Page 96 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

“You’ll find the black­mailer.” Cer­tainty rang in his voice. “And when you do, I will spit in his face.”

Chap­ter 25

“Why do you have to be a royal duke?” Quinn asked, glar­ing at Gabriel across the re­mains of their Sun­day break­fast frit­tata. His hair was still rum­pled from sleep, and the mus­cles of his bare chest flexed un­der his olive skin. She wanted to for­get the stupid din­ner with his fam­ily and spend the whole day in bed with him.

“Be­cause you wouldn’t have met me if I weren’t.” Gabriel sighed. “Even if I gave up my ti­tle, my fam­ily would still be my fam­ily.”

“I know.” She set her mug down and reached across the ta­ble to take his hand. “I’m just ter­ri­fied.”

He lifted her hand to kiss it. “You track down far more fright­en­ing peo­ple in your job.”

“I un­der­stand crim­i­nals.” All too well. “I’m out of my depth with roy­alty.” That was why she knew their re­la­tion­ship would even­tu­ally end. But she wouldn’t think about it to­day.

“When you’re ner­vous about giv­ing a speech, don’t they tell you to imag­ine the au­di­ence in their un­der­wear? Just do the same with my fam­ily.”

“Are you kid­ding? I’m sure they wear gor­geous silk lin­gerie, and they’re all in bet­ter shape than I am, so that would be more in­tim­i­dat­ing.”

Gabriel laughed. “Okay, here’s the drill. You’ll be picked up in a plain sedan twenty min­utes be­fore you’re due at the palace. Once you’re through the gates, you’ll be driven to a pri­vate court­yard, where I will meet you. As you know, Mikel felt it would be bet­ter if we didn’t ar­rive to­gether, just in case there are any overea­ger pa­parazzi hang­ing around with drones. Then I’ll take you in through the fam­ily en­trance.”

“This isn’t din­ner. This is a mil­i­tary cam­paign.” Quinn groaned. “Okay, what the heck do you talk about at din­ner?”

“Sun­day is fam­ily night, so we don’t dis­cuss busi­ness, only per­sonal top­ics. It’s my un­cle’s—and Raul’s—night off.”

“So no Cal­e­van pol­i­tics and noth­ing about the case. What else is off-lim­its?” She would still man­age to put her foot in her mouth at some point.

“Noth­ing spe­cific that I can think of. What does your fam­ily talk about at din­ner?” Gabriel propped his chin on his free hand.

What had she and her fa­ther talked about over meals? Bren­dan had en­ter­tained her with sto­ries of peo­ple he’d met, many of whom he’d scammed, of course. He had the con man’s gift of gab, so he’d kept her rapt and of­ten laugh­ing. He’d al­ways asked about her day, what she did in school, how she was set­tling in since they moved so of­ten, what the other kids were like. He’d paid at­ten­tion, too, re­mem­ber­ing names and in­ci­dents.

“We talked about the usual stuff. Dad asked about school and told me about the peo­ple he met in his work.” Of course, many of them had been his marks. “He was funny. Some­times Un­cle Pete joined us. When the two of them got go­ing af­ter a glass or two of whiskey, I prac­ti­cally had to ban­dage my ribs, they made me laugh so hard.”

In­ter­est lit Gabriel’s eyes. “Un­cle Pete?”

“A close fam­ily friend, not re­ally my un­cle.” She had to shut down this con­ver­sa­tion be­fore she slipped up in her lies.

The dark green sedan turned in through the iron gates of Castillo Dra­conago.

Quinn gave the col­lar of her rose silk blouse one last tug be­fore she dropped her hand and rubbed her palm over the light gray wool of her trousers. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” she mut­tered when the car halted in the mid­dle of the walled court­yard.

A sigh of re­lief whis­pered from her throat when Gabriel strode around the cor­ner. Nor­mally, he would have worn his stan­dard at­tire of jeans and T-shirt, be­cause this was a “fam­ily din­ner,” but she’d told him there was no way she would wear jeans to dine with the king. With­out say­ing a word, he had cal­i­brated his out­fit to hers, wear­ing char­coal-gray trousers and a dark blue Egyp­tian cot­ton shirt.

Her car door swung open, and Gabriel held out his hand as she swung her legs around to set her high-heeled black pumps on the an­cient paving stones.

Just as she stood, a sil­ver Maserati swept up be­hind the sedan, and Gabriel’s mother emerged.

It was show­time.

The waft of Hélène’s sub­tle per­fume as she bent to touch cheeks with Quinn was a sur­pris­ing plea­sure.

“So lovely to see you again,” the duchess said with a warm look as she tucked Quinn’s hand in the crook of her arm and led her away from the cars.

“And you, Doña Hélène,” Quinn lied.

Quinn had con­sulted with Mikel about how to ad­dress Gabriel’s fam­ily. She fig­ured her boss was a com­moner like Quinn, which would give him a bet­ter han­dle on the gra­da­tions of re­spect than an in­sider like Gabriel would have. Mikel had sug­gested first names for any­one of Quinn’s gen­er­a­tion, Doña and Don for the older gen­er­a­tion, and Su Ma­jes­tad or Señor for the king. Quinn could not imag­ine call­ing him any­thing else. It still gave her a lit­tle shock when Gabriel re­ferred to him as Tío Luis.

Hélène led them into a foyer fur­nished with a glo­ri­ous Ori­en­tal rug and six suits of ar­mor lin­ing the walls. All of them held weapons—swords, bat­tle-axes, and pikes.

Gabriel must have no­ticed Quinn’s star­tled scan of the room. “Tío Luis’s lit­tle joke. He calls them his ar­mored guards.”

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