AllFreeNovel
Share Us
lexei released his breath in an impatient hiss. ‘Anatalya told me that you’ve been unwell for quite a few weeks. I would have preferred to hear that from you.’
Billie’s face flamed and then lost colour again. Her entire skin surface dampened with nervous tension below her clothing. How foolish of her to overlook the likelihood that the housekeeper would notice the attacks of nausea she had tried so hard to conceal!
‘Did you consult the doctor?’
‘Er…no,’ she admitted grittily.
‘So I’m not the only person around here who avoids medical advice,’ Alexei noted mockingly.
‘I caught a bug and it took a while to shake off. That’s all,’ Billie retorted with a jerky lift of her shoulders that dismissed the topic as trivial. ‘I’m fine now.’
That weekend she flew to London to check that the events planner, Janine, had all the arrangements in hand for Calisto and Alexei’s party. The ballroom of Alexei’s town house was exquisitely decorated for an event that promised to be the most fashionable of the season. Billie checked her profile in a mirror, noting with relief that the loose jacket of her suit still concealed her thickening waistline and softly curving stomach. Mercifully, she had got over her nausea and at three months pregnant was now anxiously noticing that the changes in her shape were beginning to accelerate. She reckoned that within another six weeks other people might begin to suspect her secret. Within the next fortnight she would have to tackle Alexei about her proposed career break. In readiness, she had already advertised for a new assistant to be trained up to take over during her absence.
She was walking through the back door of the ballroom when she heard a woman calling Janine’s name.
‘Calisto…’ Janine was saying in a rather strained welcome; the party planner had confided to Billie that Calisto kept on changing her mind about what she wanted.
Billie spun around and glanced back apprehensively over her shoulder. Calisto was casually turned out in a red dress, a black leather jacket and high-heeled sandals. Even at a glance the Greek woman was a striking beauty with a magnificent blonde mane of hair and amazingly long legs. Billie had only to think of those incredible legs wrapped round Alexei’s lean bronzed body to feel sick and she backed away from the door before she could be seen and walked hurriedly away. Once again she had avoided a face-to-face meeting with Alexei’s fiancée. She had twice sidestepped encounters on the yacht. Indeed, since Calisto’s appearance on the scene, Billie had stayed very much in the background of Alexei’s life and he had yet to bring Calisto back to Speros for a visit. But then, the happy couple were both very busy people who spent a lot of time on board Sea Queen. Calisto, whose once stalled career had taken off again on the strength of her new high profile with Alexei and his A-list friends, was currently accepting modelling assignments across the globe.
Billie had arranged to spend the weekend with Hilary. Her aunt’s husband—John—had passed away a month earlier and although Billie had flown over to the UK to attend the funeral she had not been able to stay on. But in spite of the open invitation to all his personal staff she had no intention of attending Alexei’s family party. She was jealous and hurting inside and no matter how hard she fought not to feel and think that way she was failing.
‘I’ve decided that I’m coming to Greece,’ Hilary informed her niece. ‘Once your baby’s born, I’ll put this house up for rent so that I have somewhere to come back to if I want to.’
Billie hugged her aunt. ‘It’ll make such a difference to my life and to the baby’s. I just hope you’re not only doing this for my sake.’
‘Of course I’m not. I’m planning to write a book on King Henry IV and the House of Lancaster. Ever since university I’ve wanted to do it. I’ll be able to do my research over the next few months with the help of the Internet,’ the older woman told her with an enthusiasm that Billie hadn’t seen her show in years.
‘I’ll be able to help you,’ Billie added. ‘I won’t have much else to do while I’m getting through the rest of my pregnancy.’
But that prospect seemed a blessing once she saw a photo of Calisto in the fabulous ball gown she had worn for the party in the next day’s newspaper. In every way Alexei was fulfilling his destiny. His family expected him to marry a woman as large as life as he was himself and Calisto, with her beauty, fame and connections, certainly fitted the bill. Billie felt another crack form in her breaking heart. She was beginning to marvel that she had ended up in bed with Alexei in the first place. That could surely only have happened because he was drunk and grieving, which was neither a comforting nor ego-boosting suspicion for her to hold.
Two weeks later, Billie was in Milan with Alexei when she broached the subject of her career break over the working lunch they were sharing.
Alexei glanced up to study her with frowning force. Her burnished copper streaked hair glinting in the sunshine, she tilted her heart-shaped face back and looked back at him with wide wary eyes as green as limes. ‘Surely this is very sudden?’ he queried. ‘Where has this idea come from?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’d like to spend some time back in England with my aunt. She could do with the support.’
‘She lost her husband recently,’ Alexei recalled, surprising Billie. ‘Well, I have every sympathy, but I’m not prepared to tolerate some idiot trying to do your job for the next six months—’
‘For a minimum of eight months,’ Billie corrected before he could contrive to try and bargain down the duration of her absence. ‘I need a break, Alexei…I really do need the break.’
‘I don’t understand why.’
‘I would come back to work refreshed.’
From below lush black lashes that any woman would have killed to possess, Alexei looked her over with keen bronze-coloured eyes of enquiry. He didn’t think she looked in need of refreshment, although he was prepared to admit that she had got a little too thin in recent months, so that her clothes seemed to have become too big for her slight frame. He sensed that something was being concealed from him. ‘What’s really wrong?’
Her gaze took on an evasive slant. ‘I just want a break and…’ in a nervous flicker of motion her tongue crept out to moisten her dry lips as she braced herself to tell her first lie ‘…my aunt is pregnant and alone and she could do with my support.’
Alexei watched stinging colour warm her cheeks and wondered why she was blushing. Perhaps it was not the late husband’s posthumous baby but the result of a fling with someone else since. He suppressed a sigh: Billie to the rescue. That made perfect sense to him. His wide sensual mouth flattened. ‘I don’t want you to take a break now. I consider you a vital member of my staff.’
‘You’ve met Olympia. I’m training her to take my place.’
‘Olympia skulks behind doors when I’m around. That isn’t promising—’
‘But that’s better than a young woman who continually throws herself in your path,’ Billie pointed out, well aware of how often that desire afflicted women in his radius and of how exasperating he found such behaviour. Yet she had never had the heart to judge a single one of those women when she herself had always been far too susceptible to Alexei’s charisma.
‘I can tell you now that Olympia won’t cut it,’ Alexei told her very drily.
