Alexei gave her a wicked smile that tilted her heart on its axis and crushed her close to his bare chest. ‘It just gets better and better with you,’ he sighed, dropping a kiss on her parted lips. ‘You’re an amazing find, moraki mou.’
A slew of phone calls disrupted dinner that evening. When Billie asked if there was a crisis of some kind Alexei fended off her questions with a shuttered look on his lean dark features. Bemused by his behaviour, she went to bed alone. In the morning she wakened to the sound of a text reaching her mobile phone and, before she reached for it, noticed to her surprise that the pillow beside hers was untouched. The message was from Hilary. It informed her that Lauren’s story had appeared that morning and Hilary had faxed a copy of the piece to the chateau. It also urged Billie not to pay heed to what her aunt termed ‘spiteful drivel’, but Billie’s apprehension about the unsavoury nature of her mother’s revelations rose to new heights.
A knock on the bedroom door heralded the arrival of a breakfast tray that could only have been ordered for her by Alexei. Striving to remain calm but, for once, impervious to the stunning view, Billie sat out at a table on the wrought-iron girded balcony and ate fresh fruit. She shredded her croissant and then lost interest in eating it while she wondered what tales her mother might have shared with the press. Who would dare to disbelieve stories told by her own flesh and blood? And the answer to that was: anyone who had ever enjoyed a personal acquaintance with Lauren, who was always willing to stretch the boundaries of the truth to make a good story.
The sound of the bedroom door snapping shut made her turn her head. Alexei strolled out onto the stone balcony, a lean powerful figure sheathed in close-fitting beige chino pants and a black T-shirt. Luxuriant black hair glinting in the sunlight, stunning golden eyes semi-screened by spiky dark lashes, he looked jaw-droppingly beautiful to her attentive gaze. Her heart seemed to jump behind her breastbone and her mouth ran dry, but neither appreciative response prevented her from noting that he was pale and tense with just the suggestion of gritted teeth behind the set of his stubborn, passionate mouth.
‘You’ve been reading Lauren’s interview with the Sunday Globe,’ Billie guessed in a hot-cheeked rush. While Hilary had assumed that their location abroad would make it difficult for them to gain easy access to that article, Billie knew that Alexei had the British newspapers flown in every day.
Alexei sent her a questioning glance.
‘Hilary texted me and then faxed a copy here—’
‘It came through but I chucked it in the bin,’ Alexei admitted. ‘It’ll only upset you.’
‘She’s my mother. I have every intention of reading it.’
His brilliant eyes veiled as if he had been prepared for that response. ‘Then you might as well know the worst now. Lauren has accused me of having an affair with Calisto…’
The numbness of shock possessed Billie’s lower limbs and the colour bled from her cheeks. For several deeply unpleasant seconds she felt physically sick and in the act of rising from the chair she dropped down again and gripped the arms with clenched fingers. ‘That may be my fault,’ she muttered with a sudden groan. ‘Before the DNA results arrived and I saw you at Hazlehurst, I saw a photo of you with Calisto in Paris and I have to admit that I was suspicious…’
‘If I had still wanted Calisto, I would never have dumped her in the first place or moved on to marry you,’ Alexei spelt out, his arrogant head held high, his jaw line at an uncompromising angle. ‘You have to learn to trust me, Billie. There will always be allegations of that nature made against me. Like my father, I’ll often be a target and I won’t have that kind of nonsense causing trouble between us. I’ve already called in my lawyers. I intend to sue on this occasion.’
It was at that point that Billie realised that Alexei had sought her out quite deliberately to tell her what was in that article before she could read it. A pre-emptive strike and very much in the bold, buccaneering Drakos style, she reflected painfully. How did she trust a male so clever and manipulative that he even knew how bes
t to sidestep claims of infidelity?
Billie pushed away her plate and got up. Alexei was regarding her with expectancy. Was he expecting an apologetic hug and the assurance that of course she believed him? It hurt that her mother could have plunged them into such a confrontation, but at the back of her mind she couldn’t help thinking that had Alexei been willing to be more frank with her she would never have cherished such qualms about Calisto.
‘I’ll get dressed,’ she said without any expression at all.
‘If you go outside, stay away from the front gates—a bunch of paps are conducting a stake-out.’
‘Oh…’ Biting her lip, Billie looked away, finally registering that Lauren had clearly managed to create quite a splash with her revelations. Her mother, she thought sadly, would be revelling in the limelight. She only hoped that the story Lauren had already sold would be the one and only time she talked about her daughter’s marriage in public. And that when the dust finally settled there would still be a marriage to conserve, she thought painfully.
When she finally held the relevant newspaper in her hand, she felt as if a cold hand were trailing down her spine. ‘I don’t need you hovering!’ she told Alexei, who was poised by a tall window with Nicky clasped in his arms. ‘Certainly not with Nicky in tow. I don’t want him to hear us arguing.’
Level dark golden eyes held hers with fierce determination. ‘Then don’t read it…’
And so intense were his look and tone that she almost succumbed, until common sense warned her that she would not be able to live with her ignorance. The fine bones of her face taut below her skin, she shook her head in urgent dismissal of that advice and walked out to the garden in search of the privacy in which to read.
The hot golden light of noon drained the borders in the walled garden of their vibrant colour and the blessed shade below the oak tree beckoned like a long cold drink in scorching temperatures.
The whole focus of the newspaper article was encapsulated by a devastating photograph of Alexei kissing Calisto in a Parisian street. In total shock at the sight of their two bodies plastered together and so close, Billie flinched and speed-read through the claim that Alexei had plunged back into an affair with Calisto within days of walking out on his bride the previous month. So, it was true, she reflected sickly. There were Calisto and Alexei captured together in black and white, the ultimate proof of infidelity, which even Alexei could not dispute. Evidently all her worst fears had been right on target.
Her heart thudding sickly inside her, she skimmed over the pictures of their son and read on. Surprisingly, Lauren had not overly embroidered the tale of how Billie had come to fall in love with Alexei while she worked for him. She’d described how the stressful hours of Billie’s busy working days had been punctuated with the constant procession of gorgeous women with whom Alexei had amused himself and Billie’s growing heartbreak while she’d watched. Lauren had had a thoroughly cynical take on Alexei’s behaviour and had accused him of having ‘used’ her lovesick daughter for comfort in the wake of his parents’ deaths and then cruelly ditching her when Calisto had reappeared, divorced and available again. Lauren had also implied that he must have known Billie had fallen pregnant and had sent her off on a supposed career break to deliberately conceal the fact.
A slight noise made Billie’s head fly up, green eyes wide and pained when she saw Alexei standing on the gravel path staring at her with a curiously raw expression in his dark eyes.
‘That photo of me kissing Calisto is almost two years old,’ he breathed harshly. ‘There is no affair.’
Unwilling to even listen, Billie turned her bright head away. Whichever way she looked at the problem, Alexei had betrayed her with the other woman, because in forgetting their intimacy after the funeral he had been unfaithful. Was it unjust of her to feel that way when he had given her no promise of commitment or exclusivity that night?
‘Billie…that is an old photo, taken long before our marriage,’ Alexei repeated determinedly.
‘How do I believe that? I mean, I know Calisto was more than willing to renew your relationship, regardless of the fact that you had married me,’ she argued helplessly. ‘She was even grateful I had given you a son because she didn’t want to run the risk of spoiling her figure with a pregnancy—’
Alexei was frowning, ebony brows pleated. ‘When did she tell you that?’