Page 37 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“I be­lieve Raul would like to speak with you, Mikel,” Gabriel said. “I will sit with Quinn.”

She was torn be­tween grat­i­fi­ca­tion and ir­ri­ta­tion. So much for her re­prieve.

“Of course.” Mikel slid her a side­ways glance as he ges­tured for Raul to pre­cede him to the ta­ble.

“Take the win­dow seat,” Gabriel said to Quinn. “You’ll en­joy the view.”

She sank into the em­brace of the soft leather and tried not to no­tice when Gabriel’s berg­amot scent drifted past her nos­trils as he set­tled in be­side her. Or how long his legs were when he stretched them out, the faded denim of his jeans tight over well-mus­cled thighs.

The stew­ard ap­peared with two large teal mugs em­bla­zoned with the royal fam­ily’s crest. They had se­cure lids and fit per­fectly in the cuphold­ers on the chair arms. “Please fas­ten your seat belts,” he re­quested.

As soon as Quinn had buck­led her­self in, Gabriel lifted his mug. “I sug­gest get­ting a good swig or two while we taxi,” he said. “This jet takes off at a steep an­gle and does a few eva­sive ma­neu­vers on the way to cruis­ing al­ti­tude.”

The pi­lot would do that be­cause the plane had two mem­bers of the royal fam­ily on board. She felt a tiny bub­ble of nerves in her throat and took a sip of cof­fee to wash it away. She took an­other sip be­cause the cof­fee was amaz­ing. “Is the pi­lot ex-mil­i­tary?”

“Cur­rent mil­i­tary,” Gabriel said, as though it was the most nor­mal thing in the world. “She and the copi­lot fly fighter jets with the Amer­i­cans from the base.”

As the en­gines revved and the plane be­gan to roll out through the now-open hangar doors, Quinn firmly wedged her mug into its holder. Af­ter Gabriel did the same, she let her gaze linger on his strong, el­e­gant hand where it rested on the chair arm. The sleeve of his ma­roon T-shirt stopped just above his el­bow so she could also ad­mire the line of mus­cle—dusted with dark brown hair—that curved along his fore­arm.

His pedi­gree had noth­ing to do with the ten­sion coil­ing in her now. She forced her­self to look out the win­dow. The tar­mac all around them was empty of planes and ve­hi­cles. Only one per­son was in sight, wav­ing two high-vis­i­bil­ity wands to di­rect them to­ward the run­way. “Wow, that’s a lot of pre­cau­tions,” she mut­tered be­fore she turned to Gabriel. “I’m sur­prised the king doesn’t have his own pri­vate air­port.”

“He does, as well as a cou­ple of he­li­pads,” Gabriel said. “The Dragon Jet takes off from ran­dom air­ports. Some­times it’s from here, some­times from San Ig­na­cio In­ter­na­tionale, some­times from Aéro­port Christophe, and some­times from the U.S. mil­i­tary base.” His jaw mus­cles tight­ened. “My un­cle takes se­cu­rity very se­ri­ously these days. He was here this morn­ing to read Raul the riot act about do­ing ex­actly what Mikel tells him.”

“Yeah, meet­ing the king was kind of a shock.”

An un­holy glint of amuse­ment lit Gabriel’s eyes. “Most peo­ple con­sider it an honor to meet the king.”

“I would have liked a chance to pre­pare.”

“Both your curt­sies were quite re­spectable. Your knees didn’t creak, and you didn’t wob­ble, both of which hap­pen fre­quently.”

“I didn’t ex­pect him to be so…royal.”

Gabriel laughed. “He’s had a lot of prac­tice.”

“Se­ri­ously, I could pic­ture him in vel­vet robes, say­ing, ‘Toss him off the cliff!’ and ev­ery­one scur­ry­ing around to dis­pose of the poor crim­i­nal as quickly as pos­si­ble.”

“There were times grow­ing up when I ex­pected him to toss me off a cliff,” Gabriel said.

“Was it weird grow­ing up with a king for your un­cle and a prince for your cousin?” The lux­u­ri­ous cabin and all the pre­cau­tions sur­round­ing the air­plane were driv­ing home how dif­fer­ent Gabriel’s life was.

He shrugged. “When I was a kid, I knew that not ev­ery­one lived in a palace, but it was my sec­ond home, so I treated it that way. Which oc­ca­sion­ally led to be­ing brought be­fore Tío Luis for pun­ish­ment.”

“Did you break sa­cred his­tor­i­cal ar­ti­facts or graf­fiti the cas­tle walls?”

“Noth­ing sa­cred. Raul and I avoided the chapel be­cause we spent Sun­day morn­ings there, bored to tears. My un­cle’s sever­est wrath was re­served for when we man­aged to hide from our keep­ers for more than an hour.” The glint in his eyes died. “I un­der­stand now why that was such an is­sue, but back then, we took great plea­sure in our ac­com­plish­ment. Un­til Tío Luis told us that he would fire Raul’s tu­tor the next time the man couldn’t find us. It was a les­son in our re­spon­si­bil­ity to­ward those who worked for us, aimed more at Raul than me, I sus­pect.”

The jet turned, and the en­gines sent a vi­bra­tion through the cabin as the air­craft be­gan to race down the run­way.

“How old were you?” Quinn had to raise her voice to be heard over the en­gines’ roar.

“About nine.”

The cabin tilted so that she was pressed back into her seat as the plane shot into the sky, demon­strat­ing the rea­son for the lid­ded cof­fee mugs. She’d had no re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at age nine. Of course, her fa­ther hadn’t been big on such things, no mat­ter what age she’d been. Un­til he’d asked the big fa­vor from her. Sud­denly, she’d been re­spon­si­ble for his fu­ture.

“Nine is young to have that kind of weight on your shoul­ders,” she said.

“When you live in a palace, there are obli­ga­tions.” He seemed to be say­ing that to him­self as much as to her.

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