by Lynne Graham
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.
