Page 31 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

‘But I’ve ruined your clothes,’ he mumbled thickly.

‘You said we were spending the night here,’ she reminded him calmly. ‘We bought luggage with us.’

Ares glanced around the room for the first time, saw the cases as yet unpacked and let some of his extreme tension escape. They were in the master bedroom, double doors off the arch at the end of the portrait gallery, his brain reminded him once again of that all-important floor plan.

‘I was rough...you’re pregnant—’

‘Still enjoying the passion,’ Alana interposed. ‘Not an invalid. Doctor said it was fine as long as I’m healthy and I am. Did you miss that statement?’

‘Was probably still studying that screen with the baby blip,’ Ares confided.

‘Yeah, not much to see there yet.’

‘But her heart is hitting one hundred and eighty beats a minute and her brain is functioning in the blip,’ Ares informed her expansively. ‘And the wrists, the elbows and the knees are forming. The legs and arms are longer too.’

‘Right.’ Alana nodded and smiled sunnily, relieved that he had relaxed enough again to be back to normal and telling her all the things that he knew and she didn’t. He was also displaying a level of interest in their daughter’s development that delighted her.

‘It’s really fascinating,’ he confided, flopping back on the bed. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Course you are. This was a challenging day.’ Alana sat up, tugged loose his tie, began to wrench him free of his jacket and unbutton his shirt and since she had sent a few of those buttons flying on the gallery that wasn’t much of a task. ‘And you gave me incredible sex on top of all that, so you’ve done astonishingly well, hit every Ares Sarris target, in fact.’

‘Really?’ Ares canted up an ebony brow, watching her take care of him as no woman had ever taken care of him and wondering how she could be so casual, so relaxed when what was happening to him felt so very visceral, so veryintense.

Alana slid off the bed to finish stripping him, drowning in those glorious dark golden eyes like the addict she was. Shoes and socks went flying along with his tailored trousers. She wrenched back the fancy silk cover on the museum-quality bed and pushed him flat. ‘Now you sleep. You need rest.’

‘I just arrived!’ Ares objected, flying upright again.

Alana pushed those big brown shoulders back down firmly again. ‘You’re knackered but you won’t admit it. You didn’t sleep last night. Don’t think I didn’t notice you up in the middle of the night working on that laptop! Anyway, we need to rest before we get up for dinner in this palace and act like we belong because wedobelong here because this isyourhome now.’

Ares computed those plain facts, lay back and sighed. When it came to the ordinary things, she knew what she was talking about. She saw stuff in a different way from him, but it amazed him how good she could be in that line, how wonderfully, brilliantly practical.

As Ares fell asleep, his phone was buzzing. Alana scooped it up before it could wake him and the name flashed across the screen,Marina, and her stomach turned over sickly as she switched it off. His ex, his mistress? She didn’t know, didn’t really want to know after what she had heard about the lady, but she didn’t like that she was still calling Ares after he had got married. Why were they still in touch with each other? Wasn’t that suspicious?

Was wondering that even her business now? Where exactly did she stand with Ares? What did the marriage, which should have been wholly fake, now consist of? Her accidental pregnancy, she answered inwardly and cringed. That was no basis for a proper marriage. Her own intelligence warned her of that reality.

She hovered, just watching him sleep. Heavens, he was still her warrior angel, so unappreciated by those who should have loved and admired him for all that he had grown into as a man in spite of his tormented beginnings. And exquisite from that ruffled silvery hair to the long black lashes fanning his model high cheekbones and the perfect pink pout of those movie star lips of his.

He was hers now but for how long? Could she really expect to continue holding Ares’s interest when it came to a temptation like that gorgeous sleek brunette she had seen online?

CHAPTER TEN

‘PREGNANT?’ALANA’SSISTERSkye gasped as though it were the worst news she had ever heard, her eyes huge.

‘Thought it might be heading that way,’ Enzo remarked wryly. ‘Reckon the way that business contract went off the rails so fast shocked the hell out of Ares!’

Alana frowned. ‘How did you work that out?’ she asked her brother-in-law.

‘Know him, know you...it was obviously going to be a car crash—’

‘Thanks,’ Alana said tightly.

‘A car crash in agoodway,’ Enzo rephrased with amusement. ‘Never met a guy who needed to live areallife so badly. There he was inhabiting his billionaire safe bubble and then he met you. Not car-crash territory, I agree, but certainly a massive wake-up call. So, Ares is going to be a father.’

‘He’s quite...happy about that,’ Alana said carefully, thinking of Ares’s fascination with their daughter’s development. A scientific experiment on Ares’s terms? She inwardly shrank.

‘He’s accepted it, then,’ Skye remarked, looking a little less panicked.

‘Ares is amazingly adaptable,’ Alana proclaimed with pride.

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