Page 2 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

She was in debt to her eyeballs but that had to remain a giant secret. Yes, her new brother-in-law, Enzo, could have rescued her from her problems in five minutes. After all, Enzo was very generous. He had bought her a car as a bridesmaid’s present, even offered to help her return to her art and design course at university. But to request Enzo’s help, she would have to lie to her sister and she couldn’t imagine Enzo lying to his bride if she told him the truth. Enzo and Skye had a thing about not keeping secrets from each other and Alana was hiding ahugesecret that she was determined not to share with the big sister she adored.

Skye had idolised their stepfather, Steve Davison. Absolutely idolised the man who had adopted them and whom they both had called Dad. But the older man had been rather more flawed than Skye could ever have suspected. Unbeknownst to their mother and his eldest daughter, Steve had been a gambler and when he had got into trouble with money he had approached Alana for help, knowing that she was the least judgemental person in his family.

Alana had been far too fond of him to refuse to borrow money on his behalf with the loan shark he had taken her to meet. Every week out of his earnings as a taxi driver, Steve had faithfully brought her his payment towards the loan and there hadn’t been a single problem. Well, the problem had really only begun when her mother and stepfather were killed in a train derailment the year before and Alana was left struggling to keep paying that loan out of what little she earned as a hotel maid.

But even worse, the debt kept on growing at a fantastic rate. She was paying a phenomenal interest rate and she knew it was illegal but there was nothing anybody could do about that aspect when the loan was in her name and her stepfather had picked a moneylender who was more of a criminal than an upstanding loan officer. Steve Davison had wanted that debt off the books, under the counter,hiddenand she had made the biggest mistake of her life when she had agreed to the debt being placed in her name.

And when it had occurred to Alana that the best thing she could do with that lovely new car Enzo had bought her would be to sell it for the cash, she had cringed in shame and guilt and had left the wedding reception to seek the darkness down by the lake to lick her wounds. Of course, she couldn’tsellthat gift, but she genuinely didn’t have the money to run a car in any case. She got around on a bike for good reasons. Not because she was obsessed with keeping fit, as her sister had teased...oh, if only Skye knew the truth!

But as Alana sank down on a rock in the shadows of the thick belt of trees girding the beach, she knew she wasn’t ever going to tell Skye the truth about their stepfather’s gambling debts. They had two younger siblings, Brodie and Shona, aged two and one, and Skye had taken full charge of them. She and Enzo were currently in the process of adopting Alana’s little brother and sister. Skye had done enough. She had already made more than enough sacrifices on their family’s behalf and shedeservedto retain her illusions about the late father she had adored.

Now it was Alana’s turn to doherbit and continue to handle the unfortunate financial repercussions of their parents’ premature demise. Making heavy weather of her difficulties wasn’t going to change anything, she scolded herself impatiently.

As footsteps sounded on the board path above the beach she glanced up, momentarily drawn from her unhappy reverie. A very tall, broad-shouldered male stepped into view below the fairy lights strung round the seating area. Instantaneous recognition leapt through Alana: it was Ares Sarris. That platinum fair hair was unmistakeable, although it had got a little longer since she had first seen him at the Blackthorn Hotel where she worked. He was probably a guest at her sister’s wedding, although she hadn’t noticed him at the reception because there were hundreds of guests.

The one and only time she had seen Ares Sarris before had been in the Presidential Suite at the Blackthorn Hotel. A US president had stayed there once to play golf and there was a plaque on the wall commemorating his visit. Ares had taken Alana’s breath away at first glance. Give him a pair of feathered wings and a sword and he would resemble a warrior archangel. Her cheeks burned in the darkness. What a silly comparison! But, seriously, the guywasheartbreakingly beautiful from the crown of his silvery blond head to the soles of his doubtless handmade shoes. He had stopped her in her tracks, made her fumble her words and stare and she still winced thinking about that moment and of how she had later watched him leaping into his helicopter to leave again. She was a grown woman, not an adolescent fangirling over a popstar.

