Page 11 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

‘Are you sure you’re feeling well enough for this today?’ Skye pressed from her seat on the bed. ‘I wish you’d gone to the doctor as I asked you to do—’

‘It’s just a cold, Skye, not pneumonia.’ Alana sighed, her throat aching like her head and she had a bit of a cough. Her muscles were aching a little too. That was all though, certainly not sufficient reason to cancel the wedding that she was being paid to show up at and participate in.

In any case, she wanted the wedding bit done and dusted and then she believed she would feel better, feel more like herself than she had of recent. Her spirits had stayed low even over Christmas with Skye, Enzo, and the kids, when she was normally on top of the world. She didn’t know why she was feeling down and continually reminded herself that that ghastly debt was gone now and that soon she would be able to move forward in her life again to a future full of exciting possibilities.

Skye, in full maternal mode, leapt up to rest cool fingers on Alana’s brow. ‘You’redefinitelyrunning a temperature.’

‘I’m OK,’ Alana insisted, leaving the bedroom. ‘Let’s join Enzo. We’re getting boring in here.’

‘You look great,’ her brother-in-law told her carelessly, visibly as certain as a man could be that this was no normal wedding. ‘We should leave. Traffic might hold us up.’

Alana suspected that Ares would not be expecting her to have brought guests, but she didn’t much care. In any case, her relatives were leaving as soon as the ceremony was complete because Enzo had an important dinner to attend in Italy and he and Skye and the kids were all flying there together. Enzo was so attached to her sister that he took her virtually everywhere with him and Alana admired their closeness as a couple. That washerblueprint for the future: finding a guy for herself who would treat her the way Enzo treated Skye. Or even as her stepdad had treated her mother, she thought absently as Enzo’s limo nosed through the morning traffic, although she didn’t want a man with a gambling problem. She realised that she was finding it difficult to concentrate and her mind was drifting aimlessly.

There was a crush of people in the foyer of the register office. Most of them appeared to belong to Ares’s security team and she recognised Edwin Graves, the older man, who was Ares’s senior lawyer. She saw the top of Ares’s silvery fair head towering over everyone else’s and refused to let herself even look in his direction. Let him find out what it was like to be shoved out in the cold and ignored!

Ares scrutinised his bride. Long blonde hair bundled up in some dignified topknot. It didn’t suit her. She was just a little bit too thin as well, he decided, noting the almost gaunt aspect of her facial bones. Even so, nothing could dim the loveliness of her face, he conceded, thinking, though, that she had rather overdone it with the rouge. He knew he was being deliberately critical because in some indefinable way he had missed her. Missed that bright novelty freshness that could be so inexplicably appealing. He couldn’t explain that oddity to his own satisfaction when he barely knew her and had only recently met her. He tensed in surprise when Enzo Durante appeared in front of him.

‘Thought you might appreciate a couple of family witnesses,’ Enzo drawled casually. ‘But don’t worry, we’re not staying. We’re flying to Italy as soon as this is done.’

Ares’s spine tightened. Sixth sense warned him that Enzo knew it wasn’t a real wedding. He wasn’t even trying to hide the fact. Alana had talked, he was convinced of it but, unusually, he found that he didn’t much care. Enzo was no gossip and the bridal family’s presence at the wedding did lend validity to the proceedings.

‘Look after Alana,’ Enzo murmured coolly. ‘She’s very precious to my wife and her siblings.’

‘Alana will come to no harm,’ Ares stated with finality, getting really antsy as he looked past Enzo to see his bridestillnot looking at him. Was she trying to make some point? Sulking with him? Offended for some reason? And why did he care either way? Why was he even wondering?

‘It’s time,’ Ares declared, stepping forward to place his hand on Alana’s wrist.

‘Is it?’ She shook her arm free and stalked ahead of him through the doors being held open for their arrival.

In front of the celebrant, he was close enough to Alana to see that what he had assumed was rouge was in fact high colour in her cheeks and it was so obvious because she was deadly pale. He grasped her hand to thread on the wedding ring, a plaited diamond-studded platinum circle that was too large for her, he registered in exasperation, knowing that that was a detail he had overlooked. She hooked her finger round it to keep it on and laughed and then she started coughing and dug out a tissue and he watched her slender shoulders shake as she struggled to stop coughing.

‘You’re unwell,’ Ares said as they walked back out again and she had virtually no memory of the ceremony, merely the drone of a voice in front of her and the stupid ring threatening to fall back off her finger again.

‘I’m fine.’ Her voice was muffled by the embrace of her sister, who was muttering apologetically that she and Enzo had to leave.

Enzo hugged her as well and Ares thought that was too familiar now that Alana was his wife. A family interaction, he censured himself, the kind of platonic affection he had no experience of being around.

As the other couple departed, Alana slung him a surprised glance. ‘You’restillhere?’

Ares froze at that provocative sally.

‘Goodbye, Ares,’ Alana framed, holding her head high, barely knowing what she was saying because she was feeling so dreadful, weak and sweaty that she wanted to melt into the floor beneath her and vanish.

Before he could even react, she turned away and moved a few steps and then she just dropped into a crumpled heap of bright floral fabric.

‘My goodness,’ his highly conservative lawyer, Edwin, commented. ‘I suppose we’ll have to drop her off at some private clinic. At least she made it through the ceremony though.’

Ares stooped and snatched up his unconscious bride from the floor in a hasty movement and locked both arms securely round her. ‘I’m not dropping her off anywhere.’

Edwin’s brows rose high. ‘But—’

‘If Alana’s ill, she’s my responsibility until she’s well again,’ he announced and, angling his head at his security team, he strode out of the register office onto the pavement, unconcerned by the stares he was attracting for the first time in his life.

CHAPTER FOUR

ITWASANIGHTMARE. Even asleep, Alana knew she was having a nightmare. She was trapped in a strange house with endless rooms, and she was running and running and something terrifying was chasing her. Her heart was pounding, her muscles burning as she cried out in fear.

‘It’s only a dream,’ a deep, dark voice murmured soothingly.

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