Alexio sighed. ‘Sid, don’t be ridiculous.’
Sidonie pulled away and dragged her top down over her bump. She shook her head again and crossed her arms. ‘No marriage unless you agree.’
Sidonie saw Alexio’s eyes slide down to her bump and she put a hand over it.
‘And no more cutesy manipulation of our daughter before she’s even born.’
Alexio rolled his eyes heavenward and then threw up his hands. ‘Okay—fine.’
His eyes glinted with determination then and he reached for her, pulling her into him so tightly that she didn’t know where she ended and he began. Sidonie slid her arms around his waist and snuggled against him. They rested like that for a long moment, the calm after the storm.
‘Sid?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Are you going to sleep?’
Sidonie nodded her head against Alexio’s chest and said sleepily, happily, ‘It’s those hormones again. I have a feeling you’re going to be keeping me up late, so I should really nap now. And also pregnant women shouldn’t be subjected to too much excitement—it takes it out of us.’
She felt Alexio tense slightly and heard his affronted, ‘What happened last night was more than hormones and you know it. Luckily we have the rest of our lives for me to prove it to you...’
The rest of our lives...
Sidonie smiled and moved closer to Alexio, deeper into his embrace, and he moved slightly so that he could put a possessive hand over her belly, setting off a chain reaction of desire.
‘Okay,’ she admitted sheepishly, lifting her head to look at him. ‘Maybe it wasn’t just pregnancy hormones...’
Alexio cupped her jaw with his hand and looked down at her. ‘Excuse my French in front of Belle,’ he said with a wicked smile, ‘but damn right it wasn’t.’
Two days later, Dublin
‘Now I just want to make absolutely sure I haven’t missed any loopholes or sneaky amendments. This was all drawn up very quickly because my fiancé has arranged our marriage for two weeks’ time in Paris.’
Sidonie ignored the snort of insult from the man pacing the solicitor’s office. She smiled sweetly at Mr Keane, who looked as if he was having trouble holding back nervous hysterics. No doubt he hadn’t expected to see one of the world’s foremost self-made billionaires in his office, never mind in this position.
Sidonie went on. ‘Is it absolutely clear that if we divorce—’
‘There will never be a divorce,’ came the fierce pronouncement.
Sidonie rolled her eyes at the solicitor and then looked at her fiancé.
‘Well, of course now we don’t think there’ll be a divorce, but you never know what will happen in life and I want to make sure that if and when such a time comes I walk away with not a cent of your fortune.’
Sidonie felt absolutely sure that there would be no divorce either, but it wasn’t a bad thing to keep an alpha male like Alexio on his toes.
Alexio was bristling. He stalked over and put his hands down on the desk to glare at Sidonie. The intensity of that glare was diminished somewhat by the way he looked at her mouth so hungrily.