“He stays here.”
She twisted round, anguished eyes seeking his. “I can’t do that. He’s
my son, my responsibility.”
“You can visit…when I’m not around,” Alexei breathed, with a raw
note in his rich, dark drawl. “I’ll cover his every need. He can have
round-the-clock nannies, every luxury….”
“You can’t ask me to choose between you!” Billie exclaimed
wretchedly, suddenly grasping the devil’s bargain he was laying down
for her like a cruel gin trap for the unwary foot.
Remorseless golden eyes struck her disbelieving gaze head-on. “That’s
the deal for now, and it’s your choice.”
An enthralling linked-story duet by USA TODAY bestselling author
LYNNE GRAHAM
A Greek billionaire with amnesia, a secret baby, a convenient marriage…
It’s a recipe for rip-roaring passion, revelations and the reunion of a
lifetime!
Available last month:
PART ONE
The Pregnancy Shock
Billie has a job that most women would love—personal assistant to
gorgeous Greek billionaire Alexei Drakos. She tries to convince herself
she’s immune to his extraordinary charms, but when events throw
them inextricably together she finds herself in his bed. However,
within hours Alexei has an accident and loses his memory of their
special night together, and Billie discovers she’s pregnant—by a man
who has no recollection of having slept with her….
Available this month:
PART TWO
A Stormy Greek Marriage
Lynne Graham
A STORMY GREEK MARRIAGE
A STORMY GREEK MARRIAGE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ONE
THE opulent cloakroom was adorned with stylish contemporary fittings
and fresh flower arrangements and was as large as many reception
rooms. At a vanity unit that was more private than any of the others
on offer, the bride was touching up her smudged eye makeup with
a careful hand, while scolding herself for getting so weepy and overcome
at the altar. However, her green eyes also shone with happiness.
She jumped when the door from the hall noisily opened to feed in a
burst of animated chattering females.
‘…Calisto threw tantrums, so clearly Alexei decided that life would
be easier with a doormat,’ a very correct English voice pronounced
with a giggle. ‘He will get bored so fast—’
‘And she’s just a worker from his office… Who ever would have believed
that a Drakos would even have looked at her?’ someone else
observed acidly. ‘And so plain—positively dumpy!’ the first speaker
added with vitriol. ‘As for that dress. No train and all that fussy dated
embroidery. Obviously Alexei is on the rebound—’
Gritting her teeth together and keeping herself out of view, Billie
was literally trying to mentally seal her ears and stop listening to the
bitchy comments. She reflected in disbelief on the exquisite handembroidered
heirloom dress that she had fallen madly in love with,
feeling affronted and hurt by that criticism of her gown. She could
have put a face to every voice though. All three women featured on
Alexei’s impossibly long list of former lovers, each of whom had
gone on to marry or move in with one of his wealthy friends or business
colleagues and thus contrived to stay within his social circle.
‘Calisto must have really screwed up—a billionaire on the rebound.
If I’d known that miracle was on the horizon, I’d have gone for a divorce
and made myself available!’ the Englishwoman confided in a
petulant tone that implied her outrageous suggestion was far from being
a joke.
‘But Calisto was a one-off,’ her companion returned crushingly.
‘She’s the only one of Alexei’s exes that he’s ever revisited.’
‘What’s that worth now when he’s just married right out of his class
and culture? I give this mismatched union three months, four if she
plays her cards right and ignores it when he strays,’ the Englishwoman
forecast. ‘Then Alexei will ditch his homely little bride so hard
and fast her head will spin!’
That was the exact moment when a glint of defiant green flared in
Billie’s eyes. Pride would not allow her to skulk out of sight somewhere
in the splendid villa that was now her home. As she moved into
view three female faces froze in a rictus of almost comical discomfiture.
Sidestepping their stilled figures, her bright auburn head held
high, Billie left the cloakroom.
Hilary, her aunt, was walking in circles in the hall while she rocked
the sobbing baby in her arms. Her eyes settled on Billie in some relief.
‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Nicky just won’t settle
for me. I think he’s getting another tooth—’
‘Let me take him.’ Billie sped over immediately to grasp the little
but solid, squirming body of her baby son. Her secret son, she reminded
herself guiltily, gazing down worriedly into his cross little
face. She adored him, wanted to show him off, not behave as though
he were Hilary’s child and her infant cousin. But that masquerade had
been forced on her when she chose to bring Nicky and her aunt back
with her to the island of Speros, for she had yet to tell the man she
had just married that morning that she had conceived a child by him
on the night following his parents’ funeral. Unhappily, Alexei, having
suffered a fall and a blow to the head shortly afterwards, had no
memory of their brief intimacy. Their son’s face was flushed below
his spiky shock of silky black hair. She hugged him close in spite of
her aunt’s exhortations for her to be careful of her wedding gown.
The scent and feel of the baby in her arms was a comfort to her frayed
nerves and the charm seemed to work both ways because Nicky started
to simmer down and indeed began to snuggle into his mother’s
soothing embrace.
A tall, devastatingly handsome, black-haired, olive-skinned male
strode across the echoing hall towards Billie and Hilary. Instantly, all
Billie’s senses went on red alert and she sucked in a ragged breath to
steady herself. She collided with Alexei’s dark-lashed exotic bronzed
eyes and her surroundings became immediately invisible: his effect
on her was that shocking and intense. Her mouth ran dry because she
could still barely credit that she was now his wife. That was a dream
so long held and suppressed by her that even on her wedding day it
could only seem to her to consist more of fantasy than fact. Alexei,
blithely ignoring the greetings of those who would have sought to deflect
him from his bride, drew level with her.
For a split second he seemed to stare at the sight of Billie cradling
a child in her arms and his attention lingered on the striking contrast
of the baby’s tawny complexion and black hair against Billie’s white
dress, auburn hair and naturally pale skin. It struck him as surprising
that the kid bore not the slightest resemblance to any one of his female
relatives. A slight frown line forming between his sleek ebony
brows, he dismissed that fleeting thought and snapped an imperious
set of long fingers to bring a manservant running, at which point he
addressed him in a low-pitched aside.
‘You keep on disappearing like mist, khriso mou.’ He inclined his
handsome dark head in approval as one of the team of nannies hired
to take care of the guests’ children joined them and put out her arms
to take Nicky.
‘Oh, no…I’ll take care of him,’ Hilary said straight away.
‘Nonsense. That is why the nannies are here, so that our guests can
relax and enjoy our day with us,’ Alexei pointed out lazily.
Billie passed over Nicky with pronounced reluctance. He began to
complain but the nanny swept off again at speed and her son’s muted
cries of protest soon disappeared into the distance. Her cheeks pink,
Billie gave Alexei a glance that spoke of reproach. With the cool intolerance
of an autocrat, he had banished Nicky from their wedding
celebration for the simple sin of crying. She folded her empty arms,
shaken by how protective she felt of her child and of how much she
longed for the nerve to chase after the nanny and retrieve him. Alexei
had to be told the truth about Nicky’s origins soon…he had to be!
‘You shouldn’t have interfered,’ Billie remarked as her aunt drifted
off at a signal from her sister—Billie’s mother, Lauren.
‘As a good hostess you should have taken care of the problem for
your aunt,’ Alexei admonished smoothly. ‘Hilary can’t even dance
with a baby in tow. I should imagine she’ll be glad of a break from
the incessant demands of so young a child.’
At that rebuke, the colour drained from Billie’s face, leaving her pale
while her soft brown curling lashes screened her discomfited gaze.
She was shaken by the awareness that Alexei had spoken the truth
and that it was a truth that she had ignored in her eagerness to keep
her son within reach. Nicky should have been passed over to the
nanny team earlier in the day along with all the other young children,
leaving her aunt free to take full relaxed advantage of a rare day out.
More and more she was appreciating just how complex and challenging
her deception had become. She was no longer being fair to Hilary.
Although Hilary had agreed to look after her great-nephew and
behave as though he were her son, neither woman had foreseen just
how onerous and complicated that responsibility might become.
From the doorway, Billie regretted their combined naivety about
Nicky while she watched as the captain of Alexei’s yacht, Stuart
McGregor, boldly swapped place cards at the top table to ensure that
he got a seat beside her attractive blonde aunt. The older man had
been keenly pursuing their acquaintance from the first day that he
had met Hilary. He had already visited Billie’s house on several occasions,
calling in on the pretext of books he wanted to loan her aunt
and then inviting her out to lunch or for a walk. Although Stuart had
yet to suggest that he was seeking anything more than platonic companionship
from Hilary, the recent widow seemed to like Stuart and
might well already be wishing that she could come clean and admit
that Nicky was not actually her child. Billie realised that the pretence
that Nicky was Hilary’s son had put her aunt in a very awkward position.
For the first time it occurred to Billie that a lot of people other
than Alexei would condemn both women when the truth finally came
out. After all, nobody liked to be lied to and deceived.
‘You’re very fond of Hilary’s baby, aren’t you?’
‘Of course, I am,’ Billie responded, almost wincing at the unnecessarily
defensive note in her reply.
Alexei laughed softly. ‘And the compliment is returned. The child
was clinging to you with both hands like a little limpet.’
‘The child’s name is Nicky,’ she told her bridegroom.
‘Whatever.’ Alexei had already lost interest in the topic and without
further comment he curved an arm round his bride’s slender body to
direct her back into the airy room where their guests were already taking
their seats for the meal.
The world-famous and very beautiful singer whom Alexei had engaged
to entertain them while they ate rested her huge sultry brown
eyes on the bridegroom and aimed every lovelorn passionate note she
sang in his direction. Steadily growing as rigid as a concrete post
in her seat, Billie watched the byplay and registered that something
much more important than good business was prompting the entertainer’s
behaviour. Evidently there was, or had been at one time, a
much more intimate link between her husband and the artiste, the existence
of which Billie had never suspected.
Before she could even think of what she should or should not say on
that score, Billie found herself leaning closer to her new husband and
saying in an acid undertone new to her repertoire, ‘You’ve slept with
her, haven’t you?’
Alexei quirked a satiric brow. ‘I won’t dignify that question with an
answer.’
‘Well, it’s pretty obvious to everybody here,’ Billie declared, refusing
to heed the voice of caution chiming to be heard inside her head. ‘I’d
have to be stupid not to see the way she’s looking at you.’
‘I don’t see a problem—’
‘Well, I expect you wouldn’t,’ Billie agreed, thinking bitterly that
he was too accustomed to receiving languishing looks and flirtatious
smiles from women to appreciate that his bride might find such displays
particularly offensive on her wedding day. Just for once she
would have enjoyed the absence of that kind of blatant behaviour in
his radius. Just for once she wanted to take pole position and shine
more than any other woman around him. As the juvenile quality
of her wishes pierced her, she almost laughed. Since when had she
wanted to show off? And just when had she forgotten that she owed
the ring on her wedding finger to qualities that Alexei deemed superior
to mere sexual attraction? It was a sobering acknowledgement.
‘I don’t expect you to fuss about such trivialities,’ Alexei told her
drily.
Billie bridled, as she very much disliked the suggestion that she had
no right or excuse to experience feelings of resentment and disapproval
when other women went out on a limb to give an unashamed
sexual come-on to her new husband. Feverish colour highlighted her
cheekbones and enhanced the bright emerald sparkle of her eyes. ‘If it
was an ex-lover of mine parading the fact in front of you, how would
you feel?’
‘I’d knock his teeth down his throat,’ Alexei conceded with a softness
that was all the more chilling for its assured cool and conviction. ‘But
then I’m the only lover you’ll ever have, so, in our case, that situation
will never arise. You’re exclusively mine, khriso mou. I like and appreciate
that.’
That macho response sent Billie’s teeth flying together with a snap
and she bit back a stinging response. It infuriated her that he was
right, that he would never know the slightest discomfort on her behalf
in another man’s radius. She had no past, no sexual history to challenge
his indefensibly sexist and hypocritical attitude, but then she
was holding back on enough secrets to sink the Titanic, she reflected
with a belated shiver of foreboding. It worried her even more that he
was so confident that she was a virgin. It was a little too late to disabuse
him of that notion now. She had allowed too many comments in
that line to flow past her unchallenged. But after that night following
the funeral when he had swept her off to bed with him, she was no
longer intact. Would he be able to tell the difference? She very much
hoped not.
She had already decided to wait until the next day before making a
clean breast of events with regard to that night. She was praying that
they could enjoy their wedding day and hopefully their wedding night
as well without the daunting necessity of a confessional session that
would shatter all harmony between them. Even one night of intimacy
would surely make Alexei a little more understanding and approachable?
After all, nobody would be less tolerant than Alexei when he
suddenly discovered that he was not in possession of all the information
there was to know about her, or indeed that she had gone out
of her way to conceal certain facts about herself. Her troubled eyes
resting on his hard classic profile and the fundamental strength and
obduracy that were etched there, Billie struggled to stay calm despite
the daunting challenges that lay ahead of her. With an idle thumb she
massaged the new ring on her wedding finger as if it were a talisman
that would protect her.
‘The only problem I can see right now is…your mother,’ Alexei delivered
in a stern undertone. ‘She’s getting out of control.’
Billie’s startled gaze followed his across the room to where Lauren
had risen from her seat to begin dancing with a man, even though the
rest of the guests were still sitting. Her mother cannoned clumsily into
another table and then a chair while continuing to laugh and talk
very loudly, all her attention predictably pinned to her male partner.
Lauren, who had obviously imbibed a fair amount of alcohol, was impervious
to the dirty looks she was attracting as those around her tried
to concentrate on listening to the world-class performance the singer
was putting on.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Billie framed between gritted teeth because
she was mortified by her mother’s rude behaviour. A thousand times
and more, when she was younger, Billie had suffered similar squirming
moments when her parent made a spectacle of herself in public.
But today of all days was special! Already very conscious of her
humble beginnings, Billie had prayed beforehand that, just this once,
Lauren would not embarrass her by doing anything to draw attention
to herself in polite company. But her mother, it seemed, would always
be as irresponsible as a defiant teenager, particularly if there was an
attractive man within her radius. In the background Billie saw Hilary
rise from the same table and advance on her giggling, swaying sister.
Lauren paid heed to Hilary in a way she wouldn’t have to her daughter.
Within the space of a minute the dancing display was over. Lauren
returned sulkily to her seat while the man she had been dancing with
returned to his at an adjoining table.
‘Thank goodness for Hilary,’ Billie remarked with relief. ‘Who’s the
man that Lauren was with?’
‘One of my cousins, who is old enough to know better.’
‘Age doesn’t necessarily make people wiser,’ Billie retorted half
quietly; the supposed wisdom of experience and maturity had made
little mark on Lauren, who remained as giddy as an adolescent. What
was more, Billie thought ruefully, men always seemed to quickly
shed their inhibitions and behave badly in her mother’s company.
‘Don’t make yourself responsible for Lauren any more,’ Alexei urged
Billie, surprising her with that unwelcome recommendation. ‘She’s
not going to change. Just let her live her life.’
Billie thought that it was all very well for him to hand out such advice,
but he had never had to cope with the hard reality of Lauren’s
problems when an affair broke up and she was abandoned once again.
At such times, her mother would sink into depression and self-pity
and use alcohol as a crutch and it was then that she needed her daughter
or her sister. Without such support Lauren did not have the resources
to pick herself up again.
‘Of course, I will always support her financially,’ Alexei added. ‘You
don’t need to worry about that.’
Billie reddened. ‘She’s pretty much fine since I bought her the house.
She doesn’t need to hang on your sleeve—’
‘I have plenty of relatives of my own who do,’ Alexei fielded evenly.
‘It makes sense.’
That Alexei was making a point of spelling out his intentions towards
her feckless parent surprised Billie and made her smell a rat. ‘What
do you know that I don’t know?’ she prompted, wondering if her
mother had got into financial trouble again and if it was possible that
Lauren had made a direct request to him for his help.
‘I don’t want to talk about this now,’ Alexei answered coolly.
And Billie found herself thinking of all the many occasions when, as
an employee, she had had no choice but to respect such arrogant embargos.
‘She’s my mother. I have a right to know what’s going on.’
Alexei dealt her a dark look of exasperation. ‘Do we really have to
discuss your mother’s debts on our wedding day?’
Hot colour ran up like a banner below Billie’s fair skin and her
slender spine stiffened. It was news to her that Lauren had run up
debts again and she was furiously embarrassed by the revelation.
‘You should’ve told me—’
‘Why?’ Alexei sent her an impatient glance. ‘Your problems are my
problems now.’
With effort Billie overcame the sense of humiliation that was threatening
to overpower her. She grasped that he’d had no prior intention
of telling her and regretted her own persistence. ‘Just one more question—
how did you find out that Lauren had such problems?’
‘Speros is a small place.’
That revealing assurance ensured that Billie’s sense of mortification
and shame lingered. The awareness that some islander, probably
either a tradesman or a shopkeeper, had clearly approached Alexei on
the score of an unsettled bill cut her to the quick. For years she had
been proud of the fact that the financial help she’d given her mother
had prevented such embarrassing situations from arising. She remembered
too well how it had felt as a child when Lauren had owed
money everywhere in the village.
‘It’s time for us to dance,’ Alexei breathed, closing a hand over Billie’s
and raising her from her seat.
Unmercifully conscious of being the cynosure of attention when she
was much more accustomed to playing the role of a backroom girl,
Billie found it impossible to lean into the strong, hard support of his
tall muscular length. Lean fingers splayed across the curve of her hips
and sexual heat flared through her in jagged response.
‘Why are you so tense?’ Alexei censured in a roughened undertone.
‘You feel like a little steel girder in my arms.’
Billie had to force her slender body to yield into his. She was quivering
with tension and the sudden onslaught of a sexual awareness
that was almost painfully strong. Memories of their short-lived intimacy
on the night that Nicky was conceived were sizzling through her
and her body was awakening again, shedding the taut suppression of
feelings and tight self-discipline that she had practised for so many
months. ‘That’s better, khriso mou,’ Alexei told her thickly, shifting
against her so that even through the barrier of their clothing she could
feel the unmistakable urgency of his arousal.
And a kind of heavenly satisfaction enveloped Billie at that instant,
for she had never truly managed to see herself as a sexually appealing
woman in Alexei’s eyes. After all, what they once briefly shared
had been unreservedly forgotten by him and she had found it hard
to equate that cruel hard fact with the idea that their intimacy had
been in any way special on his terms. But now, in the most primitive
way of all, she could enjoy the proof that Alexei wanted her as a
man wanted a woman and as a husband wanted a wife. Her, miraculously;
not one of the more beautiful and sophisticated women
present who had entertained him most successfully, though if only for
a little while. And what if she came to the same end? The thought
struck like a dagger in Billie’s vulnerable heart. What if those gossiping
exes of his were right and Alexei got bored and swiftly realised
that he had made a mistake in marrying her?
Anxious green eyes screened, she luxuriated in his embrace while her
mind teemed with rampant, fearful thoughts that dismayed her. Since
when had she been so scared? But all too often in recent months Billie
had appreciated that loving Alexei and having Nicky had changed
her in a fundamental way: she was much more at the mercy of her
emotions than she had once been.
And, of course, she was nervous about the future. After all, Alexei
wasn’t in love with her. He had married her on the rebound after
breaking off his relationship with Calisto Bethune. That particular
taunt, overheard in the cloakroom, had not been without foundation.
Alexei had chosen Billie as a wife because he believed he knew her
well and considered her to be thoroughly sensible and trustworthy. He
had not chosen her because she was gorgeous, exciting or fantastic
fun. He had picked her with his head, not his heart, deeming her perfect
for the role of a conservative, low-maintenance wife. How would
he react tomorrow when her revelations forced him to appreciate that
she was as flawed and imperfect as any other woman?
They left the floor to circulate among their guests. Later, in the early
evening, Hilary, her eyes full of dismay, sped over to her niece and
whispered urgently, ‘Lauren’s talking in the room next door. She’s
drunk and saying silly stuff. She wouldn’t listen to me—’
‘I’ll come with you.’ Sliding free of Alexei’s hold, Billie hurried in
her aunt’s wake.
Lauren was easily spotted. The table in front of her was littered with
empty glasses. With a cigarette in one hand and another burning in
the ashtray beside her, Lauren was revelling in being the centre of attention.
‘Billie!’ Lauren exclaimed with enthusiasm when she laid eyes on her
diminutive daughter. ‘You know that’s not her actual name. That’s
what Alexei christened her when she was a kid—her real name is
Bliss…’
‘What else can you tell us, Lauren?’ an eager brunette prompted.
‘Obviously, I know where all the bodies are buried!’ Throwing back
her shoulders in emphasis and exposing rather too much bosom in her
low-cut dress as she did so, Lauren widened suggestive eyes, only to
start coughing violently as the smoke from her cigarette wafted up into
her face.
‘There are no bodies,’ Billie interposed firmly, finding her way to the
bedraggled blonde’s side and slapping her on the back.
‘Don’t listen to her…there’s lots of bodies!’ Lauren carolled rebelliously
loudly. ‘And one of them is very little. In fact, I warned my
daughter to keep all her secrets until she was safely married. At least
that way even if the marriage crashes and burns, she’ll be rich and secure—’
Losing all patience in the wake of that outburst, Hilary grasped one
of her sister’s arms and hauled her bodily from her seat. ‘It’s time for
us to go home now, Lauren—’
‘I don’t wanna go home,’ the middle-aged blonde slurred as she
swayed. ‘I’m enjoying the party.’
A horrible little silence fell and only as she assisted her aunt with
her stumbling, angrily muttering mother did Billie register that Alexei
had joined them. Her face burning, her tummy twisting with fear, she
clashed with blazing golden eyes.
‘I’ve organised a car for you,’ Alexei told Hilary in a gentle undertone
as a nanny appeared to pass over Nicky into her care. ‘I’m sorry
that you have to leave early.’
Lauren, who, for all her outspokenness, was intimidated by her sonin-
law, had turned an ashen colour and was now avoiding both his
gaze and her daughter’s. Billie was wan and uncomfortable as she
watched her aunt leave with Nicky and her mother.
‘I think Lauren may well need professional help,’ Alexei breathed
with icy cool.
‘Sorry. I know she’s an embarrassment…but professional help?’ Billie
echoed, finally working up the courage to look directly at him.
‘A stint in rehab might at least cure her of looking forward to our
marriage crashing and burning,’ Alexei countered sardonically, brilliant
golden eyes cutting as lasers. ‘Clearly she hasn’t read the terms of
our pre-nup. But what the hell was she talking about? Buried bodies?
Secrets?’
Pale as milk, Billie trembled as she registered how close her mother
had come to exposing Nicky’s parentage in public. ‘She was drunk
and getting carried away with all the attention she was getting—that’s
all. But I don’t think she needs to be packed off to rehab just yet—’
‘Leave me to deal with Lauren,’ Alexei interrupted with ruthless cool.
‘I understand her better than you do.’
And Billie, accustomed to her mother’s single-minded obstinate egotism,
reckoned that he very probably did.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS after midnight. The bride and groom had stayed with their
guests until late, then had then taken a motor launch out to Alexei’s
yacht, Sea Queen. But lights in Billie’s own little house were still
twinkling brightly back on shore, Billie registered as she stood on the
private deck beyond the incredible luxury of the stateroom suite. Hilary,
at the very least, was still awake. Was Lauren still with her sister
and behaving badly? Or was Nicky reacting poorly to his disrupted
routine and preventing her aunt from getting the rest she needed? Billie’s
arms felt horribly empty. Her heart ached at once again having
to face the prospect of leaving her infant son.
Only for a week, though, Alexei had sworn. He was no big fan of
honeymoons or indeed any enforced break from business, but he was
also too astute not to recognise that to neglect any show of intimacy
and togetherness after their wedding would attract the kind of comment
that might embarrass his bride. And tomorrow Alexei would finally
know everything there was to know about her, Billie reminded
herself doggedly. The pretences, the lies would mercifully end there.
There would be no more secrets. He would understand her attachment
to Nicky, but how would he feel about suddenly and without any preparation
at all becoming a father?
Billie shivered in the cool crisp late spring air. A light step sounded
behind her and Alexei closed his arms round her from behind, drawing
her back into the heat and shelter of his tall, muscular body. ‘That
was one very long day,’ he sighed above her head. ‘How the hell did
my father manage to go through with marrying four times over?’
‘I suppose the fact that he kept on trying to find the right wife says
a lot about his optimistic outlook,’ Billie remarked, her voice wavering
as her bridegroom pressed his mouth sensually to the tender skin
where her shoulder met her neck. She was not aware that it was a
sensitive spot, but it sparked a surprising burst of heat low in her pelvis
and she trembled, straining back against him in response.
Alexei laughed softly. ‘Don’t be so naïve. He only married my mother
because she was carrying me. He wanted a son and heir more than
he ever wanted any woman—’
Cooler air brushed Billie’s spine while he unhooked the back of her
gown with the lazy pace of a gourmet contemplating a six-course
banquet. ‘You’re so cynical!’ she returned.
‘The marriage might have been a success on your terms, but even my
mother knew that he would never have married her had she not conceived.
She was a nobody from nowhere…’
‘Like me,’ Billie could not resist commenting in receipt of that arrogant
opinion.
‘No. You’re a local girl with a clever brain and a colourful background,’
Alexei teased, sliding his hands below the loosened bodice
of her dress to find the firm thrusting softness of her breasts. ‘And
now you’re my wife, my perfect wife, khriso mou.’
Her breath caught in her throat as he expertly massaged her swelling
nipples between thumb and forefinger, sending sharp arrows of desire
darting to the very centre of her restive body. Helpless in the grip of
those sensations, she leant back against him and he swept her up into
his arms and carried her back into the stateroom. Setting her down he
peeled her out of the gown he had undone and lifted her clear of the
foaming swathe of petticoats.
‘Full marks for surprising me,’ Alexei quipped, pausing to take in the
full effect of her turquoise satin and lace lingerie and the lacy hold-up
stockings she sported on her slim legs.
Although rosy colour warmed Billie’s face beneath his lingering appraisal
and her breasts shimmied in the turquoise satin cups as her
breathing increased in rapidity, she countered, ‘I’m a bride…what did
you expect?’
‘White cotton, no frills,’ he told her frankly, resting her down across
his long powerful thighs while one strong arm supported her spine.
Billie gazed up into brilliant golden eyes and her heart felt as if it
were bouncing up onto a positive high of love. ‘Oh, you’ll see plenty
of white cotton on the other three hundred and sixty four days of the
year. This is a one-off,’ she warned him deadpan. ‘Enjoy it while you
can.’
And Alexei laughed and kissed her, framing her face with spread fingers,
delving into the moist tender interior she offered long and deep
until her heart was thumping like a piston and she was kissing him
back hard, revelling in the wicked pleasure of being crushed against
him. He released the catch on her bra and moulded the lush fullness
of a rose-tipped mound with reverent appreciation. ‘You can have no
idea how many times I’ve fantasised about your breasts…’
‘In the office?’ Billie gasped, taken aback by that candid admission.
‘You look so shocked.’ Alexei was laughing again, both hands now
fully engaged in massaging the swelling bounty of her creamy flesh.
‘Well, it’s not very professional, is it?’ Billie complained, embarrassed
for herself in the past.
‘But I only looked and imagined. I didn’t touch,’ he reminded her. ‘Of
course I looked. I’m a man and the more you covered up, the more I
noticed and wondered. Modesty is a great turn-on. If you’d sunbathed
topless I’d have satisfied my curiosity long ago.’
As his skilled fingers found the distended tips of her nipples her eyes
slid shut in an instant of intense arousal that made heat bloom like a
yearning flower between her trembling thighs. But even as her body
reacted she was thinking over what he said, registering that her discreet
clothing and apparent reluctance had heightened his desire for
her and immediately wondering whether constant marital availability
would swiftly convert his interest to boredom. He bent her back
over his arm and closed his mouth over first one throbbing reddened
peak and then the other, laving her sensitised flesh with his tongue
and grazing the beaded peaks with his strong white teeth. She gasped
out loud, her body catching fire and flaming as fast and hotly as bonedry
straw. Rational thoughts fled her head like fallen leaves blown by
the wind.
‘I never thought I’d be so excited by my wedding night,’ Alexei confided
huskily, setting her aside and springing up to begin carelessly
shedding his clothes. ‘Congratulations, Billie. Experienced as I am,
you make even sex feel fresh and new.’
Awesomely conscious of the stinging sensitivity of her nipples and
the lush heat at the heart of her, Billie was dry-mouthed and all of
a quiver, while wondering if she would ever be able to match his
cool…or, for that matter, his evident expectations. So many women
had tried and failed to hold his attention. Why should she be any different?
Even to lie there half naked without rushing to cover up her
exposed flesh was a challenge for Billie. Impervious to such insecurities,
Alexei cast off his shirt, revealing the tightly honed muscular
magnificence of a torso sprinkled with dark whorls of hair, a narrow
waist and a stomach as flat as a rock slab. Physically he was just pure
perfection, she acknowledged, her gaze riveted by his sheer spellbinding
masculine impact. He discarded his last garment and the very
boldness of his towering erection washed colour over her face, for her
memory—unlike his—had no missing gaps and she was recalling the
velvet-sheathed-in-steel feel of him beneath her fingers and moving
inside her. Something clenched deep in her stomach.
He lay down beside her and pulled her back to him, crushing her
mouth hungrily below his with a hot sexual urgency that thrilled her.
He slid long fingers in a bold trail below her panties and groaned with
earthy satisfaction, ‘You’re so wet and ready for me, khriso mou.’
