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‘McGregor phoned me.’ His probing gaze a clear hot gold, Alexei came down on the bed on his knees beside her, suddenly, disturbingly close. But where Dean had brought her out in a cold sweat of fear and disgust, Alexei sent her heart racing in an all-out sprint.
‘Why did the Captain phone you?’ Billie dragged in a feverish breath, a bubble of heat bursting low in her tummy when she collided with his level golden gaze.
‘My goodness, I’m so sorry you were disturbed, Alexei. I seem to be causing an awful lot of trouble, but I only needed a bed for the night and I couldn’t face your mother. I’m sure she would’ve thought I was being cheeky turning up at the villa,’ Billie gabbled, embarrassed and scarcely knowing what she was saying
His brilliant scrutiny oddly intent, Alexei lifted a bronzed long-fingered hand to turn her face into the pool of light shed by the lamp. His sleek ebony brows pleated and a stifled Greek curse escaped his taut mouth. ‘McGregor phoned me because he could see that you had been attacked and naturally he was concerned.’
‘Attacked?’ she echoed in consternation.
‘You have a long scratch and blood on your cheekbone and I suspect you may have a black eye by morning,’ Alexei enumerated in curt explanation. ‘Have you any other injuries?’
Billie lifted a tremulous hand and let the pads of her fingers brush the swelling soreness of her cheekbone. She had not even looked in a mirror since boarding. ‘No. I’m perfectly fine.’
‘You’d tell me that if you were lying here dying!’ Alexei vented, unimpressed by that assurance. ‘What happened? Who did this to you? Get over the idea that it’s not done to admit to being hurt!’
‘I really appreciate your concern but I’d prefer not to talk about it,’ Billie mumbled, her eyes stinging like mad beneath her lowered lashes, because his concern on her behalf was more than she could bear while the thought of sharing such a kitchen-sink family drama with him just made her want to cringe in humiliation.
‘Save the nonsense for fools. Talk,’ Alexei instructed in an emphatic growl of threat that ratcheted up her tension and widened her gaze to focus on the harsh set of his darkly handsome features.
‘Storm in a teacup,’ she said shakily. ‘Mum’s boyfriend made a pass at me. He’d been drinking and he came into my room and lay down on my bed while I was sleeping—’
‘He…did…what?’ Alexei roared, springing back upright and glowering down at her in angry disbelief. ‘You could have been raped!’
‘But I wasn’t. He gave me such a fright I screamed at him, and that woke Lauren up and she stormed in and misread the situation…’ Billie was becoming too uncomfortable to hold his gaze. ‘She slapped me—’
‘Blamed you as well, no doubt,’ Alexei incised with a gritty lack of hesitation. ‘Why on earth did you waste your money buying her a house?’
‘She’s my mother and I know she’s not perfect, but she’s the only one I’ll ever have,’ Billie proffered, tight-mouthed.
‘She’s no mother at all when there’s a man in the equation,’ Alexei derided. ‘If you had been more aware of your own interests you would have bought that house for your own use. You shouldn’t be under the same roof as her.’
After Lauren’s attack and abuse, Billie wondered if she ever would be under the same roof again. That violent response from her mother had gouged a big hole in Billie’s heart. She knew alcohol had probably had a lot to do with her mother losing her head but it still hurt that Lauren could trust a man she had only met a few weeks ago more than she trusted her daughter.
‘Well, it’s too late now,’ she muttered ruefully.
His attention still nailed to her swollen face and reddened eyes, Alexei breathed grimly. ‘We’ll see.’
Another knock sounded on the door and Alexei opened it to reveal the familiar, careworn face of the island doctor. The older man was taken aback by the state of Billie’s face and, with all the assurance of someone who had known her as a child, he told her not to be silly when she insisted that an examination was unnecessary. He checked her eye and a steward brought a cold pack to help reduce the swelling. The doctor’s probing revealed no further injury and the cut was minor enough to require no further attention.
‘Now go to sleep,’ Alexei instructed, leaving the cabin in the older man’s company as soon as Billie had swallowed the painkillers she had been given. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’
Billie could not think what they could possibly have left to discuss. She lay curled up in the bed, tears seeping from below her lowered eyelids and stinging her sore face. She heard the doctor leave on the launch and its return when the sun was high in the sky because sleep had evaded her once again. A cup of tea was brought to her and she peered at her reflection in the mirror in horror: she looked a sight with one eye half shut by purple bruising and swelling that had destroyed the symmetry of her face. The phone by her bed buzzed.
Sunglasses firmly attached to her nose, she went up to the main deck to join Alexei for breakfast. He was on the phone and, sketching a movement with an imperious brown hand, he indicated that she go ahead and eat without waiting for him to join her. There were a couple of faces at the windows of his office and she reddened, knowing that the breakfast invite would be viewed as a sign of favouritism by the rest of the team, while anxiously wondering if word of her sudden arrival on board the yacht in the middle of the night had spread among the crew.
Alexei’s dark rich masculine drawl took on the subtle change that warned her that he was talking to a woman. In Spanish? She had learned to recognise a number of the languages he spoke even if she couldn’t speak them herself. He could well be talking to the actress, Lola Rodriquez, whom he had recently met in London. It was none of her business, Billie told herself urgently, squashing the beginnings of an envious daydream in which she, got up in a fabulous dress, dined out with Alexei, leaving him open-mouthed in admiration over her looks, her wit and her sex appeal.
‘Let me see you,’ Alexei urged, bending down to filch the sunglasses off her nose and inspect her battered face in the full unforgiving light of day.
Mercifully unaware of the heights her imagination could take her to, Alexei grimaced. ‘Nasty. It’ll be a few days before you look normal again.’
Billie snatched back her sunglasses and replaced them on her nose with a shaking hand. His input on how she looked was overkill, for wasn’t she already wincing over the rainbow bruising round her eye and the swelling distorting her face?
‘Your mother’s boyfriend is gone,’ Alexei informed her.
Her brow furrowed. ‘Gone? Where? What are you talking about?’
‘I dealt with him.’
