The Pregnancy Shock (4 page)

Was she attracted to Alexei more than she was prepared to admit? Had she been mortally offended by Katia and Kerry because they had shared Alexei’s bed? Was that because in some dim dark corner of her mind she was jealous of the carefree and sexually confident twins? She shuddered at the suspicion. Alexei was as bronzed, beautiful and flawless in feature and physique as a Greek god and she was a flesh and blood ordinary woman who could hardly be impervious to that reality. But being aware that he was a very good looking guy did not mean that she was physically attracted to him,
did it? And even if it did, what did it matter? Nothing was ever likely to come of the fact. Alexei only went for gorgeous women and she was much too sensible to be tempted even if he should have a weak moment in her radius. Mortified by her growing suspicion that she might not be as unprejudiced or as principled as she had fondly believed, Billie lay awake until dawn.

The following day, she returned to Athens and the apartment she shared with two other women. She needed to be on the spot to job-hunt. She put her short-lived job with Alexei into a mental box and hammered it shut, but she soon discovered that the very brevity of her employment with him had harmed her standing in the eyes of others. A month later, she was less angry with Alexei and angrier with herself for damaging her career prospects. By then her proud and impulsive walkout on a matter of principle was beginning to strike her as more foolish than brave.

That was the mood she was in when the doorbell went one evening and she answered it to find one of Alexei’s security team facing her. ‘Mr Drakos would like to speak to you. I have a car waiting outside for you,’ he volunteered before swinging away and heading downstairs, it not even crossing his mind that she might dare to refuse such an invitation.

Billie stepped back into the apartment, glancing at herself in the hall mirror. Her hair, freshly washed, lay in vibrant waves across her shoulders. She was wearing cropped jeans, a sleeveless cotton top and canvas pumps. She lifted her chin. What did Alexei want? She could just say no to the offer of a meeting and then she
would burn with curiosity ever after, she completed ruefully. He could just want to see her about something she had dealt with while she still worked for him. Grabbing her bag, she slammed the door behind her.

Alexei had a ritzy apartment in Athens, just one of the many properties scattered round the world that he owned, since he had already inherited several from his father’s side of the family. She recalled his town house in Venice, a chateau in the south of France, a house in New York, a ski lodge in Switzerland and a ranch in Australia. Taking care of those properties and their staff had been her responsibility and she had been looking forward to visiting each and every one of them at some stage.

Alexei was on the phone chattering in French when she was shown into a massive living area with bold designer furniture and an array of modern art and sculpture. A wide-shouldered, lean-hipped figure clad in linen trousers and an open shirt, Alexei was barefoot and clearly fresh out of the shower. His black hair was still spiky and shiny with moisture, his aggressive jawline rough with the shadow of blue-black stubble that accentuated the wide sensual allure of his masculine mouth.

Just looking at him, she felt his impact like a thud in her ears and a kick in her stomach. He was all rogue male, from his dark-as-midnight eyes heavily fringed by lashes to the slice of torso visible between the unbuttoned edges of his shirt, which revealed a matt of dark curls sprinkled across his bronzed chest and the six-pack stomach that Katia and Kerry had raved about…among other things. Her mouth dry and feeling oddly breathless, Billie squashed those inappropriate thoughts—but
not in time to stop her disobedient gaze dropping to the distinctive masculine bulge at his crotch.

Reddening to the roots of her hair as fully as only a woman of her complexion could, Billie yanked her eyes upward and said jerkily, ‘You wanted to see me?’

He shifted a hand, which urged her to wait until he had finished his phone call and, that fast, she wanted to shout at him again. Her spine stiffened, her full soft mouth compressing, for he had summoned her like a minion across the city at seven in the evening and he was still putting his own wishes first. And it would always be like that, she acknowledged tautly. He was poised there, more beautiful than any mortal male had any right to be, and the world was his oyster because he was a blue-blooded filthy-rich Drakos. In
his
life, people always dropped everything to run and do his bidding. It had been that way for him since he was born.

