Page 86 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

Gabriel shifted on the chair again. “No.”

“You should.” Luis gave him a hard look.

“I felt you should be in­formed first.” How ironic that he was more com­fort­able shar­ing his per­sonal life with the king than with his par­ents.

“Your mother will be happy that you have found some­one whom you care about,” his un­cle pointed out.

“And my fa­ther?” Gabriel al­ready knew the an­swer. Lorenzo would hate the smudge on the fam­ily rep­u­ta­tion.

“Give him a chance.”

“He has had many chances.” Gabriel leaned down to flick open the latches of the gui­tar case.

“So­brino”—Luis’s voice was ca­jol­ing—“I’m ask­ing you to give him an­other one. He was dev­as­tated by what hap­pened to you, both the kid­nap­ping and the loss of your mu­sic.”

Gabriel crossed his an­kle over his knee and set­tled the gui­tar on his thighs. Af­ter Gabriel had been re­leased by his kid­nap­pers, Lorenzo had met the plane at the air­port. When Gabriel had walked down the steps, his fa­ther had shoved past Luis and Raul to wrap his son in a hug so tight Gabriel had barely been able to breathe. He had felt his fa­ther shak­ing, and when he’d pulled away, tears had streaked Lorenzo’s cheeks. Then his fa­ther had stepped aside with­out say­ing a word as the rest of his fam­ily had en­gulfed Gabriel.

Gabriel re­played that mo­ment in his mem­ory more of­ten than he wanted to ad­mit.

“That’s dif­fer­ent from ac­cept­ing my Amer­i­can girl­friend who has a shadow in her past.” In fact, he was sur­prised at how eas­ily the king had ac­cepted it. Gabriel tapped his fin­gers against the gui­tar’s glossy wood. “Do you have any re­quests tonight?”

“First, I want to con­grat­u­late you on the su­perb re­port you wrote about the Lily Ca­bal. It was a model of clar­ity and brevity. I will be re­spond­ing with a strongly worded pri­vate let­ter, as you rec­om­mended.”

Grat­i­fi­ca­tion shim­mered through Gabriel’s chest. He had sweated over that doc­u­ment and his sug­ges­tion for how to re­spond. “Gra­cias, Señor. I heard from Raul that Mikel has tracked the fund­ing for the Lily Ca­bal’s re­cent can­di­dates to the Cay­man Is­lands.”

“Yes, they’re de­lib­er­ately con­ceal­ing the source of their money. Now we need to find out where it came from and why it’s be­ing kept a se­cret.” Luis made a wry face. “I thought to ease you into the shark-in­fested wa­ters of pol­i­tics with a mi­nor project. In­stead, I tossed you in head­first. This is a more se­ri­ous prob­lem than I ex­pected.”

“If you would like me to step aside for a more ex­pe­ri­enced per­son, I am happy to do so,” Gabriel said, mean­ing ev­ery word.

“On the con­trary.” Luis snared his gaze. “Have you given more thought to run­ning for por­tavoz? You would be an ex­cel­lent coun­ter­bal­ance to the ca­bal.”

There it was. The call to duty and re­spon­si­bil­ity, like a boul­der crash­ing onto his shoul­ders. He clenched his hand around the neck of his gui­tar so hard, the frets pressed against his bones. “If you be­lieve it is nec­es­sary, I will run.”

His un­cle’s gaze rested on Gabriel’s face for a long time. Gabriel felt a trickle of sweat run down his back.

The king shook his head. “No, you must go into that job with pas­sion. I do not see that in you.”

“I am sorry to dis­ap­point you.” Re­gret and self-re­proach tight­ened his throat. He wanted to help his un­cle, yet re­lief flowed through him as the boul­der melted away from his shoul­ders. He loos­ened his death grip on the gui­tar.

“Not once in your life have you dis­ap­pointed me, hijo mío. In fact, you of­ten as­tound me,” Luis said. “Tell me how your mu­sic is pro­gress­ing.”

Gabriel wel­comed the change of sub­ject with open arms. “I have found a new teacher. How­ever, she lives in Granada, so I will have to travel there fre­quently un­less I can lure her to Cal­eva.”

“Is that a pos­si­bil­ity?”

Gabriel de­bated for a split sec­ond. His un­cle was a busy man. Per­haps he should take ad­van­tage of this sur­prise meet­ing.

“I’m putting to­gether a pro­posal for you that might lure her here,” Gabriel said.

“This grows more in­ter­est­ing by the minute. Tell me your idea in broad strokes.”

Gabriel took a deep breath be­fore plung­ing in. “You know that our lo­ca­tion so far off the coast of Spain makes it dif­fi­cult to draw tourists here for their first visit. I want to put Cal­eva on the map as a pre­mier cul­tural des­ti­na­tion by cre­at­ing a mu­sic fes­ti­val that will bring in tal­ent from all over the world. It will be an honor to be in­vited to per­form, and peo­ple will come to Cal­eva to at­tend, fill­ing our ho­tels, rentals, and restau­rants. Once they’ve been here, they’ll come back be­cause our coun­try is so spec­tac­u­lar.”

Luis leaned for­ward. “Your idea in­ter­ests me strongly. Tell me more.”

“I’ve scouted about half a dozen venues around San Ig­na­cio and St. Christophe.” Since Luis was re­cep­tive, Gabriel de­cided to go for broke. “In ad­di­tion, we would of­fer tem­po­rary res­i­den­cies to prom­i­nent artists in all medi­ums—and who wouldn’t want to spend a year on Cal­eva?” He grinned at his un­cle. “We would at­tract the best men­tors who could help us grow our own tal­ent here. Cal­eva will be­come a mecca for mu­si­cians, artists, ac­tors, and dancers.” He stopped when he re­al­ized that he sounded like an ad­ver­tise­ment.

“You are pas­sion­ate about this project,” Luis said. “I’ve al­ways won­dered… Did you feel held back in your mu­si­cal ca­reer be­cause you lived here?”

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