Page 1 of Cinderella's One-Night Baby

CHAPTER ONE

THEBORDERSBETWEENthe tiny principality of Monte Cleure and the countries it was sandwiched between, France and Spain, had, for generations, been lax. A wave of your passport at a bored border guard or a facial recognition scan had been considered the height of security. As the principality was considered to be Monaco on steroids and awash with millionaires and billionaires taking sanctuary in its low tax regime, this laxness, along with its notoriously lazy, corrupt police force meant it also attracted the more unscrupulous, namely drugs, arms and people traffickers who found Monte Cleure the perfect place to launder their dirty money.

This shameful attitude to law and order came to an abrupt end when its internationally loathed monarch and ruler, King Dominic, met an untimely end in a racing accident and his sister, Catalina, reluctantly took the throne. One of her first acts on being crowned Queen a couple of years before was to crack down on the criminals who used her beautiful land for their nefarious enterprises. Which meant tightening controls at the borders. Within months of Catalina taking the throne, the borders were strengthened and mandatory retraining given. Any guard suspected of corruption was sacked and new recruits taken on. One of those new recruits was Gabrielle Breton.

A year into the job and Gabrielle still loved it. It wasn’t the path she’d intended to take in life, but she’d determined to make the best of it. No two days were the same. For sure, most days were routine but on days like today, when a tip-off had come in that a luxury car was being used to smuggle a million euros of cocaine into the principality from Spain, the excitement would swell inside her. She always made sure to hide it, of course. Gabrielle took pride in her professionalism, a pride that had seen her immediate supervisor recently encourage her to apply for a promotion. It was something she was still carefully considering. Gabrielle rarely did anything without careful consideration.

The main problem with the luxury car tip-off was that luxury cars accounted for roughly seventy per cent of the vehicles that passed the border. If you didn’t have pots of cash there was little point in visiting. Fortunately extra information had been provided. The car in question was a brand-new model and would be driven by a man and a woman.

With barely an hour to go until her shift finished, Gabrielle and her team had thoroughly searched nine cars, X-rayed three of them to be certain, and found nothing. The other team had also come up with zilch. And so it was that when a futuristic-looking sports car that looked as if it had been driven straight out of the factory approached the border, a man behind the wheel, a woman beside him, both teams willed it to join their lanes. Gabrielle’s team won, and it was her turn to take the lead on it.

Waving the driver of the gleaming machine with Spanish number plates into a bay, she waited until it had parked and then indicated to the driver to wind his window down.

A darkly handsome, black-haired man with a thick designer beard duly obliged.

‘Passports, please,’ she said politely in Spanish.

‘I am already on your system,’ the man replied with more than a hint of impatience. ‘I am entitled to use facial recognition.’

She vaguely recognised him, was quite certain this was a face she’d seen when on facial recognition duty and possibly in the media too. But that made no difference to the job in hand.

‘I asked for your passports.’

Strong jaw clenching, long fingers with short, buffed nails handed them over. ‘Is there a problem?’

She opened the first passport. ‘We shall find out shortly, Mr...Morato.’ Andrés Javier Morato. Spanish national. Recently turned thirty-three.

Gabrielle glanced at his passenger before opening the second passport. Sophia Maribel Morato. Spanish national. Thirty-five. ‘What is your purpose for visiting Monte Cleure?’

‘What is the purpose of asking that?’

‘The purpose is for my job, sir.’

Lips that could only be described as sensuous tightened in a scowl. ‘I have property and business interests here. I put alotof money into your economy.’

She resisted yawning. ‘Congratulations. The purpose of your visit?’

‘The purpose of this particular visit,miss...’ themisshad a nice dismissive ring to it ‘...is tonight’s party at the palace. I am a friend and invited guest of your Queen.’

‘Lucky you.’ She swore half the people crossing the border that day were attending Queen Catalina’s party. Gabrielle would have happily sold one of her kidneys for an invitation to be under the same roof as the woman she idolised, but as that was as likely to happen as Gabrielle growing a second head, she kept her tone disinterested and professional. ‘And if you want to address me, it’sofficer. Are you concealing any illegal drugs of any quantity on your person or in your vehicle, or any other goods that run contrary to the laws of Monte Cleure?’

He gave her the kind of look she’d expect to receive if asking whether he ate pet goldfish straight from the bowl.

‘No,’ he said tightly. ‘I have nothing illegal in my possession or anything I need to declare. Are we done? Only, we’re already running late. I have a team of people due at my apartment in twenty minutes to prepare Sophia and myself for the Queen’s party.’

‘I’m afraid we are not done yet, sir, and namedropping the Queen isn’t going to make the process go any faster. Please step out of the car. Both of you.’

Eyes almost as black as his hair and beard lasered with fury onto her. ‘Do you know who I am?’

That old chestnut. Nearly as common and as tedious as theI put a lot of money into your economyone. ‘I’m sure you are very important, sir, but I have a job to do and I need you to comply.’

The man’s wife, who’d been silently observing, tapped his wrist with the hand her huge diamond engagement ring and thick wedding band resided on, and made a gesture with her head before pressing something on the door. It lifted up like something from a sci-fi movie.

With a put-upon sigh, Andrés followed suit, unfolding what turned out to be an incredibly tall, muscular body from the car. His wife was much smaller, only a few inches taller than Gabrielle, although the heels she wore made her appear statuesque.

‘Stand behind the line, please.’ Gabrielle pointed where she needed them to go, just a couple of feet from the bay the car was parked in. Sophia didn’t need telling twice. Andrés though, folded his arms across his broad chest, pecs flexing beneath the black shirt. The sleeves were rolled to the elbows, revealing a sleeve tattoo on his left arm that, at first glance, looked surprisingly tasteful.

‘Why?’

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