Page 4 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

Where are you?

THATWASTHEtext from Ares four days after Alana had left Italy.

Alana rolled her eyes as she emptied rubbish from a bin and wheeled her trolley back down the corridor. It was seven in the evening. Alana worked a permanent nightshift and the very wealthy clientele she served on the upper floors of the exclusive hotel often arrived and departed at unconventional times. The Blackthorn Hotel offered twenty-four-seven service to their guests.

UK. Working. Busy.

She texted the triple-word response with pleasure, thinking it served him right when he had blown her off in Italy. Doubtless he wanted that NDA signed, she reflected ruefully, her punishment for having listened to a private conversation when she should have revealed her presence.

That brief text response made Ares grind his teeth together. She was a hotel maid, not a neurosurgeon. She could have spared him a little more information. Of course, if that was how she wanted to play it, he would respond in exactly the same way. He signalled a PA to get Enzo Durante on the line because he wanted a favour. He would buy the Blackthorn. Game on, he thought without really thinking about what he was doing, a reaction weird enough to Ares’s precision-orientated brain to have usually inspired deeper reflection. Only it didn’t on this occasion because Ares was in full attack mode like a guided missile taking aim at a target.

Forty-eight hours later, as she began her shift at six in the evening, Alana was cornered by the night manager, Martin. ‘Why does the new owner of the hotel want to see you?’ he demanded.

‘The hotel’s been sold?’ Alana was ridiculously surprised by that news and, as quickly, she scoffed at her reaction. Had she really thought that Enzo would retain ownership purely because she worked in a lowly capacity there? Naturally, that wouldn’t strike her brother-in-law as an important fact. Besides, in response to his offer of financing her return to university, shehadmentioned searching out a better job as her current ambition. That had been her handy excuse when she was not in a position to admit that she could not afford to stop earning while she had a debt to service.

Her brow furrowed as she mulled over the rest of what the night manager had said. ‘Why would he want to seeme?’ she asked.

‘Maybe because your rich brother-in-law asked him to check on you or something,’ Martin replied cuttingly.

Alana reddened. ‘I doubt that.’

She was paying the price for the time off she had been granted for her sister’s wedding. Initially it had been refused because the hotel was fully occupied and then an order had come down from the owner of the chain to say that she was to receiveanyleave that she requested and her family connection to Enzo had been exposed. And ever since her return she had been treated with suspicion at work, being viewed either as a potential spy or some little rich girl playing at a low-paid job she didn’t really need. Nobody seemed to accept that Enzo’s wealth had nothing whatsoever to do with her.

‘He’s in the Presidential Suite so you had better get up there,’ Martin said thinly just as a slender brunette came walking down the corridor with a winning smile aimed at him, and Alana lost his attention altogether.

A couple of months earlier, Alana had applied for the assistant night manager position when it came up. Enzo hadn’t known about it because Skye hadn’t wanted to ask her fiancé for a favour for her sister. And Alana hadn’t got the job she was qualified to do because married Martin was illicitly involved with the equally married colleague of hers whohadgot the job.

Wondering if the new owner was one of the men she had met at Skye’s wedding and very much hoping he wasn’t, Alana ducked into the staff cloakroom to check that she was tidy and wash her hands. Her simple brown overall and maid’s frilly mob cap were brown and uninspiring, her hair braided up beneath, her face bare of cosmetics. Maybe it was just a case of the new owner being a friend of Enzo’s and wishing to be polite and acknowledge her, she thought wryly.

She knocked on the door of the Presidential Suite and it was swiftly opened by a guy in a suit wearing one of those earpieces that signified that he was in protection work. Her face tense, Alana moved deeper into the very large reception area with its opulent seating and a fireplace blazing with the logs provided.

A very tall figure clad in a black pinstriped suit of impossibly well-tailored cut rose from behind the desk in the corner, lean bronzed features so instantly recognisable, she gasped. ‘Alana—’

‘You’rethe new owner?’ The accusation flew from Alana’s lips in angry disbelief, instant wariness and suspicion flooding her. ‘Why on earth would you buy the hotel where I work? Is that supposed to be some nasty, aggressive threatening move?Why?I agreed to sign an NDA, didn’t I?’

Utterly taken aback by that verbal assault, Ares strode round the desk and right over to her. ‘Nasty? Aggressive?Threatening?Of course not, not inanyway,’ he assured her with taut emphasis, his startlingly handsome face reflecting distaste at the very suggestion.

‘Well, it looks like a dodgy move after the conversation we had on the beach last weekend,’ Alana told him roundly, noting how very tall he was again. ‘It’s intimidating.’

‘My apologies. That was not my intention,’ Ares lied, and heknewhe was lying but he still didn’t understand why he had bought the wretched hotel in the first place and now had nothing more to say on the subject. It was a good investment, that was all, he reasoned inwardly.

‘So, where’s the document for me to sign?’ Alana prompted. ‘I need to get back to work.’

Unaccustomed to such a summary dismissal, Ares breathed in deep, wondering how their meeting could have travelled in such a disconcerting direction. Like a grenade thrown into a room, she had exploded his every expectation because he had vaguely pictured her greeting him with smiles and warmth. ‘I wish to discuss the debt you told me about—’

Alana tilted her chin, green eyes like emerald fire throwing defiance. ‘That’s nothing to do with you—’

‘You have no debts to your name. I had a background check done on you,’ Ares revealed with calm assurance.

Her delicate brows shot high, her slender frame growing even more rigid. ‘And why would you do something nosy like that?’ Alana demanded. ‘My background is none of your business!’

‘When you asked me to marry you, you neglected to mention how belligerent you could be,’ Ares breathed with icy restraint.

‘Well, now you can be grateful that you’re not suffering a bad case of buyer’s remorse!’ Alana shot back at him quick as a flash.

‘Miss Davison?’ another voice unexpectedly interposed into the seething silence that had fallen after that response. ‘Why don’t you come this way and we’ll get the document signed without further ado?’

In shock that there was another human being present, because she had assumed that she was alone with Ares, Alana glanced across the room to see an older man standing in the open archway that led through to the dining area and she turned the colour of an over-ripe tomato in embarrassment. She had contrived to have an argument with Ares Sarris, and she honestly didn’t know how that had happened. His unforewarned appearance as the new owner of her place of employment had set off every alarm bell she possessed and only now did it occur to her that she might have overreacted, and she regretted the hot, quick temper that her sister had once told her she should always control.

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