‘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.