Page 6 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

‘How did you get involved with your stepfather’s gambling debts?’

‘He asked me to take out the loan in my name with the moneylender so that it couldn’t come back to him and expose his secret,’ Alana explained.

Ares was so outraged by that casual explanation that he clenched his teeth together, sooner than risk saying something offensive, but he couldn’t hold it back. ‘He was your adoptive father. It was his duty toprotectyou. Instead he took you to a moneylender and bulldozed you into signing up. Is it an illegal loan?’

‘I assume it is. But I don’t want you thinking badly of Dad. He brought me the money to pay that loan every week for over a year before he died,’ she countered. ‘He would never have left me to cope with it alone.’

Ares studied her with hungry intensity. Even in a maid’s uniform, he found her appealing. Did that mean thathewas a sleaze? In haste, he averted his attention from her but the vision of her face and curvy little body went with him. What was wrong with him? The heaviness at his groin told him that he was getting hardagain. It was the originality of her, he told himself. She was like no woman he had ever met before and naturally novelty was a draw. For once, he wasn’t bored. He couldn’t second-guess her responses. She didn’t fish for compliments or talk endlessly about herself and her accomplishments in an effort to impress. But why was he even thinking in such a manner about her?

He had come in person to the Blackthorn because he had wanted to see her again.Neededto see her again, no matter how odd that key instinct still seemed to him. For the first time in his life he couldn’t fathom what was happening inside his own head and it was driving him crazy. It had to be sex,lust, he assumed, compressing his lips on the shocking suspicion that such a base prompting could control him to such an extent. Characteristically, he was appalled by the idea.

‘I understand,’ he remarked on her defence of her father.

‘And I hope you also understand now that you don’t owe me anything whatsoever for signing that NDA,’ Alana pressed, her green eyes welded to his bronzed features while she tried feverishly hard to fight off her fascination. But he wasso...together, she selected distractedly. Controlled, contained, impregnable, she sensed, the core of him locked behind high walls. She was all on the surface, nothing concealed or, certainly, very little and he was her total opposite, not a shred of emotion displayed on that lean, darkly handsome face of his.

‘I get that that is what you want me to feel but I don’t agree with your outlook,’ Ares admitted tautly.

‘I don’t suppose you do, because you’re used to putting a price on everything and I suppose people expect to enrich themselves at your expense.’

‘That’s an odd remark to make when you’re the woman who offered to marry me for a price.’

‘I’m in a bind, Ares. While I have to service that debt I can’t get on with my life or do anything that I want to do.’

‘And what do you want to do? Assuming you had a choice.’

Ares watched her emerald-bright eyes cloud in contemplation. ‘Return to your university studies?’

‘I didn’t like my course much. I signed up for it because I wanted a marketable job when I finished because of the loans I took out to finance it,’ she admitted. ‘I’d probably most enjoy something arty, possibly painting, although I’m not particularly talented as an artist.’

Ares was impressed that she could admit that. He pictured her painting in one of his houses. He himself did not have an artistic bone in his body but he collected art that he enjoyed for more than its investment value. He liked her utterly unashamed honesty, her unexpected standards, her confidence even though she was sitting in front of him in a maid’s uniform. He knew Edwin Graves, his suave chief lawyer, would turn white overnight at what he was about to do but, for once, he didn’t care about the formalities. He would take a risk on Alana Davison and, although he had only briefly discussed the idea with his lawyers, who had expressed reservations, he knew thathehad already made up his mind and for that reason he had instructed his lawyer to bring the marriage contract with him for him to look over.

‘I’m offering you that job you said you wanted,’ Ares intoned. ‘That’s why I had the background check done.’

Her green eyes widened, and her soft pink lips parted in surprise. ‘Oh, well...er...what does it entail?’

‘We go through a legal ceremony, because I need a wife for legal reasons,’ Ares advanced. ‘It will last from a few months to, at most, a year. The signing of a contract will be required. If you break the terms included it will be punitive, I warn you. For the period of time that you are pretending to be my wife, you will conduct yourself as though you trulyaremy wife and will engage in nothing that could cause me embarrassment. You will dress well and behave well and that is pretty much it.’

‘And I don’t even have to live with you?’ Alana checked anxiously.

‘No. I like my privacy but, for the sake of appearances, I will occasionally visit whichever property you are using.’

‘OK. I’m signed up,’ Alana told him with a huge inhalation of sheer relief at the very idea of finally being free of the debt that haunted her every waking hour.

Ares frowned, black brows pleating. ‘Are you always this impulsive?’

‘Don’t say it like it’s a fault.’

‘I see it as such.’

‘Do you ever let loose and relax? Because after meeting you twice, I have to wonder.’

‘We will have a businesslike arrangement,’ Ares countered levelly. ‘We will not have conversations like this. Indeed, you will hardly see me for the duration of the contract.’

Alana lowered her hopelessly disappointed gaze and swallowed hard.

‘Being attracted to me is unlikely to be a plus in this scenario,’ Ares warned her quietly.

Alana’s head came up again in a rush. ‘I’m not attracted to you!’ she snapped.

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