Constantine Drakos had truly idolised his one and only child. Every cough and sniffle Alexei had suffered had been a major episode for his father. Alexei had had a bodyguard before he could even walk. A weaker child would have been indelibly scarred by such a protected upbringing but Constantine had found that he had a fight on his hands as Alexei had fought his ultra-safe regime every step of the way. He had taken part in dangerous sports at school; he had gone out fishing on the elderly boats of the village fleet; he had learned to sail alone; he had even learned to fly. Full of restive boundless energy, he had always challenged himself and those around him. He’d let nothing and nobody hold him back from what he wanted to be.

‘Sorry about that.’ Alexei sighed, tossing aside the phone. ‘Take a seat.’

Billie sank down onto the sofa behind her, closed her hands together neatly on her lap and sent him an enquiring look.

‘I’ve tried out two personal assistants since you left and rejected both. They couldn’t handle your job—’

‘At the end I couldn’t handle it either,’ she pointed out, and then wondered why she was drawing that failing to his attention again.

‘It is important to me that I don’t have to deal with all the hassle of being a Drakos—the properties, the social invitations, my relatives. I need to concentrate on business,’ he breathed impatiently. ‘When I’m not working, I like a smooth peaceful life. For the six weeks that you were in charge I enjoyed perfect peace. I want you to come back and work for me again.’

Billie was tense: she was flattered and troubled at one and the same time. ‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea—we didn’t gel.’

‘From my point of view, I barely noticed you were around most of the time,’ Alexei volunteered. ‘You’re very quiet.’

Not best pleased to hear that she was just part of the wallpaper as far as he was concerned, Billie met his stunning dark eyes unwarily and her tummy performed a somersault. ‘I assumed that that was what you would want.’

‘Why are you always so tense?’ Alexei demanded with a sudden frown. ‘You were like that around me even when you were a kid. Look at you now—sitting
there as frozen as if you’re waiting to be tipped into a pool of hungry sharks!’

In a defensive move, Billie folded her arms. ‘I never know what you’re going to do or say next. It’s…unnerving.’

‘You could learn to live with it. If you start back to work tomorrow, I’ll double your salary,’ Alexei murmured silkily, watching the sunshine play across the gold and copper shades in her auburn hair, which was much longer than he had appreciated and surprisingly attractive. He went for blondes, not for redheads, but for the first time ever he could see the draw of her striking colouring, particularly in the contrast between her hair and her pale, flawless skin.

‘But I haven’t even said I’ll come back yet and offering to double my salary is just crazy and extravagant!’

His expressive mouth took on a humorous quirk. ‘I can afford to be. If having to occasionally deal with the women in my life is a sticking point, you can hire an assistant to deal with them on your behalf. I don’t care.’

It was a compliment to her efficiency that he should be so keen to have her working for him again. As he smiled that lazy smile and remained poised there in the sunshine pouring through the windows she was, for the first time, hugely conscious of his compelling charm. He was offering her an amazing salary to do a job she enjoyed. With that amount of money coming in, she would no longer need to worry about Lauren falling behind with the rent or not being able to buy her own property.

‘All right,’ Billie said gruffly. ‘I’ll start back tomorrow.’

‘You didn’t get another job, did you?’

‘I couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse for leaving your employ after only six weeks!’ Billie responded with spirit.

Alexei laughed. ‘Where were your wits? You should’ve said I made a pass at you. With my reputation everyone would have believed it.’

Billie turned a slow hot pink and evaded his keen gaze. ‘That idea never occurred to me.’

Probably because it would never have occurred to her either that anyone would
believe
she had actually found his attentions unwelcome and turned him down, Billie acknowledged ruefully…

‘T
HAT
should wrap it up,’ Alexei pronounced, stabbing a final button on the keyboard before pushing away his laptop in a rare gesture of rejection. Rising up, he stretched like a lion, flexing strong muscles bunched up by the constraint of sitting at a desk before shrugging back his sleeve to check the slender gold Rolex on his wrist. It was after one in the morning. ‘You should have told me how late it was.’

