Page 163 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Her words yanked him back to the mo­ment when Odette had swung her gun to­ward Quinn. The ter­ror flared, and he had to close his eyes to beat it back down.

“Are you okay?”

He opened his eyes to find worry cloud­ing her face. “One hun­dred per­cent.” He wanted to pull her against him so he could feel the warmth and life thrum­ming in her, to smell the sweet scent of her hair, and find her lips with his. In­stead, he raised her hand to brush his lips over the back of it. “I’m glad to be out of the hos­pi­tal.”

“Is be­ing there hard for you too?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I hate hos­pi­tals.” She hes­i­tated a mo­ment. “They re­mind me of prison. You have to stay un­til some­one in charge gives you per­mis­sion to leave. I thought maybe…”

Un­der­stand­ing dawned. “The kid­nap­ping! No, be­ing con­fined in the tent felt dif­fer­ent. Not in­sti­tu­tional like a prison or a hos­pi­tal.”

“That’s bet­ter for your health, then,” she said with a shaky smile.

Once again, fury boiled at the thought of her be­ing im­pris­oned. “I’m sorry to have re­minded you of that time in your life.”

“I need to get past it.” Her words seemed to carry an ex­tra mean­ing he couldn’t de­ci­pher.

The limo glided to a stop in front of Quinn’s house.

“Please wait un­til I open the door,” the driver said be­fore get­ting out.

“Stan­dard se­cu­rity pro­to­col when in an of­fi­cial limo,” Gabriel said when Quinn looked sur­prised.

In a few min­utes, the door swung open, and a squad of guards es­corted them to Quinn’s front door.

Once in­side, Gabriel saw Quinn’s fa­vorite leather jacket slung over the newel post. It re­minded him of their first meet­ing, and he couldn’t re­sist run­ning his hand over the soft black folds. “It’s good to be here.”

Quinn stepped in front of him, her gaze a search­light on his face. “Are you re­ally all right?”

“Now that I am here, yes. Just tired.”

She nod­ded. “It’s the af­ter­math of the adren­a­line. You kind of crash. I’m feel­ing it, too, to be hon­est. You should go sit down.”

“Where are you go­ing?” A spark of panic flick­ered.

“Just to change my clothes. These have been through a lot to­day.” She brushed the back of his hand in re­as­sur­ance be­fore she trot­ted up the stairs.

Gabriel walked into the kitchen area, try­ing to de­cide if he wanted wa­ter or some­thing stronger to drink. He opened the re­frig­er­a­tor in search of a beer.

The in­te­rior light flashed in his eyes, and he felt time slide back­ward.

He was strapped down on the stretcher while the sur­geon flicked his thumb back and forth.

No! Gabriel slammed his eyes shut as he leaned on the re­frig­er­a­tor door, fight­ing the mem­ory. But time shifted again.

He was hurl­ing him­self off the sofa, his heart pound­ing with fear. He crashed to his knees on the stone floor of Finca de Bruma. He wouldn’t be able to reach Quinn be­fore Odette pulled the trig­ger.

He forced his eyes open and saw where he knelt.

On tile, not stone.

He was back in the tent. The voice over the loud­speaker called him use­less and worse. He shiv­ered as cold air chilled the sweat bead­ing his face.

“No. This isn’t real,” he mut­tered, try­ing to re­mem­ber how to com­bat the flash­backs.

The sur­geon picked up a scalpel. Gabriel surged to his feet, shak­ing his head, at­tempt­ing to dodge the sharp blade. The masked face came closer.

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