Page 54 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“Odette did not climb to the po­si­tion of CEO of Ar­cham­beau Cos­met­ics by be­ing sen­ti­men­tal,” Luis said.

Tante Odette was not a blood rel­a­tive but an hon­orary fam­ily mem­ber. She was a close friend of Gabriel’s mother go­ing all the way back to their uni­ver­sity days. As well as do­ing busi­ness to­gether con­cern­ing the lily sap, they had re­mained friends through the years. “Per­haps the ca­bal has con­tacted other cos­met­ics com­pa­nies,” Gabriel said.

“If Tante Odette sus­pects her con­tract for the lily sap is about to be­come nonex­clu­sive, that will put the ca­bal in her crosshairs. She could be an ally for us,” Raul said be­fore he turned to Gabriel. “What else should we know?”

“Do you re­mem­ber Riva from school?” Gabriel asked his cousin.

Raul made a face. “Yeah. He never for­gave me for be­ing cho­sen as cap­tain of the fenc­ing team when he ex­pected to be.”

“Too bad,” Gabriel said. “He was in the del­e­ga­tion, and I fig­ured he might talk to you in­for­mally.”

“Couldn’t you speak with him in­for­mally?” Luis asked. “You are also a school­mate.”

“I’m afraid he views me as com­pe­ti­tion for a larger role than team cap­tain.” Gabriel gri­maced rue­fully. “Now that I am in­volved in pol­i­tics, he be­lieves I have my sights set on be­ing por­tavoz. As I men­tioned, he wishes to at­tain that po­si­tion.”

The king and Raul locked gazes for a long mo­ment in what seemed to be an un­spo­ken con­ver­sa­tion that both un­der­stood per­fectly. “Per­haps you should con­sider it,” Luis sug­gested. “It would be use­ful to have an ally in the role.”

“Me?” Gabriel was stunned. “I am not even a mem­ber of the Con­sejo de los Señores, and I have no ex­pe­ri­ence at all.”

“With your…his­tory, you would be elected to the con­sejo with­out any dif­fi­culty,” Raul said.

“But por­tavoz?” Gabriel couldn’t be­lieve they thought he was qual­i­fied for the job.

“Think about it.” Luis leaned back in his big chair. “Now, it’s time to find out where those can­di­dates are get­ting their money.”

“CSIC or Mikel?” Raul asked.

“Let’s keep it quiet for now,” Luis said.

Raul nod­ded. “I’ll talk with Mikel.”

“Gabriel, you’ll be in the loop on this, of course,” Luis said. “From now on, you’re the point man with the Lily Ca­bal.” He be­stowed one of his royal smiles on Gabriel, the kind that felt like you’d re­ceived an ap­prov­ing tap on the shoul­der with the king’s in­vis­i­ble sword. But Gabriel didn’t feel the in­can­des­cence that Raul glowed with. He didn’t even feel a sense of ac­com­plish­ment. All he had done was ex­change non­com­mit­tal pleas­antries and veiled threats with a bunch of grasp­ing no­bles.

“Bet­ter you than me, primo,” Raul said with a grin.

“I’m glad that I can help.” How­ever, he was still reel­ing from his un­cle’s sug­ges­tion that he run for of­fice. Ev­ery mol­e­cule in his body re­jected the idea.

From some­where in his mem­ory, an­other voice bub­bled up. Quinn propos­ing that he start a mu­sic fes­ti­val. He had dis­missed it as adding prob­lems for his un­cle, but now…now he needed a coun­ter­bal­ance for the king’s push in the di­rec­tion of pol­i­tics. Un­like the prospect of be­com­ing por­tavoz, the idea of bring­ing fa­mous mu­si­cians to Cal­eva ig­nited a spark of ex­cite­ment.

Chap­ter 15

Quinn had been try­ing to find a con­nec­tion be­tween Jean-Pierre Dupont and Dr. Paul Ricci for the last few days with­out suc­cess. No mat­ter how she ar­ranged and re­ar­ranged the facts, a piece of the puz­zle was miss­ing. A sea­soned crim­i­nal like Dupont didn’t de­cide to kid­nap a high-pro­file fig­ure like the Prince of Cal­eva out of the blue. It was too com­pli­cated and high risk. Sure, he had made a lot of money in the short term, but Mikel would make sure he suf­fered for it for the rest of Dupont’s life.

She closed the use­less screen she had been glar­ing at, took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes.

She hadn’t heard a word from Gabriel since their trip to Lis­bon, which both­ered her more than it should. She couldn’t be­lieve she had imag­ined that flare of at­trac­tion be­tween them. He had been the one who’d in­sisted she go to lunch with him and of­fered to let her drive his ex­pen­sive car. He had shown up on her doorstep on horse­back and then spilled his guts about the kid­nap­ping. He had made a point to sit be­side her on the jet. He had kissed her in a way that made her toes curl.

He had even taken her ad­vice about get­ting a sec­ond opin­ion con­cern­ing his mu­sic.

Didn’t that mean some­thing?

“Ev­i­dently not,” she mut­tered as she re­seated her glasses on the bridge of her nose.

An email from Mikel pinged into her in­box.

Your ap­point­ment at the shoot­ing range is at two to­day. Esmé Del­gado will be your in­struc­tor. She’ll out­fit you with what you need. Don’t re­turn to the of­fice af­ter­ward. That’s a di­rect com­mand.

In dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, Quinn would have been an­noyed with her boss for push­ing her out of the of­fice, but she was go­ing in cir­cles. A field trip would shake up her brain so she might find a fresh per­spec­tive on her re­search.

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