Page 36 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

De­spite his mod­ern at­tire, she could eas­ily imag­ine this man in a suit of ar­mor, astride a gi­ant black warhorse, gal­lop­ing into bat­tle with sword drawn at the head of an army of thou­sands. Or sit­ting on a throne, a gold crown cir­cling his head, as he handed down life-and-death judg­ments with­out a mo­ment’s hes­i­ta­tion.

She felt a strong de­sire to sink into a curtsy.

It made her un­easy to be this close to a king, so she looked for a cor­ner to slide into where no one would no­tice her. She couldn’t sit since the king was stand­ing. She knew you had to fol­low the royal lead on such things.

But the king turned in her di­rec­tion. “Gabriel,” he said in greet­ing.

Out of the cor­ner of her eye, she saw Gabriel dip his head in re­spect. “Tío Luis, good morn­ing.”

Should she curtsy now? Did some­one need to in­tro­duce her first? Why hadn’t Mikel warned her that the king was go­ing to be here?

She looked at Mikel in panic and ac­cu­sa­tion.

“Señor, may I present Quinn Pier­son?” Mikel said, res­cu­ing her. “She is re­spon­si­ble for find­ing Elio Ko­dra.”

Quinn tried to re­mem­ber what she was sup­posed to say when meet­ing a king and came up blank, so she just curt­sied as long and as low as she could. She prob­a­bly looked ridicu­lous since she was wear­ing jeans and a pink T-shirt, as per Mikel’s in­struc­tions to dress like a tourist.

When she straight­ened, Luis’s eyes held an amused glint. “A plea­sure to meet you, Quinn. Thank you for all your work on the case.”

“You’re wel­come, Your Majesty.” She stopped her­self from curt­sy­ing again.

“I hope you are happy liv­ing in Cal­eva. We are for­tu­nate to have you here.”

Not what she had ex­pected him to say. “Yes, it’s a beau­ti­ful coun­try. Thank you.” An inane an­swer but also in­of­fen­sive.

He swept his gaze around the whole group. “I hope your mis­sion will be suc­cess­ful. Buena suerte.”

She was stand­ing be­tween the king and the exit, so she hastily stepped be­tween two of the big, plush seats.

As Luis passed her, he looked di­rectly at her with those pale blue eyes. “Gra­cias, señorita.”

Now she wanted to catch ev­ery crim­i­nal who had ever threat­ened the king­dom of Cal­eva, just to please this pow­er­ful man who had both­ered to thank her for mov­ing out of his way. She bent her knees in a quick sketch of a curtsy be­cause it seemed like the right thing to do.

As soon as Luis was out the door, Gabriel bent to mur­mur in her ear with a hint of laugh­ter in his voice, “Two curt­sies. I’m im­pressed.”

“He makes you want to curtsy,” she mut­tered back.

Gabriel’s chuckle was a low, de­li­cious rum­ble.

Mikel waved her over to where he and Prince Raul stood. “Raul, I’d like you to meet Quinn.”

Ex­cept for his dark brown hair, Raul was a younger ver­sion of his fa­ther, with that same in­bred air of com­mand. Ev­i­dently, he’d got­ten Mikel’s dress code in­struc­tions, too, be­cause he also wore jeans, a faded blue polo shirt, and run­ning shoes.

Oh, hell! Curtsy or not?

She de­cided to go with pro­fes­sional. She held out her hand. “A plea­sure to meet you, Your Royal High­ness.” She’d looked up how to ad­dress a prince since she’d ex­pected him.

As he shook her hand with a firm grip, he smiled in a way that melted the ici­ness of his blue eyes. “Call me Raul, please. Great work on iden­ti­fy­ing Ko­dra.” The smile turned hard, and she saw the same steel core as his fa­ther’s. “It’s time we brought the kid­nap­pers to jus­tice.”

Quinn felt the change in air pres­sure as the plane’s door thumped shut.

“May I ask you to take your seats?” the flight at­ten­dant asked from the front of the plane. His gaze fell on Quinn. “For your com­fort, I rec­om­mend that you choose a for­ward-fac­ing seat for the as­cent.”

She glanced around the main cabin, which had an ar­ray of seat­ing choices, in­clud­ing a side­ways sofa that faced a tele­vi­sion set. She looked at Mikel with raised eye­brows.

“Raul and Gabriel, why don’t you take the ta­ble?” Mikel said. “Quinn and I will sit be­hind you un­til we level off.”

Re­lieved, Quinn started to­ward a big, cushy leather seat set well be­hind the two at the ta­ble. She would have some time off from deal­ing with roy­alty. It was sur­pris­ingly ex­haust­ing.

---