Blinking, Billie stifled a yawn. ‘I
did.
’

That quiet rejoinder made his handsome mouth quirk. Billie was the only employee who ever answered him back. He studied her with narrowed eyes, taking in the white sleeveless top she wore and the full rounded thrust of her breasts against the fine cotton that was pulling at the pearl buttons. More than a lush handful, he calculated, pressure building at his groin as he instinctively pictured the baring of her firm pink-tipped flesh. He was startled by his reaction. Evidently, it had been too long since he had been with a woman, he reflected in exasperation.

Even as he looked, Billie was reaching for the jacket she had removed. In the past two years during which Billie had been on his staff, she was always covered up, buttoned up, zipped up, just as her hair was always clipped, plaited or tied—everything held in tight restraint. In an age when other women were happy to reveal as much flesh as possible, Billie’s modesty made her stand out from the crowd. Even when she went swimming she donned a modest black swimsuit that would not have shamed a nun. Yet the feminine my stique she was careful to preserve was strangely and powerfully sexy, Alexei acknowledged. Odd, too, how he felt guilty even thinking about her in such a way. But then he was almost certain that, rare as it would be, Billie was still a virgin.

‘You’ll have to stay here tonight. You can’t disturb your mother this late,’ he commented, lifting the house phone to issue instructions to the housekeeper, Anatalya.

‘I’m sure it won’t bother her if I wake her up,’ Billie protested, uneasy at the prospect of spending the night at the Drakos villa where she generally felt like a peasant-born intruder.

‘Don’t make a fuss,’ Alexei groaned in all-male irritation, silencing her.

Behind his back, Billie flushed at the reproof. The door opened, revealing not the maid she had expected, but Alexei’s mother, Natasha.

‘I’ll show you upstairs,’ the tall, still-beautiful brunette said with an artificial smile. Billie was never more conscious of her humble little-island-girl beginnings than she was in the radius of Alexei’s glamorous and patronising mother.

Alexei said something in Russian to the older woman. Dark eyes warming only as they rested on her only child, Natasha left the room to escort Billie up the palatial staircase. ‘Do you often work this late for my son?’

‘Not that often. But I’m very well paid, Mrs Drakos. Occasional long hours go with the territory,’ Billie pointed out.

A door was pressed open. Rather stiff and taut, Billie walked in. She was always aware that Alexei’s mother didn’t approve of her working for Alexei. She had no idea why, only the vague suspicion that Natasha didn’t think Lauren Foster’s daughter was good enough to work in so trusted a position.

Her reluctant hostess was already turning to leave when Billie noticed the man’s shirt lying discarded on the carpet and put two and two together fast. ‘Is this…Alexei’s room?’ she breathed in dismay.

‘Why, yes, I assumed that…’ Natasha Drakos gave a little suggestive shrug of her slim shoulders.

‘You assumed wrong.’ It was Alexei’s assured drawl from behind the older woman that broke the tension and the brief, awkward silence that had fallen.

Billie’s face was drenched with colour and she could barely bring herself to look at him or his parent. ‘I really think I should go home—’

‘I’m sorry,’ Natasha Drakos murmured. ‘I misunderstood.’

Rather than make more of a scene, Billie allowed herself to be shown into the room next door but she felt humiliated. She was well qualified and she performed her job to the highest standards, for no Drakos had yet
been born capable of accepting shoddy work. Why did Alexei’s mother have to assume that her role automatically extended to warming her son’s bed? That was a very demeaning supposition. Locked in that thought, she was then nonplussed by the discovery that her hostess had yet to leave her alone.

‘You probably think you’re very clever getting so close to Alexei and worming your way into his confidence,’ the older woman breathed with cold dark eyes, her angry hostility laid bare now that her son was no longer within hearing. ‘But you’re wasting your time. He’s a Drakos and, although he’ll think nothing of sleeping with you when there’s not a more attractive prospect available, he’ll never marry beneath him.’

Billie did momentarily toy with the idea of responding with the simple fact that Alexei’s father had done exactly that when he chose to wed his pregnant mistress, a little-known fashion model from a poverty-stricken home in some obscure industrial town in Russia. But Billie had never been bitchy and she was reluctant to rattle Natasha’s cage when she was an increasingly frequent visitor to the villa.

