In her eagerness to persuade him, Billie leant forward. ‘I’m not lying and maybe you’ll understand that better once I’ve told you everything—’
Dense ebony lashes screening his stunning eyes to a dangerous gleam of gold, his lean dark features were a mask of disdain. ‘Everything?’ Alexei repeated with a saturnine look of mockery that sent the blood drumming heavily into her cheeks. ‘What other strange fantasies have you dreamt up for my amusement?’
That piece of ridicule made Billie want to slap him hard. Her fingers clenched tightly together on that dangerous impulse. ‘Maybe I was wrong not to tell you the truth months ago, but once you met Calisto the whole situation changed and I didn’t feel I had any choices left. I assumed you were in love with her—you pretty much told me you were going to marry her. I had just discovered that I was pregnant. I was planning to tell you but you couldn’t even remember sleeping with me—’
Black brows pleating together, Alexei cut boldly into that recitation. ‘You were pregnant? By whom?’
Billie flung him a fevered glance of frustration. ‘You’re not that slow on the uptake—I conceived on the night of the funeral; I fell pregnant by you. You may not remember it but we made love twice without precautions.’
Alexei released his breath in a sharp exhalation, his instant dismissal of that possibility clear by his expression.
‘Hilary’s son is actually my son,’ Billie spelt out, refusing to be daunted by that discouraging silence. ‘He’s my baby. I gave birth to him while I was on my career break in London. The only reason I asked for the leave was so that I could conceal my pregnancy.’
His brilliant eyes suddenly shimmered like a firework display, his outrage at what she was saying etched into every harshening angle of his lean darkly handsome features. ‘Hilary’s child is yours? You are telling me that you have actually given birth to a baby? That you deliberately concealed that fact from me and let me go ahead and make you my wife?’ he roared at her in a sudden wrathful attack that made her shrink back momentarily into the shelter of her seat, shaken by his vehemence. ‘And now you dare to try and pass off some other man’s child as mine?’
Rigid with tension and with perspiration dampening her brow, Billie faced him. ‘It’s not like that at all. Nicky is your son. I’ve never been with another man.’
Alexei wasn’t really listening. What he had learned was sufficient for him to make a judgement. A red mist of rage was burning through his brain while he struggled to put together what she had told him. His bride was a mother…she had a child? Appalled by that revelation, he remembered the seam of scar tissue low on her abdomen, which only hours earlier she had passed off as ‘a gynaecological thing’. A Caesarean scar, he guessed, for the first time seeing a solid foundation to what had initially struck him as incredible claims. He could not at first get over his sense of shock that she could have concealed so much from him and even the most cursory appraisal of the past year or so warned him that Billie must have spun him an elaborate ongoing pack of lies in an outrageous attempt to pass off her child as his. Of course, she was anything but stupid. She knew that that was the only circumstance that might give her the hope that he wouldn’t divorce her.
Golden eyes steadily chilling to the temperature of a sunlit iceberg, Alexei surveyed her. ‘What a devious little schemer you are! You have the nerve to sit there looking me in the eye while you confess that you lied and cheated your way to the altar knowing that I would never have married you had I known the truth about you!’
Billie leapt up, her long, thick, wine-red hair rippling like bright ribbons across her shoulders and sliding across her cheekbones to highlight her pallor. ‘That’s not how it was, Alexei. There were lies and I’m sorry for that, but there was no cheating. Nicky is your son. How was I supposed to persuade you of that fact when you couldn’t even recall being with me?’
‘I assume yo
u have heard of DNA testing?’
Hotspots of pink deepened the hue of Billie’s cheeks in reaction to that unexpected taunt.
‘This kid is…what age?’ Alexei queried.
‘He’s four and a half months old. But when he was born you were still with Calisto and thinking about marrying her,’ Billie referred to his ex-girlfriend, Calisto Bethune, with a heavy heart. ‘I didn’t want to cause trouble. I saw no benefit to anyone in doing that. It seemed to me,’ she continued painfully, ‘that you didn’t want to remember being with me, and that probably everyone concerned would be happier if that night remained a secret.’
‘I don’t believe for one moment that your child is mine,’ Alexei declared with icy conviction. ‘I refuse to believe it. I hope you don’t plan to take these insane stories into court with you. You will make a laughing stock of yourself—’
‘Into…court?’ Billie echoed shakily. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Do I really need to spell out the fact that what you’ve just told me is grounds for divorce?’
Billie turned as cold as though he had just plunged her into an ice bath, consternation and shock gripping her hard. ‘I know that you’re shocked by what I’ve told you—’
‘Of course I’m shocked by the image of you, your mother and your aunt plotting against me like Macbeth’s three witches! ‘Alexei derided with ferocious bite.
Billie’s temper flared and she flew upright. ‘It’s ridiculous to talk like that. Nobody plotted against you! When I persuaded Hilary to pretend that Nicky was her child, my only motivation in doing so was to hide Nicky’s parentage and protect you.’
‘You wanted to protect me? ‘Alexei exclaimed harshly, his contempt for that claim unconcealed. ‘Even now in the midst of your attempt to palm off your bastard child on me, you can’t tell me the truth! My proposal of marriage was what motivated your lies and deception—’
‘How could it have been?’ Billie flung back fierily, standing her ground to challenge him. ‘My pretence that Nicky was my aunt’s child began when I first told you that she was pregnant and asked for a career break. And that was months before you even considered marrying me!’
Stumped by that inescapable fact, Alexei studied her with enraged hauteur, his glittering gaze bright against his superb bone structure. ‘You lied to me and you deceived me over a very long period—’
‘But not with any malicious intent!’ Billie rushed to interpose, desperation racking her with a level of fear that did nothing to clarify her state of mind. ‘I admit that I should have told you about Nicky before the wedding but I didn’t have the guts—’
‘Naturally avarice and ambition won out over honesty. Why? Only because you knew there would be no wedding if you told me the truth about yourself.’
‘The very last thing I have ever wanted from you is money!’ Billie launched back at him, angrily objecting to that base accusation. ‘And don’t refer to my son as a bastard ever again. However he was born, whoever he is, I love him and I’m proud of him. If you think so badly of me, how could you make love to me again?’
That emotive demand made Alexei’s jaw square and he sent her a flashing look of scorn. ‘That was just sex, a primitive urge for physical release, nothing more complex.’