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THE VELASCO LOVE CHILD
Clare Connelly
All the characters in this book are fictitious and have no existence outside the author’s imagination. They have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names and are pure invention.
All rights reserved. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reprinted by any means without permission of the Author.
The illustration on the cover of this book features model/s and bears no relation to the characters described within.
First published 2014
(c) Clare Connelly
Photo Credit: dollarphotoclub.com/Syda Productions
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http://www.clareconnelly.co.uk
Blog: http://clarewriteslove.wordpress.com/
Email: [email protected]
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“To lose thee, sweeter than to gain
All other hearts I knew.
‘Tis true the drought is destitute,
But then I had the dew!”
-Emily Dickinson
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 an 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 undercover operation such a success.
Finally, Maggie had relented. She had wanted to get Miranda off the phone in the end. 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 cry off 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.
