Page 57 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She winced. “That’s ex­treme.”

“He claims it’s nor­mal be­cause he’s lost his cal­luses.” Raul shrugged. “That’s plau­si­ble. How­ever, he’s set a goal for him­self that con­cerns me.”

“A goal?” She braced her­self.

“He plans to play for the fa­mous fla­menco gui­tarist Marisela Alejo in a cou­ple of weeks. If she says he’s lost his ear for the mu­sic, he will give up the gui­tar for­ever.” Raul smacked the bench with his hand. “He can’t ex­pect to reach a high level of skill in a few weeks af­ter months of not touch­ing the strings. It’s not re­al­is­tic. Think about the cal­luses alone! He needs them to play well.”

Yup, that had been her ter­rific ad­vice about get­ting a sec­ond opin­ion. But she hadn’t in­tended for Gabriel to seek it in such an un­rea­son­able time frame.

Raul heaved out a breath. “I am ec­static that he has hope, but I’m ter­ri­fied that it will be crushed by a neg­a­tive com­ment from Alejo.”

“Shouldn’t he know that he needs longer to prac­tice? I mean, he was play­ing at a pro­fes­sional level be­fore the kid­nap­ping.”

“He claims it’s not about how well his fin­gers work but about his ear, whether he is catch­ing the nu­ances of the sound. He be­lieves Alejo will be able to tell him that.” He curled his hand into a fist. “He’s just be­gin­ning to come out of his de­pres­sion, to open up again. I can’t bear to lose him.” Raul en­snared her with his gaze as his tone turned per­sua­sive. “Will you talk to him? Tell him he needs to give it more time?”

“Me? But I don’t know any­thing about play­ing the gui­tar.” She should have kept her mouth shut for that rea­son.

“He seems to trust you in a way I haven’t seen him trust any­one for a long while,” Raul said. “He would lis­ten to you.”

“I’m just a sort of bar­tender, a stranger he can talk to with­out reper­cus­sions,” she said.

“It goes deeper than that. I think he feels that you know the dark­est parts of his past. With you, he doesn’t have to pre­tend they don’t ex­ist.”

Gabriel had said some­thing sim­i­lar, that he didn’t have to ex­plain his ex­pe­ri­ence to her. “But that doesn’t mean he’ll take my ad­vice about the gui­tar.”

“Didn’t he al­ready do so?” Raul’s tone hard­ened slightly.

Shit! How does he know?

“He came home from Lis­bon all fired up to get his gui­tar out,” Raul con­tin­ued. “You spent the most time with him, so it had to be some­thing you said.”

Raul was guess­ing, but that didn’t mat­ter since he was al­most right. “It also came from the way he felt when he saw Ko­dra. That had noth­ing to do with me.”

“If you can’t per­suade him to post­pone his au­di­tion, will you at least go with him?” Raul pleaded. “He will need sup­port.”

A prince was beg­ging her to do some­thing. That was a first. But what did Raul think she could do by be­ing with Gabriel? “Where is he go­ing?” she stalled.

“New York City. Alejo is do­ing a se­ries of con­certs there.”

They’d have to travel to­gether again. A thrill of ex­cite­ment rip­pled through her, but her sen­si­ble side smoth­ered it with lo­gis­tics and doubt.

“Am I sup­posed to ran­domly an­nounce I want to go sight­see­ing in the Big Ap­ple at the same time that Gabriel plans to go there?” The thought of re­turn­ing to her home coun­try sent an un­ex­pected spasm of home­sick­ness through her.

Raul smiled, clearly be­liev­ing she had agreed to his in­sane re­quest. “No wor­ries about that. Mikel will fig­ure out how to make it hap­pen.”

The royal fam­ily re­lied on her boss for a lot. “I’ll try to talk Gabriel into slow­ing down the timetable.”

“Mag­ní­fico! Muchas gra­cias,” Raul said, his face light­ing up.

“There’s one small prac­ti­cal prob­lem,” Quinn said. “It’s hard for me to ca­su­ally run into a royal duke, es­pe­cially one who’s prac­tic­ing the gui­tar like a fiend.”

“Mikel will take care of that too.” Raul stood, so Quinn did too. “I’ll let him know.”

Great. Now her boss was be­ing sucked into her per­sonal life. Or maybe the bound­aries be­tween her per­sonal life and her pro­fes­sional life were be­com­ing blurred in an un­nerv­ing way.

“I can’t prom­ise I’ll suc­ceed,” Quinn said, fid­get­ing with the gun’s mag­a­zine crammed in her pocket.

Raul skew­ered her with a gaze that she could al­most feel. “I love Gabriel like a brother, and I would do any­thing to see him happy again. I am ask­ing—no, be­seech­ing—you to give it ev­ery­thing you have.”

---