Feverishly aware of that betraying damp heat, she trembled beneath
the confident touch of his hand, raising her knees to assist him as
he skimmed off the final barrier between them. ‘I can’t help wanting
you,’ she breathed shakily.
‘And isn’t that only as it should be?’ Alexei husked, golden eyes glittering
over her with virile approval even as his fingers came into contact
with a roughness to the skin of her lower stomach that surprised
him. ‘What is this I feel?’
Billie froze, belatedly realising that he had found her Caesarean scar.
‘Just a gynaecological thing—some surgery—I had,’ she answered as
casually as she could.
‘You never mentioned it,’ Alexei commented.
‘Some things women like to keep to themselves.’
He shifted his hand back to a more sensitive spot and every skin cell
in her quiveringly appreciative body seemed to leap. She was feeling
too much to feel comfortable because her responses were already
breaching the boundaries of her self-control. The exquisite pleasure
of his skilled exploration of the slick folds of tender tissue between
her thighs was almost more than she could stand without crying out
aloud. She twisted and she turned until he stilled her and then she gritted
her teeth together, her slender neck extending while he delicately
teased the tiny erect bud of her clitoris and right then her concept of
what was unbearable was rewritten from inside out. Her hips shifted
and jerked upwards in a pleading motion and he lowered his dark arrogant
head to the distended rigidity of her nipples, sucking them into
his mouth and toying erotically with her wildly responsive flesh.
‘Please…please now,’ she framed brokenly, tormented by the burning
heat of an excitement too much to be borne.
He came over her and into her in an almost simultaneous movement.
With a sinuous shift of his hips he positioned his long powerful body
and sank into her inner warmth with a low, melodious growl of sensual
pleasure. For a split second, fear pierced the veil of her excitement
and her inner muscles clenched hard round his swollen shaft.
His golden eyes caught the momentary look of concern and unease
she couldn’t hide and then his hands closed round her hips and he
drove into her again with hard, sure sensual force as if he knew the intensity
of her need. The feeling of pressure low in her belly increased
until all she was conscious of was the remorseless intrusion of his
strong body into hers and the ravishing irresistible force of a physical
stimulation so extreme it came close to pain. Tingling sparks of
her impending release shot through her stomach and she writhed and
gasped, her body arching as the most intense orgasm gripped her and
sent wild sensation flooding through her in an uncontrollable and explosive
tide.
The feeling of release from her earthly body was so powerful that
for long moments after that climax Billie was in a daze. Only slowly
did she regain awareness again, register the weightiness of her limbs,
the heavy cocoon of sweet satisfaction that was reluctant to let her
go, and even more slowly did she notice that Alexei had pulled away
from her when she most wanted to cling to him. And then there was
the silence…thrumming and taut as only a male as volatile as Alexei
could make it. Her bright head swivelled on the pillow, green eyes
very dark and wide flaring to Alexei.
He looked levelly back at her and a lump of dismay formed in her
throat, for she read the challenge in his appraisal. The silence lay like
a claustrophobic blanket threatening to stifle her ability to breathe.
A whoosh of alarm ran down her spine like a cold warning hand.
‘What’s wrong?’
Thrusting the pillows back against the headboard, Alexei sat up. Brilliant
golden eyes rested on her with all the extraordinary force of his
fierce temperament. ‘I’m amazed you have the nerve to ask me that.
You lied to me, and you know how I feel about lies.’
Fear cut Billie as deep as a knife wound and a kind of panic raced
like a wrecking ball through her more usually calm thoughts, creating
mental havoc. Her blood ran cold, her skin turned clammy. ‘L-lies?’
she queried, playing desperately for time.
‘That certainly wasn’t the very first time you had sex. You weren’t a
virgin before I married you, yet you were determined to make me believe
that you were. What is that other than a lie?’
He was disappointed, she assumed, realising just what a pit she had
dug for herself to fall into. How could she tell him the truth without
telling him the whole truth? The few hours of grace she had believed
she still had had suddenly vanished, depriving her of any control over
the situation.
‘Of course it would be downright hypocrisy for a guy of my experience
to expect or demand a virgin bride in this day and age,’
Alexei drawled in glancing continuance. ‘I may have made a false assumption
but you lied by omission. Lying by staying silent when you
should have contradicted me is still a lie.’
‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ Billie framed uncertainly. ‘When you
made that assumption I felt trapped by it—’
‘No, don’t make the mistake of trying to lay your dishonesty at my
door,’ Alexei cautioned her, his lean handsome face hardening into
grim lines at her response. ‘I also want to know who your first lover
was: Damon Marios, your spineless first love?’
The instant he flung that arrogant demand and that name at her she
froze, wondering whether she really had to trail out all her secrets
there and then, if there was no escape, no other way of deflecting
him. And then she marvelled at her own reluctance to speak, her terror
of breaking free of the cosy bridal bubble of happy-ever-afters and
fantasy. ‘You’re not going to believe me when I do tell you who it
was.’
As he stared at her from below the dense dark screen of his luxuriant
lashes Alexei’s handsome mouth took on a sardonic quirk. ‘Try me.
At least you have the wit not to persist in the lie.’
Billie no longer felt comfortable in the bed. She was no more comfortable
under his intent scrutiny when she slid out naked from below
the sheet to move a few steps away and reach for the light silk robe
draped in readiness for her use over a chair. Enveloped within its concealing
folds, the sash tightened round her waist with unsteady hands,
she felt curiously more in control again.
‘How did you know? How did you guess?’ she suddenly pressed, unable
to resist asking that question.
‘You told me. You betrayed yourself by the expression in your eyes,
your face, your very responses. You looked and acted guilty.’
‘Because that’s how I feel and it’s really not fair because not all of
this is my fault,’ Billie reasoned with a defensive edge of defiance.
‘You can’t be so judgemental about lies. Not everything is that black
and white.’
‘Spare me the moral philosophy speech,’ Alexei derided. ‘You may
be my wife but one thing hasn’t changed: I still expect a straight answer
to a direct question.’
‘You asked me who my first lover was but, quite honestly, you have
no right to ask me that question!’ Billie dared, flashing that answer
back to him in retribution.
Alexei dealt her an arrested appraisal, her insubordination clearly
coming as an unwelcome surprise to him.
Billie was trembling. ‘I mean, how do you even dare to ask me that
question?’
His golden gaze was splinteringly hard and unyielding. ‘I dare because
you’re my wife and nothing in your life should be hidden from
me.’
Billie tried and failed to swallow at that bold, startlingly idealistic expectation.
A tiny pulse at the base of her throat was flickering wildly.
The tip of her tongue snaked out to moisten the taut dryness of her
full lower lip. ‘You were my first lover…but you don’t remember the
time we spent together—’
His ebony brows drew together. ‘What the hell kind of nonsensical
claim is that?’ Alexei demanded, his raw impatience unhidden.
‘It may sound like nonsense to you at this moment, but it’s still the
truth. On the night of your parents’ funeral, when everyone else had
gone home, you had been drinking and you went to bed with me,’ Billie
recounted, her agitated fingers knotting into the too long sleeves
of her robe and tugging in a restive motion at the cuffs.
‘Any moment now you’ll be telling me that you were abducted by
aliens! Are you crazy?’ Alexei jibed, tossing back the bedding and
springing from the bed, a tall, powerful figure all the more daunting
unclad. ‘Or are you drunk? That’s the only explanation I can come up
with!’
‘We made love in the guest suite where I was staying at the time.
We had no contraception. You were heading back to your own room
for condoms when you tripped and fell down the steps by the swimming
pool. When you came round, you didn’t remember that you’d
been with me…’ Billie’s taut voice quivered with tension as he came
to a halt, wheeled round and stared at her with frowning questioning
force: she had finally won his full attention. ‘You thought you’d been
in the swimming pool because your hair was damp but you’d only
been in the shower…’
Dark eyes blazing wrathful gold, he studied her, his lean, strong
visage clenched into forbidding lines. ‘No, Billie,’ he cut in icily.
‘You’re very ingenious but I won’t fall for a story like that. You tell
me that we slept together on the one night of my life that I can’t fully
recall and you expect me to believe you? How stupid do you think I
am?’
In a growing state of confusion, Billie gazed back at him. She had
known it would be a challenge to make him believe her, but it had not
crossed her mind that he might suspect her of fitting fictional facts
to an actual event to provide back-up for what he deemed to be lies.
‘But we really were together that night.’
‘So, according to you, unlike every other woman I have ever met, you
gave me your body and expected nothing in return—not even an acknowledgement
from me?’ Alexei slashed back at her with incredulous
scorn. ‘At least come up with lies that make some sense!’
Anger licked like a hungry flame out of her bone-deep anxiety. She
felt as if she were fighting for her life and certainly for the love of it.
Not so very long ago they had enjoyed an instant of perfect harmony
out on deck and she had been so happy. ‘When have I ever lied to
you?’ she queried emotively.
‘What about those weeks before our wedding when you were playing
the innocent little virgin charade? You need to fine-tune those principles
I mistakenly thought you had. It’s not the lie you allowed to
stand, it’s the fact that you were dishonest that disgusts me.’
Every word Alexei spoke flailing her like a whip, Billie had lost colour.
Her body, so lately hot and damp from the vigour of his lovemaking,
suddenly felt cold and shivery. Her green eyes dominated
her heart-shaped face but the anger that had awakened inside her was
already climbing higher and growing stronger in her defence. How
dared he say that she disgusted him after all she had gone through on
his behalf? She had stood by in silence while he romanced Calisto
and slept with her. She had endured her pregnancy and the birth of his
child without his support. How dared he judge her?
‘Don’t you dare tell me that I disgust you!’
Hard-as-granite dark golden eyes raked over her slight figure before
finally condescending to meet her incensed gaze. ‘It’s the truth and
that’s all I’ve ever wanted or expected from you: the truth,’ he told
her insistently. ‘If you can’t even give me that, what have we got?’
That harsh question assailed her like water dripping incessantly on
stone, for no matter what excuses she gave and no matter what words
she spouted she would still be faced with the reality that she had lied
to him. And just then, as he stepped into the shower and switched on
the controls, Alexei was a formidable presence, terrifyingly immovable
in his stubborn conviction. Rigid with tension, she went back
into the stateroom. She quailed at the prospect of telling him about
Nicky right there and then. If he couldn’t even credit her claim that
he had once made love to her, how likely was it that he would accept
that he was the father of the child he didn’t yet know she’d had?
Her slender hands clenched into fists as she attempted to will greater
strength into herself. Hilary had insisted that her niece should tell
Alexei the truth before the wedding, and Hilary had been right, Billie
acknowledged with fierce regret over her own weakness. Instead of
respecting the sound ethical base of her aunt’s argument, Billie had
listened to Lauren, her self-serving and avaricious mother, who had
never let notions of what was right and decent come between her and
anything that she wanted. Billie had wanted that wedding ring at any
cost, and now that she had it on her finger it felt like an own goal, a
mockery, an empty promise…why? They had only been married for
a matter of a few hours and Alexei had just told her that she disgusted
him.
Billie sat down on the richly upholstered chair and surveyed her extravagant
surroundings with blank eyes. Although it was warm, she
felt cold. Shock was setting in and hitting her hard. He was the guy
that she loved and she had burned her boats so thoroughly that she
did not know how to go back and retrace her steps. Just then, damage
control seemed an impossibility. Nothing that she could say or do
would alter the fact that she had lied. And in the same moment she recognised
just how much falling in love and having a child had altered
her, for she was so much more emotional than she had once been.
That made her feel so vulnerable and she longed to slide back into the
practical, less sensitive shell of the young woman she had once been.
Towelling his wet body roughly dry with impatient hands, Alexei
listened to the silence from the adjoining room. The silence only inflamed
him more. He should have had the truth out of her by now, not
those ridiculous lies! Discarding the towel, he strode into the communicating
dressing room to pull out clothes. He was so angry that there
was a tremor in his lean muscular hands. He stared down at them with
brooding dark eyes and clenched his teeth together hard. Billie, whom
he had trusted. Ise Vlakas! Stupid, he called himself angrily. Why had
he placed such faith in her when he had long known that precious few
women could be trusted? He had long accepted that many women
would do virtually anything to get close to a man as hugely wealthy
as he was. But that for her own ends Billie should attempt to make
use of that particular night when he had drunk too much was an act
of even more serious subterfuge and one that he considered unforgivable.
To add more lies to the lies she had already allowed to stand
between them was inexcusable. To think that he had thought her intelligent,
worthy of being his wife, perfect….
Although in one sense, she had been perfect, Alexei conceded
grudgingly as his mind roved back to their brief intimacy. A prickling
heat at his groin and the stirring heaviness of renewed arousal assailed
him while he recalled his bride’s surprising wildness between
the sheets. Her eager responsiveness and complete lack of control
when he touched her had excited him—she had excited him more
than any woman had in a long time. Any man would have rejoiced
in receipt of such fervour. That passionate receptiveness had not been
what he expected from a woman who was well known for her rigid
self-discipline and old-fashioned notions.
Old-fashioned? His handsome mouth curled with renewed derision.
What was truly real about Billie? And what was fake? Only hours
earlier he would have sworn she was genuine one-hundred-carat gold,
the real article, a woman he could actually respect…and now? He
wondered if Damon Marios had taken her virginity, or whether it had
been one of his other employees, or even whether the identity of Billie’s
secret lover lay far back in her youth. But why should the man’s
identity even matter to him? He had never been a possessive man,
particularly when it came to sex. He was too practical to be otherwise.
The crux of the matter was that Billie had lied.
Distaste filling him afresh, Alexei strode out of the dressing room,
across the spacious stateroom and out of it again without even acknowledging
her presence. He would give Billie time to consider her
options before he left Sea Queen. He was already considering his
own: he had no intention of staying married to a woman he couldn’t
trust.
CHAPTER THREE
FRESH from the shower, Billie tackled her tangled and damp hair until
it dried in a heavy silken swathe across her shoulders. She breathed
in deep and set off to find Alexei. She was not a coward, she had never
been a coward; he would listen to her, he had to listen to her. That
was the only hope of salvation that she had left. Yet she knew how
hard Alexei Drakos could be, how uncompromising, how very coldblooded
when his own interests were at stake…
Alexei was working at his laptop in the office just as if it were the
middle of his working day rather than halfway through his wedding
night. His luxuriant blue-black hair gleamed below the discreet
down-lighters, lush dark lashes casting crescent shadows across his
exotically high cheekbones. It was a pose she had seen him in a thousand
times before and she had known exactly where to find him—at
times of stress, Alexei always took refuge in work. But she could
read the tension still etched into the lineaments of his classic profile
and the warning flare of his straight aquiline nose as he lifted his
proud dark head and saw her in the doorway and his grim golden eyes
hardened.
‘I know you’re angry with me but I have to talk to you,’ Billie said
with low pitched urgency. ‘I have to tell you what I’ve done—’
‘What you’ve done?’ Alexei repeated drily, a slanting brow quirking
in emphasis. ‘Does this relate to Lauren’s loaded comments about
knowing where the bodies are buried?’
That was a question that Billie would have preferred not to have to
answer just then. But the awareness that she could not afford to play
with the truth even just a little froze her in place. Slowly she nodded
in reluctant affirmation of that point and watched his lean strong face
darken in angry acknowledgement.
‘Even your mother knows what I do not?’ Alexei demanded.
‘Yes. I did try to keep it all private but I’m afraid she worked out what
I didn’t tell her for herself,’ Billie confessed quietly.
Alexei let his gaze roam over her small straight figure. For once what
she wore enhanced rather than concealed her body and it was obvious
that she was naked below her robe. The lush curves of her
breasts were clearly delineated by the thinly draped silk and the tiptilted
swollen nipples that had thrilled to his attention were still tantalisingly
prominent below the fine material. The heaviness stirring at
his groin forced him to shift position in his seat while he wondered
cynically if that revealing wrap had been chosen purely for his benefit.
Regardless of that suspicion, desire slivered through him and the
strength of his sudden heated arousal took him aback. Just for once,
satisfaction had not led to satiation. But then the very force of what
he was feeling, that pungent mass of anger, bitterness and disillusionment,
required a physical response; he was far more comfortable
with his body’s natural appetites than he was with words or emotions.
Determined to ease himself in the most effective way of all, he extended
a lean hand to her in silence and with a wary look of surprise in
her green eyes she was quick to grasp his fingers. Banding his arms
round her slight length, he crushed her to his big powerful frame and
claimed her soft mouth with hot, driving hunger.
‘Se thelo.’ Alexei told her bluntly that he wanted her in roughened
Greek and as the heady combination of yearning and relief at that
invitation gripped Billie it left her infinitely weak. His embrace had
blown her vague expectations out of the water and with every erotic
plunge of his tongue her legs felt more boneless and less able to
provide independent support. So keen was she to bridge the gulf
between them at that moment that he could have done virtually anything
with her and she would have offered no objection.
With a bold tug on the sash of her robe so that the edges fell apart,
Alexei lifted her up onto the desk. He moulded the lush, creamy swell
of her breasts, tugging at her swollen nipples, before he lowered his
dark head to close his mouth urgently to a pouting peak while he
pushed her legs apart so that his fingers could slickly massage the
tiny bud of her arousal and probe the excruciatingly tender pink flesh
beneath. She whimpered, excitement shrieking through her in a great
rampant roar of heat, her body eager for release from the terrible tension.
That fast, she could think of nothing but the urgent craving that
his skilful caresses had induced.
Her arms linked round his neck and she trembled as he settled his
hands below her hips and pulled her closer to stand between her
spread thighs. There was a split second when she was aware that he
was donning protection and sanity almost came back to her but, an instant
later, he drove his rigid shaft into her hot velvety depths and her
slim body bucked and writhed in ecstatic response. He pushed her flat
and raised her thighs to pound into her tight wet channel with ravishingly
forceful thrusts. Sounds she couldn’t control escaping from her
throat, she was at the mercy of intense sensation and extraordinary
pleasure. She was flung to a height and then the pressure and tightness
in her pelvis broke and fireworks exploded inside her in a wild,
jerking, totally uncontrolled release.
‘Efharisto…thanks. That took the edge off my temper.’ Alexei lifted
her off the desk and deposited her in a bemused heap in a nearby armchair.
Blinking rapidly and still all of a quiver from the raw passion he
had unleashed on her, Billie watched blankly as he strode into the
washroom. She looked down at her naked breasts and, with a stifled
exclamation of shock, reared upright to tie the robe securely closed
again. That seeming necessity did, however, make her think of that
well-known saying that talked of bolting the stable door after the
horse had already bolted. She was so shocked by what had just
happened between them that she was trembling.
She had not known that it was possible to make love like that, for
everything to be so intense and wild that it overwhelmed every other
thought and decent consideration. Nor had she ever suspected that
she might have the capacity to enjoy such an encounter and that new
knowledge shamed her in her own eyes. Indeed she was devastated
by his demonstration of savage sexual power over her, because even
though no such intimacies had even been on her mind he had taken
her from cool passivity to the hottest orgasm without the slightest
hesitation or difficulty. That took the edge off my temper, he had said,
as if the taking of her body was on a par with a good gym workout.
Her face burned scarlet at the recollection.
Across his desk as well, she recalled in consternation, mortified by
the awareness that in spite of the chasm between them she had let
him do exactly as he liked. Even so, it was still their wedding night,
wasn’t it? Saying no to her highly sexed husband would not be the
wisest path to take if she wanted to heal the breach between them.
And, of course, anything that could reduce the tension between them
was sensible and good, she reasoned, raking her tangled hair back off
her damp brow with an unsteady hand. After all, she still had to talk
to him, but the prospect of doing so while her body still hummed,
tingled and downright ached from the sexual Blitzkrieg of his was a
major challenge.
Only the dark shadow of masculine stubble roughening his strong jaw
line and sensual mouth marred Alexei’s visual perfection when he rejoined
her. His cream linen chinos and sweater were as expensive,
tailored and sophisticated in style as any more formal wear. Black
hair brushed back from his brow, Alexei looked startlingly handsome
but worryingly untouched by the emotional vulnerability threatening
her equilibrium. All over again she longed for the detachment and
self-control she had once been able to call on around him, for it had
protected her from pain.
‘I believe you said that you had something to tell me,’ Alexei drawled
cool as ice, as if that episode of hot breathless sex had taken place
only in her imagination.
Locking pained green eyes to his angular bronzed face, Billie said
quietly, ‘You were with me on the night of your parents’ funeral.
After your fall I knew that you’d lost a couple of hours and were actually
suffering from concussion, even possibly a form of amnesia, but
I couldn’t persuade you to seek medical help.’
Alexei straightened his broad shoulders, his imposing height of over
six feet casting a long forceful shadow across the dimly lit room. His
entire attitude was detached, even businesslike. ‘I can’t accept any
part of your story. I would never have slept with you in such circumstances,
and as for that tale you told about sex without contraception?
I’m afraid that could only have happened in the fictional realms of
your brain because, drunk or sober, I don’t ever take risks in that line.’
In her eagerness to persuade him, Billie leant forward. ‘I’m not
lying and maybe you’ll understand that better once I’ve told you
everything—’
Dense ebony lashes screening his stunning eyes to a dangerous gleam
of gold, his lean dark features were a mask of disdain. ‘Everything?’
Alexei repeated with a saturnine look of mockery that sent the blood
drumming heavily into her cheeks. ‘What other strange fantasies have
you dreamt up for my amusement?’
That piece of ridicule made Billie want to slap him hard. Her fingers
clenched tightly together on that dangerous impulse. ‘Maybe I was
wrong not to tell you the truth months ago, but once you met Calisto
the whole situation changed and I didn’t feel I had any choices left.
I assumed you were in love with her—you pretty much told me you
were going to marry her. I had just discovered that I was pregnant.
I was planning to tell you but you couldn’t even remember sleeping
with me—’
Black brows pleating together, Alexei cut boldly into that recitation.
‘You were pregnant? By whom?’
Billie flung him a fevered glance of frustration. ‘You’re not that slow
on the uptake—I conceived on the night of the funeral; I fell pregnant
by you. You may not remember it but we made love twice without
precautions.’
Alexei released his breath in a sharp exhalation, his instant dismissal
of that possibility clear by his expression.
‘Hilary’s son is actually my son,’ Billie spelt out, refusing to be daunted
by that discouraging silence. ‘He’s my baby. I gave birth to him
while I was on my career break in London. The only reason I asked
for the leave was so that I could conceal my pregnancy.’
His brilliant eyes suddenly shimmered like a firework display, his
outrage at what she was saying etched into every harshening angle of
his lean darkly handsome features. ‘Hilary’s child is yours? You are
telling me that you have actually given birth to a baby? That you deliberately
concealed that fact from me and let me go ahead and make
you my wife?’ he roared at her in a sudden wrathful attack that made
her shrink back momentarily into the shelter of her seat, shaken by his
vehemence. ‘And now you dare to try and pass off some other man’s
child as mine?’
Rigid with tension and with perspiration dampening her brow, Billie
faced him. ‘It’s not like that at all. Nicky is your son. I’ve never been
with another man.’
Alexei wasn’t really listening. What he had learned was sufficient for
him to make a judgement. A red mist of rage was burning through his
brain while he struggled to put together what she had told him. His
bride was a mother…she had a child? Appalled by that revelation,
he remembered the seam of scar tissue low on her abdomen, which
only hours earlier she had passed off as ‘a gynaecological thing’. A
Caesarean scar, he guessed, for the first time seeing a solid foundation
to what had initially struck him as incredible claims. He could
not at first get over his sense of shock that she could have concealed
so much from him and even the most cursory appraisal of the past
year or so warned him that Billie must have spun him an elaborate
ongoing pack of lies in an outrageous attempt to pass off her child as
his. Of course, she was anything but stupid. She knew that that was
the only circumstance that might give her the hope that he wouldn’t
divorce her.
Golden eyes steadily chilling to the temperature of a sunlit iceberg,
Alexei surveyed her. ‘What a devious little schemer you are! You
have the nerve to sit there looking me in the eye while you confess
that you lied and cheated your way to the altar knowing that I would
never have married you had I known the truth about you!’
Billie leapt up, her long, thick, wine-red hair rippling like bright ribbons
across her shoulders and sliding across her cheekbones to highlight
her pallor. ‘That’s not how it was, Alexei. There were lies and
I’m sorry for that, but there was no cheating. Nicky is your son. How
was I supposed to persuade you of that fact when you couldn’t even
recall being with me?’
‘I assume you have heard of DNA testing?’
Hotspots of pink deepened the hue of Billie’s cheeks in reaction to
that unexpected taunt.
‘This kid is…what age?’ Alexei queried.
‘He’s four and a half months old. But when he was born you were
still with Calisto and thinking about marrying her,’ Billie referred to
his ex-girlfriend, Calisto Bethune, with a heavy heart. ‘I didn’t want
to cause trouble. I saw no benefit to anyone in doing that. It seemed to
me,’ she continued painfully, ‘that you didn’t want to remember being
with me, and that probably everyone concerned would be happier
if that night remained a secret.’
‘I don’t believe for one moment that your child is mine,’ Alexei declared
with icy conviction. ‘I refuse to believe it. I hope you don’t
plan to take these insane stories into court with you. You will make a
laughing stock of yourself—’
‘Into…court?’ Billie echoed shakily. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Do I really need to spell out the fact that what you’ve just told me is
grounds for divorce?’
Billie turned as cold as though he had just plunged her into an ice
bath, consternation and shock gripping her hard. ‘I know that you’re
shocked by what I’ve told you—’
‘Of course I’m shocked by the image of you, your mother and your
aunt plotting against me like Macbeth’s three witches! ‘Alexei derided
with ferocious bite.
Billie’s temper flared and she flew upright. ‘It’s ridiculous to talk like
that. Nobody plotted against you! When I persuaded Hilary to pretend
that Nicky was her child, my only motivation in doing so was to
hide Nicky’s parentage and protect you.’
‘You wanted to protect me? ‘Alexei exclaimed harshly, his contempt
for that claim unconcealed. ‘Even now in the midst of your attempt
to palm off your bastard child on me, you can’t tell me the truth! My
proposal of marriage was what motivated your lies and deception—’
‘How could it have been?’ Billie flung back fierily, standing her
ground to challenge him. ‘My pretence that Nicky was my aunt’s
child began when I first told you that she was pregnant and asked for
a career break. And that was months before you even considered marrying
me!’
Stumped by that inescapable fact, Alexei studied her with enraged
hauteur, his glittering gaze bright against his superb bone structure.
‘You lied to me and you deceived me over a very long period—’
‘But not with any malicious intent!’ Billie rushed to interpose, desperation
racking her with a level of fear that did nothing to clarify her
state of mind. ‘I admit that I should have told you about Nicky before
the wedding but I didn’t have the guts—’
‘Naturally avarice and ambition won out over honesty. Why? Only
because you knew there would be no wedding if you told me the truth
about yourself.’
‘The very last thing I have ever wanted from you is money!’ Billie
launched back at him, angrily objecting to that base accusation. ‘And
don’t refer to my son as a bastard ever again. However he was born,
whoever he is, I love him and I’m proud of him. If you think so badly
of me, how could you make love to me again?’
That emotive demand made Alexei’s jaw square and he sent her a
flashing look of scorn. ‘That was just sex, a primitive urge for physical
release, nothing more complex.’
Her face flamed and then slowly paled as his response sank in and
trampled her pride into the dust. She wished with all her heart that
she had said no, pushed him away, stuck to the business of confession
and blame. But what was done was done and she could not change it.
In spite of that sophisticated façade, Alexei had a primal streak that
ran through him like tempered steel and powered his volatility and his
ruthlessness. He was a Drakos through and through. His father, Constantine
had not hesitated to divorce the blameless third wife who’d
adored him, and replace her with his pregnant mistress. Alexei, it
seemed, would be equally quick to discard her now that she had disappointed
his expectations.
‘Nicky is your son,’ she swore one last time, desperate to convince
him of that crucial fact before he could tear their marriage apart.
‘Nothing can excuse your lies and trickery,’ Alexei drawled in a tone
of finality. ‘You cheated your way into our marriage and deserve
nothing but my contempt. Naturally I’ll order DNA tests, but only to
ensure that you can’t continue to allege that I fathered your baby.’
Humiliated by the threat of such testing being carried out on her child,
Billie flung him a seething glance of condemnation. ‘That’s an insult!
You’re the only man I’ve ever slept with.’
Alexei rested forbidding dark golden eyes on her. ‘I can’t believe a
word that comes out of your mouth and whose fault is that?’
He strode out of the room. Billie lingered in the shadowy office and
struggled to cope with her unwieldy emotions. Their marriage had
barely begun and she had wrecked it by keeping secrets from him, a
little voice warned inside her aching head. She had lost his trust and it
would not be easily regained. He was angry with her, very angry, but
she had known he would be, she reminded herself dully. She heard
the racket of rotor blades and unfroze to rush over to the desk and
snatch up the phone. Captain McGregor informed her that Alexei had
filed a flight plan for Monaco and had taken off in the helicopter with
his security team. She thanked him for the information and replaced
the receiver with a trembling hand and a heart racing like an overworked
piston.
Alexei had just left her, walking out on her and their marriage. That
realisation was a body blow that hit Billie very hard. She felt sick
with the pain and trauma of that bold move and knew she had seriously
underestimated his reaction to the secrets she had kept. It would
be virtually impossible to influence a man who was determined to put
an ocean between them. Few brides, however, were abandoned within
hours of the wedding and Alexei’s activities never passed under the
media radar. The press would pick up the story of his unbridegroomlike
behaviour and run with it for weeks.
