The Millionaire's Bet [BOOK ONE][#Wattys2015][#SYTYCW15][#CarinaPress]

part twenty two

ALYSSA

When I woke that morning, it felt amazing to wake in the arms of someone, and to simply lay there awake as I admired the man beside me while he slept. And, since it had been a while for me, the feeling of having someone's arms wrapped around you protectively was amazing and I was something which I could easily get used to doing every single day for the rest of my life—especially if that man was going to be Andrew and he was going to be the one holding me every morning.

I had admired the peaceful expression which covered Andrew's face as he slept. His hair was all over the place, mostly from where I had been running my fingers through it, his clothes were now creased from the limited distance which had existed between us as we slept, and his hand was still interlocked with my own. There were no signs on the worry, or even the fear, which had been there last night and for the first time, in probably a very long time, he actually looked happy and I was the person who had made him feel that way.

And, after spending the morning just cuddling with each other and talking about anything other than the business, he finally left me at half five this afternoon so that I could get myself ready for this evening. I had, obviously, tried to convince him that there were place other than Darren's restaurant where we could spend our night together, but he was insistent that's where we were going and there was nothing I could do to prevent it from happening.

I still don't know whether he was foolish, or whether he was simply trying to prove a point to his brother that he had won this time rather than the other way round, or whether he was just genuinely interested in his brother's restaurant and wanted to take me there because he really never had been there before this evening. Either way, I wasn't excited to be going there, but I was going to trust Andrew's judgement, this once anyway, and hope that he wouldn't fuck it up before it had even started.

I had spent the last fifteen minutes admiring myself in my mirror and, in my unprofessional opinion, I thought that I looked good in my one-shoulder black dress which finished mid-thigh and the white heels which I had matched with it for the night—Robert had become my shopping partner in the last couple of months, after I realised just how good he was at knowing what worked and what didn't, and he was constantly helping me out with both of those things whenever we went out for the day. He was quite the fashion expert and I rather enjoyed our shopping trips together, they would happen at least once every two weeks and more than half my pay check would go on new clothes or shoes, whichever I felt that I needed in that particular week.

My hair was curled and clipped to the side with a pair of silver hoops I had found in one of my drawers, and I remembered that my father had given them to me on my sixteenth birthday because it was a tradition that the females of my family were given a pair of silver hoops on their sixteenth birthday to wear in special occasions. My mother still had the pair which my father gave to her for their twentieth wedding anniversary, which didn't follow tradition to the letter, but my father wanted my mother to know that she was part of his family and nothing was going to change that—especially not his own mother who had never approved of the marriage and had done all in her power to prevent it from happening all those years ago, my father had told me the story many times of the reason for becoming estranged from his own parents, and it was the one thing which made me believe that it was possible to find real love in the world.

I grinned to myself when I heard the front door, and I could only assume that it was Andrew, and that he was early, given that I didn't have many visitors and the only ones I did have, were all busy with other things today. Darren was busy with the restaurant this evening, since he was the one who had organised everything which was happening, and Jenni had already informed me that she was busy with Danny so I wasn't to bother her for the entire day.