Page 152 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Mikel was an un­happy man for many rea­sons right now. The king was un­der­stand­ably up­set about Gabriel’s brush with death in New York—and Mikel felt re­spon­si­ble for not be­ing there to stop it—so all fam­ily travel out of Cal­eva had been can­celed. Luis had also can­celed the ruse of the false lily sap de­crease. He would take no chances of an­other at­tack on a royal fam­ily mem­ber. They would have to con­nect Odette with the kid­nap­ping some other way.

The only good news was that Dupont was in cus­tody in France, thanks to Mikel pass­ing along the in­for­ma­tion Bren­dan had given him. That had been set in mo­tion be­fore news of the sniper at­tack had been re­ceived in Cal­eva. Mikel’s re­quest that there be a splash of pub­lic­ity about the su­per­crim­i­nal’s cap­ture had been met with de­light by French law en­force­ment. The noose was tight­en­ing around the necks of Gabriel’s tor­men­tors, and Mikel had made sure Odette would know that.

Quinn’s phone vi­brated with a text from Gabriel.

I will meet you out front when you ar­rive. We will get past any dif­fi­culty away from Odette’s view.

Her nerves screamed with dread. She had no idea what to say to him. Ev­ery greet­ing she came up with sounded wrong.

Would he kiss her? Or do the Eu­ro­pean air-kiss thing?

Go left first. Be­cause it would be be­yond aw­ful to col­lide with him when they used to be per­fectly in sync.

She slipped her phone back into the pocket on the out­side of her purse. As she did, she felt the hard out­line of the Glock that was in­side. She had put it there to re­mind her­self that tonight was about work, rather than be­cause she thought she would need a gun. She needed to fo­cus on Odette Fontaine, not her own dis­as­trous love life.

The car turned off the road and came to a stop in front of a tall iron gate set be­tween two mas­sive basalt pil­lars. On top of each pil­lar, a carved stone Cal­e­van dragon clutched a coat of arms. Mikel would be pleased that the gate guard asked her to roll down her win­dow so he could check her face against the photo on his tablet.

The car rolled for­ward along a drive bor­dered on each side by tall conifers with straight gray trunks and fluffy-look­ing nee­dles. It took a good ten min­utes be­fore a grand stone house loomed in front of them.

She had time for no more than a quick im­pres­sion of a tall many-win­dowed cen­tral struc­ture of dark gray basalt with white lime­stone ac­cents and lower wings sprawl­ing to the left and right.

Then Gabriel jogged down the stone steps of the front por­tico.

For a mo­ment, she just drank him in, tak­ing in the glint of his hair in the fad­ing light, the strong line of his jaw, the con­fi­dent set of his shoul­ders un­der the pale gray but­ton-down shirt. Heat and sor­row braided them­selves to­gether in her chest, mak­ing it hard to breathe.

She braced her­self as he opened the car door and of­fered his hand. For show. It was just for show. When his fin­gers closed around hers, their warmth and strength evoked mem­o­ries of other times he had touched her with gen­uine feel­ing.

“Bue­nas tardes, car—” He stopped him­self from us­ing his fa­vorite en­dear­ment, but he didn’t try to cover it up.

She glanced up to find his gaze locked on her face, his gray eyes blaz­ing with his feel­ings for her. A strange whim­per tried to wrench it­self out of her throat as she stood.

When she glanced at him again, he had closed the shut­ters into his soul, leav­ing his face tight but bear­able to look at. “Odette seems no dif­fer­ent to me, even when I try to ob­serve her with sus­pi­cion,” he said.

“It must be hard to imag­ine some­one you have known and trusted for so long could do some­thing so hor­ri­ble.” Maybe two hor­ri­ble things, if Odette was re­spon­si­ble for the sniper.

“I can’t de­cide if I hope you and Mikel are wrong or not.” Gabriel’s voice was heavy. “I would like to be free of the fear that some­one I care about could be a tar­get at any mo­ment. How­ever, I don’t want the vil­lain to be Tante Odette.”

He couldn’t even re­lax in his child­hood home, be­cause right now it might har­bor a viper.

“Does your fam­ily know we’re…no longer to­gether?” Quinn forced her­self to ask.

“My fa­ther does. Not my mother. I haven’t had the strength to tell her.”

That made her feel like crap.

He of­fered her his arm, and she fell into step be­side him as he led her up the steps. The faint fra­grance of berg­amot and ve­tiver waft­ing around him was so achingly fa­mil­iar that it set off bursts of de­sire in­side her.

“We have to ap­pear to be a cou­ple for Odette’s sake,” Gabriel re­minded her, “so I may put my arm around you or give you a kiss. I do not mean to en­croach on the bound­aries you have set, but it seems nec­es­sary.”

“Un­der­stood,” Quinn said, a shud­der of an­tic­i­pa­tion run­ning through her at the thought of his lips on hers. Bad. Very bad.

She gri­maced as she found her­self re­mem­ber­ing var­i­ous pieces of ad­vice her fa­ther had dis­cussed for run­ning a con­vinc­ing scam. “My fa­ther al­ways said to get in char­ac­ter be­fore you need to. You have to be­lieve it your­self be­fore you can sell it.” She looked up at Gabriel with a daz­zling smile.

Some­thing flared in his eyes be­fore he nod­ded. “Ah, I see.” He lifted her hand to brush a kiss over the back of it.

Then he pulled open the heavy oak door and ush­ered her through it with his hand rest­ing on the small of her back. The heat from his palm rip­pled across her skin.

“We are hav­ing drinks and tapas in the sala,” he said, as they walked across a two-story en­trance hall. A wide stair­case soared up to a gallery that ran around three sides. Ta­pes­tries and a suit of ar­mor adorned the im­pos­ing space.

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