Tears choking her and stinging her heavy eyes, Billie went back to
the opulent stateroom in order to get dressed. It might not be dawn
yet but the wedding night was well and truly over. She would take the
motor launch back to Speros and go home to look after Nicky. What
else could she do? Her presence on Sea Queen had driven Alexei off
his beloved yacht.
Was this it? Was their marriage over as well? Over even before it got
past the beginning? She tried and failed to imagine Alexei giving her
a second chance. Why would he do that when he had never loved her?
Without love, what hold did she have over him? She had screwed up
so badly that she hated herself at that moment. It seemed just then that
keeping quiet about her pregnancy had cost her any hope of a happy
future.
CHAPTER FOUR
DURING the longest two weeks of her life, Billie followed Alexei’s
every move across the globe, for the pursuit of the paparazzi ensured
that everything he did was reported in the tabloid press.
So, Billie got to know that Alexei stayed up two nights in succession
at a Monaco casino gaming with a bunch of male friends. Then, after
he went out to a fashionable nightclub in London she lay awake wondering
whether, even though he had arrived and left alone, he had
been with other women inside? Or indeed if at some more discreet
location a woman had waited patiently for his visit. For the sake of
her own sanity she tried not to read any more of the humiliating articles
that speculated about the state and nature of the Drakos marriage.
All too many gossip columnists decided that Alexei had married his
PA only because he would retain his sexual freedom with a wife who
would appreciate her good fortune in marrying him too much to make
unreasonable demands; a practical wife who didn’t expect her gorgeous
predatory tycoon to become as domesticated as a tabby cat.
And, as another columnist quipped, Alexei Drakos was not the sort of
guy likely to welcome rules. Alexei had always done what he wanted
when he wanted without apology.
Old Drakos history was also dredged up, with Constantine’s worst
womanising exploits, even while married, spicily presented to entertain
the readers even more. Billie felt doubly humiliated when far
from flattering wedding photos of her, evidently taken with one of
their guest’s phones, appeared in print. Looking mousey and squat as
she did in those horrible snaps she had felt that she was being shown
up as the bride any self-respecting Greek tycoon and modern-day sexsymbol
would desert.
‘I just can’t believe the way you’re behaving!’ Lauren snapped with
angry irritation, studying her daughter, who was playing with her son
and Skye, the puppy. ‘What were you thinking of when you moved
back into this stupid little house? You’re a Drakos now, you belong
at the big swanky mansion next door! Of course people are talking
when you’re trying to act like the marriage never happened.’
Billie prevented the little black terrier from sinking her teeth into one
of Nicky’s toys, setting the item aside to be washed. ‘I have no intention
of moving Nicky into Alexei’s house until he acknowledges that
he is his son—’
‘Oh, don’t be more stupid than you can help!’ Lauren hissed, her
attractive face unattractively lined by her annoyance. As her shrill
voice rose in volume the puppy fled behind the sofa. ‘Leave the brat
here with us and take possession of what’s yours. You have the right
to live in that villa—you’re Alexei’s wife!’
Billie glanced coolly at her mother. ‘Don’t call my son a brat!’
‘You know I didn’t mean it nastily,’ her mother argued. ‘After all,
Nicky—bless his little heart—is your golden goose. I mean, good
grief, getting yourself pregnant was the only thing you did right!
Alexei can do and say what he likes, but at the end of the day you will
still be the mother of his son and heir and nothing can change that!’
‘That kind of offensive talk isn’t helping anyone, Lauren,’ Hilary interposed,
sending her a sister a reproachful look while she soothed
and petted the puppy who had crept over to her feet. ‘Billie is more
interested in saving her marriage than in making a profit. I think she’s
right to stay here rather than up at the villa, particularly while Alexei
believes that Nicky is not his child.’
At that moment, Nicky gave a chuckle of satisfaction. His big brown
eyes looked up to his mother for approval and she told him what
a beautiful boy he was. Anatalya, having firmly placed herself in
Billie’s support camp, arrived with the day’s newspapers. While the
housekeeper bent down to give Nicky her attention, Billie spread the
papers across the dining table.
‘You shouldn’t look at them,’ Hilary warned her in the tone of a woman
who knew her advice would be ignored. ‘They twist the truth
and print lies, and it upsets you.’
‘I’m not upset and I won’t get upset,’ Billie vowed, only for the blood
to drain from her features while she studied the latest photo of Alexei.
There was no chance that what she was looking at was a lie, she reflected
wretchedly. If only it had been.With a stunning lack of discretion
for a married man, Alexei was seated at a fashionable pavement
café on an elegant Parisian boulevard with a very beautiful blonde
companion, a woman whom Billie had never expected to see in his
company any more. ‘Alexei’s meeting up with Calisto again!’ she
cried strickenly before she could think better of that revealing outburst.
‘I don’t believe you,’ Hilary breathed in disbelief, only to stare in dismay
at the newspaper pages that her niece spread across her lap.
‘I told you that you should have chased after him when he left the
yacht,’ Lauren sniped, staring over her sister’s shoulder, unmoved by
that shocking photo. It was obvious that her cynical expectations of
her son-in-law had just been fully vindicated. ‘Never let an angry
man go if you want him back. Left to their own devices, they get up
to all sorts of mischief!’
Billie was incapable of response. Just then, looking at Calisto with
Alexei in Paris and thinking of them being together, she was living
her every nightmare come true. Who had contacted whom first? Who
had made that crucial first move? After being disillusioned by Billie,
had Alexei turned straight back to the glamorous Greek divorcee for
consolation? Was he already thinking that breaking off his relationship
with Calisto had been a mistake?
A smart rata-tat-tat on the rarely used front door of her home made
Billie jerk in surprise. ‘Who on earth is that?’ she muttered.
‘I’ll go and see.’ Hilary was already out of her seat, keen to bury
any further discussion about Alexei and Calisto Bethune in Paris. A
minute later, however, Billie’s attractive blonde aunt stuck her head
back round the door and asked Billie to join her.
Billie was taken aback to find a trio of men standing in her hallway.
Two of them were known to her and their appearance dismayed her
a good deal: Baccus Klonis, the head of Alexei’s legal team, and
his second-in-command. Her face coloured with embarrassment. The
third man was the doctor entrusted with the task of taking a DNA
swab from the mouth of Nicky. Billie was stunned by their arrival
without prior notice and the clear expectation that she would agree
to the testing being carried out. While Hilary moved ahead of her to
shepherd Anatalya, Lauren and the dog into the small seating area off
the kitchen, Billie showed her visitors into the spacious lounge.
‘Did Alexei ask you to do this?’ she prompted tautly.
‘Naturally I’m following Mr Drakos’ instructions,’ Baccus informed
her with scrupulous politeness.
Billie felt as if she had just been slapped in the face and her cheeks
reddened afresh. Even though Alexei might appear to be wandering
without purpose around Europe he had still contrived to consult his
lawyers and it cut her even deeper to learn that he had instructed them
to have their baby son DNA tested in spite of the fact that he knew
that Billie was against it. A tense silence settled while Billie considered
her options. Of course she could withhold her consent to the
test. Possibly Alexei even expected her to refuse and he would undoubtedly
consider a negative response as yet more evidence that she
was lying. It might be humiliating to agree to her son being tested,
Billie conceded angrily, but at least it would prove his identity. That
at least would force Alexei to accept that their intimate encounter had
actually happened somewhere other than in her imagination.
The doctor explained the simple procedure. Billie scooped up Nicky.
A swab was taken from inside her child’s mouth. Although it was
accomplished in seconds and without causing her child the slightest
annoyance or discomfort, the whole scene felt unreal to Billie and
very much like a nasty invasion of their privacy. Had she and Alexei
truly reached such an impasse that he had to treat her like this? And
communicate with her only through his legal representatives? She
watched the men leave and shivered as Hilary came up behind her
and squeezed her taut shoulder in a quiet gesture of support and understanding.
‘It had to be done,’ her aunt said quietly. ‘When Alexei realises that
that little boy is his, everything is sure to change for the better.’
It was typical of Hilary to cherish an optimistic outlook. Billie was
less confident. Was Alexei ready to be a father? She didn’t think so.
Would he begin to understand why she had behaved as she had? Or
was she to be for ever condemned as a disgusting liar by a guy who
had never had to adjust his black and white take on ethics for anyone’s
benefit?
‘I think I’ll go for a walk on the beach—’
‘I’ll put Nicky down for his nap,’ Hilary cut in, well aware that her
niece was eager to escape listening to what her mother would have to
say about the DNA testing Nicky had just undergone.
A slender elegant figure in cropped brown trousers and a gold T-shirt,
Billie paused at the roadside to allow a car to drive past. She gave
a weak smile when the car stopped and Damon Marios lowered the
window to greet her. ‘I was just about to call on you—’
‘I’m going down to the beach.’
With a nod as if she had issued an invitation, Damon parked his car
on the broad verge and got out to join her.
‘I don’t think that us being seen together is likely to do either of us
any good,’ Billie remarked, secretly squirming with the anxiety over
her marriage, which was urging her to exercise a rare kind of extreme
caution. But when Alexei was being seen out and about with Calisto,
what was she worrying about?
Damon cupped her elbow to steady her as she stumbled on her descent
of the sloping ground that led down to the beach. ‘Well, don’t
worry on my behalf. I’m getting a divorce…’
Billie turned dismayed eyes on him. ‘But I thought you and Ilona
were back together again.’
Damon released a rueful laugh. ‘Yes, we were, but only briefly. I’m
afraid the reconciliation didn’t work out. Two years ago, Ilona fell for
a colleague at work and had an affair and now that she’s finally prepared
to come clean on that score with her family and mine, we are
both free to move on.’
Taken aback by that frank explanation, Billie spun and rested a sympathetic
hand on his sleeve. ‘I had no idea, Damon…I’m truly sorry.’
‘It’s most sad for our daughters. They don’t understand why their
mother is now bringing another man into their lives,’ Damon replied
heavily as he reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers. ‘Ilona
and I tried really hard to make a go of our marriage for their sake but
we failed.’
Billie squeezed his arm. ‘How are your family taking it?’
Damon rolled his eyes and grimaced. ‘Like it’s the end of the world,
like nobody ever got a divorce before; like Ilona has suddenly become
the most wicked woman on Speros.’
‘I thought that was me!’
‘Your husband’s reputation goes before him. Everyone suspects
Alexei of double-dealing.’
‘In this case they would be wrong.’
‘But not if the rumour that your aunt’s child is in fact yours is actually
true,’ Damon chipped in, curious dark eyes settling on her flushed
face.
‘That is true,’ Billie confirmed, since she had insisted that that deception
was dropped the day after her wedding when she travelled back
to the island alone. She could see that Damon was dying to ask who
Nicky’s father was and that only good manners were restraining him,
but she dropped the subject. She had no intention of sharing her innermost
secrets with the son of one of the biggest gossips in the village.
Forty-eight hours later, having stayed in London long enough to secure
the purchase of several oil super-tankers at a fantastic price,
Alexei flew home. The sun was going down over the island of his
birth in a blaze of fire on the horizon. Full of all the splintering energy
and impatience that characterised him, he sprang out of the helicopter
and strode towards the villa whose many windows were reflecting
the vivid skies. Most of his staff greeted him in the front hall. His
keen gaze narrowed, for the one person he had expected to see was
nowhere to be seen. He strolled down to the master suite to check
out his suspicions and glanced into the dressing room. Thirty seconds
later, he summoned Helios, his head of security, and asked a question.
The answer he received infuriated him.
Billie was alone in her house when Alexei arrived. He walked straight
through the back door, noting and disapproving of the fact that it was
unlocked as it facilitated his entry. ‘Billie?’ he called out, frowning at
the silence.
The kitchen was tidy, the living area empty. A black fluffy puppy
peered out from behind a sofa at him, uttered a tiny tentative little
bark and then hurriedly disappeared again, duty evidently done.
Alexei’s attention dwelt briefly on the basket of colourful toys and
arrowed away again. Hearing music playing, he glanced into a bedroom
and then noted the triangle of light showing to the side of the
bathroom door, which had been left ajar.
Billie was enjoying a rare moment of self-indulgence and relaxation
in the bath. Hilary had taken Nicky down to the village to see Lauren.
She had not heard Alexei arrive because of the music and when the
door opened she gasped in dismay and sat up in a sudden movement,
water sloshing noisily round her. When Alexei appeared she
was thunderstruck because he was the very last person she had expected
to see.
Alexei focused on Billie in her sea of bubbles. Her creamy skin was
wet and slick, the rounded globes of her rosy-tipped breasts invitingly
pert and moist. His reaction to her was instantaneous; his body,
which had been infuriatingly indifferent to the presence of other women,
stirred into a rampant erection. Her generous pink mouth fell
open on his name and, looking at the soft pink cushiony proportions
of her lips, he knew for the first time in days exactly what he wanted
and marvelled at the strength of his craving.
‘Alexei…’ Billie whispered unevenly, her bright head falling back
and her green eyes widening to take in his tall muscular length with
a sense of disbelief. His pearl-grey Italian suit had the sheen of silk
and it hugged his broad shoulders, lean hips and long powerful thighs
with the fidelity of the most expensive tailoring. Brilliant dark golden
eyes gleaming from below the ebony screen of his luxuriant lashes,
he looked spectacular enough to take her breath away.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ Alexei demanded in a wrathful
undertone. ‘Do you realise that I was able to just walk into this house?
I could have been anyone…’
‘You’re probably the only person I know on the island who wouldn’t
bother to knock on the door and wait for an invitation,’ Billie contradicted
without hesitation.
‘Where’s your brain? I could have been a bloody paparazzo! Don’t
you realise how aggressive the press are now? You’re not safe here
without security. Get out of the bath,’ he instructed her, extending a
towel. ‘I’m taking you home.’
‘This is my home,’ Billie protested, sitting firm and resolutely resisting
a modest urge to cover her bare breasts, which she knew would
provoke his scorn.
Alexei dealt her a splintering appraisal, his tough jaw line clenching
at her defiance. ‘You’re my wife—you don’t belong here any more.’
‘You told me I was a disgusting liar and you walked out on our wedding
night,’ Billie reminded him tightly. ‘I don’t feel like your wife
any more.’
‘I’ve got the perfect cure for that.’ Alexei strode forward and sank his
hands below her arms. Before she could even work out what he was
doing he had scooped her wet, resisting body out of the bath, set her
down and enveloped her most efficiently in the folds of the towel.
‘Stop it!’ Billie shouted at him full throttle, trying to clumsily slap
away his hands at the same time as she kept hold of the towel.
‘If I walk out of here without you, I’m not coming back, yineka mou,’
Alexei swore between clenched white teeth.
Billie froze as if an avalanche had suddenly engulfed her, stopping
her in her tracks and depriving her lungs of oxygen. ‘You can’t
threaten me like that!’
‘It’s not a threat, it’s the truth,’ Alexei countered harshly. ‘Either
you’re with me, or you’re not. I won’t play games.’
In mute frustration, she watched him tug her wrap from the hook on
the back of the door and extend it to her. He had the subtlety of an
army tank on a battlefield. He had walked out on her and she longed
to take a rebellious stance and defy his warning. But life just wasn’t
that simple, she acknowledged, digging damp arms into the sleeves
of the wrap while letting her towel drop to her feet. She didn’t know
how to behave with him now, but he knew so well how to cut through
all the aggravation to what really mattered. And what really mattered
now was that she cared about him and loved him with all her heart,
she reflected painfully. In his defence he was trying to bridge the gulf
between them and their living in two separate houses would scupper
any attempt to achieve that end.
‘This isn’t where you should be,’ Alexei told her, his husky accent
roughening his vowel sounds into a sexy growl as he backed her into
the corner, wrenched the ties she was fiddling with from her grasp
and knotted the sash with deft hands. ‘You’re coming home with me.’
And those words sounded so unexpectedly good to her that tears
prickled at the backs of her aching eyes. The past fortnight of stress,
gossip-column headlines and wild speculation had drained her
strength and awakened her worst fears for the future. He contemplated
her down-bent head and tipped up her chin so that he could
see her triangular face again. The anxiety in her expressive eyes disturbed
him but it didn’t put a lid on the seething desire he was struggling
to restrain. He had no idea why he wanted her so much at that
moment. He only knew that her absence from his home where he had
expected to find her had enraged and unsettled him to a degree that
he was deeply uncomfortable with. Half-formed thoughts and jagged
responses he didn’t like were travelling through him, giving him an
edgy and unfamiliar out-of-control sensation that he despised.
The atmosphere was so thick that Billie could taste it. He was frowning
down at her, lean hands settling down on her shoulders with authority,
the heat of him burning through the fine fabric of her wrap.
She collided with scorching golden eyes and the quickening awareness
low in her pelvis made her press her thighs together on the ache
stirring between her legs. Uneasy with that piercing arrow of sheer
wanton lust, she pulled away from him. ‘I’ll get dressed.’
‘No.’ Alexei closed a hand over her arm, pulling her back. ‘There’s
no need. The car’s outside. Someone will come over and pack for
you.’
On the threshold of her bedroom, she stilled. ‘What about Nicky?’
Alexei’s big powerful body was resting lightly against hers, but when
she posed that particular question he went rigid and his handsome
dark visage set hard. ‘He stays here.’
She twisted round, anguished eyes seeking his. ‘I can’t do that. He’s
my son, my responsibility.’
‘You can visit…when I’m not around,’ Alexei breathed with a raw
note in his rich dark drawl. ‘I’ll cover his every need. He can have
round-the-clock nannies, every luxury…’
‘You can’t ask me to choose between you!’ Billie exclaimed
wretchedly, suddenly grasping the devil’s bargain he was laying
down for her like a cruel gin-trap for the unwary foot.
Remorseless golden eyes struck her disbelieving gaze head-on.
‘That’s the deal for now and it’s your choice.’
‘I’m so sorry to interrupt,’ another quiet familiar voice intervened and
Hilary stepped into view in the living area, her face flushed with discomfiture.
‘But you needed to know that you weren’t alone any more.
I’ll take care of Nicky, Billie. You don’t need to worry about him.’
Alexei thanked her aunt with grave courtesy and Billie flung a questioning
glance at the older woman, wondering why she was encouraging
Alexei in his callous conviction that the obstacle of Nicky’s
very existence could be neatly set aside. And then it dawned on her
that, within a few days at most, her son’s paternity would no longer
be in doubt. ‘I don’t want to leave him,’ she admitted shakily.
‘You and Alexei should have time alone as a couple. There’s no harm
in that,’ Hilary murmured soothingly as if the situation were the most
natural thing in the world.
Alexei directed Billie towards the back door as if the last definitive
word had been spoken and was now etched in stone.
‘I’m in my bare feet!’ Billie objected jerkily.
‘You don’t need shoes!’ Alexei countered, unwilling to countenance
spending even five more minutes in what felt like the enemy camp.
He bent down and swept her up off her feet into his arms.
‘Please put me down,’ Billie urged between compressed lips while
her aunt opened the door to smooth the progress of their departure.
Wearing a beaming smile, Helios stepped out of the huge black SUV
outside to flip open the passenger door in readiness. Alexei stowed
Billie into the rear seat and climbed in beside her. She gritted her
teeth, horribly conscious of the reality that she was wearing neither
make-up nor proper clothes. Impervious to any sense of awkwardness,
however, Alexei made use of the brief drive to instruct Helios
to organise a separate security team to watch over his wife.
‘That’s really not necessary,’ Billie argued as the SUV swung up the
driveway to the villa’s imposing entrance.
‘I know what’s necessary,’ Alexei asserted, settling a large domineering
hand over hers where it rested on the seat. ‘Whether you like it
or not, you’re at risk now as my wife and I want to know that you’re
safe, regardless of where you are.’
The presence of Helios and the driver made Billie restrain her snort
of disagreement as she could not imagine what possible harm could
come to her on Speros. Anatalya already had the front door open
wide, and the housekeeper’s eyes shone with satisfaction when she
saw Billie inside the vehicle. Alexei scooped Billie out and strolled
up the front steps into his home as if it were an everyday event to
walk in carrying a wife clad in a dressing gown. He had always had
that kind of ultimate cool, even as a boy, she recalled, and a sharp
little pain stabbed through her as she thought of all that she stood to
lose if their marriage broke down. Oddly enough, until that moment
it had not occurred to her how deeply embedded Alexei was within
even her life memories. Pausing only to instruct Anatalya to have Billie’s
clothes removed from her home and ask when dinner would be
ready, Alexei took Billie into the master bedroom suite.
Billie sucked in a steadying breath as Alexei set her down on the carpet.
‘We can’t just act like these past two weeks never happened.’
Alexei swung round, his keen dark gaze grim. ‘For the moment, why
not? Of course, you could cut a lot of the **** out of this by just
telling me the truth now. I would rate you higher for that than if you
force me to drag the truth out of you after the DNA-test results.’
With a rueful sigh, Billie sank down on the side of the stylish big bed.
‘It would have been easier if you had just left me where I was for
now. Why did you insist on bringing me back here tonight?’
Doffing his jacket and wrenching off his tie, Alexei sent her a darkling
glance of warning as though she had strayed into a conversational
no-go area. Muscles rippling through the fine silk of his shirt, he
bent to remove his shoes. ‘I want a shower before dinner…’
Billie tried to avoid the temptation of watching him undress, but she
learned that she hungered for even that small intimacy. Black hair
tousled, strong jaw shadowed by blue-black stubble, he was stripping
off his clothes without a hint of self-consciousness. ‘I’ve nothing to
wear here,’ she pointed out. ‘I left half my clothes on Sea Queen.’
Alexei laughed. ‘I would be quite happy for you to dine with me naked.’
‘It’s not going to happen.’ Billie knotted her hands together and
watched him lift the house phone by the bed to issue a command
and then discard his shirt and shoes. Every lithe movement of his
lean bronzed body mesmerised her: he was utterly gorgeous. A knock
sounded on the door and he strode over to answer it and accept the
garment bag and boxes he was handed. He dumped them on the bed.
‘That’s the clothing problem solved,’ he said with distinct satisfaction.
‘These are for me?’ Astonished, Billie unzipped the garment bag and
pulled out a flamboyant, strappy scarlet dress. ‘You bought this for
me? But when?’
‘I saw it in a window in Paris. You wear drab colours. I thought that I
would enjoy seeing you in something bright for a change.’
Once again, Alexei had contrived to confound her expectations. He
might have met up with Calisto in Paris, but while he’d been there
he had also contrived to go shopping on his wife’s behalf. She pulled
open the other packages and her complexion warmed when she saw
the zingy red lingerie and high heels, which carried a much more
sexual message.
‘Those items were pure self-indulgence,’ Alexei agreed without a
shade of remorse.
‘Why did you bring me back here?’ Billie pressed uneasily, utterly
disconcerted by his unpredictable behaviour.
His ebony brows drew together. ‘That’s a silly question. You’re my
wife. Until I decide otherwise, this is where you belong, yineka mou.’
He was a Drakos and possessive of what was his. But he was talking
as though she were a prized car or some other item that he owned and
he would keep her close…until I decide otherwise. Those words of
cold warning sent a cold shiver down her sensitive spine and she was
no longer so certain that staying at the villa with him was the right
thing to do. ‘I felt more comfortable in my own home,’ she told him
tautly.
‘Sleeping alone? Get over yourself!’ Alexei quipped with daunting
disbelief, striding like a bronzed naked statue brought to life into one
of the twin en suite bathrooms.
She remembered that picture of him with Calisto in Paris and discovered
that she didn’t want to ask him about that just at that moment.
Not right now when everything felt so fragile and uncertain between
them that she feared the wrong word or query might lead to a quarrel
that could end their marriage for good. Her lies, her silence when she
should have spoken up, had already put them on that dangerous slippery
slope. Living in separate houses would not mend their differences
and get them back together again, she recognised ruefully.
Even so she was walking on eggshells and could hardly bear the
knowledge that to see Nicky she would have to leave the villa. It had
proved a relief rather than a sacrifice to end the pretence that Hilary
was Nicky’s mother and, after all, she’d had only two weeks to
luxuriate in the joy of being a full-time mum again for the first time
since she had left London after her son’s birth. And even though that
fortnight had been a strain because of the situation between her and
Alexei, Billie had adored having the comfort of her child within reach
at all times.
Before Alexei was even out of the shower, two maids arrived with
suitcases from her home. While they got busy in the dressing room,
Billie went into the other bathroom with the outfit Alexei had bought
for her. Thirty minutes later, she was ready for dinner and far from
happy with her appearance. The scarlet dress was much more revealing
than what she usually wore, cut away at the bust to make the most
of what she had and very short, showing off her legs to well past
mid-thigh. She checked her reflection, her brow furrowing while she
wondered if the dress was a gift with a sting like a scorpion. Was this
how Alexei saw her now? As a sexually provocative and available
woman? As yet another in a long line of women prepared to wear
whatever he bought and behave however he wanted if it pleased him?
Alexei watched Billie walk into the dining room with keen attention.
He shifted an authoritative hand to make her twirl for his appraisal
and his brilliant gaze shimmered gold because he very much liked
what he saw: Billie, as he had always wanted to dress her for his own
private enjoyment, no longer the efficient office machine in her crisp
buttoned-up blouses and low sensible pumps. Scarlet looked amazing
against her porcelain redhead’s skin and the cut of the dress enhanced
the curves of her ripe rounded breasts and slender thighs. The reaction
at his groin was instantaneous and he suppressed a groan as his
trousers tightened. In that moment, he knew exactly why he had come
home to reclaim his deceitful bride. Lust that powerful had an appetite
and a drive all of its own.
The chef had put on a spread worthy of a banquet for the reunited
couple. Nervous as a cat on hot bricks, Billie wondered how on earth
she could match Alexei’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge that anything
was wrong between them. But, in fact, conversation flowed
freely as Alexei told her about his latest deal and the changes he had
decided to make in the command structure at his London headquarters.
Intrigued, Billie asked eager questions, made a couple of suggestions
and was duly impressed by the deal he had cut on the supertankers.
A couple of delicious mouthfuls into the dessert she was savouring,
Billie discovered that Alexei’s gaze was positively welded to her.
‘What?’ she prompted, her face warming.
‘You’re a very sensual woman, mali mou.’
Lashes veiling her gaze, Billie shook her head in instinctive disagreement.
‘I don’t think so.’
Brilliant golden eyes glittering, Alexei sprang upright. ‘But you just
don’t see yourself the way I do.’ He reached down to tug her up out
of her seat and bent his handsome dark head to kiss her.
Her heart was thumping so loudly she was afraid he would hear it and
guess that she was a total pushover when he got that close to her. The
familiar scent of him sent shivers down her spine and warmed the
hollow in her tummy, leading to a shower of sharp spiky little longings
in an infinitely more private place.
‘I was enjoying the dessert,’ she dared before his sensual mouth could
connect with hers.
Eyes gleaming, Alexei threw back his a head and laughed with appreciation.
‘Is this your idea of playing it cool?’
‘Why would I act like that?’ she traded.
‘Maybe because you know how much I want you,’ Alexei husked,
rubbing his cheek against the extended length of her throat as he bent
her head back. ‘But it won’t work because your heart is racing and I
can feel you trembling against me, mali mou.’
As his lean, muscular body shifted against her, she registered the
forceful swell of his erection and the heat of her desire intensified.
She turned her face under his and found his mouth hungrily for herself
and didn’t begrudge the male satisfaction in the growling laugh
that vibrated low in his throat. Suddenly all the seething emotion of
the past weeks was welling up inside her with explosive effect and
the glory of his mouth on hers set her alight.
Stepping back from her, Alexei closed a lean hand over hers and
walked her out of the dining room. Her troubled thoughts warred
against her intentions. Yet in spite of everything that had passed
between them, Alexei had come home to her and he still wanted her.
Wasn’t that some cause for celebration? Didn’t that prove that she
had more of a hold on her bridegroom than she had dared to hope?
But how could he simply ignore the fact that he believed she was trying
to palm off some other man’s child on him? She just wanted him
with her…but she wanted her son too. She also felt guilty that she had
dressed up and dined in state while Nicky was being put to bed for
the night by his great-aunt.
‘Shouldn’t we be talking about more serious stuff?’ she asked Alexei
abruptly.
As if jolted by a sudden flash of lightning, Alexei swung round to
rest silencing fingers against her soft mouth, preventing her from saying
anything more. ‘No,’ he breathed harshly. ‘I don’t want to talk
about any of it because if I have to stop and think, I would know that
I shouldn’t be here with you.’
That blunt admission unnerved Billie and shook her to her very core.
Generally, Alexei was decisive, disciplined, tough and immovable regardless
of how difficult situations became. He had never got into
the emotional aspect of events. But right now she felt rather as if she
were trying to deal with a split personality, a stranger. He knew he
shouldn’t be here with her? Yet here he was? It was as though he had
built a wall between the revelations on their wedding night and the
present, spelling out the fact that only his ability to blank out and suppress
those revelations allowed him to be with her again now. She
gazed up at him with wide green eyes full of dismay and, in a move
that suggested that her vulnerable look disturbed him, Alexei lifted
her up against him and crushed her berry-tinted lips beneath his with
a hungry impatient fervour that put her troubled thoughts to flight.
Billie gasped as Alexei blazed a trail of kisses across her shoulder,
tugging the straps down on her dress and burying his face in the warm
valley between the full globes of her breasts as he urged her down on
the bed. She kicked off her shoes while his fingers slid up her thigh to
the narrow band of her thong. In a swift movement, he wrenched the
tiny garment off and tossed it aside. Her breath caught in her throat,
channelled in urgent gasps of helpless anticipation.
