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Her bedding carried his scent and she buried her nose in a pillow and cried. Was it ridiculous to wonder if his forgetfulness regarding that crucial few hours could be subconsciously deliberate? Maybe he had forgotten about going to bed with her because he didn’t want to remember that it had happened. And maybe fate was giving her a second chance, for what he didn’t recall she didn’t have to worry about. Now she could just go on as if nothing had happened, with the added comfort of not having to fret about what he thought of her for sleeping with him in the first place. Her job was safe.
But no matter how hard Billie worked at putting a positive spin on his inability to recall their short-lived intimacy, she failed to find solace in the fact. And the fear that he might have suffered a more serious injury than he was willing to consider destroyed her ability to sleep. So great was Billie’s concern on that score that she phoned the village doctor as soon as the surgery opened and Dr Melas agreed to come up to the villa and check Alexei out…
Chapter Seven
BILLIE was so tense that even the shallowest breaths were rattling through her lungs at too fast a rate. Lean, strong face set in grim lines, Alexei was seething with her and every inch a Greek tycoon in his proud bearing.
‘You overstepped the mark. You skirt it all the time but today you went too far,’ Alexei delivered in a tone of rebuke and command that was still raw-edged with anger. ‘This is your last warning. Nobody is indispensable, so, if I once gave you the impression that you were, wipe that assumption from your mind. For what I pay you, I could find someone else equally efficient—’
‘Yes, yes, I’m sure you could,’ Billie inserted, her skin clammy with nervous perspiration, for he had never before spoken to her in such a tone or studied her with such censure.
‘Don’t interrupt me when I’m speaking!’ Alexei launched down at her crushingly.
Billie buttoned her mouth up tight and gritted her teeth. She could feel the tears building up behind her eyes, tears of chagrin and hurt and shock at being treated like a lowly office junior who had messed up spectacularly.
‘I did not need or wish to consult Dr Melas this morning. And even had I needed to, it was for me to make that decision,’ Alexei imparted succinctly. ‘You wasted the good doctor’s time. You lack perspective with regard to your role as an employee.’
Billie swallowed back angry defensive words and said with a determined lack of emotion, ‘I was genuinely concerned about your health.’
Alexei dealt her a cold appraisal that cut her to the bone. ‘That’s way beyond your remit.’
‘Yes. It won’t happen again,’ Billie told him woodenly.
Her colour high, she walked straight-backed back through the general office past the business team, who must have heard Alexei raise his voice to her, and returned to her office. Her only consolation was that Dr Melas had called in to talk to her before he left to stress that, although he had got nowhere with Alexei either, she had done the right thing in phoning him. He too wanted Alexei to see a neurologist and have a scan. Of course, wasn’t Alexei just being his usual nonconformist self? Too stubborn to play safe and too convinced of his superhuman health and higher intelligence to take advice from lesser mortals? So that was the end of that road. She had overstepped her boundaries. For the moment, Alexei had forgotten their hours in the guest-suite bed. Would he ever remember? And did she even want him to?
His father’s sudden death had left a couple of important business deals wide open and Alexei went straight to New York with his team to handle the fallout the next day. He stayed there for over a week, putting in workaholic hours, and followed it up with a similar week in London. Being left alone on the island shook Billie, as Alexei rarely left her behind. Her assistant, Kasia, had crumpled under the pressure of working for Alexei and had used her position as a springboard into a less taxing job elsewhere. Billie had yet to hire a replacement. Convinced that a break from her usual routine would do her good, she set off on a quarterly visit to a number of Alexei’s European properties, where she checked out problems, new staff and authorised essential maintenance. She was in Venice, at his ancient palazzo, when Alexei decided to take some time off and cruise the Caribbean in his yacht, Sea Queen. He invited friends on board and several long-distance photos of gorgeous bikini-clad women appeared in the newspapers. Billie’s heart sank like a stone and when she found herself poring over those pictures with a magnifying glass to see if she recognised any of the faces, she realised that jealousy and fear were eating her alive.
Yet how could she fear losing what she had never had? There was no commitment and no security in being a one-
night stand. She’d had her moment and it had lasted for even less time than she might have hoped. And even while she scolded herself for being so foolish, she recognised that she already had a much more serious issue to worry about: her menstrual cycle had stopped dead in its tracks and her period was overdue.
