Page 83 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

For a hys­ter­i­cal mo­ment, she won­dered what would hap­pen if she told Luis she was busy. She took a deep breath. “I would be hon­ored, Su Ma­jes­tad. Thank you so much.”

“My sec­re­tary will be in touch.” He turned to the duchess in what was clearly a dis­missal of Quinn.

Quinn curt­sied again, just in case any­one cared, and bee­lined for the door. As she got there, Raul in­ter­cepted her, his eyes glint­ing with amuse­ment. When he reached for the knob, he leaned in close. “It won’t be so bad. Hope­fully, Tante Hélène will be there, and you won’t have to sit be­side my fa­ther.”

“Is that even a pos­si­bil­ity?” Quinn knew her eyes were wide with ter­ror at the prospect.

“Well, he must want to get to know you bet­ter, or he wouldn’t have in­vited you.” Raul chuck­led. “Don’t look so hor­ri­fied. Pa­ter can be charm­ing in an in­for­mal set­ting.”

“He’s the king!” Quinn grated un­der her breath.

“You Amer­i­cans aren’t sup­posed to be im­pressed by ti­tles,” Raul said.

“Right now, I live in his coun­try.”

Raul twisted the knob and pulled the door open with a grin. “The dun­geons have been con­verted into stor­age, so you’re safe.”

“Please don’t ever send me to the palace again,” Quinn begged Mikel as she sat down in his of­fice to re­port on her meet­ing.

“Why not?” her boss asked.

“Be­cause I was in a room with a prince, and then a duchess walked in. That was bad enough, but then the king showed up. I’m not cut out for royal pro­to­col.”

The cor­ners of Mikel’s mouth twitched up­ward. “I as­sume the duchess was Gabriel’s mother.”

“Yup.” So now Mikel knew that she’d just met her boyfriend’s mother for the first time. “Then the king in­vited me to din­ner at the palace on Sun­day.”

Mikel coughed.

“You’re laugh­ing at me, aren’t you?” Quinn said.

“It is en­ter­tain­ing to hear how much you ob­ject to an in­vi­ta­tion that most Cal­e­vans would kill for.” The amuse­ment faded from his face. “In truth, you should be grate­ful. The king is throw­ing the man­tle of his pro­tec­tion around you. Also, Sun­day is fam­ily night, so it will be an in­for­mal meal.”

She sus­pected her idea of in­for­mal and the king’s were very dif­fer­ent.

“This is sur­real.” She shook her head, try­ing to clear the tur­moil. “Can we talk about the case? Crim­i­nals are so much eas­ier to deal with.”

“Did Raul have any names to of­fer?” Mikel asked with a nod.

“A cou­ple, but he didn’t be­lieve they rose to the level of kid­nap­ping him.” She ran through the three pos­si­bil­i­ties and their back­grounds.

“Dead ends,” Mikel agreed be­fore he tapped a fin­ger­tip on his desk. “How­ever, we are go­ing to visit the sur­geon while his wife is at a spa in Italy.”

Her pulse jumped. “I’m go­ing too?”

“You went toe-to-toe with Dupont, so you can in­tim­i­date a mere sur­geon.”

Thirty min­utes of strate­giz­ing later, Quinn sat in her of­fice, star­ing at her phone. Noth­ing from Pete.

She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out the key chain Dupont had tossed at her. The brass coin dan­gled at the end in its plas­tic case, show­ing first a horse, then a harp as it spun in slow cir­cles. Her fa­ther had of­ten twirled it like that, ask­ing her which side she liked the best. She dropped it on the desk.

Tak­ing a deep breath, she swiped to her fa­ther’s con­tact in­for­ma­tion and typed, Check­ing in to make sure you and Un­cle Pete are okay. LMK.

Her fin­ger hov­ered over the Send but­ton.

When she’d left the United States, she had told her fa­ther not to con­tact her ex­cept in an emer­gency. Nor would she con­tact him un­less she deemed it nec­es­sary. Cal­eva of­fered her a fresh start af­ter the shame of be­ing con­victed and serv­ing time in prison. She didn’t want her past throw­ing murky shad­ows over her bright, shiny fu­ture.

She had reached for hap­pi­ness once—just a nor­mal job with a nor­mal life—and it had been smacked away from her. You would think she would learn her les­son. But no, she had to go and fall in love with a royal duke.

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