Alexei was standing over her shedding his clothes with a seething impatience
that thrilled her. Lean strong face taut, he viewed her with
scorching golden eyes. As he cast aside his shirt, he bent down and
raised her up to pull her dress off her without unzipping it. She heard
the rip of material, for it had been a neat fit. He flicked loose the catch
on the balconette bra that had merely acted as an extra line of suspension
and, with it gone, she was naked.
‘No, don’t you dare try to cover a centimetre of that beautiful bare
flesh,’ Alexei censured huskily, lifting her up the bed to settle her in
a pose that concealed nothing from his burning gaze. ‘This is what I
wanted from the moment I saw you in the bath earlier.Within seconds
I was hotter than hell for you, moraki mou.’
A high-voltage smile of extraordinary sexual power tilted his beautiful
mouth and it was just as if he lit a fire inside her. In a flash Billie
went from feeling hideously awkward in her unadorned skin to lying
back in quivering readiness and acceptance. He wrenched off his silk
boxers and came down to her. All rock-hard muscle from his magnificent
torso to his flat stomach and long powerful thighs, he was hugely
aroused. He brought her hand to the virile shaft rising from the thick
dark curls at his groin.
Feeling the pound of the pulse at the heart of her and the moisture
there, she closed her fingers round his hard male heat and watched his
thick dark lashes sweep down with an uninhibited sensual pleasure
that sent the blood pounding at an insane rate through her own veins.
With a new boldness she drew him down to her and used her mouth
to caress his straining masculinity.
Within the space of a minute he pulled back from her. ‘I can’t take too
much of that,’ he confided, his dark deep accented drawl rough with
erotic meaning. ‘I want to be inside you too badly.’
And he touched her then with infinite skill, his thumb teasing her
swollen bud and making her release an abandoned little cry and
shiver even as a lean finger probed the slick wetness of her lush opening.
As her hips bucked in a movement as old as time he entered her
all too willing body with a single driving thrust. Her spine arched and
her teeth clenched on the extraordinary tide of sensation as his engorged
length stretched her tight inner depths.
‘You feel like hot silk,’ Alexei ground out, rising over her while gliding
into her tender flesh with strong, stirring strokes that fuelled her
growing excitement to ever greater heights.
He wanted to make it last but her sheer abandonment to pleasure and
the frantic urgency of her movements pushed him to the edge very
quickly and created a chain reaction. As Alexei surged into her with
ever greater power, it was too much for Billie and she soared into a
convulsive orgasm, writhing and crying out with the bittersweet pain
of release. While she was still struggling to surface from the incredible
intensity of that climax, Alexei’s magnificent body shuddered
over hers in the grip of the same overwhelming finale.
Afterwards, Billie felt emptied and adrift, totally shattered by the intensity
of what she had just experienced. But this time, Alexei did not
pull away from her, making her feel alone and uncertain at a most
vulnerable time. Still trembling from the explosive force of his own
release, he kept her in the circle of his strong arms and kissed her
brow in a surprisingly gentle salutation.
‘Alexei…’ she whispered softly in acknowledgement, her body surrendering
to her exhaustion, her eyes sliding closed.
‘You’re worth going to hell and back for,’ he murmured with growling
carnal satisfaction. ‘Nobody has ever given me that much excitement,
moraki mou.’
And Billie drifted off to sleep in his arms, happier than she had ever
dreamed she might be after that awful nerve-racking two weeks apart
from him. The sex was amazing, she was willing to agree, but that
tender kiss and his relaxation with her in the aftermath meant a great
deal more to her. She wondered if she would ever fully understand
the man she loved. He was so complex, volatile and in every respect
unpredictable. And on that frustrated acknowledgement she sank into
the deepest sleep she had enjoyed in many weeks.
She awakened, befogged by drowsiness and bewildered, to the bright
light of an island morning. Alexei, fully dressed, was standing over
the bed.
‘Is there no end to your deceptions?’ he demanded of her in savage
condemnation.
Astonished by that attack, Billie pushed herself up clumsily against
the pillows, suddenly conscious of her nudity and holding the sheet to
her breasts. Running trembling fingers through her wildly tousled red
hair to rake it back off her face, she mumbled, ‘What are you talking
about? What’s wrong?’
‘This…this is what’s wrong!’ Alexei bit out rawly, flinging a newspaper
down on the bed for her to look at. ‘You and Damon Marios
holding hands on my private beach!’
Her face stiff with shock, Billie glanced down at the page and froze,
her skin turning clammy, her throat closing over. It was not the best
photo she had ever seen and it seemed to have been digitally enhanced
for clarity, but it did show her and Damon on the beach,
clearly engaged in intent conversation, her hand in his, her face
turned up to his. She was dismayed to recognise that even though her
dialogue with Damon had been entirely innocent of even flirtation the
photo was misleading, as was the closeness of their bodies.
She flung her head back, green eyes very bright. ‘This is not what it
looks like,’ she whispered shakily.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘IT WAS taken by a telephoto lens. The paparazzo must’ve been in
a boat,’ Alexei grated between clenched teeth, and then he swept the
newspaper off the bed again in an angry gesture of repudiation. ‘What
the hell is going on between you and Marios? Is he the father of your
baby?’
‘No, he is not. We’re friends, nothing more. All that happened
between us was a rather emotional conversation. Damon was telling
me why his marriage had ended.’
‘Exchanging sob stories, were you? Getting all touchy-feely?’ Alexei
glowered at her unimpressed, his lean dark features hard with angry
denunciation. ‘I don’t believe you. Damon was your first love and
you’ve always had a thing for him. I can well understand too why you
would want to conceal your child’s identity on Speros after Damon
chose to reconcile with his estranged wife last year.’
At that crack, Billie turned very pale, for it struck her as terrifying
that it could take only one piece of misinformation to provide a
foundation for a seemingly convincing case against her. ‘I’ve never
been intimate with Damon. He is not the father of my child,’ she intoned
afresh, desperate to make Alexei listen to her.
Alexei swore only half under his breath. ‘Na pas sto dialo! Go to
hell,’ he told her roughly. ‘I’m leaving. In a couple of days the DNA
results will be available and I refuse to see you again until then.’
In consternation, Billie watched him stride towards the door. ‘Where
are you going?’
‘London. I’ll see you at Hazlehurst in forty-eight hours,’ he spelt out
grimly.
He didn’t even have to pack, Billie acknowledged limply, because
Alexei kept capsule wardrobes all over the world at the properties he
used the most. He was walking out on her again. After a night that
had filled her with a crazy burst of hope for the future, he was leaving
and she was devastated by that development.
It was the work of an instant to run to the door and shout furiously
down the corridor after him, ‘You’re a total coward, Alexei Drakos!’
She knew that hurling that accusation at a proud Greek male was like
waving a red flag in front of a maddened bull and, sure enough, her
tall, muscular husband wheeled straight round in his tracks to throw
her an outraged look of incredulity from fierce golden eyes.
‘I mean it…every word!’ she flung in provocative addition, only belatedly
becoming conscious that she was stark naked, and closing the
door hurriedly to seek something to wear.
And true to the arrogant Drakos tradition of fearless confrontation,
Alexei powered back down the corridor again and thrust the bedroom
door back open so violently that it crashed back against the wall.
Halfway into his discarded shirt, Billie faltered. She had never seen
him so irate, his eyes blazing above the patrician cheekbones showing
prominent and pale beneath his bronzed skin, his lean hands clenched
into fists. ‘How dare you accuse me of such behaviour?’
‘Because you’ve been running away ever since I told you the truth
about our child. You left the yacht on our wedding night and you’re
leaving me now, walking out all over again,’ she condemned bitterly.
‘How does that solve anything? Last night you wouldn’t even talk.
You won’t discuss anything with me!’
‘What the hell is there to discuss?’ Alexei raked back at her in a lion’s
roar of intimidation that made her tremble, his powerful stance as aggressive
as it was dogmatic. ‘You’ve told me nothing but stupid stories
that a child could tear apart.’
‘Those were not stupid stories!’
Alexei came several steps closer. ‘You’ve lied and lied and lied again
to me,’ he derided. ‘Why do you think I would want to listen to more
of the same?’
‘I had to lie…I didn’t know what else to do,’ she shot back at him
shrilly. ‘Why does everything have to be about you? What do you
think it was like for me when you took up with Calisto and told me
you were thinking about marrying her?’
Alexei stretched out his arms and then dropped them again in a volatile
gesture of frustration and impatience. ‘I’m not listening to this
nonsense again. Nothing you have told me justifies your behaviour.
You’ve got nothing left to say. Lies are lies, no matter what the circumstances.
I won’t live with them or forgive them.’
White with anger, he studied her standing there in his half-buttoned
shirt, her tangle of colourful red hair spread round her shoulders. He
dealt her a bitter look of cynicism. ‘We’re over, we’ve got to be. Sizzling
sex isn’t enough to keep me with you,’ he delivered with harsh
emphasis, and this time when he turned to leave she said nothing and
she made no attempt to bring him back.
That evening after Billie had tucked Nicky up for the night in her own
home, she found herself engaged in a bitter debate with her mother.
‘Your marriage is already over bar the shouting,’ Lauren told her
daughter sourly.
‘Of course it isn’t,’ Billie reasoned. ‘Once Alexei realises that Nicky
is his son…’
‘He’s not like his father who was desperate for an heir,’ the older woman
pointed out bluntly. ‘You’re so naïve, Billie. Men aren’t driven
to be fathers the same way women are driven to be mothers. It’s different
for them, so wise up. Alexei has already told you that the marriage
is over and in my opinion the discovery that he has a kid isn’t
going to change that.’
‘You’re such a pessimist,’ Hilary scolded her sister from the lamp-lit
corner where she had been trying to read a book.
‘Billie has to look out for her own interests now,’ Lauren argued
forcefully. ‘Alexei consulted his lawyers when he organised that
DNA test. Billie should see a good divorce lawyer while she’s in the
UK. Hilary, stop looking at me like I just took an axe to Santa Claus!
Alexei is a Drakos—let’s face it, her marriage was always going to
end in tears. His father only finally settled down because he was getting
too old to stray and you can’t hope for that with a guy who’s only
thirty-one.’
Billie breathed in deep. In truth she was finding her mother’s ominous
predictions more than she could comfortably cope with just at that
moment. She offered to make some supper and went out to the kitchen,
for she had already learned that the only way to keep a grip on
her worries was to physically do something. Idleness while she had
nothing but anxious thoughts whirling inside her head had become a
torment. Much as she loved Nicky, she missed the buzz of working.
She was taking Nicky to Hazlehurst with her and had already arranged
for Anatalya’s daughter, Kasma, to travel with her and help
her look after her son. After all, unlike Alexei, Billie already knew
the results of the DNA test and she was convinced that she and
Alexei would have a lot to talk about. She was praying that Alexei
would find himself more interested in being a parent than her sceptical
mother had forecast. A child could bring them together again,
couldn’t it? Unfortunately she remembered reading somewhere that a
child only made matters worse in a failing relationship and she could
only hope that Nicky would have a more positive effect on their marriage.
Surely Alexei would not divorce her for being the mother of
his only child?
The following day while she was engaged in packing for their trip to
England, Anatalya brought her a letter, addressed to her as Alexei’s
wife but heavily marked private and confidential. Opening the
missive, she sank down on the bed to read it after her eyes flew wide
on the first shocking sentence, ‘I believe it is possible that I may be
your father…’
Slowly and carefully, Billie read the letter. For all its startling opening,
it was a remarkably sensible and far from dramatic communication
in which its writer, Desmond Bury, explained that he had fallen
in love with her mother, Lauren, when she’d come to work as a teenage
receptionist at his father’s vehicle-repair garage. An engagement
had followed during which Lauren had fallen pregnant. Sadly, by
then, Lauren had decided that she no longer wanted to marry Desmond
and, having told him that she intended to seek a termination,
she had dumped him for another man. He’d had no further contact
with Lauren until he’d come upon a newspaper article about Billie’s
engagement to Alexei, which had also featured a picture of her
with Lauren. Ever since he had been wondering if Billie could be
his daughter, for her age and colouring fitted that scenario. The letter
concluded with a small paragraph on Desmond’s history. He had
eventually married and was now the widowed owner of a flourishing
chain of garages. If Billie believed that she might be his daughter, he
would like the opportunity to meet and get to know her.
Five minutes after her third reading of the missive, Billie drove down
to the village with Nicky to see her mother and handed her the letter.
‘Is there any truth in this? Is it possible that this man could be my
father? Were you once engaged to him?’
Lauren grimaced and rolled her eyes theatrically several times while
she read the letter. ‘Yes to all those questions,’ she said grudgingly.
‘But he’s got no right telling you that I considered a termination while
I was carrying you…’
‘I think he may only have mentioned that because he wanted me to
know that he would have taken an interest in me sooner had he known
I existed,’ Billie responded mildly. ‘And I don’t blame you for considering
it…’
‘Well, you can thank Hilary for the fact I didn’t go ahead with it!’
Lauren fielded tight-mouthed. ‘But I’ve got no regrets where Desmond
was concerned. He was a bore, middle aged at twenty-five, a
pipe-and-slippers man, not my type at all.’
‘So why, when I was a teenager, did you tell me that I was the result
of a one-night stand?’ Billie asked painfully. ‘That upset me and I
honestly thought you didn’t know who my father was.’
Lauren laughed heartily at that candid admission. ‘I thought you
would blame me for not marrying Desmond and giving you a more
conventional childhood.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t marry him just for the sake of it,’ Billie told the
older woman truthfully. ‘It would never have worked out if you were
so different.’
‘Will you get in touch with Desmond?’ Lauren prompted with a
frown. ‘You know, he’s really not an exciting person.’
‘If he is my father, I would like to meet him.’
‘Oh, he is definitely your father,’ Lauren confirmed with a sigh, as if
she was more embarrassed than anything else by that.
The next day Billie arrived in London and climbed into the limo that
would waft her, Nicky and Kasma to Hazlehurst. She had dressed
with care in a beautifully elegant dark purple suit, rescued from looking
like office apparel by a short skirt, high heels and snappy accessories.
Kasma, who had only been abroad once before, was excited
by everything she saw while Nicky looked adorable in a practical
blue-striped playsuit and little jacket. The closer they came to their
final destination, the more nervous Billie became.
Basking in early summer sunlight, Hazlehurst looked idyllic. The
house wore its Georgian beginnings with style and elegance. The redoubtable
housekeeper looked surprised when Billie arrived with a
child in tow but wasted no time in calling another member of staff
to escort Kasma and her charge upstairs to the nursery floor. Even
before Billie was directed into the drawing room to see Alexei, her
tummy was rolling and her skin dampening with nervous perspiration.
The tall front windows had a wonderful view of the lawns that ran
below beech trees clad in the fresh green of their seasonal finery.
Poised to one side of that view, Alexei looked formidable, sheathed in
a dark pinstripe business suit of flawless cut and tailoring. His lean,
darkly handsome face was taut and unrevealing, but his brilliant eyes
glittered with a light that warned her that appearances could be deceptive,
and that he was by no means as calm as he might seem on
the surface. Alexei was, after all, studying her as if he had never quite
seen her before.
‘You…know,’ Billie guessed immediately, her voice emerging
strangely squeaky and insubstantial from her lips. Even when he intimidated
her, he could still take her breath away with his stark male
beauty and high-voltage sexual magnetism. No matter what thoughts
ran through her anxious mind, at the back of those thoughts she was
recalling the hard driving rhythm of his lean powerful body on and
inside hers and the ecstasy of release that had allowed her, for such a
brief time, to feel close to him. Was it any wonder that her throat was
dry and her lungs reluctant to give her more oxygen?
‘I received the DNA results early this morning. At first I couldn’t
credit it,’ Alexei imparted between compressed lips, more than a hint
of ferocious self-discipline still etched in his tense stance and forbidding
aspect.
‘You should have known I wouldn’t lie about something that was so
easily proven one way or other,’ Billie dared, lifting her chin in challenge.
‘Of course, Nicky is your child.’
‘But I remember nothing,’ Alexei growled in a driven undertone, his
incapacity in that field evidently now a source of deep resentment.
‘Although I now know it obviously happened, it’s still a challenge for
me to accept that I slept with you that night and that I was so careless
that I got you pregnant.’
Dismayed by that punishing choice of wording, Billie flinched. ‘All
I can say is that we were both upset and vulnerable that evening and
when we were together it didn’t feel wrong or out of place.’
His intense stare made her feel as though he would like to get inside
her memory of that evening and take it from her rather than simply
share it with her. She sensed his duality in the strong current of
aggression that still ran beneath his self-disciplined surface and
wondered at it. He was not reacting to the revelation of Nicky’s paternity
as she had hoped or expected and yet she could not have said
precisely what was wrong with his attitude.
‘I don’t want platitudes from you. I want to know exactly what
happened between us…’
Unsure as to what he meant by that statement, Billie worried at her
lower lip with her teeth. ‘The obvious happened—’
She collided with unrelenting dark golden eyes. ‘I want to know what
I did, what I said, what you did—every detail,’ Alexei told her flatly.
Embarrassment swallowed Billie whole and glued her tongue to the
roof of her mouth. ‘I don’t remember much,’ she fibbed in desperation.
Alexei dealt her a gleaming look of contempt. ‘Just another forgettable
shag, was I?’
‘I wouldn’t know about that—I don’t have anyone to compare you
to!’ Billie snapped back at him furiously. ‘I was a virgin.’
Alexei nodded acceptance of that fact. ‘Okay, so talk…’
Billie wandered restively over to the window and turned her narrow
back to him in self-defence. In truth she had near-perfect recall of
their time together and she repeated snatches of conversation and
mentioned the sharing of the shower and the reason for his departure.
‘I think you fell down the steps because you tripped over my handbag…
I’d dropped it on the floor by the door on the way in,’ she completed
woodenly.
The silence stretched and gnawed at her nerves. Throwing back her
head, vivid coppery hair falling back from her pale cheeks and brow,
Billie straightened her stiff shoulders and spun back to him. ‘So, now
you know that Nicky is your son—’
Her husband’s lean powerful visage hardened from the reflective look
he had worn. ‘And I so easily might never have known,’ he interrupted.
‘Had I married Calisto, you would never have told me—’
She was alert to the renewed tension in the atmosphere. Billie’s spine
went rigid and a smidgeon of colour warmed her cheeks. ‘I don’t
know what I would have done if you had married her,’ she contradicted.
An ebony brow quirked, for he was unimpressed by that claim.
‘Don’t you? You would have deprived me of my son, denied my
son his father and disinherited him of his Drakos heritage,’ he condemned,
taking her breath away with those hard-hitting charges.
‘Both he and I would have paid a very steep price for our ignorance
of our bond. Were you planning to lie to him when he got old enough
to ask who his father was?’
‘I hadn’t got that far, for goodness’ sake. I hadn’t even thought about
stuff like that!’ Billie disclaimed in a tone of unconscious appeal.
‘Nicky’s only a baby—’
Alexei raised his head high, dark golden eyes hard with censure.
‘Nikolos is my son and you passed him off as someone else’s, even
brought him into my home in that false guise. As a mother, you failed
in your duty to him.’
Shaken by those accusations, Billie felt her cheeks grow hot. ‘And as
a wife?’ she chipped in helplessly.
‘You leave more than a little to be desired,’ Alexei delivered without
hesitation and he swung open the drawing-room door and stood back
with contrasting courtesy for her exit. ‘Now I would like to see my
son. At least you had the good sense to bring him here with you.’
Billie felt rather as if a whip had somehow contrived to lash her skin
below her clothes. Anger sparking, she tried to defend herself. ‘In my
position some women would have opted for a termination and your
son would never have been born.’
‘Maybe you saw his existence as money in the bank for a future
power-play. Certainly that is how your mother thinks and don’t try to
tell me otherwise. Lauren is always out for what she can get.’
At that cruel taunt, her delicate facial bones tightened below her
fair skin and her fingernails bit sharp crescents of restraint into her
palms, because she truly wanted to shout and scream at him for daring
to make that humiliating comparison. He had never in his life before
compared her to her feckless and avaricious parent, and that he
should do so now hurt like the sharp slice of a knife in already tender
flesh. ‘I’m not like my mother and you know I’m not.’
Crossing the big echoing hall on his passage to the grand staircase,
Alexei skimmed a cool glance at her taut profile. ‘Once I would have
agreed with that statement, but not any more. I don’t know you the
way I thought I knew you.’
A lump formed in her throat. ‘I don’t feel I know you either just at
this moment.’
‘I’m still very angry with you,’ Alexei responded with succinct bite.
‘Of course I am. I’ve already missed out on months of my child’s life
and I’m a complete stranger to him.’
Mounting the stairs by his side, Billie murmured, ‘I thought you weren’t
ready for a child.’
‘He’s here, ready or not!’ Alexei quipped with derision.
‘I didn’t realise you’d feel this way.’
‘Until I found out about Nikolos, neither did I,’ Alexei admitted in
a raw undertone. ‘But he’s the next generation of my family and his
beginnings couldn’t have been worse! He’s my responsibility and the
buck stops here.’
Ouch, Billie thought at that far-reaching assumption of responsibility
but she said nothing, recognising that he had to have a lot of conflicting
feelings to work through and that in many ways he was probably
still in shock at the result of the DNA test. All of a sudden he
had been plunged into fatherhood and the smokescreen with which
she had surrounded Nicky’s birth and paternity only complicated that
state of affairs.
Kasma was playing with Nicky on the floor of the well-appointed
nursery. Alexei told the nursemaid to take a break and the young
Greek woman had barely crossed the threshold when he bent down
to scoop his son up off the carpet. Taken by surprise, Nicky loosed a
startled yell of complaint and scowled at his father.
‘He can be a bit strange at present; he’s not comfortable with anyone
he doesn’t know,’ Billie warned him reluctantly, mentally willing
Nicky to be compliant and friendly at this crucial first meeting with
his father.
Alexei drew his son awkwardly closer and Nicky burst into noisy
floods of tears and wrenched his little body dramatically sideways in
his mother’s direction.
Billie reached out to take her distraught son into her arms. ‘Try playing
with him first,’ she suggested.
‘I’ve never played with a kid in my life,’ Alexei said flatly. ‘Is he always
this jumpy or is it just me?’
‘Babies can be very sensitive to atmosphere and we’re both fairly
tense.’
Alexei studied his son’s truculent little face with intense interest. He
scanned the baby’s tousled black hair, his olive skin tone, his big dark
accusing eyes and the manner in which he was clinging to his mother.
Alexei wondered how he hadn’t guessed that Nikolos was his child
for, in his opinion, the physical resemblance was marked. How come
some sixth-sense prompting hadn’t urged him to take a closer look
at Billie’s supposed cousin? How come he hadn’t tied together the
evidence of her unexplained sickness as reported by Anatalya and her
months-long career break, which had come out of nowhere at him?
But he knew exactly why he hadn’t put it all together.
He had had no recollection of their sexual encounter and he had trusted
her absolutely while she had gone to extraordinary lengths to deceive
him: there was no getting round that unpleasant truth.
Billie lifted up a picture book and pushed it into Alexei’s hand.
‘That’s Nicky’s favourite. I’ll put him in the baby seat and you can
read it and show him the pictures.’
‘Surely he’s still too young for stories?’
‘He always looks interested and stays quiet while I read to him. Babies
like familiar rituals.’
With a strong air of reluctance, his lean dark features tense, Alexei
sank down in the armchair beside the baby seat and leant down to
Nicky’s level. ‘You don’t have to stay,’ Alexei told Billie. ‘I don’t
need an audience for this.’
Billie would have preferred to stay to act as a buffer and a source of
advice, but then Alexei had always been very self-sufficient in the
face of a challenge. She walked out of the door and closed it, listened
outside as her son started to sob at her departure and heaved a sigh
as she moved away again. If there was a lesson to be learned, Alexei
would only learn it the hard way and at his own pace.
Alexei had never had to entertain a child before, but his quick intelligence
soon came to his aid. In no time he had the box full of toys
by the wall emptied and he was demonstrating the different items for
his son’s amusement. The tears dried on the little boy’s face as he
slowly responded to that stimulation. He smiled when Alexei got him
out of the baby seat and sat him on the carpet instead. He gurgled
with pleasure when Alexei showed him the different noises one toy
made and stretched out his hand for it, pummelling it with a chubby
fist, only to start complaining when he couldn’t get the same sound
to emerge. Alexei showed him again and took a little fist and showed
him where to press. Nikolos chortled with satisfaction, thumped the
toy energetically several times with his clenched hand and then suddenly
held out his arms to Alexei to be lifted.
Kneeling on the carpet in front of his son, absently wondering when
he would be old enough to appreciate mechanical toys, Alexei froze
at that unexpected invitation. The baby gave him a huge grin and,
ending his hesitation, Alexei moved forward and lifted him. Nikolos
grabbed his father’s tie and yanked it, and then put it in his mouth to
chew. Alexei deprived him of the tie, sprang up to find a source of
distraction and found it in the view from the window. While he was
showing his son the trees, the tractor and the sheep that were visible,
the little boy laughed and tried to copy him and point his own fingers,
brown eyes full of life and fun.
And, for Alexei, that unstudied moment of shared relaxation suddenly
became one of the most important and emotionally gripping of
his life. Only a few hours earlier he had decided that he was still too
young and selfish to be a parent. At the speed of light he had worked
out all the drawbacks of parenthood, swiftly recognising the boundaries
that would now be imposed on his once free and untrammelled
lifestyle. He might have had no experience of young children but he
certainly knew enough to know that a child was major baggage.
But now memories were surfacing of his own father and with them
a rich appreciation of the fact that he was still young enough to fully
understand what his child would enjoy and to actually play with him.
Constantine Drakos had never, ever played with his son and had
treated him like a miniature adult. Their relationship had always been
sedate and a little detached with Alexei’s mother cheerfully supplying
the glue of family affection and all the fun.
Ten minutes later Alexei was sitting with Nikolos on his lap and
he was reading the few words in the picture book and, what was
more, he was bringing an excitement to that familiar pastime, for
Alexei mimicked the noises the different animals made when Billie
had merely read them.
When Billie reappeared an hour after her departure, all was quiet in
the nursery. Alexei moved a silencing finger to his mouth; their son
was fast asleep in his arms, as relaxed as if he had known his father
from the day of his birth. Both surprised and pleased by that discovery,
Billie smiled warmly, relief uppermost. She had no idea what
Alexei had done to win the little boy’s trust but, whatever it was, he
had clearly done it well.
‘I am grateful you had him,’ Alexei admitted outside the door and as
she gazed up at him, a vulnerable light in her emerald-green eyes, his
handsome mouth compressed. ‘But he deserved that you should have
told me the truth right at the beginning of your pregnancy.’
Her eyes veiled. ‘Maybe so.’
His lean, strong face clenched hard. ‘You know better than that. I
have work to catch up on before dinner,’ he responded, heading for
the stairs, making no attempt to hide his exasperation with her.
Grovelling didn’t come naturally to her, Billie recognised ruefully as
she entered the master bedroom to decide what to wear for their evening
meal. He remained angry with her, while refusing to accept that
she had grounds for being angry with him as well. There were two
sides to every story. He needed to acknowledge that his partial amnesia
had put her in an untenable and humiliating position and then Calisto’s
arrival on the scene had proved to be the last straw. She had given
birth to their child without his support and the deep unhappiness
and loneliness that she had endured during the long months of her
pregnancy still haunted her. Hilary had been marvellous but her company
had also made Billie feel that she had to act as if she were a good
deal happier and more positive than she actually was. For months she
had lived behind a false face and had maintained that she was feeling
fine.
Desperate to escape the circuitous anxiety of her thoughts, Billie took
out her father’s letter and read it again. She decided to phone Desmond
Bury there and then, have a chat and see how she felt about
him without making a major production out of establishing contact.
After all, Desmond might be her father but he was also a stranger with
whom she might have nothing whatsoever in common. At the same
time, however, she and her mother were so different that she could
not help hoping that she might find something of her own nature reflected
in her other parent.
Her heart was in her mouth when she made the call and a crisp businesslike
male voice answered on the fourth ring. She heard his surprise
when he realised who she was and then, with an endearing
warmth and enthusiasm that touched her, he aimed a flurry of eager
questions at her. He was surprised when she told him that she had a
son and marvelled that there had been no mention of Nicky’s existence
in the newspaper article he had read. When she admitted that she
was actually in England, rather than Greece, he asked if she would
like to meet him and in receipt of a positive response immediately
offered to get together with her in London. She arranged to meet him
the very next day for lunch.
Proud that she had had the courage to make that phone call, Billie
showered and set out black silk trousers and a sapphire-blue evening
top to wear, before lifting a magazine she had bought at the airport
to read. She frowned with distaste when she came on a little newsy
segment on Calisto, photographed looking every inch a top model
dressed in the latest fashion and talking about how much she loved
living in Paris. Billie stilled and studied the building in the backdrop
of the photo, which struck her as familiar. It dawned on her that she
knew that street, knew it really well because she had on several occasions
visited the splendid town house that Alexei owned there. Just as
suddenly she was recalling that photo of Alexei with Calisto in Paris
and appreciating that the pavement café they had been patronising
could well be the one she recalled being just round the corner from
the town house.
Could Calisto currently be living in Alexei’s Parisian home?
