His brow furrowed. Why the hell was he even still thinking about her? His common sense and practicality did not seem to be the equal of hers, he registered grimly. His libido had him over a barrel. He would have sacrificed their working relationship in a second, had she been waiting in the cabin bed for him…and to hell with the immorality, inconvenience and poor long-term outlook of it all!
Three months after that day, Billie went out on a date with a charming Italian businessman called Pietro Castronovo. He took her out to dinner in a very fancy Florentine restaurant where she toyed with food that was too rich for her taste and tried to respond to his flirtatious chatter.
At ten o’clock, Alexei rang her and wrecked the evening. ‘You should have checked with me before you went out. Pietro is a married man with two kids.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Billie murmured flatly.
‘I’ve got some work for you to do.’
‘Right now, I’m on an evening out,’ she responded thinly.
‘Surely you’re not planning on spending any more time with a married man?’ Alexei enquired sardonically.
Billie came off her phone and apologised to Pietro for having answered it. ‘I always take Alexei’s calls.’
‘You stand very high in his regard,’ Pietro commented.
Billie breathed in deep. ‘Are you married?’
Her companion’s thin, good-looking face tightened and she knew the answer before he even parted his lips and acknowledged that he was. ‘I should have asked,’ she said ruefully. ‘I wouldn’t be here if I had known.’
Pietro tried to dissuade her from cutting the evening short, but Billie stood firm and wondered why she was so much angrier with Alexei than with Pietro. After all, Alexei’s warning had been a timely one, coming as it did before she could get any more involved with the handsome Italian. But, somehow, being saved at the eleventh hour from a mistake by a male who had very few morals of his own simply incensed Billie.
When she returned to the penthouse hotel suite Alexei was occupying, Alexei was at work with the rest of the team. She sent him an accusing glance but would not have dreamt of telling him how she felt about his previous phone call in front of an audience. When the business was dealt with, he called her back before she could leave.
‘Did you shake Castronovo off? He was born with the gift of the gab,’ Alexei said very drily. ‘I should have warned you about him.’
‘I am able to look after myself,’ Billie told him starchily. ‘Thank you for the warning on this occasion, but please don’t interfere like that again.’
‘Naturally I interfered. I knew that you wouldn’t intentionally date a married man.’
There was a little devil inside Billie’s head and it deeply resented his assumption that she would never do anything untoward. ‘Actually, that’s not necessarily one hundred per cent true.’
‘You were back at the hotel within thirty minutes of my phone call,’ Alexei countered with dark amusement. ‘Don’t be ashamed of your principles. Too many people have none at all.’
And still she had wanted to slap him. Her long-overdue venture onto the dating scene had gone belly-up and left her with egg on her face. The person she most hated for his interference was, without a shadow of a doubt, Alexei. She would never choose to date another woman’s husband, but Alexei had once again managed to make her feel a fool.
Eight months after that mortifying evening, Billie was in a better mood. She was sitting in her office in the Drakos villa on Speros, watching beautiful people through the windows. Got up in their fabulous evening outfits, the guests were laughing and drinking on the terrace outside the entertainment suite. The party she had arranged for Constantine’s eightieth birthday was a huge success. Having made an appearance as instructed and stayed around long enough to check that the party schedule was running smoothly, Billie had bowed out to finish off some work.
In recent months her working hours had been very long, even though she now enjoyed the services of an assistant because her duties currently stretched to taking charge of Alexei’s parents’ social and travel arrangements as well. At the same time, she was making a hundred and one decisions about the building of her new house, which was currently two-thirds of the way towards being completed. She had picked the doors, the door handles, the bathroom and kitchen fittings and tiles. By spring the following year, she would be living under her own roof and could still hardly believe it.
In the planning stage the house had been a nightmare. Since anyone doing anything on Speros always looked first to the local community to supply services and skills, she had hired the island architect, Damon Marios, to design her new home. Damon, long since married and the father of two sturdy children, was still a friend. Alexei, however, had insisted on seeing the plans and changing things, pointing out that if he had an interest in the house, he also had the right to voice his viewpoint and ensure that the property was worthy of the site.
‘I wanted something that fitted in with the island architectural style,’ Billie had argued, fighting for the simple little cottage that Damon had designed.
‘There is no style here. A century ago, dirt-poor people built dwellings that were the cheapest of the cheap,’ Alexei had derided, urging Damon to use a little creativity and open up windows and doors to the fabulous views in a much more contemporary—and expensive—approach.
‘Plain can be stylish,’ Billie had said sharply.
‘No wonder people talk about you and Alexei,’ Damon had remarked in the aftermath of hearing that rough-edged exchange of views between them. ‘I can’t believe the way you argue with him.’
‘It may be an unconventional working relationship but it works well for us,’ Billie declared lightly.
It had been easy to silence Damon, make him cloak the curiosity she saw in his eyes, for he was too polite to persist. She was accustomed to being questioned about Alexei and her relationship with him. Just about everyone was madly curious about Alexei: how he lived, what made him tick, his women, his houses, his yachts and his sporting prowess. He provided an endless stream of fascination for others. Since he had taken the helm of Drakos Shipping, he had become a hugely powerful tycoon. The richer he became, the more the media wanted to know about him and the less they found out, because Alexei didn’t grant interviews. Paparazzi lay in wait for his every public appearance but his brutally efficient security team barred and evaded their invasions. Some of his lovers had, of course, gone to the press to sell stories, acts of betrayal that had only increased the level of interest in him and his lifestyle.
‘Billie!’ A voice intervened, separating Billie from her thoughts and making her look up from her computer screen to smile in some dismay at the slender brunette in her fifties framed in the doorway. ‘I knew you would sneak off to work!’ Natasha Drakos scolded. ‘Come back to the party, please.’
Billie surrendered gracefully; Alexei’s mother was a strong-willed woman. From the moment Alexei had taken over the family shipping business, Billie had started working long hours in the office suite at the Drakos villa and inevitably the two women had got to know each other better. While her son flew one woman after another out to Speros for entertainment during his hours of leisure, Natasha had soon realised that she had nothing