Page 12 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

Alana felt heavy and unspeakably exhausted and her eyelids were too weighted even to lift. She wondered dimly what was wrong with her but it didn’t feel important enough to mention when her brain was a swamp.

A hand grasped her limp fingers where they lay splayed on the cover. ‘You will feel better tomorrow,’ the voice assured her with impressive confidence. ‘It’s your temperature. You have a fever. It is probably causing the nightmares.’

And she knew right then that the voice belonged to Ares. Only Ares would give her that much detail when she was beyond caring and yet the very knowledge that he was with her was a comfort because somehow sheknewthat he would deal with any problem with the utmost efficiency. ‘I’m ill,’ she mumbled as a more pressing need made itself known to her.

‘You have influenza.’

You say flu, she wanted to tell him, but she didn’t have the energy and she simply sighed as she shuffled her legs across the bed to find the edge, wondering then why Ares was around when she was in a bed, of all things. She attempted to roll her heavy body.

‘What are you trying to do?’ Ares demanded, sounding tried beyond measure, making her feel guilty.

‘Bathroom,’ she said curtly, mortified by that necessity.

Ares gazed down at her with impatience, pushed back the duvet and scooped up her slight body. He had got used to carrying her around and now it cost him not a thought to do it. She weighed far less than she should. The doctor had spelt that out to him in rather accusing terms, as though it were his fault that his wife was so skinny. Maybe she had assumed he was one of those men obsessed with having only a very thin partner. Well, he wasn’t, he thought, tucking in one pale slender arm with great care as he strode into the adjoining bathroom and settled her down.

In astonishment at having been lifted in such a way, Alana opened her eyes for the first time and she focused dizzily on a tiled floor and her own bare feet. Her hands slid down over fabric and she studied it in amazement. She was in a nightdress, she who never wore nightdresses, who was a vest and shorts girl, and all she could think about then was how she had got out of her clothes and into a nightdress when she didn’t even know where she was.

‘Where am I?’ she mumbled.

‘My home where you are safe.’

She lifted her head enough to focus on bare brown male feet, nicely shaped feet too, she acknowledged abstractedly, noting the hem of jeans visible. Ares in jeans? She really wanted to see that because he was always in a suit and she could imagine him going to bed in a suit like a vampire retiring to his coffin. ‘My brain’s dead,’ she complained of that piece of nonsense.

‘Because you’re ill.’

Not so ill that she wanted a man in the bathroom with her, she thought fiercely. ‘Go! Close the door. Leave me alone.’

‘You’re not well enough to be left alone,’ Ares informed her stubbornly.

With immense effort, Alana threw her head back and finally focused on Ares, barefoot, sheathed in faded jeans and a shirt hanging open on a bronzed torso worthy of a centrefold and a thousand camera flashes. It was to her credit that she didn’t get sidetracked by the view and still hissed, ‘Says who? Get out of here!’

As soon as the door closed on his exit, Alana slumped and slowly took care of herself, crawling across a cold floor to lever herself up by a cupboard to a sink. As she clumsily washed her hands, splashed water on her hot face and buried her face in a towel, she remembered that they had got married. She looked at her hand but her finger was bare. Oh, heavens, had she already lost that ring that had looked as though it had cost a king’s ransom?

As she began to open the door, it opened for her and Ares scooped her up again as if it were the easiest thing in the world to lift a fully grown adult woman. He settled her back into the bed, fixed the pillows, tugged the duvet over her while her green eyes clung to his hard bronzed features in a daze. ‘I’ve lost the wedding ring.’

‘It was falling off. I removed it and I’m having it resized,’ Ares explained, lifting a glass of water with a straw to angle it at her helpfully for her to drink before retreating to an armchair within a few feet of the bed.

‘What time is it?’

‘It’s the middle of the night. Go back to sleep.’

Her troubled gaze rested on him. It might be the middle of the night, but Ares Sarris radiated energy just the same as usual and betrayed not a hint of emotion. ‘I’m being a nuisance,’ she began uneasily.

‘You’re my wife. You’re my nuisance for the moment,’ Ares retorted crisply.

‘You’ve got no tact,’ Alana framed drowsily.

‘And you’resurprised?’

‘You still look like an angel,’ she whispered, almost mesmerised by the light from the lamp that gilded his hair and threw his perfect features into an intriguing mix of exotic peaks and shadowed hollows.

Even if Alana was plainly still feverish, Ares was relieved that she was opening her eyes and talking again. Unconscious, Alana had panicked him just a little. Until the doctor had reassured him, Ares had been deeply concerned...obviously. Married one day and a widower the next might not have fulfilled the will and it would be outrageous to go to such lengths as matrimony only to be thwarted by a dying bride. On another level, impervious to the ruthlessness of that last thought, Ares watched her sleep, scanning the silky golden hair tangled across the pillow, the curling lashes separating her determined little nose above the peachy softness of that mouth he had tasted with such forbidden pleasure. He almost smiled as he opened his laptop, deeming it safe to work now that she had made what he viewed as her very first step in the recovery process.

A nurse in a uniform greeted Alana when she wakened later the following day.

‘I’m your nurse, Fay,’ she said cheerfully with a smile.

‘Where’s...er...?’ Alana framed, lying still as she realised she felt too weak to push up against the pillows.

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