With that acid condemnation, Natasha mercifully departed and Billie exhaled. At least she now knew why Alexei’s mother didn’t like her. She thought Billie was too close to her son and in spite of Alexei’s denial that he and his PA were intimate, Natasha remained unconvinced. Initially, Billie was vaguely amused to think she could figure as a clever, calculating gold-digger in Natasha’s eyes, but she was not at all amused by the
comment that Alexei would only sleep with her if she was the only woman available to slake his high-voltage libido.

How much more hurtful and wounding could one woman be to another? Billie wondered once she had got into the comfortable bed. She was already very much aware that she was not good looking. After all, she had grown up in the shadow of a handsome mother and Alexei’s women were always noted beauties. Billie knew her best points and her worst ones. She was now also wondering if it had been a mistake not to date at least one of the men who had asked her out since she started working for Alexei. Perhaps if, at some stage, she had had a boyfriend Alexei’s mother would not have regarded her with such poisonous suspicion.

Billie lay in the moonlit room and mulled over the awful truth that daily exposure to Alexei had made other men pale by comparison. Alexei had more sex appeal than any man she had ever met. Although she tried not to think about her employer on those terms, he was gorgeous to look at and usually very entertaining to be with, because he was clever, witty and dynamic while also being amazingly attuned to what women liked. Only Alexei would order her a hot chocolate topped with melted marshmallows at the end of a particularly long or difficult day, or send her for a relaxing hot stone massage when she got headaches at that certain time of the month. Times without number he’d picked up on things other men would have failed to notice.

Maybe, Billie began thinking anxiously, it was her own fault that Alexei’s mother had thought it necessary to warn Billie off her son. Maybe her own behaviour was
to blame for Natasha’s belief that she shared Alexei’s bed. Just at that moment it suddenly struck Billie that, for a mere employee, she was far too attached to Alexei. Somewhere down the line her protective barriers had crumbled. Alexei was brilliant in business and working for him was exciting. But she admired him too much, she conceded grudgingly. When once she had disapproved of his energetic sex life, now she turned her head away from the evidence of it, reasoning that his lovers were experienced women who knew the score. When had she started making excuses for his lifestyle?

Just when had she started falling in love with her boss?

Shattered by that belated glimpse into her innermost heart, Billie was furious that she could have been so blind to the feelings she was developing. More than a few of the women Alexei had had affairs with had descended into sobbing heartbreak in front of Billie when his interest had waned. Billie had offered tissues and platitudes in response, protecting Alexei from such aggravations, guarding his privacy as best she could. Why had it taken Natasha’s taunts to make her appreciate that, over the past couple of years, she had got too close to the sun and got burned without even realising it? Was her attachment to Alexei equally obvious to others? Billie cringed, resolving that she needed a little space, time to get a grip on herself and her emotions again. She did not want to turn into one of those sad women who worked for the man they’d loved for years without ever being noticed by him, because being close to him was better than being without him entirely.

When she got up the next day, heavy-eyed from her
lack of sleep, it was to be greeted with the news that she had the day off because Alexei had gone out fishing with his father around dawn. One of the security guards gave her a lift to the village house she had bought for her mother six months earlier. The purchase had not been as straightforward as she had hoped, for at least one local had complained to the Drakos family about a foreigner like Billie being allowed to buy property on Speros and she had little doubt that allegations about Lauren’s morals had also been part of the argument. Thankfully, Constantine Drakos had squashed the protests and approved the sale.

‘My father believes that you and your mother have lived on the island long enough to be viewed as part of the community,’ Alexei had told her.

‘I’m grateful. I just want Lauren to have a secure home that no one can take away from her,’ Billie had confided, not bothering to add that, from her point of view, buying a small house outright was cheaper and safer than trusting Lauren to use the money Billie gave her to pay the rent.

Lauren was delighted with her new home and had gone to unusual effort to furnish and decorate it.

