Page 45 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“We need to talk about some­thing neu­tral be­cause Dupont prob­a­bly has guards around. Have you seen any movies re­cently?”

She had avoided an­swer­ing a ques­tion again, but he couldn’t ar­gue with her in­struc­tions, so he named a newly re­leased movie.

“Oh my God, could you be­lieve how stupid Aria was? She be­lieved Ezra in­stead of Toby. That made no sense to me.”

He couldn’t re­mem­ber the char­ac­ters’ names, but that might be more au­then­tic. “Toby was the chess player?”

“No, he was the gamer who cracked the hack.”

They turned the cor­ner, and the smell of fry­ing fish en­veloped them. “And Ezra was the Bit­coin ge­nius,” he said.

“Yeah. We should buy some Bit­coin, you know. It’s cool.”

Quinn’s act of un­so­phis­ti­cated girl­friend was mas­ter­ful. “We don’t have enough money to do that.”

“Shit! Re­ally? That sucks.”

“You’re so cute,” Gabriel said, get­ting into the role. Then he stopped, leaned down, and kissed her. On the lips. Be­cause that’s what boyfriends did.

“Mmpf,” Quinn said against his mouth be­fore she joined the act, her lips soft­en­ing as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

He could blame it on the adren­a­line, but he’d wanted to kiss her since their lunch to­gether. He pulled her in closer so he could feel the push of her breasts against him. He slid one hand down to cup the lush­ness of her butt, his fin­gers dig­ging into the denim. When she touched his lips with her tongue, he an­swered with his, send­ing a sear of heat low in his gut.

Some­one hooted ap­proval from across the street, mak­ing Quinn jerk away. “Id­iot,” she mut­tered.

“Are you re­fer­ring to our au­di­ence or me?” Gabriel asked with a smile.

Quinn snorted. “Nei­ther. We need to keep walk­ing.”

His brain took a minute to sort that out. She’d called her­self an id­iot? Did that mean her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the kiss hadn’t been an act? For a mo­ment, sat­is­fac­tion eclipsed his fear.

Af­ter a few steps, Quinn halted. She slid her hand around his neck to pull his head down so she could whis­per in his ear, “Raul and Mikel are ap­proach­ing from the op­po­site di­rec­tion. Raul in­sists on get­ting his eyes on Ko­dra, but they’re go­ing to stay out­side. Don’t re­act when you see them. Now, laugh like I said some­thing funny.” She dropped her hand and grinned up at him.

Gabriel laughed in his best low, se­duc­tive rum­ble. “You are so sexy when you talk like that.” Then he brushed his lips over hers and mur­mured, “Un­der­stood.”

Mikel must be hav­ing a fit, but maybe Raul would rec­og­nize some­thing about Ko­dra that Gabriel didn’t. He doubted it, though. When the kid­nap­pers had first sur­rounded them, it had been dark, and he and Raul had been drunk. How­ever, he sym­pa­thized with Raul’s de­sire to as­sist in cap­tur­ing the ab­duc­tors.

He and Quinn be­gan walk­ing again, and he de­lib­er­ately kept his fo­cus on her. It wasn’t hard, since he had his arm around her slen­der waist and his fin­gers hooked in the belt loop of her jeans. The feel of her body mov­ing against him fed the adren­a­line surg­ing through him.

The smell of fish in­ten­si­fied when they walked through the door of the restau­rant. He and Quinn ex­changed a cou­ple of ca­sual re­marks about the fish on dis­play be­fore she said, “Will you get some pic­tures of the walls? I want to send them to Jeb. He’ll hate them.”

Then she caught his hand and gave it a squeeze. She turned her face up to his gaze with a smile that con­veyed con­cern and en­cour­age­ment. For a mo­ment, he was en­snared by the un­der­stand­ing in her brown eyes, be­fore he re­leased her hand with a nod.

He saun­tered to­ward Dupont and Ko­dra’s ta­ble, snap­ping pho­tos with his phone. Dupont’s body­guards turned their stares on him, but he ig­nored them. Af­ter he had taken sev­eral pic­tures, he propped him­self against the wall and pre­tended to be en­grossed in scan­ning through them.

His mir­rored sun­glasses were still in place, but his eyes had ad­justed to the in­te­rior dim­ness well enough so that he could see Ko­dra’s face with a quick side­long glance. All he could see of Dupont was the back of the man’s head and shoul­ders.

Ko­dra was smil­ing. A sav­age urge to slam his fist into that smil­ing mouth ripped through Gabriel. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and con­cen­trated on the men’s voices.

Ko­dra was speak­ing heav­ily ac­cented but flu­ent Eng­lish rather than French. “I’m get­ting mar­ried, so I need an­other job.”

“It’s too soon.” Dupont’s ac­cent was less ob­vi­ous, and his tone was pissed off. “And you’re a fuckup.”

Nei­ther voice det­o­nated any recog­ni­tion in Gabriel’s hy­per­fo­cused brain.

“Bico was the fuckup!”

“Shut up, dick­head. No names,” Dupont snarled.

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