Or were the photos just a ghastly coincidence? His town house was,
after all, situated in a very trendy and photogenic part of Paris. Was
insecurity making her suffer from increasingly paranoid suspicions?
Billie grimaced. Suspicions about the fidelity of a male whom every
paparazzo in Europe nourished suspicions about? A guy to whom fidelity
was a dirty word, if it came between him and a woman he
wanted? Of course, she was suspicious. Alexei might have married
her, but he hadn’t come with any cast-iron guarantee of loyalty and
there was every possibility that he saw her lies and deceit over Nicky
as an excuse to stray. Hadn’t he already told her that they as a couple
were over?
Just how had she contrived to overlook that fact? We’re over, we’ve
got to be, he had said before flying to London. Her mother, Lauren,
who rarely suffered from rose-tinted glasses when it came to the male
sex, had believed her daughter’s marriage was already over as well.
Only Billie had been naïve enough to arrive at Hazlehurst, groomed
within an inch of her life, in the foolish hope that Alexei, having discovered
that Nicky was his son, might greet her with apologies, understanding
and forgiveness.
CHAPTER SIX
LATER, before dinner that evening, Alexei called Billie on the house
phone, told her that two of the business team were off sick and asked
her if she would mind helping out for a while.
Billie was quick to agree and stayed only long enough in the bedroom
to dress in casual clothes. In the ground-floor office suite, she stepped
into the working role she had given up as if she had never been away
and although the other staff were now somewhat overawed by her
new position as Alexei’s wife she very much enjoyed being kept busy.
‘I miss working,’ she told Alexei when she joined him later for dinner,
having finally donned her slinky evening trousers and blue top.
Supremely handsome in his dark suit, Alexei surveyed her slight figure
and the bright hair flaming round her pale heart-shaped face and
his wide sensual mouth compressed. ‘But you’re a mother now.’
‘Surely I could still work part-time with you?’ Billie prompted, longing
for the closeness of that working relationship to be restored.
‘Not when I’m travelling,’ Alexei pointed out drily.
And Billie had overlooked that necessity when she’d come up with
her proposition. While she was ready to allow her son to be cared for
several hours a day, she was not prepared to leave him for several
days at a time or to disrupt his routine by taking him travelling round
the world with her.
‘But your talent for efficient organisation and working well under
pressure is much missed,’ Alexei conceded wryly.
‘I think I could still work several hours a day from the villa without
Nicky suffering any deprivation,’ Billie responded with quiet determination.
His brilliant dark eyes lingered on the obstinate set of her small face
and his lush lashes screened his gaze. ‘I’ll think it over.’
‘When you talk to me like that—as if I haven’t a brain or self-will
of my own and I’m a possession—I want to slap you hard!’ Billie
confided in a rush, pushing her chair noisily back from the table and
leaping upright in a temper.
Refusing to rise to the bait, Alexei surveyed her steadily with his
stunning dark golden eyes. ‘With reference to most of the decisions
you have made over the past year and more, I cannot be impressed.’
Billie gritted her teeth and shot him a look of frustration. ‘Did you
think Calisto was more impressive?’ she dared in a driven voice.
His strong jaw line clenched. ‘I have no intention of discussing Calisto
with you.’
Her angry flush receding at that wounding snub, Billie muttered, ‘I’m
tired. I’m going to bed.’
Coward, she scolded herself once she was lying in the lavish marital
bed. Why hadn’t she mentioned that photo of him with Calisto in Paris?
Asked where Calisto was staying over there? Yet without proof of
anything untoward, what would be the point of questioning Alexei?
He would very much resent an interrogation. And with their marriage
hanging in the balance did she really want to take the risk of heightening
the conflict between them? Of making counter-accusations that
might well have no basis in reality? Alexei had still to apologise for
suspecting her of a secret affair with Damon Marios, she reminded
herself doggedly. She tossed and turned while she swung between
angry defiance, fear of losing Alexei and self-loathing. She loved him
too much, still wanted him too much in spite of the way he was treating
her, and that made her despise herself. Oh, how she longed to reclaim
the sensible wall of detachment she had once been able to protect
herself with around Alexei!
Alexei was considerate enough not to put on the lights when he came
to bed after midnight, but when he swore after colliding with a solid
piece of furniture in the darkness Billie stretched up with a sigh to
switch on the bedside lights. ‘It’s all right…I’m not asleep,’ she told
him.
She tried to go to sleep then, but when the mattress sank beneath his
weight, she said abruptly, ‘Did you really think I’d got involved with
Damon?’ That demand came to her lips before she even appreciated
that she needed to ask him it.
‘I was with Calisto. How do I know what you did during that period?
Or whether you would turn to him for sympathy when our marriage
was in trouble?’ he fielded stonily.
‘Well, you could start by trying not to assume that everything I say is
a lie,’ Billie pointed out gently. ‘Just because I found Damon attractive
when I was a teenager doesn’t mean I still feel the same way as
an adult—’
‘Why not? He so obviously does still find you tempting,’ Alexei retorted
drily.
That response filled her with impatience over his obstinacy. She was
damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. ‘There’s just one flaw in that
view. I’m in love with you,’ she said boldly.
‘If hiding my child from me is your idea of love, I can live without it.
Trust is more important and we’ve lost it,’ he delivered bluntly, turning
out the lights again.
As his lean powerful body brushed up against hers Billie froze like
an icicle; his take on their marriage chilled her to the marrow. He
didn’t love her, he didn’t even want her love and he didn’t trust her
either. Did that leave anything left for her to hope for? Any bond
with which they might rebuild their relationship? Alexei closed an
arm round her and tugged her up close in a movement that took her
totally by surprise and reminded her of a potential fringe benefit of
matrimony that she had overlooked. The sensitive tips of her breasts
swelled and tightened in contact with his hard muscular torso and a
sensation like hot liquid lightning snaked through her pelvis, creating
moisture on the tender flesh between her slender thighs. His mouth
brushed her cheek, his breath fanning her lips, and the musky male
scent of him flared her nostrils and left her weaker still. But her defences
conjured up that photo of him seated with Calisto in Paris and
somewhere down deep inside herself she was able to switch off the
current of responsive heat and turn colder than a winter’s day in his
arms.
‘No,’ she breathed in fierce rejection.
Alexei tensed. ‘No?’
And a part of her that she didn’t like very much gloried in his lack
of familiarity with that negative word between the sheets. She pushed
him away and retreated to the far edge of the bed. ‘No. Feeling as you
do about me, I don’t think you should be touching me,’ she extended
in blunt clarification.
Without warning the lights went on again and she blinked in astonishment.
Alexei sent her a seething appraisal, his lean dark features hard
as iron. ‘You’re not going to punish me with celibacy, glikia mou!’
‘That’s not what I’m trying to do!’ she snapped back, even while she
wondered if it actually was and if sometimes he saw her more clearly
than she saw herself.
Alexei flung back the sheet and strode naked and still heavily aroused
into the bathroom. Seconds later she heard the shower running and
she lay there very still for quite a while until he finally reappeared,
a towel negligently knotted round his narrow hips. Green eyes wide
with consternation, she studied him over the top of the sheet. She
could feel his anger like a physical force in the atmosphere and was
already wondering if she had made a mistake in refusing him what
she wanted herself. But she was ashamed of the fact that regardless
of what he said and how he behaved he only had to get close for her
to crave him with every fibre of her being.
‘We can’t make love with everything so wrong between us,’ she
muttered in urgent appeal.
A sardonic expression stamped to his darkly handsome features,
Alexei shot her a harsh narrowed glance of condemnation. ‘Who said
anything about making love?’ he repeated the expression with silken
derision. ‘I was talking about sex. You think separate beds are likely
to help us?’
‘Sex isn’t the answer to everything!’ Billie slung back in frustration.
Alexei looked grim as he walked to the door. ‘No, but it’s important
to me, to any man!’
‘Where on earth are you going?’ Billie gasped.
‘I don’t want to run the risk of waking up tomorrow morning and
treating you as if you’re my wife,’ he derided. ‘So I’ll sleep elsewhere.’
Tears stung her eyes at the prospect of that cold physical separation.
She wasn’t at all sure about what she had just done but his refusal
to even countenance the term ‘making love’ for their intimacy had
hit hard and had bolstered up her defences. At the same time she just
couldn’t get Calisto out of her mind and his refusal to talk about his
ex-fiancée only increased her doubts about the nature of his continuing
relationship with the other woman. In one way Alexei had been
very right: the trust they had once shared had gone and without it she
felt lost, scared and out of control.
When she awakened early the next morning, Alexei had already left
the house. She had to phone Helios to discover that her husband had
flown out to France, a revelation that shook her inside out. As soon
as she heard it she was convinced that he would be staying in Paris
with Calisto and spending the night with the gorgeous blonde. That
conviction killed her appetite for breakfast and made it a major challenge
for her to feed Nicky and play with him with her usual light
heart. Worry stoked her growing anger. Possibly freezing Alexei out
of the marital bedroom the night before had been unwise, but he had
blocked all her efforts to bridge the mental gulf between them. If he
imagined, however, that she planned to close her eyes to his infidelity
as so many other women had in the past he was in for a huge shock!
Determined to discover the truth at first hand, Billie booked a late afternoon
flight to Paris. If Alexei had resumed his affair with Calisto,
she would confront them and see the evidence for herself before she
gave up hope on their marriage.
After all that drama and agonising over what to do next it was an effort
for Billie to get into the right frame of mind to go and meet her
long-lost father for the first time. When she realised that a security
team was to accompany her to London, she swiftly appreciated that
if she accepted their presence she would never be able to surprise
Alexei with Calisto in Paris as he would immediately be informed if
she was flying into the same city. So, when Petros joined her in the
hall to request exact details of her planned itinerary in London, she
told him that she was sorry but that she did not wish to be accompanied.
‘I’m following your husband’s orders, kyria,’ Petros replied in some
surprise. ‘It is the wish of Kyrios Drakos that you enjoy protection
whenever you leave home.’
‘But I’m afraid it is not my wish,’ Billie replied firmly. ‘You may tell
my husband that I refused to allow you to come with me.’
Feeling guilty at having put the bewildered Petros in that awkward
position, Billie left Hazlehurst without any further ado. Just before
Billie got out of the limo at the rural station where she was to catch a
train to the city, Alexei called her on her mobile phone.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he demanded without any preliminary
chat. ‘You need a security team—’
‘I don’t need anyone following me every place I go. I like my privacy.’
‘Privacy in which to do what?’ Alexei queried in a glancing challenge
that startled her.
Billie released an angry laugh. ‘So now we’re getting to the truth of
the matter. It’s not my personal safety you’re concerned about, but
what I might be doing. You want me to have bodyguards so that you
can spy on me and I won’t accept that!’
Buoyed up with a sense that she had to stand up for her rights before
Alexei’s powerful personality and controlling nature steamrollered
her bid for independence flat as a pancake, Billie switched off her
mobile phone and plunged it back into her bag. She caught the train
to London and walked to meet her father in a quiet restaurant that lay
not far from the station.
Her first impressions of Desmond Bury were good and her tension
slowly began to drain away. She found unexpected pleasure in the
fact that she had evidently inherited her father’s small stature, auburn
hair and green eyes. Smartly dressed in what was obviously a new
suit, the older man felt familiar from the first moment he joined her
with a rather shy smile at her table. He asked her a great deal about
her childhood experiences on Speros and she wrapped up the truth
as best she could, while suspecting that he had known Lauren well
enough to deduce that her daughter might well be glossing over some
disagreeable realities. In turn Desmond answered Billie’s questions
about his side of the family tree and his business. His marriage had
been childless and his parents were long dead so, with the exception
of a couple of elderly great-aunts in Scotland, there were no other
close relatives for her to discover. Billie asked him if he thought they
should get a DNA test to confirm their relationship and he looked
taken aback momentarily. Then he grasped her hand firmly to assure
her that she was the very picture of his late sister and that he was
already fully satisfied that she was his flesh and blood. His unquestioning
faith in their bond warmed her heart as much as Alexei’s distrust
had chilled it.
Lunch lasted much longer than Billie had originally planned and she
parted from her father only after accepting an invitation for her and
Nicky to spend a weekend at his home in Brighton. She was grateful
that he had not asked awkward questions about her marriage and only
realised afterwards that having confided that Alexei knew nothing
about their get-together had probably revealed more than she would
have preferred to have admitted about the state of her marriage.
In early summer, Paris was packed with tourists and the traffic from
the airport was heavy. Desperate to escape the stuffy cab and calm
her frantic thoughts, Billie chose to be dropped a block from Alexei’s
elegant eighteenth century town house on Ile St-Louis. The tree-lined
quai could not have looked more attractive in the sunlight but Billie
had never been less aware of the beauty of the ancient buildings because
she was a bag of nerves beset by doubts and insecurities.
As she approached the steps to the imposing front door, she asked
herself what she was most afraid of. Was it of what she would find,
or of having to deal with the fallout from a husband’s extra-marital
affair? That latter discovery would mean the death of hope and the
end of their marriage, but she could not live in fear; she had to know
one way or another if Alexei had resumed his affair with Calisto. She
rang the doorbell before she could think better of it.
Calisto answered the door. Luxuriant blonde hair waving round her
slim shoulders, her big dark eyes haughtily enquiring, her tall slender
body was sheathed in a stretchy miniskirt and top ensemble that was
provocatively tight and short. Her gaze hardened as she recognised
her caller. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded baldly.
‘As this is Alexei’s house, I think I could more easily ask you that,’
Billie dared to reply in Greek, trying not to be intimidated by the reality
that the beautiful blonde towered over her like an adult beside a
small child. ‘I would like to come in.’
Calisto dealt her a scornful glance and, turning on her heel, walked
away from the door, leaving it open. ‘If you feel you must…’
‘I do,’ Billie replied, closing the door behind her with a trembling
hand. ‘Alexei isn’t here, is he?’
Calisto cast her a maddeningly amused smile. ‘He will be soon. Feel
free to sit down and wait. I would enjoy being a fly on the wall at that
meeting.’
Icily calm on the surface, Billie lifted her chin. ‘I’m not afraid of
you.’
Calisto released a scornful and unimpressed laugh. ‘Of course you
are—why else would you be here?’
As the other woman’s laugh echoed eerily in the cool marble hallway
with its high ceiling nausea stirred in Billie’s stomach. She felt lost
and hopeless and the very thought of being found in the town house
with Calisto by Alexei made her blood run cold. All of a sudden she
had no very clear idea why she had decided that she had to confront
Calisto face to face, or of what she had come to Paris to say. Leave
Alexei alone? Stay out of our marriage? She was, after all, fairly certain
that Calisto didn’t have a good side to which she could appeal.
Calisto raked her imperious gaze over Billie from her head to her toes
and with a contemptuous toss of her head made it clear that she could
not see what the source of her attraction was. ‘Alexei and I were in
love. You stole him from me. Did you really think it was going to be
that simple? He’s a Drakos and you’re just a little office girl who got
herself knocked up—oh, yes, I know about the kid,’ she confirmed as
she saw Billie’s eyes widen in surprise.
‘Alexei and I are married,’ Billie heard herself say rather desperately,
for she could think of no stronger verbal comeback.
Calisto just laughed again, a six-foot-tall Amazonian blonde of spectacular
beauty and shining confidence. ‘That may be so but it doesn’t
change the fact that Alexei is my lover—’
‘Alexei broke off your engagement,’ Billie reminded her, struggling
not to flinch at that bold claim that pierced her heart like a knife.
‘He got cold feet—you must know the feeling well. After all, he
abandoned you within hours of the big wedding. The press had a ball
with that little detail, didn’t they?’ Calisto sniped with her perfect
white-toothed smile. ‘Alexei was on the rebound. He and I belong together
but I should really thank you for having the all-important son
and heir for me…’
‘Thank me?’ Billie frowned in bewilderment. ‘What on earth are you
trying to say?’
‘That I’m not remotely kiddy-minded or interested in the idea of
breeding babies, but that Alexei would have insisted that I have at
least one child. I’m quite happy for that child to be your child. I’m not
into stretch marks and saggy bits. I’m very proud of my perfect body.
I’ll be much happier as a stepmother than I would ever have been as
a mother.’
‘There is no way that I will ever let you near my son!’ Billie snapped
back in shaken retaliation, anger surging through her in a sudden adrenalin
rush.
‘Famous last words—do you really think that Alexei will give you a
choice?’ Calisto purred in a poisonously sweet response. ‘He’s very
taken with the kid, isn’t he? The next generation of the family dynasty
and all that…when he divorces you, you’ll be very lucky if he
lets you keep custody of him.’
‘Nobody is going to take my son away from me!’ Billie shot back
shakily and, whirling on her heel, she sped back to the front door
because she recognised that the confrontation had gone beyond the
stage where she could hold her own. She had also learned what she
would rather not have known: Calisto knew way too much about
Alexei and Billie’s marriage, and about Nicky, whose very existence
and paternity Billie had fondly imagined was still a secret known to
only a precious few off the island of Speros.
Indeed the level of Calisto’s information told Billie first and foremost
that the gorgeous blonde enjoyed Alexei’s complete trust. Clearly,
Alexei had returned to his former lover as soon as he’d become disillusioned
with his marriage, Billie registered sickly. He had to be
sleeping with the Greek fashion model again.
Jealousy and despair assailed Billie in a dizzy wave. He had already
discussed Nicky with Calisto, yet he had only found out that Nicky
was his son early the day before. That Calisto should already know so
much was uniquely revealing and her assurance in speaking as though
she was to be Alexei’s next wife was even more menacing.
As Billie walked with a down-bent head along the pavement to hide
the tears spattering her cheeks in the fading light of evening a man
straightened from the railings he had been leaning against and signalled
the driver of the car parked further down the road. ‘Kyria
Drakos?’
Billie was shocked to recognise that it was Helios, the head of
Alexei’s security team, standing in her path. ‘Helios?’ she queried
with a frown of surprise.
‘Your husband asked me to collect you and convey you to the airport,’
the older man told her with a caution that warned her that
Helios was well aware of her obstinacy over her personal security
at Hazlehurst earlier that morning and of Alexei’s anger at her behaviour.
In a daze after her upsetting encounter with Calisto and truly appalled
by the suspicion that Alexei might already be aware that she had
tackled his former girlfriend, Billie climbed into the waiting limousine.
While the luxurious vehicle struggled through the traffic she
wondered how on earth her movements had been tracked all the way
to her destination in Paris. She laid her mobile phone on the seat beside
her and waited for Alexei to ring her with a heart sinking like a
stone but it stayed mercifully silent. Her heart was hammering with
nervous stress, her skin clammy with perspiration.
Had Alexei and Calisto already discussed future living arrangements
for Nicky? It had sounded to her very much as though they had and
her courage was failing her in the face of such a cruel, unfeeling
threat to her love for her child. She felt sick and scared, while she
inexorably recalled all the many times that she had stood back and
watched while Alexei utilised every ruthless, clever and unemotional
Drakos gene to come out on top. He was remorseless, determined to
win every battle.
Helios took her to a private room at the airport and plied her tirelessly
with magazines and refreshments as if he sensed her growing feeling
of terror at her predicament. How could she be scared of Alexei? But
she had never crossed him before to such an extent. It shook her that
he had had her tracked down and retrieved like a wayward child even
though she was in a foreign country. But in truth her own behaviour
shook her even more. In one catastrophic move in facing up to Calisto
she had fallen off the straight, narrow and sensible path she usually
followed. But she had needed to know about Calisto, had needed
to know that there were genuine grounds for her self-humiliating suspicions.
She freshened up in the cloakroom, studying the pale drawn
triangle of her face and seeing only Calisto’s glowing physical beauty
superimposed over her own. There was no contest; never had been
and never would be.
Helios told her when it was time to board her flight home. ‘Where is
Alexei?’ she could not help asking, for she had spent over an hour in
that silent room, flinching every time she heard footsteps in the passage
outside.
‘Already on board,’ the older man confirmed.
Shivering a little in the cool of late evening, Billie mounted the steps
to the private jet and looked straight past the assembled flight crew
greeting her to see Alexei seated with his laptop at a desk. The instant
he saw her he lifted his arrogant dark head and vaulted upright. Blazing
golden eyes struck hers and she almost reeled back from the force
of the corrosive anger he was struggling to contain while they still
had an audience. Walking down the aisle between the cream leather
seating towards him felt as dangerous and daunting as walking a pirate’s
plank above shark-infested seas.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE thrumming power of the jet as it took off sent vibrations rippling
through Billie’s taut slender length. As soon as they were airborne the
crew served drinks and snacks, after which Alexei dismissed them.
As the tension in the atmosphere took on an explosive edge, Billie
gnawed at the soft underside of her lip until she could no longer bear
the silence.
‘What were you doing in Paris today?’ she demanded thinly.
‘The Drakos foundation was staging a charitable lunch,’ Alexei
answered, referring to the global charity set up by his father. ‘I had a
speech to make.’
She had a vague recollection of the luncheon benefit and compressed
her lips. ‘How did you know where I was?’ she asked tautly.
‘Helios only tracked you down when you arrived at the airport for
your flight out to Paris.’ Alexei’s cool, controlled diction unnerved
her and merely increased her wariness. ‘So where did you go in London
beforehand and who were you meeting? You were very keen to
ensure that there were no witnesses.’
Billie turned her head and finally focused on him. ‘I didn’t want you
to know that I was planning a trip to Paris as well,’ she admitted
baldly. ‘I had no other motive and no reason to hide where I was going
or what I was doing. Actually, I had my first meeting in London
with my father over lunch today—’
That announcement certainly did grab Alexei’s attention and his expressive
brows drew together. ‘Your father?’ he exclaimed in disbelief.
‘But I thought you had no idea who he was!’
Billie dug into her bag to retrieve the letter Desmond had written and
leant across the aisle to pass it to Alexei.
His bold bronzed profile set hard while he scanned the comparatively
brief communication. ‘And until now you never even thought to mention
this man’s approach to me?’ he ground out.
Billie reddened, for he sounded so astonished that she could have
neglected to share the contents of that letter with him sooner. ‘There
was so much else going on between us at the time—’
‘But you still just went ahead and arranged to meet this guy, taking
him on trust?’ Alexei thundered in interruption, springing upright to
stare down at her in frank disbelief. ‘You didn’t even have a background
check done on him! Have you any idea what a risk you took?’
‘There was no risk,’ Billie disclaimed. ‘Desmond is a perfectly ordinary
middle-aged businessman.’
‘But this letter could have been a con trick to lure you into a vulnerable
position.’ His striking cheekbones prominent below his dark
skin, golden eyes blistering, Alexei slowly shook his handsome head
in angry wonderment. ‘You could’ve been kidnapped, robbed, anything!’
he spelt out angrily.
‘Don’t be so melodramatic—’
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ Alexei retaliated with icy bite. ‘You’re part of
my world now and worth more money as my wife than most people
could earn in a lifetime. People maim and kill others for a great deal
less. Round-the-clock protection is a necessary precaution to ensure
your safety.’
A good deal paler than she had been after receiving that graphic
warning, Billie nodded acceptance of his concern, which did ironically
have the side effect of briefly lifting her mood. Alexei could be
so cold and unemotional that it was good to know he cared enough to
worry about her well-being to this extent. ‘I promise that I won’t be
so trusting with anyone again, but my father is a very agreeable man.’
‘That doesn’t mean that he couldn’t also be a fraudster on the make,’
Alexei proclaimed with crushing cynicism. ‘I’ll have him thoroughly
checked out before you see him again.’
Quietly convinced that her father was exactly who and what he purported
to be, Billie made no comment. It struck her as deeply sad that
she had had to look to Alexei’s anger to find solace in the idea that he
cared about what happened to her. Had their relationship always been
so one-sided, so empty? Then he did not reciprocate her feelings, nor
had he ever pretended to. She sipped her cold drink to moisten her
dry mouth. ‘Please don’t let’s talk about what I was doing in Paris,’
she urged him in hasty appeal.
‘How can I ignore what you did? What the hell were you thinking
of when you went there?’ Alexei responded with censorious golden
eyes. ‘You’re my wife. I expect you to behave with dignity. That does
not mean confronting Calisto in one of our homes and accusing her
of having an affair with me.’
Her face burning at that rebuke, Billie lifted her chin. ‘I wasn’t sure
that you still regarded me as your wife. Most of our conversations
since our wedding have ended with you walking out or talking about
us being over as a couple…’
Golden eyes gleaming, Alexei loosed a harsh laugh of challenge.
‘You make me sound so unreasonable. Nobody would credit that you
spent more than a year lying to me and then produced my son like a
rabbit out of a magician’s hat the same day that I married you!’
Having paled at that accurate if acerbic summing-up of her sins, Billie
swallowed hard. She registered that in his eyes she was never going
to live down her past and concentrated on what mattered most
to her at that moment. ‘I’m still entitled to ask you what’s going on
between you and Calisto.’
‘Nothing sexually.’ Alexei’s wide sensual mouth took on a sardonic
twist. ‘It’s business now. Her father died during our relationship and
in his will he placed me in charge of her inheritance. As she was one
of three children the legacy was not particularly large. But when I
parted from Calisto it was on poor terms and it was easier for me to
ignore the responsibility her father had given me. While I was doing
that, she got into considerable debt.’
‘Debt?’ Billie leant forward to question in unabashed surprise at that
statement. ‘I thought Calisto was a wealthy woman in her own right.’
‘So did she, but she didn’t get a big divorce settlement because of the
pre-nuptial agreement she signed with Bethune,’ Alexei informed her
wryly. ‘And as the wife and then the girlfriend of two very rich men
there was never any need for her to watch her expenditure. But once
she was living on her own income, she quickly got into trouble.’
‘And because of this, she’s now living in your town house in Paris?’
Billie had already worked out the direction his cool explanation was
going in and she was not overly impressed by it. So, poor Calisto had
finally been forced to live as an independent woman and settle her
own bills! She could see that such an obligation would have been uncomfortable
for Alexei in the aftermath of a broken relationship, but
she did not accept the need for him to have got involved again with
Calisto on such a very personal basis. He could easily have brought
in an accountant or lawyer to take charge of the Greek woman’s financial
affairs and have kept Calisto at arm’s length.
‘If I had done my duty by Calisto as her late father expected of me,
her finances would never have got in such a mess,’ Alexei reasoned
as if his involvement and sense of guilt were the most natural and understandable
reactions in the world. ‘As she’s currently working for a
Parisian fashion house, it made sense for her to use my property as a
base and reduce her outgoings.’
Billie wondered why he hadn’t just settled his ex-fiancée’s debts in
compensation for his neglect of her affairs. Billie could not help
thinking about the amount of very private information about their
marriage that Calisto had apparently had full access to and she
reckoned that she was only receiving part of the truth from her volatile
husband. Alexei and his former lover were clearly on very close
terms again. It was possible that that intimacy had not yet stretched
to accommodate a renewed sexual relationship, but it could only be
a matter of time until it did. Perhaps Calisto was also being given a
second chance to prove herself and Alexei was biding his time before
reaching any firm decision about his future plans. After all, he had
dived at uncharacteristic speed into their marriage and what had that
gained him? A son she’d dragged like a rabbit out of a magician’s
hat?
‘You shouldn’t have gone anywhere near Calisto,’ Alexei breathed
grimly, his hard gaze cutting into her like a laser beam. ‘Today, when
you subjected her to a jealous scene, you embarrassed me. I expect
more from you than that kind of gutter behaviour.’
While inwardly cringing at that rebuke, Billie perfectly understood
how Calisto had delivered her into Alexei’s hands, gift-wrapped and
tagged, and as a jealous vengeful witch. Calisto must have got onto
the phone within minutes of Billie’s departure to get her version of
events in first. Alexei believed she had gone to fight over him with
another woman and, as she had never really known how she planned
to tackle Calisto or indeed what she would say to her, she could not
have come up with a more dignified explanation for her visit.
Alexei surveyed her steadily, lush black lashes screening his gaze to
the hot gleaming gold of a hunting animal, while his dark accented
drawl took on a husky deep note that shimmied down her sensitive
spine like a caress. ‘Before today, I would never have dreamt that you
would act in such a primitive way, moraki mou. I’ve always admired
your restraint and intelligence.’
‘Well, it just goes to show that you never really know anyone,’ Billie
quipped unevenly, marvelling at the stunning beauty and power of
his eyes and feeling her treacherous body quicken in a physical response
as natural to her in his presence as the feel of her own skin.
Her nipples peaking into straining buds, she wondered whether she
should shout at him for calling her ‘primitive’ or revel in his evident
fascination because something equally basic in him clearly liked the
idea of her fighting for him. And nothing had ever illustrated for her
so clearly the innate dichotomy of Alexei Drakos the man, censuring
her behaviour while reserving the right to sexually savour it.
Billie closed her eyes tight on temptation. And he was the ultimate
temptation for her and always had been. But the time for that kind of
behaviour was past, she told herself firmly, crushing the inner quivers
of desire that would have destroyed her self-respect had she let them
linger. Unlike him she refused to take refuge in sex when their relationship
was falling apart and she could not accept his current intimacy
with Calisto Bethune either.
Maybe he hadn’t yet got back into bed with his ex-fiancée but that
did not make his betrayal of their marriage any easier to bear. He had
shared their secrets and evidently even discussed who would get custody
of their son. She could not forgive him for that disloyalty. He had
been right on one score though. Until she had spoken to Calisto, Billie
would have fought for their marriage with whatever weapons came
to hand. But loving Alexei was no longer enough and she had made
some terrible mistakes, she acknowledged painfully. Now, however,
she felt alienated and on the brink of being discarded, a humiliating
sensation that did not sit well with her pride. It was really time for
her to look out for her own interests and those of her son and prepare
for a future that did not include Alexei. Furthermore, rather than wait
to be pushed she was discovering that she would very much prefer to
jump.