Smiling at the window box of bright geraniums ornamenting the blue-painted front sill, Billie knocked on the rough-wood front door of the tumbledown whitewashed house at the end of a crumbling terrace. Her smile slid away a little when the door was opened by a strange man. Around thirty years old with long brown hair and an unshaven face that made him look more unkempt than trendy, he sported shorts and a T-shirt.

‘You can only be Billie,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Lauren’s in her studio.’

The tiny sunroom at the back of the house had become her mother’s workplace. Her deeply tanned, leggy parent turned from her easel to say, ‘When I saw the yacht had docked in the bay last night I expected you home.’

‘I had to work late. If I’d known you were expecting me I’d have phoned.’ Billie stretched up to dab a kiss on Lauren’s cheek. ‘Who’s your guest?’

‘Dean? He was a deckhand on a boat that called in a few weeks back. We met at the taverna and he decided he’d like to stay a while. I’m enjoying the company. You know how it is,’ her mother told her, shooting a flirtatious glance at Dean, who was stationed in the doorway, denying Billie the privacy she would have preferred with her parent.

‘I’ll just go upstairs and change.’ Billie came to a halt and had to say, ‘Excuse me, Dean…’ before her mother’s boyfriend let her pass.

And, as Lauren had commented, Billie did indeed know how it was when it came to Lauren’s boyfriends. They were usually backpackers, dropouts or seasonal workers, happy to latch onto the chance of free board and lodgings on an idyllic Greek island. Billie could not recall when her mother had last had a guest who contributed in any way to the household budget. But she was determined not to let Dean’s presence spoil her brief stay.

Billie made a salad lunch for the three of them in the kitchen, coolly clad in a pair of shorts teamed with a tankini top. She glanced up while she was setting the
table and noticed that Dean was staring lasciviously at her cleavage. A hot flush marking her cheeks, she looked hurriedly away again. After they had eaten, she said she was going down to the beach and went upstairs to put on a T-shirt. When she came back down again Lauren and Dean were whispering and kissing on the sofa and she couldn’t get out of the house quickly enough.

Not for the first time she wished she had her own bolthole on Speros. If she moved out it would be yet another nail in her mother’s coffin as far as the locals were concerned but after so many years did that really matter? On the other hand, she had very little time off and was usually staying on the yacht or in one of Alexei’s other properties when she was free. How much use would she get out of an independent home on the island? It would not be much of an investment either as privately owned houses on the island had to be offered to the locals first for sale, which kept prices artificially low.

That evening, they dined at the taverna—Billie’s treat, of course. By then she was noticing that her easy-come-easy-go mother seemed unusually keen on Dean, and that Dean drank too much and talked too loudly. Billie was revolted by the way he kept on staring at her breasts and the jokes he began to crack about busty women. She went to bed early and stirred only when her door opened some hours later.

‘Mum?’ she mumbled, drowsily trying to unclog her lashes to open her eyes when the side of the bed gave as someone came down on the mattress and tilted it.

The smell of beer and male sweat assailed her in warning a split second before a bristly jaw line made
scratchy contact with her cheek. ‘It’s Dean,’ her mother’s boyfriend whispered thickly. ‘Keep your voice down or you’ll wake your ma, and we don’t want to do that, do we?’

The instant he made physical contact her eyes flew wide in panic and her arms flailed wildly to push him away from her while her body frantically squirmed and heaved up to escape the weighty imprisonment of his body lying half over hers. ‘Get off me!
Get out!
’ she screamed at the top of her voice.

Within thirty seconds Lauren was in the room demanding to know why her boyfriend was falling off the end of her daughter’s bed. Her mother had had a great deal to drink as well and the older woman lost no time in accusing Billie of trying to steal her man. In the midst of the resulting madness, in which her mother slapped her face hard, Billie got out of bed, gathered up her clothes, fought past Lauren’s hysterical attempt to hold onto her and escaped into the bathroom to get dressed. By the time she emerged, her mother was shouting at her to get out of her house and never come back and the neighbours were banging on the party wall in complaint. Billie paused only long enough to grab up her bag, which she had not unpacked, and her phone.