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 o
f 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.’