‘Billie…’ Alexei murmured thickly.
‘No, don’t look at me that way, don’t talk to me that way either,’ she
told him tautly. ‘It’s no longer appropriate.’
Alexei frowned at her evasive eyes and cool intonation, the sensual
heat dying out of his intent gaze. ‘What are you talking about?’
Billie breathed in deep. ‘Marrying you without telling you about
Nicky was a huge mistake,’ she admitted heavily, lifting her head to
study her husband with pained eyes. ‘But fortunately we don’t have
to live with that mistake for ever.’
Alexei had fallen very still. ‘Meaning?’
‘You were right. We should get a divorce,’ she extended flatly, pinning
her tremulous lip line firm as she voiced that ground-breaking
decision.
‘I only entertained that idea before I knew we had a child!’ Alexei
raked back at her with disdainful force. ‘Now that I do know, a divorce
is out of the question.’
‘But we’re not working out as a couple.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ Alexei raked back at her.
‘It’s not all my fault,’ Billie told him, green eyes flaming back at him
like highly polished jewels. ‘Your renewed intimacy with Calisto—’
‘There is no intimacy!’ Alexei broke in angrily.
Billie gave him a stony look. ‘Well, there’s a closeness that I find unacceptable.’
‘You find it…unacceptable?’ Alexei framed in a raw undertone of
wrath.
‘As you said, trust is gone,’ Billie reminded him tightly. ‘Calisto was
a major part of your life for many months while I was pregnant and I
refuse to stand by on the sidelines again while you entertain her.’
Black-lashed bronzed eyes brilliant with fury at her daring to lay
down the law to him, Alexei spread his arms wide in an angry movement
of dismissal. ‘You are my wife,’ he growled between compressed
lips. ‘That should be enough for you.’
‘But it’s not enough. I feel like an accidental wife, not a real one. You
said I cheated you. You regretted marrying me within hours of the ceremony.’
While Billie grimaced, she also held her head high as she
reminded him of those facts. ‘I can’t rewrite our past and neither can
you.’
A screaming silence that flared along the edges like an inflamed
wound fell in the opulent cabin.
‘I won’t give you a divorce,’ Alexei delivered in sardonic challenge.
‘I don’t mind waiting a bit longer to get the legal stuff over and done
with,’ she said wearily, a thumping headache beginning to pound behind
her temples. ‘But while you can hold things up you can’t stop
me getting a divorce. I know enough about the law to know that.’
Bronzed eyes shimmering like polished metal, Alexei set his even
white teeth together.
Billie sensed his brooding dark fury and watched his long brown fingers
tighten to show the white of bone round the glass in his hand. He
was a Drakos, an Alpha male with a very powerful personality, and he
was outraged that she should talk of divorcing him when he blamed
her for the disintegration of their marriage. She understood that, she
understood that perfectly, but she was fed up of eating humble pie,
turning the other cheek and staying quiet when she wanted to demand
answers and felt she deserved more understanding. As yet she could
not even imagine a life without Alexei in it, but in time she would get
stronger and she would get over him…oh, yes, she would! She had
more than enough strength and resolve and courage, she told herself
fiercely.
A barrage of paparazzi awaited them at Heathrow Airport. Cameras
flashed to catch the first sight of Alexei Drakos together with his
English-born wife since a single official wedding photo had been released.
Questions were shouted and, certain someone had asked her
about her child, Billie shied away, wondering if Nicky’s existence had
now become public knowledge. Alexei stopped dead so suddenly that
she almost tripped over him.
‘I have a son,’ he announced with considerable pride and satisfaction.
‘His name is Nikolos.’
And with that Alexei turned to close an arm round Billie and herd her
onward out of the airport. ‘You might have warned me that you were
planning to do that!’ she exclaimed.
‘It had to be done,’ Alexei fielded without a shade of apology. ‘I will
not tolerate speculation about my son’s paternity when a simple acknowledgement
from me will protect both you and him from spurious
rumours.’
So, now everyone would think that Nicky was the reason why Alexei
had married her. He had laid bare the fact to the world that she had
conceived his son before he had even got together with Calisto Bethune.
His relations would be shocked, but then they were very well used to
being shocked by Alexei and would probably honour him for marrying
the mother of his firstborn son, just as his father had once done a
generation ago. Billie asked herself why she should still be so sensitive
to those facts when she had already reached the decision that their
relationship had no future. Obviously she needed to grow a much
tougher skin.
‘We’ll fly back to the island tomorrow,’ Alexei told her smoothly as
she slid into the waiting limousine.
Billie turned startled eyes on him and he closed a hand over hers.
‘No…’ she began.
‘You can’t run out on our marriage after three weeks,’ Alexei drawled
with a soft sure sibilance that filled her with disquiet.
‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Billie dealt him a defiant glance and snatched her
hand free of his. Sometimes she thought she had spent half her life
waiting for Alexei to return after he had walked away from her. As
an employee madly in love with her boss, she had been defenceless.
Even when pregnant with his baby she had contrived to be powerless
because she had not stood up for her rights. She had been too sensitive,
too proud to face her fear of being a burden and an embarrassment
to him. But her days of martyrdom and victimhood were now
at an end. This time around she would do what was right for her and
what suited Alexei wasn’t going to influence her, she promised herself,
having stoked up her anger with him to a fine burning heat.
‘As for me running out on our marriage, you didn’t even last the
length of our wedding night,’ Billie completed in provocative addition.
‘That is past. We’re not children. Indeed, we have a child to consider.
We have to work this out,’ Alexei informed her grittily.
‘I’ve already worked out what is best for me and I’m not going back
to live on your island, to stay in your house to be surrounded by your
people!’ Billie rounded on him to respond with ferocious resolve.
‘What has got into you?’ Alexei bit out with a roughened edge of incredulity
in his dark deep accented voice.
Staring out of the windows at the dark lamp-lit streets of the city and
the ever-present surge of traffic, Billie dropped her head to study the
hands she had linked together on her lap. ‘I’m thinking of me for a
change, not of you.’
‘Try thinking about our son instead. He would be more relevant.’
‘No, don’t you dare try that maternal guilt trip on me!’ Billie flared
back at him in furious rebuttal, her small face stiff with resentment.
‘You seduced me, you got me pregnant, then you conveniently lost
your memory. I did the best I could for my child in a rotten situation
and I don’t owe anyone anything, least of all you!’
Bemused by the positive violence of her response, Alexei studied her
fixedly, his bold bronzed profile taut, his piercing gaze assessing her
hectically flushed face. ‘Forget about me. I’m actually asking you to
put the needs of our son first.’
Billie flung up a hand in a silencing motion, angry that he could dare
to attack her on that front. ‘I’ve made enough sacrifices and I’m not
in the mood to make any more!’ she warned him.
‘You’re being totally irrational. Only today you flew over to Paris to
confront Calisto—that’s not the behaviour of a woman who wants a
divorce.’
Billie glued her lips together in a mutinous line. As far as she was
concerned taking part in any further discussion concerning Calisto
would be humiliating for her and she had no intention of going there.
‘I want a divorce,’ she repeated steadily. ‘I want my life back and my
new life will naturally be here in England.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Alexei interposed with a scantily leashed savagery of
tone that made her turn back to stare at him.
‘Well, why would I want to live on Speros any longer? At least I can
get a job here,’ she pointed out squarely.
‘You’re talking about taking my child away from me as if it means
nothing,’ Alexei condemned in an aggressive undertone.
‘But we can’t stay married just for Nicky’s sake,’ Billie protested
helplessly. ‘I want more, I need more than some empty charade of a
relationship. I’m not prepared to spend the rest of my life paying for
the mistake I made on the night of the funeral.’
‘If you live in England, I will see very little of our son. I consider my
role in his life to be as important as yours. You’re being unreasonable
and unfair. Nikolos needs both of us.’
Billie could hear his continuing surprise at the way she was behaving
and she wondered why he expected her to be reasonable when he had
been so very judgemental and inflexible since she had fallen off her
pedestal with a crash on their wedding night. Right at that moment,
after enduring all the stresses and strains of an inordinately long and
eventful day, she was at the end of her tether. She was too tired to argue
with him, for he would keep up the pressure and refuse to quit
until he wore her opinions down and she knew that she could not afford
to allow that to happen this time around.
It would be a ghastly joke to divorce Alexei and end up living as
his ex-wife on the island of Speros. What life would she have there?
Once again she would be living on the edge of his life, watching him
with Calisto or some other woman, and for the sake of her sanity she
just couldn’t do that any more! A fresh start far away from Alexei and
his influence was what she needed, not a rehash of the past when constant
exposure to him had enslaved her and ruined her for any other
man. So as far as where she lived was concerned she was fully convinced
that she had no choice but to be unreasonable as he called it.
A huge weariness that encompassed Billie’s entire body was gaining
on her steadily. She let her heavy eyelids slide shut and thought longingly
of having Nicky in her arms again. The love of her child would
surely fill the giant black hole where her heart used to be. Without
Alexei around to upset and distract her, she would be able to concentrate
on being a mother. That thought was the very last thought she
would later remember.
Billie woke up slowly the next morning. It was just after eight and a
twinge of guilt assailed her because Kasma would already have given
Nicky his morning feed. The pillow beside hers was pristine and
untouched and she knew that once again she had slept alone. Alexei
had put her to bed in her unexciting white cotton underwear. She
wondered with a sudden savage pain if he had smiled when he saw
what she wore underneath her clothes and recalled her warning on
that wedding night that had gone so terribly wrong. No, Alexei had
probably not been any more in the mood to smile the night before
than she had been, she acknowledged unhappily, sliding out of bed
and heading into the bathroom for a quick shower.
In fact Alexei, she conceded ruefully, was much more concerned for
Nicky’s future in the event of a divorce than she would ever have believed.
His own parents, of course, had maintained a stable relationship,
setting their only a child a good example. She pictured Alexei
as she had seen him with Nicky only two days earlier, their son lying
trustingly asleep in his father’s arms. Alexei had proved to be much
more hands-on with his son than she had expected as well. Indeed he
had accepted Nicky straight away and had immediately wanted to get
to know their child.
Of course she recognised the importance of a father in her son’s life!
She wasn’t stupid, nor was she so selfish that she wanted to keep
Nicky all to herself. She would make every reasonable effort to share
their son with Alexei, but he was primarily based in Greece and she
was not prepared to continue living abroad for his benefit. Was that
so heinous a crime?
As Billie got dressed she was still rationalising the decisions she had
reached the day before. Alexei no longer respected or trusted her.
They had no relationship left to save. A quick divorce would be a
better solution to their predicament than a long dragged-out marital
breakdown. Why shouldn’t Alexei spend more time in London? Was
that so much to ask of him? Surely they could both be good and effective
parents even if they lived far apart?
Still stressing about the serious conclusions she had made after the
trip to Paris, Billie went up the flight of stairs to the nursery, which
was traditionally and inconveniently sited on the top floor of the
house. She walked into the room, which was empty, and crossed it to
knock on the door of the bedroom that Kasma was using. When there
was no answer she opened the door. There was no sign of Nicky’s
nurse or of her belongings. Indeed the bed had been stripped. Her
brow furrowing, Billie went back out onto the landing. The housekeeper
was emerging from her self-contained flat on the other side of
the gallery.
‘Did Kasma take Nicky out for a walk?’ Billie asked the older woman.
The housekeeper looked surprised at the question. ‘Mr Drakos flew
out at dawn with Kasma and the little boy…’ Her voice faltered as
Billie went white and closed her hands tight round the stair rail. ‘Is
there anything wrong, Mrs Drakos?’
Billie didn’t know what she said, but afterwards she went back into
the empty nursery to get a grip on herself and on the shocking news
that Alexei had simply taken their son out of the country with him
without her permission. She looked down into the cot and finally noticed
that, strangely, her mobile phone was lying on top of the disturbed
bedding. She lifted it and registered that it was flashing because
it had an unopened message.
‘Call me,’ ran the text, and it was from Alexei. He must have deliberately
placed the phone there for her to find it.
Call him? She wanted to throw the mobile through the unopened window,
tear the room apart and scream her fury loud enough to be heard
in Greece! Call him? She was so shattered by what he had done that
she could barely think straight. He had kidnapped Nicky and taken
him abroad without her knowledge, indeed knowing that she had other
plans. How dared he? How flipping dared he? Denied her son when
her arms ached for him, Billie was overwhelmed by the sudden fear
that Alexei was already making a bid for custody of their child. Her
heart seemed to skip a beat and she felt sick as she pelted downstairs
to check her handbag for Nicky’s passport. As she had expected, it
had gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘WHAT the hell have you done?’ Billie yelled down the phone the
minute her call was answered. ‘Where is Nicky?’
‘Here at our house in the South of France with me. He’s about to have
lunch. He’s fine.’
That Alexei and her son were in France took Billie aback and she
could only dimly assume that there was some advantage to that location
that she had yet to work out. ‘You kidnapped him…how could
you do that to me?’
‘My jet is waiting at Heathrow for you. I’m sure it won’t take you
long to pack,’ Alexei countered without remorse.
Barely able to vocalise, never mind think, Billie was trembling with
rage and distress. ‘If you were standing here in front of me, I honestly
believe I would kill you!’ she hissed at him and she flung the phone
down on her bed, folded her arms and stared at it with rampant loathing.
Arrogantly ignoring everything she had said the previous day, indeed
clearly impervious to her wishes, her opinions and her feelings,
Alexei had removed his son from his mother’s care and taken him to
another country.
It was a shocking move that filled Billie to overflowing with dark,
fearful foreboding for the future. As a gesture it was uniquely effective,
for in that one outrageous act of aggression Alexei had contrived
to jerk all her strings at once as though she were nothing but a puppet
he was able to control.
Billie was truly shattered. It honestly had not occurred to her that
Alexei might fight dirty from the word go. She had assumed they
could be civilised—at least in the initial stages of a separation. She
had most definitely not been prepared for a war in which no holds
were barred to break out so fast. Why had Alexei taken their son to
France? Was there some legal advantage in doing this? For the first
time in her life Billie regretted not following her mother’s guidance
and approaching a divorce lawyer. In business, Alexei always took
keen advantage of legal advice and she was convinced that Alexei
would have sought a professional opinion of what he had just done
before he did it. She wished she could have grabbed at the comfort
of believing that he was too stupid to appreciate that such behaviour
might be held against him in a divorce court when it came to discussing
his access to their son. But having worked for Alexei for so long
and seeing at first hand how in touch with events and boundaries he
always was, she could find no consolation in that line of thought.
Dressed in a yellow shift dress, Billie watched her luggage being
stowed in the silver SUV that had come to collect her from the flight
to Nice. The sun was warmer and brighter than it had been at Hazlehurst
and the sky was a great bright arc of endless blue above her
head. Alexei’s idyllic chateau in the unspoilt Luberon Valley had always
been her favourite Drakos property so it struck her as especially
ironic that he should have taken Nicky there. As they travelled deeper
into the countryside hills the colour of ochre gave a dramatic edge
to the scenery and fields of purple lavender stretched as far as the
horizon. Stands of woodland, peach orchards and the serried ranks
of highly productive vines that belonged to the chateau surrounded
the little medieval settlement of Claudel that was perched high on a
rocky cliff like so many other fortified villages in the area. On the
uphill climb the SUV traversed the narrow streets with care, snaking
across the sleepy village square past the beautiful old church to take
a steep cobbled lane lined with medieval dwellings and terminated
by the elaborate turreted entrance to the chateau. The electronic gates
whirred shut in the vehicle’s wake.
In front of the ancient stone bulk of the chateau, which had, over the
years, been burned down and ruined many times only to be rebuilt to
survive another century, Billie sprang out of the car. She didn’t take
the time to admire the magnificent view of the village and the valley
below and she paid no heed at all to the lovely peaceful gardens
where she had so often sat basking in the sunshine. Indeed she barely
paused to greet the maid who opened the solid oak front door, and
sped down a corridor walled with rough stone to thrust open the door
of the room Alexei used as an office…and there he was: her quarry!
Impervious to the warmth of the day in the air-conditioned room, he
was very elegantly clad in a dark blue designer suit fashionably cut
to define every sexy, virile line of his long powerful thighs, muscular
chest and broad shoulders. Her heartbeat kicked up speed, her breathing
straining in her throat. She hated his guts like poison at that moment
but there was no denying that he was gorgeous.
Alexei surveyed her with glittering golden eyes and there was neither
apology nor remorse in that bold challenging appraisal. ‘No shouting,’
he warned her.
But Billie was so violently angry to discover that he had relaxed and
simply got on with working while she agonised over the disappearance
of her son that she sought the nearest heavy object, swept it off
the side table and threw it at him with all her strength. Alexei ducked
in the nick of time and the metal paperweight she had lifted sailed
over his shoulder and smashed through the window behind him.
Just a little shaken by the hail of broken glass noisily showering the
floor, which Alexei hastily stepped back from, Billie breathed bitterly,
‘I wish I’d hit you.’
‘Mercifully you missed—your French isn’t good enough to handle a
murder charge in a court here, mali mou,’ Alexei quipped, and as the
door burst loudly open to frame an anxious Helios he smiled and dismissed
his bodyguard with a fluid movement of a lean brown hand.
‘An accident, Helios. My apologies for disturbing you.’
Billie set her teeth together so hard she was surprised they didn’t
splinter. ‘I don’t have the words to tell you what I think of you. Have
you any idea how I felt when I learned that you had taken Nicky
abroad? Do you know what it felt like when I saw that empty cot?’
she launched at him in a shaking voice of rage once Helios had withdrawn
again. ‘He’s my son and you had no right to take him away
from me.’
Alexei rested steady dark golden eyes on her angry troubled face.
‘Yet you were prepared to do the exact same thing to me,’ he said
silkily.
For a split second Billie was transfixed by that unexpected comeback.
‘You can’t compare my choosing to live in England to what you did
today!’
‘Can’t I?’ A well-shaped black brow lifted. ‘Speaking as someone
who knows my commitments as well as I do, how often do you think
I was going to get to see my son?’
Billie lost colour and compressed her lips, refusing to be drawn on
that score.
‘But you were quite happy to impose that loss on me,’ Alexei declared
with a raw edge to his deep voice. ‘And do you know why?
You’ve spent the past five months ignoring my rights as a father and
you see no reason why that can’t continue.’
‘You’re twisting things—I’m not that selfish!’ Billie protested.
‘You are where our son is concerned,’ Alexei contradicted in Greek.
‘And that’s why I took him today, knowing that you would follow
us.’
‘Never in my life have I heard anything more reckless or irresponsible!’
Billie fired back at him furiously. ‘I was so scared when I realised
you’d taken him…it was wicked and unpardonable to put me
through that.’
‘You knew he would come to no harm in my care and Kasma’s. I
would consider it equally wicked were you to deprive our son of his
father,’ Alexei drawled with a steely sibilance that cut through her defences.
‘Message received!’ Billie flung back at him angrily, her complexion
reddening. ‘But you didn’t have to go to such lengths to make your
point!’
‘Didn’t I?’ Alexei replied, unimpressed. ‘You’re even more stubborn
than I am when you get the bit between your teeth.’
‘What you did was wrong.’
‘I agree, but you didn’t give me a choice,’ Alexei reasoned, having
astonished her with that initial admission of fault. ‘I have no intention
of being an occasional father. Our son will need my guidance as a
child and as an adult, and if we don’t forge a close relationship now
you can kiss goodbye to me having any influence with him when he’s
older.’
For just a moment, Billie recalled how wild Alexei had been as an adolescent,
with unlimited wealth and two very indulgent parents. Constantine
Drakos had only ever interfered in Alexei’s life when he believed
his son might be in physical danger. It dawned on Billie that
one day Nicky might be just as rich, wilful and careless of his own
safety as Alexei had once been, and when that day came it very probably
would take a personality as forceful as Alexei’s to exercise control
over their son.
Billie stiffened. ‘I do appreciate that you have an important role in
Nicky’s life as well.’
‘But until this moment you weren’t prepared to make any allowances
for the fact.’
The pink tip of her tongue slid out to moisten her dry lower lip. She
was beginning to feel like someone pinned between a rock and a hard
place. ‘Maybe I was a little hasty in some of the things I decided.’
Lush ebony lashes fanned down low on his electrifying golden gaze,
and as he stared at the glistening curve of her voluptuous lower lip
a nerve ending pulled taut in her pelvis. She shifted uneasily off one
foot onto the other. Alexei strolled towards her as lithe as a hunting
cat on the prowl. The atmosphere hummed with sexual awareness
and she fought her responses with all her might. Alexei made no
such attempt, closing his hands to her hips to urge her close. As she
parted her lips to object he brought his sensual mouth down hungrily
on hers, his tongue delving into the tender interior between her lips
with an erotic heat that made every nerve ending in her treacherous
body sit up and take notice. A trembling started low down inside her,
her bra constricting her swelling breasts, a snaking burn and surge
of moisture tingling between her thighs. And in that fiery instant she
learned that she could hate Alexei but still want him with a remorseless,
bone-deep craving that was terrifyingly strong.
‘No!’ she told him fierily, striking her fist against a broad hard
shoulder and when he didn’t immediately draw back doing so again.
He lifted his arrogant dark head. His bronzed gaze burned her like
honey heated to boiling point, unbearably sweet and tempting. ‘Even
if it’s what we both want, glyka mou?’
Billie threw back her head, jewelled green eyes bright as rapier
blades. ‘I don’t do just sex, Alexei. You should know that by now.’
‘You have impossible standards.’
‘Only to someone like you.’ Deep inside, she was squashing a wealth
of pain and regret that it should be that way. She didn’t do just sex but
he didn’t do love or for ever and, even worse, she wasn’t even sure
that he knew how to do them. For a little while she had assumed he
loved Calisto, but nobody witnessing the smooth, unemotional way
he had moved on from that affair could have believed that he was
nursing a broken heart. If he had decided that he wanted Calisto back,
it was most probably because she suited him and his lifestyle better
than Billie could.
‘I’ve always enjoyed a challenge,’ Alexei riposted, a strong hand on
her spine trying to urge her back into his arms.
‘Right now, I just want to see my son,’ Billie announced, hectic colour
in her face but sincerity shining in her clear gaze.
And the darkening of Alexei’s beautiful eyes, the tensing of his stunning
dark features, would have signified annoyance had she been
naïve enough to believe that his responses could be that human. He
freed her, thrust open the door and escorted her in silence up the
sweeping staircase, which would have looked more at home in an
antebellum mansion than in a hilltop chateau with the core of a medieval
fortress. But then it was exactly that endearing quirkiness that
she had always loved about the Chateau Claudel. Each new owner
had added personal touches, few of which were historically accurate.
Nicky was lying in his cot, Kasma busy tidying away toys. As Anatalya’s
daughter moved to greet her Billie recognised the relief the
younger woman couldn’t hide and knew that Kasma had been uneasy
about her charge’s removal from his mother’s care. Her son kicked up
his bare toes and gave her a wide gummy smile, which told her that
while her world might have been rocked on its axis, all was right in
his. Her heart beating very fast, Billie reached down into the cot and
scooped the baby up, loving the weight of him in her arms and the
sweet familiar smell of his skin as she cuddled him close. Alexei was
watching and she gave him a fierce warning look before she gave her
attention back to the child she adored.
‘Where are you going?’ he enquired as she headed for the stairs.
‘I think I’ll sit in the garden for a while…before I pack his things,’
she tacked on as casually as she could, for she refused to reward
Alexei’s cruel manipulation of her attachment to her child by staying
on in France.
His lean dark face shadowed, dense ebony lashes fanning down on
his stunning eyes as he absorbed that unapologetic statement. ‘I can’t
let you do that,’ he murmured very softly, but she was not taken in by
that softness of tone because she knew that the cooler and the quieter
Alexei was, the more dangerous he was.
She didn’t reply. She walked with Nicky in her arms outside into the
afternoon heat and sought the bench in the shade of the ancient oak
tree in the walled garden. There she had often sat to enjoy the magnificent
view. I can’t let you do that. Did he mean to physically prevent
her from leaving with Nicky? Or was he planning to flex his muscles
in some other way?
‘Your father is so, so tricky,’ she sighed into her son’s tousled black
hair.
The tranquillity of the garden and the silence enclosed her, soothing
her anxious thoughts. But she could not escape her recollection of her
dialogue with Alexei. At first she had been so angry with him that
she couldn’t think, but then he had made her think of what her plans
would mean to him. Regardless of what happened between them, she
had never wanted to shut him out of his child’s life or to damage their
chances of developing a normal father and son relationship. But she
was only beginning to get used to the concept of sharing her son with
his father and she knew that the concept of sharing anything was a
worryingly alien concept to any Drakos male.
If she insisted on living in England she would be making it very difficult
for Alexei to develop strong ties with his son. Yet the alternative
of living on the island would cruelly restrict her life in every way and
make it virtually impossible for her to move on as an independent woman.
She supposed the bottom line ought to be what would most benefit
her son, not herself. Perhaps there was no happy-medium solution
that would be beneficial to both her and her son. But enabling
Nicky to enjoy a close relationship with both his parents would be the
wisest, kindest option, she acknowledged ruefully. It was just unfortunate
that that might well have to come at the price of her freedom.
Hearing a step, she glanced up and saw Alexei with Kasma and a
pushchair in tow. Nicky had drifted off to sleep and when the nursemaid
offered to take him, Billie passed him over. As Kasma wheeled
him away Billie glimpsed the momentarily tender and unfamiliar expression
on Alexei’s lean strong face as he gazed appreciatively down
at his son and her heart stabbed her. Alexei, who had all his life been
adored but who, as far as Billie was aware, had never truly responded
to any woman after his mother, had somehow and in a very short
space of time contrived to become deeply attached to his infant son.
‘We have to talk,’ Alexei delivered as soon as Kasma had headed
back indoors with her charge.
Billie viewed his tall, powerful figure with pained eyes. ‘You didn’t
need to steal him to make me understand how much he meant to you
as well. You could just have told me.’
His hard jaw line clenched as if her candid reference to his obvious
attachment to Nicky had embarrassed him. ‘You weren’t willing to
listen.’
Billie didn’t want to plunge them back into an argument by referring
to all that had passed between them since their wedding. She had
done wrong but so had he. Yet he was still the guy that she loved with
all her heart, she acknowledged unhappily. No matter how angry or
frustrated he made her, she never lost sight of what he meant to her.
‘I was very shocked that you just took Nicky’s passport and whisked
him away from me,’ she admitted tautly. ‘What would you have done
had I called in the police?’
Alexei froze, his lean powerful face washing clean of expression, his
eyes glittering dark as night in the shade of the tree. ‘I would have
informed them that I have legal custody of my son.’
Her smooth brow indented. ‘What the heck are you talking about?’
The blankness of his features was put to flight as he bit out a rare
curse in Greek before saying, ‘You didn’t read the pre-nuptial agreement,
did you? I couldn’t credit you would be that trusting, but obviously
you were…’
Billie leapt upright, all her attention locked to him. ‘Why? What was
in the agreement?’
‘If you gave me a child you signed away all rights over that child to
me.’
Billie stared back at him in disbelief, her flush in the heat of the day
fading to be replaced by pallor. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘Billie….’ Alexei spread fluid brown hands in instinctive appeal to
her natural intelligence ‘…when you only hire the very cleverest lawyers
in the world, anything you want is possible.’
CHAPTER NINE
FOR the longest period of her life, Billie stared at Alexi in horror.
‘But you didn’t even know we had a child when we got married.’
‘But I hoped there would be one eventually and, after my father’s
various costly excursions into matrimony, my legal team naturally
sought to protect me against every possible threat in the future. If we
break up, I retain custody of our children.’
Her legs wobbling, Billie slowly sank down on the bench again. ‘I
would never have knowingly signed such a contract. It’s immoral. I
trusted you and you cheated me…’
‘There was no deception. You signed the document without reading
it,’ he pointed out drily. ‘How wise was that?’
‘You actually thought that I would be willing to give up all rights over
my own children just to marry you?’
Alexei shook his dark head with wry amusement. ‘You know better
than that. There are women in this world who would give their last
pint of their blood to marry me.’
‘Possibly not if they’re sitting where I’m sitting,’ Billie tacked on
helplessly. ‘Do you honestly think that something like that would
stand up in court?’
‘I don’t want to take you to court. I don’t want to remove my son from
your care. I don’t want a divorce either,’ he completed with measured
emphasis.
Billie got up again on knees that felt shaky. ‘I wish I had never slept
with you and never had your child. But my worst mistake was marrying
you.’
‘I’m grateful that you did all those things. I don’t want to turn the
clock back. I would very much like to remember the night our son
was conceived—’ Alexei sent her a gleaming glance of rampant curiosity
that made her bridle ‘—but in the absence of that, I am delighted
and proud to have a son.’
And he didn’t want a divorce. Now she was beginning to wonder if
she did either. In a divorce he might well exercise the legal right to
take charge of their son and what would that do to her? Would he win
if she fought him in a court?Was that a risk she was prepared to take?
If she lost the right to be the primary carer of the child that she loved,
what would her freedom be worth to her then? Her blood was already
chilling in her veins at the very idea of such deprivation.
‘You’re blackmailing me,’ she condemned in disgust.