As a female came tripping down the same path, Alana looked on curiously while also beginning to rise to her feet to leave and then the woman announced quite loudly that she was pregnant and Alana dropped back down on her rock perch in shock because she definitely didn’t want to walk out into the middle ofthatkind of scene and the only way off the beach would be past the couple. Their voices carried very clearly even though she was trying hard not to listen. The conversation was too confidential to interrupt, she told herself, all the while as her brows rose so high they vanished into her hairline because the idea that Ares Sarris, in all his gorgeous bronzed-angel glory, could have topaya woman to marry him shook her rigid.

By the time, the foul-mouthed lady had departed in a snit, however, Alana’s brain was engaged in an entirely different direction. The baby wasn’t his? Heneededa fake wife? He was willing to pay for the service? No sex was involved? In the midst of her frantic ruminations, it struck her that here was a vacancy she could fill, a job with better prospects than the one she had because she knew that Ares Sarris was even richer than her brother-in-law. According to repute, the Greek technology mogul was one of the richest men in the world.

Was she a gold-digger to even think of approaching him?

It was disgusting, wasn’t it? To be so desperate for money that she would consider such an option? But that same desperation moved Alana stiffly and uncertainly out of the shadows. What drove her forward was remembering the days she’d lain sleepless, fretting about how she would scrape enough cash together to make the next payment to Maddox, the moneylender. He was a nasty, revolting little man, who had told her more than once that there wereotheroptions if she was struggling to find the money. She strongly suspected that Maddox was a pimp.

Focusing on a point somewhere to the left of Ares Sarris, after he had asked her whether he could help her with something, she heard herself stammer in a mortifyingly little voice, ‘I was rather h-hoping I could help you. If you need a fake wife in a hurry for a price,I’dlike to put myself forward as a candidate. I’m in debt and I need the money,’ she added, like an afterthought.

Ares loosed an unexpected laugh because she was so embarrassed and so gauche and so young that she couldn’t even look him in the eye. ‘Does Enzo know about this?’

Alana’s cheeks flamed and she looked up at him, disconcertingly aware of his great height in comparison to her below average five feet three inches, to say, ‘Of course, he doesn’t. There are very good reasons why I can’t go to Enzo for help.’

Credit-card debt, Ares ruminated, extravagance, drugs? ‘If it’s drugs, I should be sharing this conversation with him. I’m not a snitch but you are his family now and, in his position, I would want to know such a thing.’

Alana blanched. ‘It’s not drugs!’ she gasped in horror. ‘What do you think I am?’

Ares chuckled, amused yet again by her sheer incredulity at such a suggestion. ‘I know nothing whatsoever about you. How do I know whether or not you’re a party girl?’

‘Well, I’mnot!’

‘But you are an eavesdropper,’ he pointed out drily.

‘I heard the woman say she was pregnant and then I thought I couldn’t interrupt because it was too private and I didn’t want to embarrass anyone,’ she protested vehemently. ‘I didn’t intend to hear the rest of it. I just felt trapped there in hiding. I’m very sorry that I heard what I shouldn’t have.’

‘How can you possibly apologise when you’re trying tousewhat you heard?’ Ares demanded unanswerably.

‘If I wasn’t pretty desperate, I wouldn’t have dreamt of coming up to you like this!’ she muttered shakily.

He gazed down at her. The jewelled eyes glistened with tears. A rare shard of compassion infiltrated Ares Sarris, by repute a male with a heart of stone. Yes, he would be asking her to sign an NDA on his behalf in the near future, but she couldn’t hide a single emotion that crossed her lovely face. Honesty, innocence and regret shone out of her like a luminous light and he found that weirdly attractive because he was infinitely more accustomed to women who concealed every genuine feeling.

‘How old are you?’ he enquired.

‘Twenty-one,’ she told him with a hint of defiance.

She was a little older than he had guessed but not by much. Listening to her, he felt about a century more mature because he didn’t believe that he had ever enjoyed such innocence. ‘Sit down,’ he urged.

‘Why?’ she asked even as she obediently sat down.

In silence he detached her shoes from her loose grip and crouched athletically low to attach them to her sandy feet. ‘I’m assuming you don’t want to walk them into the water first?’

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