Page 7 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

Ares was almost pleased to discover that some things she would lie about, if cornered. But he was attracted to her too, although he would not have admitted it either, he conceded absently. ‘I spoke merely because I don’t want any misapprehensions arising between us. There will be no intimacy of any kind.’

‘Not a problem,’ Alana replied with insouciance.

Ares experienced an extraordinary desire to simply lift her into his arms and show her how much of a problem that hunger could be, but he was too disciplined to succumb to such an urge. ‘The contract is on the desk. When you’ve read and digested it, I’ll recall my legal team to act as witnesses.’

‘I don’t need to read it—’

Dark eyes as sharp as ice picks landed on her. ‘Youwillread it from start to finish.’

Alana watched him vault upright with that smooth easy grace that she found so noticeable in his every movement, as if his limbs and his muscles were composed of stretchy silk. He swept a document off the desk and strode back to her extending it and she reckoned that she would not miss his bossy presence in whichever property of his she ended up living in. The fat document was at least a hundred pages long and she looked at him in wonder as she glanced through it.

‘You shouldn’t punish me just because the last candidate was stupid.’ She sighed, beginning very slowly to leaf through, peering at the small print. ‘I can’t read this without my specs.’

‘You read the NDA,’ he reminded her.

‘As well as I needed to,’ she qualified.

‘Go and get your spectacles,’ Ares instructed impatiently.

Alana got up, which took effort when the squashy cushioning of the sofa wanted to hold her back. ‘Gosh, is this what happens when you get rich...you want everything signed, sealed, and delivered like...yesterday?’ she commented.

‘It is,’ Ares responded without apology.

Alana heaved a long-suffering sigh but inside she was crowing in heady delight. She was about to get rid of her stepfather’s debt, she was going to get her life and her freedom back! She could hardly believe the sheer joy of release that was flooding through her veins.

Ares watched her bounce out of the room and he smiled. She was pleased. She was happy. Strangely that knowledge satisfied something in him. He assumed it was relief from being at the end of the bride hunt again.

His chief lawyer had intimated some doubts on the score of Alana being the right choice. He had produced exactly the same objections that Ares himself had cherished on first meeting Alana. But some stubborn trait inside Ares had refused to give ground to those sensible doubts. HelikedAlana and he trusted her. It really was that simple. Her silence in recent days, when she could have spilled what she had overheard to the press and made herself a fortune, had been the conclusive proof he needed that Alana was the absolute right choice.

Alana raced back to the Presidential Suite, her glasses firmly anchored on her nose. She used her key to gain entry, saw no sign of Ares and walked into the dining area to sit down at the table and immediately read the contract. She could have done with a dictionary to interpret some of the words but glossed over those phrases regardless.

‘Any questions?’ Ares enquired from behind her.

‘Yes, what does that word mean?’ she asked, pointing a finger.

Ares leant down close to her to look over her shoulder and explained, silvery hair brushing her cheek. He smelleddivine. Some sort of cologne mixed with warm, clean, male earthiness. Her nostrils flared on the scent of him, her body warming without her volition, her nipples tightening into hard little buds, her legs quivering and pressing close together. Only chemistry, she told herself squarely, nothing to feel bad about. Or at least, she conceded, she wouldn’t have felt bad had a guy ever affected her that way before, only no one had until now. Ares Sarris was like a hidden patch of black ice on a road. She needed to learn avoidance techniques. Or did she? Hadn’t he said that they would barely see each other?

‘My lawyers are joining us to witness the signing,’ Ares informed her. ‘You’ll leave this job in the hotel today.’

‘I can’t just—’

‘If you want this contract, you will. How many people would credit that I’ve married a maid?’ he sliced back at her. ‘And I want the details of the debt so that it can be dealt with.’

‘Maddox operates out of the back room of the pool hall in town. That’s all you need to know. Give me the money andIwill settle it—’

‘No,’ Ares said succinctly. ‘You will not return to the moneylender in person. It could be dangerous. That is not negotiable.’

‘There isn’t very much negotiable with you,’ Alana dared to say. ‘But then you’re paying for this, so I suppose that’s how it should be, but I can’t see what you’re getting out of it.’

Ares’s innate reserve prevented him from telling her. He would gain immediate ownership of the house he had never once entered as a boy or young man. He would see the portraits of the Sarris family as their last descendant and the name would die out after him because he wasn’t planning on providing the next generation. He would pass on single, childless and without fanfare and leave the medieval ancestral estate to the state to use as a tourist attraction.

‘All the same, I enjoy a mystery,’ she said lightly, turning another page. ‘Where will I be living?’

‘I haven’t decided yet.’

‘Well, if you could make your mind up now I could tell Enzo and Skye that you’ve hired me as a housekeeper for it.’

‘A lie of that nature won’t work, not when you’ll have staff of your own looking after you and calling you Mrs Sarris. Tell your family that we fell in love at first sight and when it doesn’t last very long, nobody will be too surprised,’ Ares disconcerted her by suggesting with a cynical twist of his lips as though the very idea of love at first sight was preposterous.

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