Fontaine,” Mikel said. “I’ll in­form Raul of our plan.”

De­spite Mikel’s eval­u­a­tion of the suc­cess of their meet­ing, de­jec­tion dragged down Quinn’s mood. The king’s story made it clear that his per­sonal life was not his own. He couldn’t be a nor­mal hu­man be­ing, mak­ing nor­mal mis­takes. His ac­tions had con­se­quences for his coun­try. Gabriel took that se­ri­ously when it came to his ca­reer, but he re­fused to ac­cept the truth when it in­volved Quinn.

She needed to con­vince him.

First, she had to in­form Gabriel that Odette could have been the in­sti­ga­tor of his kid­nap­ping. At din­ner that night, she started to lay out her ev­i­dence, but Gabriel in­ter­rupted her.

“Are you back to Tante Odette?” he said, plunk­ing his fork down on his plate. “She would never hurt Raul or me. Was this Mikel’s idea?”

“No, it’s mine. Mikel was skep­ti­cal at first too.”

Gabriel gave her one of his duke-ish looks down his blade of a nose. “It’s ridicu­lous.”

But his no­ble stare didn’t in­tim­i­date her. “Maybe im­prob­a­ble, but your un­cle is on board with test­ing my hy­poth­e­sis.”

“Tío Luis thinks she did it?” Shock rang in his voice.

“No, but he is will­ing to ad­mit it’s pos­si­ble. Would you like to hear the case we laid out for him?”

“Yes, of course.” He stretched his hand across the ta­ble to cover hers in an apol­ogy. “I’m sorry. I just can’t wrap my mind around the idea.”

Guilt pricked at Quinn. He was al­ready stressed about the au­di­tion, and she had been forced to add an­other worry to his list.

“I wouldn’t have told you, but you’re part of the plan,” she said, turn­ing her hand to squeeze his. “As is Raul.”

“You should hide noth­ing from me.” Then he did some­thing he rarely did any­more. He touched his re­con­structed ear. The ges­ture sank claws of re­gret into her gut.

As she sum­ma­rized her data and Raul’s up­com­ing role, she searched Gabriel’s face for signs of dis­tress, but his dark eyes showed only fo­cus. “One more thing. I’ll be at any events with your fam­ily. Since we’re dat­ing, it will make sense, but I’ll be there in my ca­pac­ity as an in­ves­ti­ga­tor. Mikel feels he can’t do it be­cause Odette knows who he is and would feel watched. She won’t per­ceive me as a threat.”

“She’ll know you work for Mikel,” Gabriel said with a frown.

“I don’t project quite the same air of con­trolled men­ace that Mikel does.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose to em­pha­size her nerdi­ness.

That won a faint smile from Gabriel. “That’s only be­cause she hasn’t seen you on the shoot­ing range.” He shook his head. “You are the ex­pert, but I be­lieve you’re wrong in this case. I fully ex­pect your plan to clear Tante Odette.”

Quinn looked down at their clasped hands. She ex­pected the op­po­site, and she hated how much that would hurt Gabriel. “What the kid­nap­pers did to you was not only about the money. It was a per­sonal at­tack. Who­ever planned it must be close to your fam­ily.”

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