‘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 a
stonishment. 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.