Page 58 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

She swal­lowed, hear­ing an echo of the king’s voice in his son’s, ex­hort­ing her to charge into bat­tle against Cal­eva’s en­e­mies.

What Raul asked was much, much more dif­fi­cult.

Chap­ter 16

The next morn­ing at work, Quinn gri­maced as she raised her hand to swipe at her com­puter screen. Thank God Mikel had told her to take the rest of yes­ter­day off af­ter the shoot­ing range. Her arms had been so tired that she had barely been able to drive her­self home.

“Are you curs­ing me or Esmé or both?” Mikel asked as he walked into her of­fice and sat in one of her pretty blue chairs. She could swear a smirk played around his lips.

Quinn groaned. “I need to get to the gym more of­ten.”

Mikel’s ex­pres­sion turned se­ri­ous. “I sug­gest that you take some lessons in self-de­fense. I’ll set you up with an ex­cel­lent in­struc­tor.”

She groaned again. “Will this in­struc­tor be any­thing like Esmé?”

“Worse. You’ll end up with bruises, but you’ll be bet­ter able to pro­tect your­self.”

Quinn eyed her boss. Why was Mikel sud­denly wor­ried about her abil­ity to de­fend her­self? “Does Ser­ena work with this in­struc­tor too?”

Some­thing—re­gret? fear?—flashed across Mikel’s face be­fore the shut­ters came down. “Yes.”

“Does she plan to be­come a ninja when she grows up?”

The joke didn’t lighten his ex­pres­sion one iota. In­stead, he leaned for­ward. “You and I have ac­cess to sen­si­tive and valu­able in­for­ma­tion. Ser­ena has ac­cess to me. There­fore, you and Ser­ena need to know how to han­dle your­selves in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, to sur­vive un­til help ar­rives.”

She knew for a fact that while Mikel still breathed, help would ar­rive. Quinn had the strange sense that she’d been adopted by her in­scrutable boss. An un­ex­pected surge of grat­i­tude washed through her, mak­ing tears prick in her eyes. At the same time, a shiver of alarm slith­ered down her spine. What kind of sit­u­a­tion would she need to sur­vive? Then she re­mem­bered Dupont’s malev­o­lent gaze and shiv­ered again.

“Has Emilia taken all these cour­ses?” Whether his as­sis­tant had Quinn’s level of ac­cess or not, she would be lever­age over Mikel.

“She’s ex-mil­i­tary.”

“Emilia?” Quinn barely stopped her jaw from drop­ping.

Mikel sat back with amuse­ment danc­ing in his eyes. “She trained with the U.S. Navy SEALs.”

So Quinn was the weak­est link in the chain. “Okay, then. Set me up with that self-de­fense in­struc­tor.”

He tapped on his phone be­fore slip­ping it back into the breast pocket of his suit. “On an­other topic, Prince Raul con­tacted me about ar­rang­ing a meet­ing be­tween you and Don Gabriel. A seem­ingly ac­ci­den­tal meet­ing.”

She had spent much of the pre­vi­ous night star­ing at the ceil­ing and curs­ing Raul for putting her in this bind. If she hadn’t been so con­cerned about Gabriel her­self, she would have asked her boss to run in­ter­fer­ence with the prince.

She fid­dled with her Tony Stark bob­ble­head, search­ing for the right thing to say. “Did Raul tell you that it has noth­ing to do with our in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“Yes. Raul doesn’t yet fully un­der­stand his power. He sees you as Don Gabriel’s friend. He sees me as a sort of benev­o­lent un­cle. He asks us both to help, not re­al­iz­ing that be­cause of who he is, it be­comes a com­mand.”

Quinn al­most snorted at the term benev­o­lent when it came to Mikel, yet hadn’t she just felt adopted by him? “I’m glad you aren’t, um, an­noyed to be pulled into some­thing per­sonal.”

“Al­most ev­ery­thing I do could be in­ter­preted as per­sonal. When you work for a royal fam­ily, the bound­aries blur very quickly.”

“I’m be­gin­ning to grasp that.” Re­lief re­laxed mus­cles in her shoul­ders that she hadn’t re­al­ized were tensed. “How do I ca­su­ally bump into a royal duke?”

“I have a meet­ing with la Mar­quise de Meror­age to­mor­row be­cause she’s at­tend­ing a din­ner at the palace. She’s sort of an hon­orary grand­mother to Raul and Gabriel, as well as a trusted friend to the king, so they’ll be din­ing en famille, as she calls it, in the king’s pri­vate quar­ters. No pomp and cir­cum­stance.”

“I’ll still have to curtsy,” Quinn mut­tered.

Mikel merely raised his eye­brows. “I’ll make sure to have some sen­si­tive re­ports to send over to la mar­quise af­ter our meet­ing. She’s old school and likes to read in print. You can be my courier for the evening.”

“In­ter­rupt­ing a meal with the royal fam­ily doesn’t seem like a good op­por­tu­nity for a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion.” She had a hor­ri­fy­ing pic­ture of stand­ing at the end of a long ta­ble sparkling with sil­ver and crys­tal while ev­ery per­son seated at it turned to stare at her.

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