‘I want you to give our marriage a chance.’ Alexei held her angry
gaze with level cool and considerable force of will. ‘That’s why I took
Nicky and why I brought you out here to join us. I was playing for
bigger stakes than making some stupid point!’
‘I don’t like being manipulated and intimidated into doing what you
want. I don’t think the end justifies the means,’ Billie argued forcefully.
‘Do you want to know what you’ve really achieved? You’ve
made me appreciate that I couldn’t bear to stay married to someone
like you!’
As Billie attempted to walk past him Alexei closed a hand like a steel
cuff to her arm and held her back. ‘I won’t let you go.’
‘I’m not giving you a choice!’ she blazed back up at him, wrenching
her arm violently free of his hold.
‘What the hell has come over you?’ Alexei bit out, staring down
at her with hard questioning eyes. ‘I’m willing to fight for you and
our marriage. How is that blackmail? How is that something to be
ashamed of? What’s right and what’s wrong doesn’t come into this.
You and Nikolos are my family now and I’m not going to lose you!’
Family. It was a word with very deep and important connotations for
Billie. She had had an unhappy childhood and a difficult adolescence
with a mother who was incapable of putting her child’s needs before
her own. She had grown up envying schoolmates with two parents,
longing to be a part of family rituals like birthday parties and lunches
when their whole families, young and old alike, would get together.
She had always blithely assumed that some day she would create that
family backdrop to nourish her own children’s need for love, support
and security. Now as an adult she was learning that life was not so
simple and that being part of a family demanded personal sacrifices.
Did she stay married to a man who didn’t love her? Did she walk in
eyes wide open and settle for that kind of marriage because it was the
best she was likely to get and because she loved him?
Alexei surveyed her grimly as she settled back down on the bench,
turning her face away from him and returning to studying the view.
‘I feel like the real you is locked up inside, somewhere I can’t reach
you,’ he admitted in a roughened undertone.
‘It’s only because I’m not behaving like an employee any longer,’
Billie murmured ruefully. ‘I’m standing up to you and you don’t like
it.’
‘You always stood up to me,’ Alexei contradicted.
Her mobile phone was buzzing like an angry wasp in her pocket and
with a look of apology in Alexei’s direction she pulled it out and
moved away a few steps to answer it. It was Hilary, but her aunt was
so upset and talking so fast that Billie had to beg her to calm down
and talk more clearly. ‘Mum’s…where?’ Billie pressed in dismay.
‘Doing what?’
‘It’s too late, Billie. I’m upset on your behalf but there’s nothing you
can do. Lauren signed a contract, took the money and is now living it
up in a London hotel. I don’t know when the article will be published.
And I think Lauren handed over photos of Nicky as well,’ Hilary revealed
unhappily. ‘I’m so sorry. If I had had the slightest idea of what
your mother was planning to do, I would’ve tried to dissuade her, but
the first I knew of what she was up to was when she called me from
London to boast about how rich and famous she was going to be!’
‘What’s wrong?’ Alexei demanded, alerted by the consternation on
Billie’s face and the growing anger.
‘This is not your problem, Hilary. Which hotel is she in?’ Finally,
Billie finished the call and turned back to Alexei. ‘You’re not going
to believe what Mum’s done—she’s talked about us to some British
Sunday newspaper and they’ve paid her a fortune for it. She’s even
given them private photographs of Nicky!’ she exclaimed furiously.
‘It was an accident waiting to happen.’ Alexei shrugged a broad
shoulder. ‘I did consider paying her to keep quiet about us but I knew
you would be annoyed if I intervened with that kind of an offer.’
‘Why on earth should she be bribed to keep quiet? How could my
mother sell pictures of her own grandson?’ Billie gasped strickenly.
Alexei was a good deal less surprised by Lauren’s perfidy than Billie
was. Over the years several lovers, acquaintances and even minor relatives
of his own had profited from selling stories about him and
his family to the tabloid press. He had long appreciated that Lauren
Foster would be vulnerable to such an approach.
‘I’ll have to go back to London to see her!’ Billie announced, so
angry with her scheming parent that she was trembling with the force
of her feelings. Lauren’s efforts to prevent her sister from finding out
what she was planning to do proved that Billie’s mother had known
perfectly well that she was doing something very wrong.
‘It won’t change anything. If she signed a contract, what’s done is
done,’ Alexei pronounced. ‘Leave Nicky here. The press could well
be lying in wait for you to visit.’
‘Why aren’t you furious?’ Billie demanded with incomprehension.
‘I’ve always had to live with media intrusion. That’s why I like the
privacy laws here in France. The paparazzi have to follow the rules
here.’
Almost grateful to have to deal with a problem that did not relate
to her marriage and its uncertain future, Billie went back into the
house to change. It was ironic to discover that she didn’t want to leave
France or her son. Nevertheless, she did feel an overriding need to
confront her mother because all too often in the past she had turned a
blind eye to Lauren’s greed and dishonesty for the sake of peace.
‘I don’t think you should do this,’ Alexei told her bluntly before she
got into the SUV to head back to the airport. I should come with you.’
The thought of Alexei standing by listening, while Lauren brandished
her unashamedly rapacious take on how to live life and make a profit,
only made Billie cringe. ‘No, of course you shouldn’t. I’ll fly back
here tomorrow,’ she promised abruptly and watched the sardonic
tightening of his handsome mouth ease into a more relaxed line.
In the limo that wafted her through the London streets that evening
towards the hotel where her mother was staying, Billie was rigid with
tension. Clearly feeling flush after the money she had earned from
selling the story to the newspaper, her mother was staying in a plush
suite. When she opened the door to Billie, her tangled blonde hair and
the skimpy purple dress she wore, not to mention her unsteady gait,
made it clear that she had been drinking heavily.
‘Even when we were kids, Hilary could never wait to tell tales on
me,’ Lauren complained sulkily. ‘I suppose you’re here to read the
Riot Act.’
‘No, it’s a little more basic than that. All my life I tried not to be too
much of a burden to you and since I started earning, I’ve always been
generous with money as well,’ Billie said quietly. ‘So why is it that
the minute you get the chance, you stick a knife in my back?’
Lauren pulled a face. ‘You’re such a goody-goody, Billie. There’s
nothing of me in you, not in your looks, not in your nature either.
How could you ever understand what it feels like to be me? I’ve had
a lousy life because I had you when I was too young to know any better.
Most men don’t want a woman with another man’s kid.’
‘I don’t recall that holding you back much,’ Billie responded drily, refusing
to listen to the self-pitying emotional blackmail that had been
coming her way since she was very young. ‘You had loads of boyfriends
when I was a child but you never seemed to want to hang onto
one in those days because I think you always thought there might be
someone better round the next corner.’
‘That was a damned sight healthier than falling drearily in love with
my boss and spending years pining for him while living like a vestal
virgin!’ Lauren sneered at her daughter.
‘Is that a little taste of what you’ve put in this newspaper article?’ Billie
demanded fiercely.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ Lauren taunted, throwing her daughter
a smug look of superiority. ‘But you’ll have to wait a few weeks to
read it like everybody else.’
‘A few weeks…why a few weeks?’ Billie questioned.
Her mother shrugged. ‘How should I know? Maybe they wanted to
check all the details out first.’
‘You don’t even care that it was my privacy which you sold, do you?
But to make use of photos of Nicky…’
Lauren laughed out loud at that rebuke. ‘He’s a gorgeous baby—you
should be proud of him. Anyway, why are you here fussing? Haven’t
you got what you always wanted? So why be so mean when it comes
to me? After all, you’ve got Alexei Drakos and that ring on your finger
and pots and pots of money.’
‘I’ve also got a mother who embarrasses the hell out of me,’ Billie admitted
painfully. ‘How could you do this to us? You know how much
value Alexei sets on privacy. You know our marriage is…rocky right
now. I’m ashamed that you would sell our secrets and not even care
how much distress you cause.’
Her mother was too busy topping up her glass of wine to pay much
heed to that reproach. She gulped down a couple of mouthfuls and
then glared at her daughter, who was watching her. Lauren spluttered
angrily, ‘What?’
Billie realised that the older woman didn’t care about what she’d
said or about what she had done. She wasn’t feeling guilty and she
wasn’t apologising either. Billie lifted her chin, determined not to
show weakness or the engrained forgiving spirit that she had always
employed with her feckless parent. ‘I don’t want anything more to do
with you,’ she declared sickly.
‘Is that Alexei’s order? I wondered how long it would be before he
made you cut me out of your life,’ Lauren framed, drunkenly gesticulating
with her glass so that drops of wine spattered the pale carpet.
‘But I don’t care…I don’t need any of you. All you’ve ever done is
hold me back like deadweight. I want to be free. I want to do as I like
without someone always raining on my parade.’
‘Fine.’ Billie walked to the door, shaken and deeply hurt by the older
woman’s complete lack of emotion. She loved her mother; she always
had. Looking out for Lauren had been a need and a duty etched on
her soul even as a child, yet with hindsight she finally had to acknowledge
that her mother had never shown her affection and had more
often made her feel like a burden whose very existence had prevented
Lauren from enjoying the freedom she craved.
In a daze Billie got into the lift and travelled down to the hotel foyer.
It was a moment before she recognised Helios, ostensibly browsing
tourist brochures at the concierge’s desk, but she was quick to recognise
the movement of his head, which sent her away from the front
exit towards a side entrance. A limousine, different from the one she
had arrived in, was by the kerb. Only as Helios swept open the door
for her did she see that Alexei was in the vehicle waiting for her.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she gasped in complete surprise,
running her attention over him to note that he was still wearing the
same suit he had worn earlier and, what was more, in defiance of his
usual perfect grooming, was badly in need of a shave. ‘And how did
you get here so quickly?’
‘It was a last-minute decision. I came by helicopter—I flew myself,’
he advanced, searching her wan, tight face with an intensity that was
unwelcome to her in her fragile emotional state. ‘How was Lauren?’
‘A-awful.’ Billie stammered out that one word and feared that the
tears would fall if she tried to say more. ‘Drunk,’ she finally added a
minute later in grudging explanation.
Alexei skimmed a reflective knuckle down over the trail of a tear
stain on her cheekbone. ‘And she’s a nasty drunk, isn’t she?’
Billie gulped and nodded jerkily, and as she quivered like a tuning
fork set on high vibration Alexei closed a comforting arm round her
slim body to pull her close. Her eyes overflowed and she buried her
wet face in his shoulder, drinking in the wonderfully welcome familiar
smell of him, composed of an exclusive designer fragrance, essential
masculinity and a unique hint of a scent that was simply him.
She wanted to cling and sob but she wouldn’t let herself drop her defences
to that extent. Yet it meant so much to her that he had made
himself available, had somehow understood how traumatic it would
be for her to confront her mother. ‘She wasn’t even sorry!’ she gasped
strickenly.
‘She needs rehab,’ Alexei told her afresh. ‘But that decision has to
come from her to do any good.’
Billie snorted disbelief of that ever happening, although she was beginning
to come round to his conviction that her mother did have a
serious problem with alcohol. ‘Where’s Nicky?’
‘Still in France. I thought it would be cruel to trail him back to London
for the sake of one night,’ Alexei confessed above her head, the
dark, sexy timbre of his deep drawl quivering down her taut spinal
column. ‘Have you eaten yet?’
‘I’m too tired to feel hungry.’
As she tripped up clumsily over her own feet in the smart hallway
of the town house Alexei bent down and scooped her up into his
arms. ‘You’re shattered,’ he censured and paused only to speak to the
housekeeper about dinner before carrying Billie upstairs.
It was quite a while since she had had cause to go upstairs in the
town house. For the long months of his engagement she had regarded
the upper floor as Calisto’s territory and she still felt that way now
when Alexei took her into the magnificent master bedroom. When
she gazed at the big bed, opulently draped in rich purple and olive
shades chosen by the Greek woman, she could imagine all too well
how good Calisto’s blonde mane of hair, sparkling white smile and
long leggy limbs would have looked against such a backdrop.
‘I’ve ordered some food for you. After you’ve eaten get some sleep,’
Alexei urged, settling her down on the bed and flipping off her shoes
for her.
He settled down on the edge of the bed. A meal arrived on a tray and
she discovered that she was hungrier than she had realised. ‘You don’t
need to stay with me,’ she told him.
Keen dark golden eyes rested on her. ‘You’re still upset…’
‘I’m dreading what Lauren might have told the newspaper,’ Billie
parried with a rueful grimace.
‘Sticks and stones,’ Alexei quipped lazily. ‘Don’t read it. Nothing
that’s printed should have the slightest impact on us.’
At that assurance, Billie shot him a wry glance. ‘That wasn’t your attitude
when you saw that photo of Damon and me on the beach.’
Alexei’s big powerful frame tensed. His strong jaw line clenched, his
brilliant gaze veiling. ‘That was different.’
‘How?’
‘Damon Marios has always had the hots for you.’
‘That’s nonsense. For goodness’ sake, he married Ilona.’
‘Only because he blew his chances with you as a teenager. You were
his first love and he was yours. For a lot of people that creates a bond
that’s hard to shake off.’
‘I could never see him the same way after that day he pretended not
to be with me on the ferry,’ Billie confided. ‘I was always the outsider
on the island, but he made me feel like dirt when he ignored me that
day.’
Alexei curved an arm round her slight shoulders. ‘He was an idiot. I
was pleasantly surprised when you didn’t forgive him for it.’
‘I didn’t like what you said about him that day but it was true and
that’s why you should know that I would never get involved again
with Damon.’
Alexei compressed his wide sensual mouth. ‘I just don’t like him
around you. You’re my wife now. He should respect that. He
shouldn’t be so familiar with you. An honourable man respects those
boundaries. You’re a woman, you don’t understand.’
Setting aside the tray because she was full, Billie released a drowsy
laugh of disagreement. ‘Oh, I understand you perfectly. You’d like a
tag on my ankle engraved with your name.’
‘This is serious. It’s got nothing to do with possessiveness or jealousy,’
Alexei hastened to declare in a tone of authority. ‘It’s simply a
question of what’s right.’
‘I know. I can be serious too. I don’t like this bed because Calisto
picked the bedding and once slept here with you,’ Billie confided
chattily. ‘But I’m not expecting you to drag the bed out and burn it
for my benefit. It’s simply a question of what’s reasonable.’
Perplexed by that unexpected turning of the tables and that particular
comparison, Alexei turned his stunning dark golden eyes on her. ‘I’ll
have all the beds changed.’
‘But that would be unreasonable and extravagant,’ Billie pointed out
gently to underline her point. ‘Some things we just have to live with.’
Alexei sprang off the bed and looked down at her with brooding darkas-
night eyes. ‘I’m not living with you holding hands with Damon
Marios. The next time I find him with a hand anywhere near you I’ll
kill him!’ he intoned in a raw undertone. ‘And I don’t care if that’s
unreasonable.’
With a sleepy sigh as the door snapped shut on Alexei’s hot-headed
exit, Billie rested her head back on the pillows and contemplated the
reality that she was married to a guy who was infinitely more possessive
of her and her affections than she had ever properly appreciated.
Her friendship with Damon was perfectly innocent but, clearly,
it really did get under Alexei’s skin. Lying there thinking about it, she
realised that even when she had worked for him Alexei had always
acted as though he had a prior claim to her and a right to interfere
in her private life. She should never have allowed him to behave that
way, but until that moment she had never quite seen the extent of his
possessiveness.
Now it brought a pained smile to her lips to recall the number of women
she had watched swan through his life to pass through his various
beds round the world. She had writhed with jealousy and envy
and had cried herself asleep more than once over Alexei’s volatile
love life, but nobody had caused her to shed more tears than Calisto
Bethune, who she had once believed had his heart as well as his body.
But at that point Billie took a pause for more considered reflection.
She was beginning to recognise that, now that she was Alexei’s wife,
it was time for her to exercise more sense and control her jealousy
and her suspicions.
To be fair, Alexei had followed her to London purely to be there for
her when she emerged in distress from her meeting with her recalcitrant
mother. She was astonished that he had made such an effort on
her behalf, and that he had understood her strained relationship with
Lauren well enough to grasp that she would be upset and in need of
support. But there had been other occasions in her long acquaintance
with Alexei when he had shown himself to be equally thoughtful, she
reminded herself ruefully. When had she chosen to forget that? That
Alexei, without any prompting from her, had shown up to offer her
that support and sympathy meant a great deal to Billie, particularly
when sixth sense warned her that he had no time for Lauren at all and
even less patience with her shenanigans.
Billie dozed off for several hours and wakened after midnight to find
that she was still wearing her clothes. Suppressing a sigh, she got up,
stripped off and dragged a nightdress out of her case before taking a
shower to freshen up. Through the communicating door with the adjoining
bedroom, she could hear distant strains of the television news
playing and realised that that must be where Alexei was sleeping. Of
course, after she had refused him that night at Hazlehurst, she mused
wryly, he was unlikely to share the same room with her. After drying
off her damp hair, she got back into bed and doused the lights. For
half an hour she tossed and turned, thinking about Alexei, wishing he
were with her, missing him, feeling deprived. And then suddenly she
sat up, asked herself if she was a woman or a mouse, and got out of
bed again.
She didn’t knock on the communicating door and when she opened it
the room was in darkness. ‘It’s only me,’ she announced, feeling horrendously
self-conscious.
‘I didn’t think it was a burglar,’ Alexei murmured huskily.
In the faint light seeping round the edges of the blinds, she picked
out the dim shape of the bed and headed for it like a homing pigeon.
Pushing back the duvet, she slid beneath it and wriggled across the
cool expanse of the mattress until she found the hot, hard heat of him.
‘You do realise that there will be consequences if you stay, yineka
mou?’ Alexei prompted thickly, one lean hand splaying across the
feminine swell of her hip to press her into suggestive contact with the
insistent swell of his growing erection.
Dry-mouthed and breathless, Billie snuggled into him, her heart
pounding like an overwound clock. ‘I was hoping so,’ she admitted
with a wanton little squirm of her hips in encouragement. ‘I mean, I
am returning to France with you tomorrow.’
Alexei rolled her under his lean powerful body and kissed her breathless.
He tasted of wine and sex and the urgency pulsing through him
lit her up like a blazing fire inside. ‘So that we can enjoy the honeymoon
we never had,’ he breathed in a voice full of erotic promise.
‘That’s not the only r-reason I’m coming to France,’ she stammered
as he carried her fingers down to his hard male heat and the need in
her leapt like a flame fanned into a blaze by the wind. She quivered,
plunged her other hand impatiently into his luxuriant black hair and
dragged his mouth back down onto hers. Her excitement licking out
of her control, she trembled with hungry longing and it was long past
dawn before she finally slept again.
CHAPTER TEN
OVER four weeks later, Billie awakened in the glorious illuminating
light that Provence was famous for and didn’t waste any time in
checking the other side of the big bed, because she knew she would
be alone. A lie-in for Alexei was staying in bed past dawn and it was
now after ten. Stifling a drowsy yawn, she stretched with voluptuous
pleasure, a smug smile tilting her mouth when the movement made
her aware of all the little aches and pains of a woman enjoying an active
and adventurous love life.
In that department, Alexei was incomparable, she reflected with helpless
satisfaction. It also seemed to her as though every time they
made love she felt closer to him. Did he still think of their intimacy
as just sex? She didn’t know, hadn’t asked, and had no plans to enquire
or pick holes in the happiness she had found with him. What
did the words matter anyway? What really mattered was how Alexei
behaved and the connection between them was very strong. With
Nicky thrown into the mix and fully shared, that bond had definitely
deepened.
It had been a relief that, as yet, no tell-all revelations had appeared in
print following Lauren’s interviews with a journalist. But the threat
of what her mother might have said still hung over Billie’s head and
bothered her in uneasy moments. After all, intelligence warned her
that no newspaper would have paid Lauren a lot of money for information
that they had no intention of publishing. She hadn’t heard
a word from the older woman, who was still in London living it up
on the proceeds of her betrayal, according to Hilary.
As Billie laid out clothes after a quick shower she marvelled that she
and Alexei had been staying at their rambling comfortable chateau for
almost five weeks. Their days had slowly fallen into a pattern: mornings,
Alexei usually worked and often she worked with him. Alexei
had, on average, only left the South of France once a week for important
meetings and was delegating all that he could.
Dressed in a blue sundress, Billie walked out onto the stone balcony
to survey the timeless landscape of vineyards, lavender fields and distant
cliffs. The views still enchanted her. Sometimes she and Alexei
walked down the cobble-stoned street to have coffee and a croissant
in the village square. Occasionally they dined at the quaint little restaurant
built into the fortified walls that surrounded the village. And
what she loved most about the area was that, aside of the attention
Nicky attracted as he smiled out of his buggy, nobody took the slightest
bit of notice of them. By common consent they had stayed away
from the Côte D’Azur and the exclusive resorts where Alexei would
be instantly recognisable and constantly approached.
An exquisite ruby-and-diamond ring in the design of a flower shone
on Billie’s finger in the glorious sunlight. Alexei had given it to her
on the memorable night they went clubbing in a funky old warehouse
in Marseille and he’d taught her to dance the salsa.
‘What’s that for?’ she had asked when he gave her the ring.
And Alexei had laughed. ‘You’re not supposed to say that. It makes
a gift sound like some sort of payment and although I have given
many gifts in that line in the past you don’t come into that category.
Of course I could tell you it’s because you’re great in bed, or because
you’re beautiful, or because you’re the only lover I’ve ever had with
hair the colour of a sunset.’ At that point in his teasing little speech,
Alexei had suddenly frowned and his gaze had taken on a curious abstracted
quality. ‘I saw the true attraction of your hair the first time
I saw it in sunlight…and I told you,’ he had completed with sudden
harsh emphasis as he frowned. ‘I told you that on the night after the
funeral.’
‘You’ve finally remembered something!’ Billie had exclaimed with
pleasure. ‘Do you remember how you felt that night? What you were
thinking about?’
Alexei had tensed. ‘Oh, yes,’ he had confirmed, but he had not gone
on to share any revelations on that score, although it had seemed to
her that he was rather distant for the rest of that day and, indeed, the
days that followed. Her elation that he had at last recalled some facet
of that evening had gradually dwindled when he’d failed to mention
it again.
Sometimes they played at being tourists, going further afield to
sleepy hilltop villages where they wandered round market stalls piled
high with fresh produce in dazzling colours and bought home-made
bread, olives, honey and also armfuls of lavender that Billie loved to
use to scent the chateau. To Alexei’s amusement, Marie, their housekeeper,
never failed to point out that produce just as good, indeed
most probably superior, could be bought right on the doorstep.
Billie had learned a lot more than she had thought she needed to know
about the running of an organic vineyard. Alexei took a knowledgeable
interest in every step of the process and was currently teaching
her to differentiate between an acceptable wine and a superlative one.
Only the previous year the Domaine Claudel label had won an award
and Alexei was eager to build on that success. Billie was less interested
in the wine than she was in Alexei’s enthusiasm in the face of a
challenge.
Now she descended the stairs and frowned when she heard Nicky
howling. She followed the source of his cries to the library where
Alexei had abandoned his attempt to work to pull his son out of the
wastepaper basket he had knocked over.
Having learned to crawl early, Nicky had rapidly become a little
menace. Suddenly he couldn’t be depended on to stay where he was
put any more and if there was anything dangerous within reach he
seemed to home in on it. He had trailed out the contents of drawers
and cupboards, shredded books and burrowed into pot plants. He was
a baby on a demolition mission, set on causing the maximum possible
destruction to his surroundings.
‘No, you can’t do that,’ Alexei was telling his son as he lifted him,
and as the little boy snatched a pen off the desk added. ‘No, you can’t
have that either.’
From the doorway, Billie watched as Nicky breathed in deep and
bawled in bad temper, his lower lip jutting with baby-rage at the restrictions
being put on his freedom.
‘And that’s not going to get you anywhere either,’ Alexei asserted,
dropping down to lift one of the toys on the floor and hand it to his
enraged son.
Nicky flung the toy away and howled even louder.
Alexei sat down and let his son claw his way upright by holding onto
his jacket. Nicky jumped and his temper cleared like magic, for there
was nothing he liked more at present than the ability to stand upright
and bounce with energetic thoroughness.
Arms wrapping round Nicky to support him in a hug, Alexei cast languorous
dark golden eyes across the room to Billie’s slender blueclad
figure and he smiled his heartbreakingly beautiful smile. ‘I
thought you were never going to surface today.’
‘And whose fault is it that I’m so tired?’ Billie fired back readily before
she could think better of that comment.
Alexei raised a sleek ebony brow in surprise at that question. ‘I distinctly
remember being woken up in the early hours by a very demanding
woman.’
Billie turned hot pink at the memory. Sometimes she just stretched
out and found him in the bed and desire would roar through her like
an express train. She just couldn’t quite believe that Alexei was now
hers to touch and love. Proximity to him had made her greedy and
sexier than she had ever thought she could be. The knowledge that
he always seemed to want her had lifted her confidence. She wore
lingerie that would have made her blush just months earlier; occasionally,
she wore very little at all.
Nicky rested his little dark head down on Alexei’s shoulder and
sagged, long lashes sweeping on his cheekbones.
‘I’ll put him down for a nap,’ Billie said.
Alexei slid lithely upright and led the way up the staircase. Billie
changed her son and made him comfortable in his cot in the room
next to their own. Kasma was out for the day and, although a local
girl took over in her absence to ensure that the young Greek woman
didn’t have to work too many hours on the trot, Alexei and Billie regularly
took charge of their son and saw to his needs without help.
Alexei stared down into the cot where Nicky was half-heartedly trying
to reach for his little pink toes and then he glanced across at Billie.
‘I’d like another child.’
Astonished by that abrupt confession and unprepared for it, Billie
frowned.
‘I wasn’t part of it when you were carrying Nikolos. I missed out on
everything,’ Alexei pointed out levelly.
‘You know why I didn’t tell you,’ Billie reminded him defensively.
‘I know you decided that my girlfriend was more important to me
than my unborn child,’ Alexei countered. ‘But that was your mistake.
I would have put my child’s needs first, just as my father once did.
It’s a shame that you didn’t give me the chance to prove that to you
firsthand.’
A frisson of fierce annoyance washed away all the warm feelings that
Billie had experienced watching Alexei handle their son with such
patience, common sense and warmth. But his skill as a parent aside,
wasn’t she entitled to have some pride? To want a man who was not
simply with her because she had fallen accidentally pregnant? With
hindsight, Billie now recognised that it was the fear of Alexei feeling
responsible for her because she was pregnant rather than freely
choosing to be with her that had made her stay silent after she had
conceived. Calisto had been more competition than Billie had felt up
to taking on and challenging. She needed to be wanted for herself, not
for her son’s benefit. But just how deep did that attitude of Alexei’s
go? Was he only set on showing her what a wonderful guy he could
be in retrospect? Or was their honeymoon ninety per cent fake as he
made a very clever and rational attempt to give their marriage sound
and lasting foundations? That suspicion sent a shiver down her sensitive
spine.
‘I think one child is enough for us right now,’ she responded quietly.
Stunning golden eyes as bright as sunlight raked over her tense, uneasy
expression. ‘You still don’t trust me. Do you think I’m so selfish
that I would suggest having another child without the intention of our
marriage lasting?’
‘It’s not a matter of trust,’ Billie reasoned hurriedly. ‘I just need more
time with you to believe that.’
‘Nicky has roused emotions in me that I never realised I could feel,’
Alexei volunteered, startling her with that admission. ‘You’re surprised…
I’m surprised. But I was bored with my life as it was. I’m
much more ready to be a family man than I ever appreciated, yineka
mou.’
‘That’s great,’ Billie told him, but she was not convinced enough to
risk a second pregnancy on the strength of that declaration. When she
lost her figure, he might not find her as attractive, she reasoned uncomfortably.
He was and always would be a male to whom a highvoltage
sex life meant a great deal and pregnancy would definitely
make a difference to their relationship. That was not a chance she
wanted to take.
‘You saw far too much of my life as a playboy,’ Alexei groaned, folding
her slim, curvy body into his arms. ‘That’s where the problem
lies.’
‘I’m not prejudiced—’
‘How can you lie to me like that?’ Alexei censured. ‘You disapproved
of my sex life from the day you met me.’
‘I’m not lying,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘You never could hide how you felt either,’ Alexei continued with
sardonic cool. ‘You’d get a stony look on your face and go all stiff
and prissy, and your voice would go cold.’
Billie was thoroughly disconcerted by that recital of her reactions.
Unexpectedly, Alexei’s lean bronzed features broke into an unholy
grin of amusement as he pulled her closer. ‘You really were a jealous
little cat from the word go!’
‘That’s not true,’ Billie mumbled, refusing to meet his shrewd gaze,
as she had not once mentioned love since her return to France, had
wrenched the very word from her thoughts and buried it deep. In
Alexei’s radius she could only feel that the less said about love and
all such sentiments, the better.
‘And there I was leading a perfectly normal life as a single man,’
Alexei lamented. ‘You were…wild,’ Billie rebutted without an instant
of hesitation.
‘But in some dark little corner of your head, you love wild,’ Alexei
murmured huskily, shifting against her in a lithe movement to acquaint
her with the hard male heat at his groin.
Loving him as much as she thrilled to that wildness, Billie trembled,
feeling the surge of heat and moisture between her legs, wishing she
had more control over her responses. He pressed her slender length
to him and bent his head to kiss her with a raw, urgent hunger that
left her struggling to breathe. He had made love to her for half of the
night but now he wanted her again and she rejoiced in that knowledge,
which made her feel secure and needed. She let him back her
into their bedroom on legs that felt as weak as cotton-wool supports.
