Page 68 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Ex­cite­ment jolted through her. “When?”

“Tonight. It’s a sim­ple bur­glary in Lake Como. An empty va­ca­tion house with some valu­able art­work they’re go­ing to steal. They needed more mus­cle to carry the sculp­tures, so Ko­dra got the call.” Mikel’s smile widened. “My team is al­ready on their way to set up sur­veil­lance equip­ment. We’ll get all of Dupont’s crew on video.”

“Will the po­lice know you’re there?”

“The po­lice won’t be in­volved. I don’t want Dupont or Ko­dra to get spooked.” Mikel waved a dis­mis­sive hand. “The owner is wealthy and will have it all in­sured.”

A strange dis­ap­point­ment nig­gled at Quinn. Her boss was sup­posed to be on the side of the an­gels, not to men­tion that her fa­ther used the same ex­cuse about tak­ing money only from the rich. He claimed no one got hurt. “Oh,” she said, all her feel­ings packed into that one word.

Mikel gave her a hard stare be­fore he sighed. “I’ll let the po­lice know where to find the art­work be­fore it gets fenced.”

She beamed at him.

“Dios ayú­dame! God help me,” Mikel mut­tered be­fore he went back to op­er­a­tional mode. “I’ll want you, Gabriel, and Raul here tonight to watch in real time. We’ll have some abil­ity to re­ori­ent cam­eras if there’s some­one we want a bet­ter look at.”

“Got it,” Quinn said with nod, even as the un­wel­come con­ver­gence of her work life and her per­sonal life loomed large.

Mikel picked up a let­ter opener shaped like a curved Moor­ish dag­ger and spun it be­tween his fin­gers. “Will Don Gabriel be post­pon­ing his trip to New York City, or will you be ac­com­pa­ny­ing him there?”

A flush of em­bar­rass­ment blazed up Quinn’s neck and over her cheeks like a brush fire in a high wind. Fac­ing her boss, know­ing he knew, was worse than she had an­tic­i­pated. “He in­sists on stick­ing to his orig­i­nal sched­ule, but he in­vited me to go with him.” She fid­dled with her phone. “If this is a prob­lem pro­fes­sion­ally, it won’t hap­pen again.”

“Only if it is a prob­lem for you,” Mikel said.

“What do you mean?”

Mikel sighed, and the let­ter opener spun in a blur of flash­ing metal. “Gabriel is a good man, very good. But he’s a royal duke, so there are ex­pec­ta­tions of him. Ex­pec­ta­tions that he buys into.”

Quinn couldn’t stand the awk­ward­ness any longer. “I know he’s not go­ing to marry me, so you don’t have to worry about me get­ting a bro­ken heart or any­thing.”

“Good.” Mikel put the dag­ger down. “If you can do your job while…main­tain­ing a per­sonal re­la­tion­ship with Gabriel, I have no is­sue with it. I would sug­gest that it could even make you more com­mit­ted to find­ing his ab­duc­tors, but you al­ready go above and be­yond on that front.” He lifted an eye­brow. “I did men­tion that you Amer­i­cans are more pu­ri­tan­i­cal than we are.”

She hadn’t en­dan­gered her job. The tight­ness in her shoul­ders eased as she nod­ded.

“Make sure you prac­tice with the Glock and get started on those self-de­fense classes,” he added.

“So I can fight off Gabriel’s ad­vances?” Some­times she couldn’t re­sist be­ing a smart-ass.

He nar­rowed his eyes with­out a smile. “Be­ing pro­fi­cient with a hand­gun is now part of your job de­scrip­tion.”

“Yes, sir.” She snapped up out of her chair in re­sponse to the edge of com­mand in his voice and headed for the door.

She might have lied to Mikel about not get­ting her heart bro­ken. Well, that was too ex­treme, but she had stronger feel­ings for Gabriel than she was com­fort­able with. Watch­ing the videos af­ter his kid­nap­ping had shown her his soul stripped bare to its essence. What she had seen—his courage and bone-deep sense of honor—had made her fall half­way in love with him al­ready. Hav­ing sex with him had only made her feel­ings more in­tense.

She’d been chant­ing, Duke, duke, royal duke, in her head to re­mind her­self that he was out of her league.

Es­pe­cially be­cause when they’d got­ten to her car this morn­ing, he’d backed her into it, laid his de­li­cious body against hers, and nuz­zled just be­hind her ear­lobe, say­ing, “I want to see you again tonight.” He must have sensed her im­mi­nent re­fusal be­cause he’d pulled away to look down into her eyes. “Por fa­vor, car­iño.”

Hav­ing his thigh slid­ing be­tween hers while he’d called her car­iño in that deep, vel­vety voice had fried her brain cells. She’d said yes. Now Dupont’s planned rob­bery had guar­an­teed it would hap­pen…in Se­guri­dad Silva’s con­fer­ence room.

Chap­ter 18

Six inches of air sep­a­rated Quinn from Gabriel as they sat in Mikel’s con­fer­ence room, yet she was aware of each tiny shift in his po­si­tion as though they were glued to­gether at the hip. It was un­doubt­edly a by-prod­uct of hav­ing sev­eral bouts of mind-bend­ing sex with him the night be­fore. She won­dered if Raul knew they had slept to­gether since ev­ery­one else in the room did.

She felt a flush of self-con­scious­ness as she glanced around, but Mikel, Raul, and Gabriel had their at­ten­tion locked on the video feed of the house on Lake Como. It was one a.m. in Italy, the per­fect hour for a hit-and-run bur­glary, and one of Mikel’s on-site team mem­bers had con­firmed that the thieves’ van and truck were on the high­way headed to­ward their tar­get.

“They should ar­rive in about ten min­utes,” Mikel said.

She heard Gabriel draw in a deep breath. She wished she could of­fer the com­fort of hold­ing his hand, but this was her work­place. She curled her fin­gers into fists on her lap as they waited.

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