Page 3 of Cinderella's One-Night Baby

Andrés looked between the two women and the darkness eating at him flickered.

He was being gratuitously rude, he realised. He’d spent the day letting his sister take the brunt of his foul mood and now he was throwing his weight around with a border guard and behaving like a self-entitled brat. As bureaucratic as the officer was being, she was only doing her job.

Inhaling deeply, he held his hands up and attempted a facial expression that wasn’t a glare. ‘Okay, okay, I get it, I’m behaving like an ass who deserves to be tasered.’

The officer, who’d moved onto the next wheel arch, almost smiled. Her lips, Andrés observed, were only a touch away from being too big for the rest of her face. If they weren’t set a normal distance beneath her rather squashed nose he would assume she’d had them enhanced like so many women liked to do in this day and age.

Hers was an interesting face. Even more interesting; not a scrap of makeup on it. A smear of oil down the right cheekbone though. Slightly frizzy dark brown hair scraped into the kind of ponytail he hadn’t seen on a female since his childhood. Absolutely no way to tell what was hidden beneath the severe, masculine uniform of dark blue shirt and trousers and polished black steel-capped boots.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. It was his lawyer. This was the call he’d been waiting for, the call that could either shift the darkness or push him further into it.

Forgetting all about the pocket-sized officer’s interesting face and nondescript body, he moved away from Sophia to answer it.

Although Gabrielle was in no way intimidated by the man, she found herself breathing a little easier when Andrés turned his back and walked away to take his call. He wasn’t intimidating butunnerving, she decided.

His wife though, was the complete opposite, and quickly struck up conversation. In no time at all, she was telling Gabrielle all about the boutique she owned and designed the clothing for, which explained the gorgeous floaty dress she was wearing, and how she didn’t particularly like leaving Seville but when it came to a party with royalty then who was she to refuse?

It was rare that someone whose ultra-expensive car was being subjected to a forced search was friendly and chatty. Usually they behaved like Sophia’s husband and sulked like small children. Gabrielle was an expert on small children. Even when face down on the floor having a temper tantrum because you had the temerity to say no to them, they were easier to deal with than entitled billionaires of either sex. One thing life had taught Gabrielle, long before she’d become a border guard, was that rich people were a law to themselves. This billionaire, Sophia Morato, was a refreshing change, even if she did make Gabrielle feel like a moon eclipsed by the sun. It wasn’t just her slender beauty, but her vivaciousness and the ease she so clearly felt in her own skin. It was an ease Gabrielle envied. In truth, it would be easy to envy everything about Sophia Morato...with the exception of her arrogant husband. Imagine having to deal with that rude, entitled attitude every day. Having the looks and physique of a Greek god in no way mitigated that.

He really was gorgeous though, and as he pocketed his phone and walked back to his wife, Gabrielle had to stop her eyes from wandering to him for another gawp and concentrate on her search of the car’s bonnet. Not only was gawping unprofessional but he was a married man.

‘How are you getting on?’ he asked Gabrielle in a much lighter tone than he’d used before.

‘So far, so good.’

‘Do you think it will take much longer?’ No sign of impatience. Whatever his conversation had been about, it had definitely had a positive effect on him. Maybe he’d lost a billion euros and just learned it had been found down the back of a sofa. Gabrielle had lost ten Monte Cleure dollars recently and had cheered right up when she found it in the back pocket of her jeans.

‘Depends if we find anything.’ The longer the search had gone on, the more inclined she’d been to call the whole thing off and send the Moratos on their way. She would bet her salary they had nothing illegal stashed in it. Gizmo, the sniffer dog, hadn’t reacted at all. But she had a job to do, a job where cutting corners was forbidden, and the search would be completed with the thoroughness demanded.

Bonnet done with, Gabrielle opened the tiny boot. It contained a mandatory breakdown kit and nothing else. Gizmo had a good sniff but, again, nothing.

Suppressing a sigh, she carefully lifted the boot’s luxury floor carpet and opened the hatch beneath it. With practised ease, she removed the spare tyre.

‘They get the smallest person on the team to do the heavy lifting?’

She flicked her gaze to the Spaniard. His arms were folded loosely across his chest, a half-smile on his face and a thick black eyebrow raised.

‘I’m fitter than I look.’

‘So I see.’

Although he was only making an observation, something fluttered deep in the pit of Gabrielle’s stomach.

‘Do you work out?’

‘Only if you count lifting spare tyres as working out—being a single mother and holding down a job doesn’t leave much time for gym memberships.’

She had no idea why she’d just mentioned being a mother.

Sophia did an exaggerated double-take. ‘You have a child? How old?’

Although Gabrielle knew there was little danger in talking about Lucas, especially with people whose paths she would never cross outside this border, her stomach still tightened. Time had only eased the terror that had cloaked her in the days and weeks and months after bringing Lucas home, not eradicated it completely. ‘Four,’ she answered with practised steadiness.

‘You must have been young.’

‘Nineteen.’

‘And you’re a single mother?’

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