AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She frowned. “You don’t think we have a happy ending?”
He laughed. “Maybe one day. But right now, we have a happy beginning, and I want that to last forever.”
The End
Following is an excerpt from THE VELASCO LOVE CHILD by Clare Connelly, available to purchase or hire from amazon.com.
The Velasco Love Child
By
Clare Connelly
Prologue
It’s not like she actually had to sleep with the guy.
No amount of money would lower Maggie’s standards to that degree.
A lingering look would do. A hand on her back. Perhaps a kiss.
Anything that would show her ‘mark’, in this case the gloriously handsome and rich Spanish wine mogul, for the cheating bastard he was. All she needed was a shared moment of intimacy that was damning enough for the agency’s photographer to catch. Proof for the poor wife, who’d suffered silently through affair after affair.
Getting the sleaze to hit on her should be easy enough.
Only, Maggie hadn’t taken on an assignment in years, and she knew she was out of practice. A flutter of nerves assailed her as she eyed herself in the washroom mirror. Nervous or not, she had still managed to look the part. Tall and slender, with auburn hair and a creamy complexion, Maggie had always been one of the agency’s best employees. Her years studying ballet gave her a litheness and grace that she took for granted.
She frowned, as she ran a hand over the black silk neckline of the dress. To describe it as plunging would be the understatement of the century. It was slit almost to her belly button at the front, and at the back, it draped to just above her bottom. The dress was made of silk, and it clung to her curves like a second skin, to mid-thigh length. She put her hands on her hips and pulled a face when she saw the way the dress hitched up a little higher, to reveal even more of her smooth, creamy skin. She might as well have walked into the five star lobby stark naked, for all the dress did to cover her up.
The slinky black number was a far cry from her usual clothes, she thought with a shake of her head. This life was so far in her past that she needed a magnifying glass to spot it in her rear vision mirror. If it hadn’t been for her cousin Miranda’s desperate pleas, she would never have agreed to this assignment.
But Miranda had been desperate; her agency’s reputation was at stake, she’d declared dramatically. Maggie had still resisted. She was no longer interested in helping wives make their cheating husbands pay. But Miranda had pushed and pushed, reminding Maggie of the effort and work that had been involved in making the sleuthing business such a success.
Finally, Maggie had relented, if only to get Miranda off the phone. And it was just one more night of her life, nothing more. And her curiosity had been piqued by the target’s description. Dante Velasco was, undoubtedly, a Big Fish. The money would be nice, too. The commission being offered to catch the Spanish wine mogul in the act would be enough to pay off Maggie’s overdraft altogether. Maybe even to service the coffee machine, she thought with a twist of her lips. With the exception of Miranda, no one knew she was undertaking the assignment. Though she’d hated lying to her best friend Rosie, it had been easier to say she had stomach flu and leave work early than to face Rosie’s big green eyes when they clouded with disappointment. Rosie had never understood Maggie’s agency work, and she would certainly not do so now. No. Lying was easier. So she’d left work and hopped onto a flight to Paris.
Which left only the seduction bit.
She’d done her research. Before his marriage to the glamorous Veronika (first name only, in true supermodel style) he had been a confirmed bachelor. The more obviously attractive his lover the better, and Maggie’s dress that night was nothing if not flagrantly obvious. Maggie had deduced that he was not one for subtlety, and not one for long-term relationships. He swapped lovers almost as often as he moved countries.
There was one crucial way in which this assignment differed to the targets she’d dealt with in the past. Infidelity was not the issue. That had already been established, and the clever wife didn’t require evidence to justify a divorce. She wanted to make him pay through the teeth for having broken her heart though, and photographs of him with another woman would help attain that. Maggie had felt a short jab of compunction, initially, but then she’d thought of the poor wife, and any sympathy had evaporated. It was his own fault for playing around, after all.
She lifted her hands and gave her hair a little tease, pushing the auburn curls at the roots so that they looked like she had just rolled out of bed. “Okay, Maggie. It’s now or never.” Her heels moved with a clickety clack across the highly sheened tiles of the foyer. As she approached the glass door entrance to the bar, a doorman swung them inwards, so that she could go in. That was the moment. The small moment she had to rethink her actions and walk away.
She did not.
The hotel bar was not busy, but even if it had been, she would have been able to pick Dante Velasco in the midst of a crowd. Had she not scoured the internet for photographs of him, she still would have just known. Men born to impossible wealth had a certain bearing about them. It was expressed in the way they held their shoulders square, their heads high, and the slight curl of disdain on their lips as though they knew they belonged to an elite echelon of society. She took a moment to steel herself for what lay ahead, and to inure herself to his obvious physical charms.
Without heels, Maggie stood almost six feet tall. She’d donned a pair of stilettos that night, knowing they made her legs look as though they stretched forever. The moment she began to weave through the bar, she felt his eyes arrest on her. Dark eyes, she knew from photos, followed her as she walked with an exaggerated swagger to the front of the room. She stood far from him. Far enough that he wouldn’t think she was interested; far enough that he would have to pursue her.
Though it was all a game of pretend, Maggie knew the way men worked. Getting a man like Dante to hit on her required him to truly be attracted to her. While she was playing a part, he was not. She leaned slightly forward, pretending fascination with the wine list. It draped her dress lower, and she knew he would be catching a good glimpse of cleavage if he were still looking.
She just hoped he wouldn’t see the way her heart was banging against her ribcage.
The one thing she’d overlooked was her manicure. When she’d worked for the agency full time, several years earlier, she’d always had a perfect set of false nails in place. Red and long, the kind of nails that men seemed to fantasise about. The kind of nails that were completely unsuitable for her new life, as the owner of her own café in Chelsea. The best she’d been able to do was to paint them herself with a black polish she’d grabbed at the airport. She ran a finger down the menu now, looking for a wine that would send the right message.
Concealing her smile, she fixed the barman with a steady gaze, and said in her huskiest voice, “One of the Vin Ros 2012’s, thanks.” She cursed the civility afterwards. Women like she was pretending to be did not say ‘thanks’ to wait staff. She assembled a shroud of unapproachable formality around herself and stared straight ahead.
“Would you like to start a tab, madam?” The barman spoke English with an obvious French accent.
