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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?’
‘When I saw her in Paris. She said you wouldn’t leave me with custody of Nicky, that you would take him off me and that she was willing to help you bring him up!’
Alexei stared at her in frank disbelief. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before? How could you listen to such ridiculous lies?’ he demanded accusingly. ‘I know how much you and my son mean to each other. No matter what happens between us, I would never part you from him—’
‘You parted us a month ago,’ Billie reminded him.
‘For a matter of hours, and only to get you here in order to give our marriage a fighting chance!’ Alexei protested in heated disagreement. ‘You’re a wonderful mother and our son will always need you. How could you have listened to Calisto’s poisonous claims?’
‘How could you put her in your house in Paris and expect me to accept it?’
His dark gaze gleaming golden, Alexei flung up lean brown hands in a furious show of frustration. ‘Because I owed her! I was the one who changed my mind about our relationship. She didn’t change, I did. In the name of God, Billie, how could you not have told me about what happened between us after the funeral? Didn’t it occur to you that I might have forgotten but that I might feel that I had lost something, even if I didn’t know what that something was?’
Wide-eyed and shaken by that counter charge, Billie watched him stride closer. ‘Lost something?’ she repeated uncertainly. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean—’
‘We forged a connection that night deep enough to haunt me when I lost it again,’ Alexei argued. ‘But I had to remember how I felt that night to realise why I’d ended up charging into a rebound affair with Calisto.’
‘You’re saying you remember being with me that night now?’ Billie questioned weakly. ‘If that’s true, why didn’t you tell me?’
Alexei released a shaken laugh that carried more bitterness than amusement. ‘Why did it never occur to you that I would be ashamed of what I would remember of that night?’
Her brow indented. Ashamed? She almost bleated out the word again in dismay, but she was fed up of trying and failing to guess what he meant and this time she said nothing.
‘Of course, I was ashamed,’ Alexei grated in a low driven voice. ‘I took advantage of you.’
Tenderness touched her frantic thoughts, slowing the flow of them. ‘No, you didn’t. You were lonely, shaken up, vulnerable…’
‘And I took advantage of you just like your mother has accused me of doing,’ Alexei completed resolutely. ‘But on the same night while I was with you I realised that I was very probably in love with you and that I had been for some time.’
Blinking rapidly, Billie gazed back at him with frowning force. ‘But that’s not possible!’
‘You got under my skin…you infiltrated me and I didn’t even know it was happening to me,’ Alexei bit out with annoyance at his lack of self-knowledge on that score. ‘Suddenly I was always comparing other women to you and you were winning hands down in every comparison—sex was just the next natural step that night but that shouldn’t have been how it happened between us.’
‘You weren’t in love with me,’ Billie told him flatly. ‘And how else should we have become intimate? One doesn’t always plan these things.’
‘You deserved more from me than what you got that night when I was drunk and confused and more than a little spooked by the weird way I was feeling,’ Alexei extended wryly. ‘When I was willing to wait until we were married—that respect and patience was a better demonstration of how I should have treated you from the first, agapi mou.’
My love, he’d called her, and Billie co
uld hardly get her head around the staggering declaration engrained in that endearment. Her attention locked to his lean darkly handsome features, she breathed uncertainly. ‘I just don’t believe what I’m hearing from you!’
‘When I fell down the steps and hit my head outside the guest suite, I forgot more than what we shared in your bed that night,’ Alexei continued vehemently. ‘I forgot how happy I was, how convinced I’d become that I had finally found the right woman for me. Why the hell do you think that I took the risk of making love to you without contraception? That was so out of character for me, it should have screamed at you and convinced you that I was planning a lot more than a brief sexual encounter with you!’
And there was so much truth in that contention that Billie finally allowed herself to listen. In truth, she had noticed that he was not quite himself that night and some of the stuff he had said to her had seemed to indicate a greater degree of involvement with her than she might have expected. But she had been quick to dismiss any such hopes, even quicker to assume the worst of a male who had apparently so often treated sex like a takeaway meal—cheap and disposable and forgettable. Her own cynicism and low expectations, she recognised ruefully, had combined to ensure that she was reluctant to confront him with the facts of their intimacy. In the expectation of disillusionment, she had ironically ensured that disillusionment was exactly what she had received.
‘I just assumed it would mean nothing to you and that maybe you forgot because you didn’t want to remember it.’
Alexei compressed his lips. ‘There may be some truth in that angle, but not on the score of what happened between us. A few weeks ago, I did consult a psychiatrist about those hours I couldn’t remember and he suggested that my mind could be reluctant to recall my grief for my parents that night. He was of the opinion, however, that since I had already contrived to recall one moment of those missing hours, I would eventually remember more. I did consider having hypnotherapy…’
‘I had no idea you were that bothered about not having those memories,’ Billie confided.
