Page 145 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

He smiled. “There’s a feast await­ing you in the cabin. Your clothes are here.” He pointed to the neat pile at the foot of the bed. “But be­fore you put on your jeans, I need to ban­dage your wound again.”

She nod­ded and dressed in ev­ery­thing but the jeans. The cut on her leg had some bruis­ing around it, but the pain was no more than a mild throb.

“Sit be­side me,” Gabriel said, open­ing the first aid kit on his lap. Pulling out a cleans­ing wipe, he cleaned his hands be­fore he spread an­tibi­otic oint­ment over her cut with a touch so gen­tle it felt like a feather brushed her. The ten­der­ness of it brought tears to her eyes.

He po­si­tioned a gauze pad over the wound and taped down the four sides in a neat square. When he was done, he traced his fin­ger around the out­side of the tape. “I nearly lost you to­day,” he whis­pered.

He turned to meet her gaze, his gray eyes shad­owed with fear. With a sud­den move­ment, he swept the first aid kit onto the floor and pulled her into his lap, his arms wrapped around her while he buried his face in her shoul­der. His body was racked by shud­ders.

“Gabri, they weren’t aim­ing at me,” she said, work­ing one arm free to stroke his glossy hair. “It was you who al­most got shot.”

The truth of that slammed into her again, and she nearly joined him in shak­ing.

He lifted his head. “It does not mat­ter who they were aim­ing at. They could have killed you.” His arms tight­ened around her. “When this is over, when you and Mikel have caught the peo­ple who are do­ing these ter­ri­ble things, I want us to go pub­lic. I want the world to know that you are the woman I love with ev­ery breath in my body.” He nuz­zled her neck, his breath warm on her skin. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Cold re­al­ity en­gulfed her like an avalanche. She couldn’t let him go on be­liev­ing that this was pos­si­ble. Now that he had his mu­si­cal con­fi­dence back, Gabriel was headed for the top of his pro­fes­sion. He had re­cruited an in­ter­na­tional rock star and a fa­mous to­caora for his fes­ti­val. More celebri­ties would fol­low.

Gabriel was re­turn­ing to the strato­sphere where he should be, where she would be a weight that dragged him down.

“Talk to me, car­iño.” How did he do that? Com­bine a com­mand with such car­ing that she wanted to weep?

She breathed out a long sigh. “We both know that can’t hap­pen.”

He straight­ened but did not re­lease her. “Of course it can hap­pen. I love you. I thought you loved me. Am I wrong?”

The con­fu­sion in his ques­tion clawed at her heart. She should tell him it was just sex, but she couldn’t hurt him that way. “No, you aren’t wrong, but how I feel doesn’t mat­ter.”

“It mat­ters more than any­thing else in the world,” he said.

“Re­ally? You’re third in line for the throne, and you think it doesn’t mat­ter to your un­cle that I’m a con­victed felon?” She pushed against his chest, but he didn’t re­lease her.

“My un­cle is more a fa­ther to me than my fa­ther. He wants noth­ing but my hap­pi­ness.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. “It’s not only your un­cle. You’re go­ing to be­come fa­mous for your mu­sic and your fes­ti­val. Ev­ery­thing about you will be sub­jected to scru­tiny by the me­dia, in­clud­ing your girl­friend with the crim­i­nal record.”

“I should have thought about… That will be very hard on you, won’t it?” His voice had lost its cer­tainty. “But the palace PR staff is skilled at deal­ing with that kind of sit­u­a­tion. With the sup­port of Tío Luis, do you think you could get through it? Af­ter the first up­roar, ev­ery­one will for­get about it, I prom­ise you.”

Each sen­tence jabbed at her like a blade. He thought she was wor­ried about her­self. She pushed away from him to stand. “There’s more to my past. Much more.”

“Does it ex­plain why you went to prison?” His face held only an ex­pec­tant in­ter­est. “Be­cause I am ready to hear that.”

“I lied un­der oath.”

Puz­zle­ment drew his brows down. “About what?”

“About the cryp­tocur­rency scam.” She looked away. “I lied to keep my fa­ther out of jail. Bren­dan was the one who set up the scam. I knew noth­ing about it un­til it be­gan to un­ravel. How­ever, he had a crim­i­nal record al­ready. If he had been con­victed, he would have been sen­tenced to decades in prison. I had no his­tory with the law, so we came up with the scheme to have me con­fess to the fraud. I thought I could dis­tance my­self from my fa­ther, but I failed.” The mem­ory wracked her with shame.

She turned back to find com­pre­hen­sion dawn­ing on Gabriel’s face. “I am glad to hear the whole truth.”

“How can you be glad? I com­mit­ted per­jury to al­low a crim­i­nal to es­cape pun­ish­ment for his crime. My fa­ther is a pro­fes­sional con man who robs peo­ple for a liv­ing. I en­abled him to get away with it. I broke the law when it suited me, just like Bren­dan does. Don’t you un­der­stand how wrong that is? I’m no bet­ter than my fa­ther.”

“You are very dif­fer­ent from your fa­ther. You went to jail to pro­tect some­one you love.” Gabriel’s voice was quiet but filled with con­vic­tion. “You did the same thing for Bren­dan that I did for Raul.”

“No! You put your­self in harm’s way to save your prince. It was an hon­or­able act. What I did was dis­hon­est and il­le­gal. My ac­tions al­lowed a crim­i­nal to re­main free to com­mit more crimes. And it won’t take much dig­ging for a de­ter­mined re­porter to fig­ure it out.”

Gabriel frowned. “Now I un­der­stand why you are wor­ried. If an overzeal­ous re­porter finds out your fa­ther is the true cul­prit, he might re­ceive the long sen­tence you saved him from.” He glanced at the coat of arms over the bed. “We will have to find a way to pre­vent that.”

“My fa­ther is a crim­i­nal, Gabriel. God knows what new scheme he al­ready has planned be­cause I kept him out of prison. I wouldn’t trust him not to use my con­nec­tion with you to lever­age his own ends.” She huffed in frus­tra­tion. “In the world’s eyes, I am a crim­i­nal too. You need to come to terms with what that means.”

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