But she was no passive partner, for she dragged his jacket off him and
embarked on his shirt buttons while exchanging passionate kisses that
made her heartbeat race.
‘I think you should just stay in bed all day,’ Alexei confided, letting
his teeth graze a particularly tender place on her neck and suppressing
a groan as she wriggled against his long powerful thighs. ‘Getting
dressed is hardly worth your while. I can’t get enough of you, yineka
mou.’
He was pulling down the straps on her shoulders, accessing the scented
hollow between her breasts and the pale upper slopes before he
found the zip and the dress fell to her waist. He dealt with the light bra
that merely uplifted the ripe swell of her flesh and he caught a straining
pink nipple in his mouth to ravish it, even as he pushed up her
skirt, ripped her delicate chiffon panties out of his path and found the
sweet damp warmth of her silken flesh. A moment later, he braced her
back against the wall, hoisted her against him and brought her down
on him. She cried out in shivering excitement as he sank deep into her
slick wet heat and after only a few strokes he moved her, tumbling
her down on the bed and plunging into her tight depths over and over
again with an erotic dominance that excited her beyond belief. She hit
a shattering high of pleasure and she arched up to him and cried out at
the convulsive strength of the climax gripping her. Dizzy satisfaction
engulfed her as Alexei reached the same peak and shuddered in her
arms.
‘Did I hurt you? Was I too rough?’ Alexei queried, breathing heavily.
‘I’m fine…better than fine…on another planet,’ she mumbled, struggling
to find the right words to encompass her wonderful sense of
well-being.
Alexei gave her a wicked smile that tilted her heart on its axis and
crushed her close to his bare chest. ‘It just gets better and better with
you,’ he sighed, dropping a kiss on her parted lips. ‘You’re an amazing
find, moraki mou.’
A slew of phone calls disrupted dinner that evening. When Billie
asked if there was a crisis of some kind Alexei fended off her questions
with a shuttered look on his lean dark features. Bemused by his
behaviour, she went to bed alone. In the morning she wakened to the
sound of a text reaching her mobile phone and, before she reached for
it, noticed to her surprise that the pillow beside hers was untouched.
The message was from Hilary. It informed her that Lauren’s story had
appeared that morning and Hilary had faxed a copy of the piece to the
chateau. It also urged Billie not to pay heed to what her aunt termed
‘spiteful drivel’, but Billie’s apprehension about the unsavoury nature
of her mother’s revelations rose to new heights.
A knock on the bedroom door heralded the arrival of a breakfast
tray that could only have been ordered for her by Alexei. Striving to
remain calm but, for once, impervious to the stunning view, Billie
sat out at a table on the wrought-iron girded balcony and ate fresh
fruit. She shredded her croissant and then lost interest in eating it
while she wondered what tales her mother might have shared with
the press. Who would dare to disbelieve stories told by her own flesh
and blood? And the answer to that was: anyone who had ever enjoyed
a personal acquaintance with Lauren, who was always willing
to stretch the boundaries of the truth to make a good story.
The sound of the bedroom door snapping shut made her turn her head.
Alexei strolled out onto the stone balcony, a lean powerful figure
sheathed in close-fitting beige chino pants and a black T-shirt. Luxuriant
black hair glinting in the sunlight, stunning golden eyes semiscreened
by spiky dark lashes, he looked jaw-droppingly beautiful to
her attentive gaze. Her heart seemed to jump behind her breastbone
and her mouth ran dry, but neither appreciative response prevented
her from noting that he was pale and tense with just the suggestion of
gritted teeth behind the set of his stubborn, passionate mouth.
‘You’ve been reading Lauren’s interview with the Sunday Globe,’
Billie guessed in a hot-cheeked rush. While Hilary had assumed that
their location abroad would make it difficult for them to gain easy access
to that article, Billie knew that Alexei had the British newspapers
flown in every day.
Alexei sent her a questioning glance.
‘Hilary texted me and then faxed a copy here—’
‘It came through but I chucked it in the bin,’ Alexei admitted. ‘It’ll
only upset you.’
‘She’s my mother. I have every intention of reading it.’
His brilliant eyes veiled as if he had been prepared for that response.
‘Then you might as well know the worst now. Lauren has accused me
of having an affair with Calisto…’
The numbness of shock possessed Billie’s lower limbs and the colour
bled from her cheeks. For several deeply unpleasant seconds she felt
physically sick and in the act of rising from the chair she dropped
down again and gripped the arms with clenched fingers. ‘That may be
my fault,’ she muttered with a sudden groan. ‘Before the DNA results
arrived and I saw you at Hazlehurst, I saw a photo of you with Calisto
in Paris and I have to admit that I was suspicious…’
‘If I had still wanted Calisto, I would never have dumped her in the
first place or moved on to marry you,’ Alexei spelt out, his arrogant
head held high, his jaw line at an uncompromising angle. ‘You have
to learn to trust me, Billie. There will always be allegations of that
nature made against me. Like my father, I’ll often be a target and I
won’t have that kind of nonsense causing trouble between us. I’ve
already called in my lawyers. I intend to sue on this occasion.’
It was at that point that Billie realised that Alexei had sought her out
quite deliberately to tell her what was in that article before she could
read it. A pre-emptive strike and very much in the bold, buccaneering
Drakos style, she reflected painfully. How did she trust a male
so clever and manipulative that he even knew how best to sidestep
claims of infidelity?
Billie pushed away her plate and got up. Alexei was regarding her
with expectancy. Was he expecting an apologetic hug and the assurance
that of course she believed him? It hurt that her mother could
have plunged them into such a confrontation, but at the back of her
mind she couldn’t help thinking that had Alexei been willing to be
more frank with her she would never have cherished such qualms
about Calisto.
‘I’ll get dressed,’ she said without any expression at all.
‘If you go outside, stay away from the front gates—a bunch of paps
are conducting a stake-out.’
‘Oh…’ Biting her lip, Billie looked away, finally registering that
Lauren had clearly managed to create quite a splash with her revelations.
Her mother, she thought sadly, would be revelling in the limelight.
She only hoped that the story Lauren had already sold would
be the one and only time she talked about her daughter’s marriage in
public. And that when the dust finally settled there would still be a
marriage to conserve, she thought painfully.
When she finally held the relevant newspaper in her hand, she felt as
if a cold hand were trailing down her spine. ‘I don’t need you hovering!’
she told Alexei, who was poised by a tall window with Nicky
clasped in his arms. ‘Certainly not with Nicky in tow. I don’t want
him to hear us arguing.’
Level dark golden eyes held hers with fierce determination. ‘Then
don’t read it…’
And so intense were his look and tone that she almost succumbed,
until common sense warned her that she would not be able to live
with her ignorance. The fine bones of her face taut below her skin,
she shook her head in urgent dismissal of that advice and walked out
to the garden in search of the privacy in which to read.
The hot golden light of noon drained the borders in the walled garden
of their vibrant colour and the blessed shade below the oak tree
beckoned like a long cold drink in scorching temperatures.
The whole focus of the newspaper article was encapsulated by a devastating
photograph of Alexei kissing Calisto in a Parisian street. In
total shock at the sight of their two bodies plastered together and so
close, Billie flinched and speed-read through the claim that Alexei
had plunged back into an affair with Calisto within days of walking
out on his bride the previous month. So, it was true, she reflected
sickly. There were Calisto and Alexei captured together in black and
white, the ultimate proof of infidelity, which even Alexei could not
dispute. Evidently all her worst fears had been right on target.
Her heart thudding sickly inside her, she skimmed over the pictures
of their son and read on. Surprisingly, Lauren had not overly embroidered
the tale of how Billie had come to fall in love with Alexei
while she worked for him. She’d described how the stressful hours
of Billie’s busy working days had been punctuated with the constant
procession of gorgeous women with whom Alexei had amused himself
and Billie’s growing heartbreak while she’d watched. Lauren had
had a thoroughly cynical take on Alexei’s behaviour and had accused
him of having ‘used’ her lovesick daughter for comfort in the wake of
his parents’ deaths and then cruelly ditching her when Calisto had reappeared,
divorced and available again. Lauren had also implied that
he must have known Billie had fallen pregnant and had sent her off
on a supposed career break to deliberately conceal the fact.
A slight noise made Billie’s head fly up, green eyes wide and pained
when she saw Alexei standing on the gravel path staring at her with a
curiously raw expression in his dark eyes.
‘That photo of me kissing Calisto is almost two years old,’ he
breathed harshly. ‘There is no affair.’
Unwilling to even listen, Billie turned her bright head away.
Whichever way she looked at the problem, Alexei had betrayed her
with the other woman, because in forgetting their intimacy after the
funeral he had been unfaithful. Was it unjust of her to feel that way
when he had given her no promise of commitment or exclusivity that
night?
‘Billie…that is an old photo, taken long before our marriage,’ Alexei
repeated determinedly.
‘How do I believe that? I mean, I know Calisto was more than willing
to renew your relationship, regardless of the fact that you had married
me,’ she argued helplessly. ‘She was even grateful I had given you a
son because she didn’t want to run the risk of spoiling her figure with
a pregnancy—’
Alexei was frowning, ebony brows pleated. ‘When did she tell you
that?’
‘When I saw her in Paris. She said you wouldn’t leave me with custody
of Nicky, that you would take him off me and that she was willing
to help you bring him up!’
Alexei stared at her in frank disbelief. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that
before? How could you listen to such ridiculous lies?’ he demanded
accusingly. ‘I know how much you and my son mean to each other.
No matter what happens between us, I would never part you from
him—’
‘You parted us a month ago,’ Billie reminded him.
‘For a matter of hours, and only to get you here in order to give our
marriage a fighting chance!’ Alexei protested in heated disagreement.
‘You’re a wonderful mother and our son will always need you. How
could you have listened to Calisto’s poisonous claims?’
‘How could you put her in your house in Paris and expect me to accept
it?’
His dark gaze gleaming golden, Alexei flung up lean brown hands in
a furious show of frustration. ‘Because I owed her! I was the one who
changed my mind about our relationship. She didn’t change, I did. In
the name of God, Billie, how could you not have told me about what
happened between us after the funeral? Didn’t it occur to you that I
might have forgotten but that I might feel that I had lost something,
even if I didn’t know what that something was?’
Wide-eyed and shaken by that counter charge, Billie watched him
stride closer. ‘Lost something?’ she repeated uncertainly. ‘I’m not
sure I know what you mean—’
‘We forged a connection that night deep enough to haunt me when I
lost it again,’ Alexei argued. ‘But I had to remember how I felt that
night to realise why I’d ended up charging into a rebound affair with
Calisto.’
‘You’re saying you remember being with me that night now?’ Billie
questioned weakly. ‘If that’s true, why didn’t you tell me?’
Alexei released a shaken laugh that carried more bitterness than
amusement. ‘Why did it never occur to you that I would be ashamed
of what I would remember of that night?’
Her brow indented. Ashamed? She almost bleated out the word again
in dismay, but she was fed up of trying and failing to guess what he
meant and this time she said nothing.
‘Of course, I was ashamed,’ Alexei grated in a low driven voice. ‘I
took advantage of you.’
Tenderness touched her frantic thoughts, slowing the flow of them.
‘No, you didn’t. You were lonely, shaken up, vulnerable…’
‘And I took advantage of you just like your mother has accused me
of doing,’ Alexei completed resolutely. ‘But on the same night while
I was with you I realised that I was very probably in love with you
and that I had been for some time.’
Blinking rapidly, Billie gazed back at him with frowning force. ‘But
that’s not possible!’
‘You got under my skin…you infiltrated me and I didn’t even know
it was happening to me,’ Alexei bit out with annoyance at his lack of
self-knowledge on that score. ‘Suddenly I was always comparing other
women to you and you were winning hands down in every comparison—
sex was just the next natural step that night but that shouldn’t
have been how it happened between us.’
‘You weren’t in love with me,’ Billie told him flatly. ‘And how else
should we have become intimate? One doesn’t always plan these
things.’
‘You deserved more from me than what you got that night when I was
drunk and confused and more than a little spooked by the weird way
I was feeling,’ Alexei extended wryly. ‘When I was willing to wait
until we were married—that respect and patience was a better demonstration
of how I should have treated you from the first, agapi mou.’
My love, he’d called her, and Billie could hardly get her head around
the staggering declaration engrained in that endearment. Her attention
locked to his lean darkly handsome features, she breathed uncertainly.
‘I just don’t believe what I’m hearing from you!’
‘When I fell down the steps and hit my head outside the guest suite, I
forgot more than what we shared in your bed that night,’ Alexei continued
vehemently. ‘I forgot how happy I was, how convinced I’d become
that I had finally found the right woman for me. Why the hell
do you think that I took the risk of making love to you without contraception?
That was so out of character for me, it should have screamed
at you and convinced you that I was planning a lot more than a brief
sexual encounter with you!’
And there was so much truth in that contention that Billie finally allowed
herself to listen. In truth, she had noticed that he was not quite
himself that night and some of the stuff he had said to her had seemed
to indicate a greater degree of involvement with her than she might
have expected. But she had been quick to dismiss any such hopes,
even quicker to assume the worst of a male who had apparently so often
treated sex like a takeaway meal—cheap and disposable and forgettable.
Her own cynicism and low expectations, she recognised ruefully,
had combined to ensure that she was reluctant to confront him
with the facts of their intimacy. In the expectation of disillusionment,
she had ironically ensured that disillusionment was exactly what she
had received.
‘I just assumed it would mean nothing to you and that maybe you forgot
because you didn’t want to remember it.’
Alexei compressed his lips. ‘There may be some truth in that angle,
but not on the score of what happened between us. A few weeks ago,
I did consult a psychiatrist about those hours I couldn’t remember and
he suggested that my mind could be reluctant to recall my grief for
my parents that night. He was of the opinion, however, that since I
had already contrived to recall one moment of those missing hours, I
would eventually remember more. I did consider having hypnotherapy…’
‘I had no idea you were that bothered about not having those memories,’
Billie confided.
‘Of course I was bothered. That encounter was central to our marriage
and your attitude of distrust. I had to remember what I did that
night to understand how horrific the experience must have been for
you. One minute we were together and then the next, it was like it had
never happened—’
‘Yes, it was very painful,’ Billie acknowledged unhappily, grateful he
understood and astonished that he had seen a psychiatrist in an effort
to deal with the issue and find a solution. ‘But I really didn’t know
what to do about it. Staying quiet seemed the most sensible move on
every count—of course I didn’t think of what might happen if I fell
pregnant. When did you remember it all?’
‘I had a couple of small flashes and then, one morning, I woke up and
the whole recollection was just there,’ he revealed. ‘I was shattered
when I realised how I’d felt that night with you.’
‘And you truly think you got involved with Calisto because you were
on the rebound from me?’ Billie whispered doubtfully.
‘Didn’t it ever cross your mind that Calisto and I had as much in common
as a dog and a cat?’ Alexei enquired drily. ‘What drew me back
to her was familiarity—my recollection of how I felt about her as a
teenager and the fact I couldn’t have her. Of course what I wanted
then from a woman is not at all what I want now. It took me a while
to appreciate that Calisto only married Bethune because at that time
he was a better financial bet than I was, as a son still dependent on a
father for support.’
Billie was afraid to have faith in what he was telling her. It was true
that he and Calisto had appeared to have nothing in common. She had
wondered what he could see in a fashion model who shared none of
his interests. But she had also known that love was reputedly blind
and had feared that beauty and sex appeal had won out over common
sense. Now when he told her otherwise she wanted so much to believe
that message but she was afraid to.
‘I thought you were so happy with her,’ Billie framed.
‘The first fine flush lasted…oh, all of five minutes,’ Alexei confided,
his handsome mouth forming a sardonic twist in acknowledgement.
‘I refused to listen to my doubts because, as I told you, I was ready
for something more, something deeper, and when Calisto reappeared
it felt like fate.’
Billie winced. ‘Fate can be cruel.’
Alexei frowned and nodded agreement. ‘If only you had told me
about us, at least I would have stopped and listened.’
‘If you were infatuated with her, I don’t know that you would have.’
‘You didn’t give me the chance,’ he reminded her. ‘In fact you assumed
the worst of me at every stage and expected nothing. That was
the real problem. That was what kept us apart.’
Billie reckoned that she had spent too long on the sidelines of
Alexei’s life watching him live up to his bad reputation to credit that
he might behave differently with her. And yet, even as she recognised
that fact, she also recognised that Alexei had always treated her with
a lot more respect and kindness than he’d employed with the other
women in his life. She had never been just an employee, forced to
respect strict boundaries, and in the same way he had always looked
out for her interests.
‘Why did you really break up with Calisto?’ Billie finally asked.
‘She wasn’t right for me. I don’t want to do her down,’ Alexei confessed
ruefully, his strong jaw line hardening, ‘but I saw her as she
really was the day I found her screaming abuse at a toddler on Sea
Queen.’
‘On St George’s Day, when you were entertaining the islanders on the
yacht?’ Billie questioned, referring to the saint’s day when everyone
who lived on Speros celebrated the holiday. ‘What toddler?’
‘The little boy you took to find his mother. Before that, he had
bumped into Calisto and put chocolate hand-prints on her skirt. I
found her shouting at him and the poor little chap was sobbing his
heart out. I couldn’t stay with a woman who could treat a young child
like that, and when she turned her attention on you that same afternoon
that was the last straw,’ he admitted grimly. ‘She has a vicious
streak I can’t accept.’
Well aware of how that vicious streak had offended and wounded other
employees, Billie said nothing. Naturally she had known that Calisto
had had character traits wholly at odds with Alexei’s engrained
sense of fairness and courtesy, but that Alexei could have found Calisto’s
verbal attack on her that same day intolerable touched her heart.
Calisto had accused her of flirting with Alexei. Now all of a sudden
Billie was appreciating that Alexei had cared even then about her,
even if she hadn’t realised it.
‘I didn’t love her,’ Alexei breathed, reaching down to close his hands
round Billie’s and draw her upright. ‘I never loved her. Why would I
risk my marriage to sleep with her again?’
Her hands quivered in the warm hold of his and she lifted fearless
eyes to him. ‘You didn’t care about our marriage when you walked
out on me. You didn’t believe that Nicky was your son either…’
His ebony brows drew together. ‘Be fair. You took me by surprise and
I was devastated by the fallout on our wedding night. You are the one
woman in the world whom I’ve always totally trusted,’ he reasoned
urgently, and pink discomfiture coloured her upturned face with regret.
‘And it did all sound crazy at the time.’
‘You didn’t love me when you married me…’
Long brown fingers framed her cheeks to hold her troubled eyes
steady. ‘I didn’t know I loved you when I married you. I thought I was
being so sensible choosing you when, all the time, you were the only
choice. Because, right then, you were the only woman I wanted,’ he
told her ruefully. ‘Then it all blew up in my face. I didn’t know how I
felt. I didn’t even realise why it all hurt so much. I just felt betrayed.’
Her fingers stroked over his and gripped tight in apology. ‘I know. I
know how impossible I made it for you but there was no easy way to
go about telling you.’
His lean hands held hers tight. ‘Telling me the truth upfront,’ he
countered. ‘Trusting me the same way I trust you—’
Sentenced to stillness by the tender look in his dark golden eyes, Billie
breathed in deep. ‘So, you’re not chasing Calisto again?’
‘No, and she’s already called me to let me know that she has issued
a public rebuttal to that effect,’ Alexei incised and then, with an unexpected
touch of amusement, ‘Along with the news that she’s got
engaged again and she doesn’t want rumours of an adulterous association
with me to spoil that.’
‘Engaged again? But to whom?’ Billie prompted in astonishment.
‘A very wealthy Parisian banker. He’s a lot older than she is, but she
says older men are more reliable and, since he already has adult children,
he’s not expecting her to have a child with him,’ Alexei completed.
‘But when I saw Calisto in Paris, she made it quite clear that she
wanted you back.’
‘But I didn’t want her and the banker was obviously her back-up plan.
I’m relieved she’s found someone,’ Alexei said wryly. ‘I can hand
over her affairs to an accountant with a clear conscience.’
And seeing his relief, Billie finally believed that only his sense of responsibility
had urged him to go to Calisto’s assistance after their relationship
had ended. It was as if a weight fell off her shoulders and
a dark shadow was jerked from her thoughts. With a sigh she leant
forward and rested her head down on his shoulder. ‘I’m relieved as
well.’
‘But you didn’t need to be. I love you,’ Alexei pointed out doggedly.
‘The minute you started talking about divorcing me, I wised up fast.
That was a really sensible move of yours—it brought me to my
senses.’
‘It wasn’t a move!’ Billie exclaimed in stark disconcertion at the
charge. ‘It seemed the only solution if you couldn’t forgive me for
keeping you in the dark about Nicky.’
Alexei bent his arrogant dark head and claimed her mouth with hot,
hard brevity that left her breathless, her slim body curving into his
and alight with the desire for more. ‘The moment you threatened me
with a divorce I got off my high horse. It brought me to my senses
and I stopped wallowing in your sins. I didn’t want to lose you, agapi
mou,’ he murmured, rubbing his knuckles down over her cheekbone
in a tender gesture. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose you. I’ve spent the last few
weeks trying to show you that but sometimes I feel like I’m banging
my head up against a brick wall.’
‘I was so jealous and insecure about Calisto that she came between
me and my wits,’ Billie confessed in a rush, finally allowing herself
to believe that she was loved and revelling in the adoring intensity of
his gaze on her face. ‘You have been making me very happy, but I
was so hurt when you didn’t seem to feel anything when I told you
how I felt about you.’
‘I’m sorry. For a while I didn’t think I could trust anything you said,’
he confided candidly. ‘I was angry, bitter and disappointed in you and
it was a while before I could move on from that to concentrate on
what’s really important. And what’s really important is that you had
our son and now we have the rest of our lives to spend together.’
The rest of our lives. The warmth of his gaze, the buoyancy of his
dark deep drawl wrapped round her vulnerable heart like a blanket
of reassurance. She hugged him close, a pulse of happiness pounding
through her as she let go of her fears and insecurities and finally felt
free to claim her happy ending.
‘I love you,’ she whispered.
He drew her out of the shade of the oak tree into the bright sunlight
and on into the dim cool of the chateau. But it was Billie who headed
straight for the stairs and the privacy of their bedroom while throwing
a half-embarrassed, half-teasing glance over her shoulder at him. Before
they got there, however, another concern stole the lightness from
her mood. ‘We haven’t even talked about Lauren, or what we’re going
to do about her,’ she reminded him heavily.
Alexei swung her back to face him. ‘We’ll deal with her together,’
he murmured with quiet resolve. ‘She needs to respect our privacy
as a family. But it’s only thanks to that article that I know how long
you’ve cared about me.’
Billie reddened and screened her eyes. ‘I didn’t want you to know
that.’
‘I cared about you too, agapi mou,’ he traded softly. ‘And in ways I
couldn’t count or explain. I never liked seeing you tired or cross or
unwell. I always wanted to make you happy. I hated seeing you with
another man. When I had no right to be, I was very possessive of you.
Your friendship with Damon Marios really got to me and made me
angry and jealous.’
‘But it never was anything but a friendship.’ Billie shivered as he ran
down the zip on her dress and eased it down her arms, pausing to
claim a hungry, driving kiss that went on and on and on because she
was clinging to him with a heart that was pounding as hard as a road
drill inside her chest.
‘I love you like crazy,’ she told him breathlessly as he tugged her
down on the bed with him, finally accepting that he loved her and
he was hers in every way that mattered. Suddenly she finally grasped
why he had stealthily instructed that all the master-suite beds in his
various homes were renewed. He was thinking about her feelings and
doing what he could to acknowledge them.
‘And you believe me about Calisto? I am suing the Sunday Globe
over that photo of me with her,’ Alexei breathed. ‘I know now why
Lauren’s story wasn’t published immediately—the paper was waiting
and hoping to get proof that I was having an affair with Calisto, but
when they couldn’t they dug out an old photo instead.’
‘I know you’re not having an affair.’ Billie gazed up at him with her
heart in her eyes and his smile felt like sunshine on her skin. ‘And
if you’re still in the mood, I have reconsidered: I would like to have
another child soon.’
‘That’s a very sexy invitation, Mrs Drakos,’ Alexei purred, disposing
of his shirt with careless grace and baring a hair-roughened muscular
torso that seemed to beg for the touch of her appreciative hands. ‘Are
you sure?’
‘More sure than I’ve ever been about anything,’ Billie confessed, regretting
the hurt she knew she had inflicted when she was unable to
give him her trust. There was love and tenderness in his expressive
golden eyes and, although it felt as if it were the first time she was
seeing those emotions, she knew they had been there in recent weeks
as well, only she had been too blind to recognise them for what they
were. She had been equally thick-headed when it came to acknowledging
that the average boss didn’t treat his PA to hot chocolate
topped with melted marshmallows at the end of a difficult day, or
send her off on a spa break. Nor, if he was Alexei Drakos, did he offer
to cut down on the other women for a mere fancy. But she had not
read those signs, had thought too little of herself to recognise that she
was special to him.
‘I’ll never stop loving you,’ he swore with all the passion and intensity
of his powerful temperament.
‘Well, I did try to get over you lots of times, but it just never worked,’
Billie admitted more prosaically.
And Alexei laughed with considerable appreciation…
Eighteen months later, Billie tucked her infant daughter, Kolena, into
her cot.
Dark-eyed and red-haired, Kolena was a delightful mixture of her
parents’ genes. Nicky hung over the side of the cot watching his sister
and pushed a stuffed toy at her hand. The little starfish fingers closed
round the bear, but then the baby’s eyes slid drowsily shut.
‘Kolena’s sleeping again,’ Nicky complained, his little boy’s restive
body humming with suppressed energy.
‘It’s been a long day for her.’ Billie smiled as she thought back on
a day of great enjoyment at the christening party held at Hazlehurst
Manor. For the first time in her life she had contrived to have both of
her parents in the same room. It was true that at the outset of laying
eyes on her former fiancée and daughter’s father, Lauren had merely
nodded frostily across the room at Desmond, but her resistance had
crumpled when Desmond complimented her on her continuing youthful
good looks. Billie had last seen her mother and father chatting
companionably at the buffet and was relieved that her parents could
now meet without any awkwardness.
Of course, the past eighteen months had proved more than usually
eventful for her mother and had led to a much-changed lifestyle.
Lauren had stayed on in London to paint the town red and, within
six months of the publication of the story she had sold, she had spent
all the money she had earned from it and the hotel where she’d been
in residence had contacted Alexei, just before throwing Lauren out
onto the street for unpaid bills. At that point, Hilary had persuaded
her sister to go into rehab for, by that stage, there had been little
doubt that Lauren had a problem with alcohol. But, unhappily, the
treatment hadn’t worked on that occasion, probably because Lauren
had merely surrendered to Hilary’s arguments rather than acting on a
genuine need to seek help for herself. It had been Billie who’d taken
charge of her mother the next time that her lifestyle had got her into
trouble—because, by then, Hilary had been abroad on her honeymoon.
Now Lauren herself was willing to acknowledge that she had
a serious addiction problem.
This second stay in rehab, followed by regular attendance at AA
meetings, had helped Lauren to stay off the booze and she and
her daughter were getting on much better since then. Sobriety had
softened Lauren’s sharp tongue and lessened her dramas, while happiness
had made Billie more accepting of her mother’s weaknesses.
The previous year, Hilary had married Stuart McGregor, the captain
of Alexei’s yacht, in a quiet ceremony. Still working on her history
book, which had since found a publisher, Hilary was—to her astonishment
and delight—now four months pregnant with her first child.
Up until then the little terrier, Skye, which Alexei had given to Billie
on their wedding day, had been the apple of her aunt’s eye. Skye had,
after all, lived with Hilary while Billie and Alexei were enjoying their
extended honeymoon in France, and by the time the couple returned
Hilary had confessed that she couldn’t face giving the puppy up because
she had become so attached to the little animal.
Billie currently worked several hours a day in Alexei’s company and
occasionally accompanied him abroad. These days he travelled less
because he was keen to take an active role in his children’s daily life.
Billie had found her husband wonderfully supportive during her pregnancy
and it had wiped out all the memories of her lonely sense of
isolation while she’d carried Nicky. She had enjoyed her second pregnancy
and had also been blessed with a straightforward delivery. It
would be a long time before she forgot Alexei’s eyes shining with
tears of pride and fascination when he saw his daughter for the first
time.
As Nicky pelted out of the nursery and greeted his father at the top of
his voice Billie turned to greet Alexei.
‘Your mother’s flirting like mad with your father. He’s mesmerised,’
Alexei revealed with a wicked grin.
‘Oh, dear, I do hope she doesn’t hurt his feelings.’ Billie sighed.
‘I think Desmond is mature enough to look after himself,’ Alexei told
her with quiet assurance. ‘How’s our daughter?’
‘Fast asleep. I think all the attention she got this afternoon exhausted
her.’
‘You got plenty of attention too,’ Alexei reminded her, scanning her
slim shapely figure in the sapphire-blue dress and jacket she wore.
‘You look amazing, agapi mou.’
He closed his arms round Billie and eased her up against his tall,
powerful body. He stared down into her shining eyes and the ready
smile of welcome already tugging at her ripe mouth and murmured
softly, ‘Every time I see you, it’s like coming home and like no other
feeling I’ve ever had. I love you, moraki mou.’
Billie whispered the same sentiment back with similar intensity and
gave herself up to the pleasure of his mouth on hers, happiness
singing through her every skin cell…