That reality struck horror into Billie’s bones. Furthermore, there was no way she could go down to the village pharmacy and purchase a pregnancy test or visit the doctor without the fear that her movements might become public knowledge. While she trusted Dr Melas, she had less faith in the other surgery staff with access to medical records. Juicy gossip on the island had a way of bypassing all the rules of confidentiality and travelling faster than the speed of light. For that reason, Billie caught the ferry to Athens and bought her pregnancy test there, carrying it out in the privacy of the small hotel room she booked for the night. The result was positive.
In complete shock she sat on the side of the bed and studied the test wand, her green eyes darkening with panic and pain. Now what? Nothing would ever be the same again, she acknowledged sickly. The child of a single parent, who had often mourned the lack of a father in her life, Billie was utterly devastated by this positive confirmation. From her teen years, she had prided herself on her common sense and the restraint she had utilised to ensure that she did not make the same mistakes as her mother had. But, even so, in spite of her awareness of the pitfalls of an unplanned pregnancy, here she was, just like Lauren, alone and pregnant by a man who had made no commitment to her. Her life was suddenly going badly wrong and it was all her own fault for sleeping with Alexei. Billie was appalled by her predicament.
And practising a conveniently short memory in respect of Alexei’s amnesia would no longer be possible: he had made her pregnant. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she rocked back and forth in an unconsciously selfsoothing motion while shame, self-loathing and regret flooded her. She had thought she was so clever, but she hadn’t been half clever enough when it came to looking out for herself and her own interests. They had both been very foolish that night in letting passion triumph to the extent of running the totally unnecessary risk of her conceiving. Now, unhappily, it was evidently time to pay the piper and her reputation, her entire career, were dead in the water. Everyone would think that Alexei had always used her as a convenient body in his bed between affairs and just as many would think she had contrived to fall pregnant with an eye to the main chance. Mortified by that prospect, she breathed in deep. He was due back on Speros the next week and she would have to tell him. What choice did she have?
That it might not be that clear-cut a question became clear during the subsequent days. Panos phoned her from the yacht to ask her to transfer some computer files that were required.
‘Not that I really think we’re likely to need them with the boss otherwise occupied,’ her colleague groaned.
‘What’s he occupied with?’ Billie prompted as her fingers flew nimbly over the keyboard while she searched out the requested files.
‘Not what, who,’ Panos corrected wryly. ‘There’s a new, demanding lady on board Sea Queen and all of a sudden business is taking a back seat. We won’t be back tomorrow. The cruise is being extended.’
In response to that announcement, Billie’s heart started thumping very, very fast, her skin turning clammy. Of course she had guessed that Alexei would soon find a new woman but the reality of it actually happening hurt like hell. In fact she felt as if someone had knocked her chair over and sent her to the floor with a bone-jolting crash. ‘Who is she?’
‘An old flame, but one from well before my time—tall and blonde, with the looks of a supermodel…Calisto Bethune, recently divorced,’ her colleague supplied.
Already winded by that metaphorical crash, now Billie felt as if she were being brutally kicked. She recognised that name, recalled the gossip. Calisto was possibly the only woman alive who had ever passed over Alexei in favour of another man and now it seemed she had returned to take a second bite from the same apple. Gripped by an awful obsessive need to know more, Billie got busy on the Internet and checked out Calisto. Now the childless ex-wife of a Swiss electronics tycoon, she was truly gorgeous, with a perfect face and a perfect body and a similar heritage to Alexei’s own as she was from the upper echelons of Greek society.
Back on Speros that night, Billie phoned her aunt, Hilary, in the UK and talked until she was hoarse about what she had done and how it had all gone hideously wrong. As the sad tale unfolded Hilary made sympathetic sounds and exclamations that allowed Billie to feel that she was no longer quite as alone as she felt.
‘I’ve been worrying about something like this happening for a long time,’ her aunt confessed ruefully. ‘You’re in love with Alexei Drakos and were probably putting out encouraging signals. An opportunistic male like him was certain to take advantage at some stage and the night of the funeral was a given…’
‘I just wanted to be there for him…’
‘Well, don’t be too tough on yourself. Plenty of women have dreamt that same dream as you.’ Hilary sighed with something less than tact. ‘But what’s done is done. Now you need to decide what you want to do and you have to spell out what happened that night to Alexei. Embarrassment shouldn’t come into it. You and that baby you’re carrying need support.’
