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A loud rata-tat-tat on the door made her sit up with a start against the headboard. ‘Come in!’ she called with a frown; even that movement of her face hurt.
She was shocked when Alexei strode through the door looking rather less elegant and laid-back than was his wont. His black hair was tousled, he needed a shave and he was wearing jeans and a half-buttoned white dress shirt below a dinner jacket.
‘What are you doing on board?’ Billie burst out.
‘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.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Billie queried nervously.
‘I took the launch back to the harbour with the doctor last night and confronted the man to tell him to leave.’
Billie rammed back her chair to stand up. ‘You had no right to interfere!’
‘Your mother is full of apologies but she caught the ferry with him this morning. The neighbours are up in arms and I think she decided that a short break from island life was in order.’
‘Oh, my goodness!’ With a groan of protest, Billie flung herself back down in her chair. ‘What on earth did you say to Mum?’
‘That if she ever hurt you again she would be charged with assault—’
A whimper of dammed-up fury and frustration escaped Billie. ‘It was none of your business!’ she bawled back at him. ‘How dare you?’
‘It’s how we deal with problems on Speros—you know it is. Every community must have rules. Lauren’s boyfriend could have raped you, although the neighbours are so nosy I think you would have been rescued before he got very far,’ Alexei conceded with a gleam of dark sardonic humour in his unrepentant gaze. ‘All that matters is that he is no longer on the island and he won’t dare to come back.’
‘But Lauren’s gone as well, driven out of her own home!’ Billie condemned emotively.
‘Your mother will be back, don’t worry. She’s too clever to abandon the easy life she has here, thanks to you,’ Alexei countered carelessly, his interest in the subject patently on the wane. ‘However, I’ve come up with a solution to your problems.’
‘I don’t have any problems,’ Billie told him stonily, abandoning the table and turning on her heel to head back at speed to her cabin.
‘Billie!’ Alexei breathed rawly. ‘Get back here right now!’
Trembling with fury over his meddling in her private life, Billie was outraged by that glossy impenetrable Drakos assurance that made Alexei believe that he could do whatever he wanted to do, particularly on Speros. But the particular note of command in his strong voice stopped her dead. She could storm off but where to and why? They had gone toe to toe once before and, though she might have got her job back, she knew her tycoon boss well enough to know that it had been a one-chance-only deal. Slowly, as if every movement physically hurt, Billie turned round again.
‘Finish your breakfast,’ Alexei told her harshly, his exasperation unconcealed. ‘We’re leaving the ship in ten minutes.’
Clashing with the warning in his hard dark eyes, Billie breathed in slow and deep, suddenly aware that the exchange was taking place right outside the office windows and marvelling that she could have forgotten the fact that they had an audience. Her spine as stiff as a steel pole, she took her seat again. A steward poured her tea and Alexei’s coffee. She had to force herself to eat as all appetite had fled…
CHAPTER FOUR
A FOUR-WHEEL-DRIVE vehicle collected Alexei and Billie at the harbour. Billie was observing a rigorous silence.
‘I’ve never known you to sulk before,’ Alexei murmured with withering bite.
Her teeth were clenched together so hard that she was surprised they didn’t chip. ‘As far as I’m concerned you invaded my private life last night in a way that you had no right to do,’ Billie responded brittlely.
Alexei closed a hard hand over hers and pulled on it to make her turn round and look at him. His heavily lashed golden eyes struck hers boldly head-on. ‘I did what had to be done. You have no father, no brother, no other male relative or boyfriend, who can protect your interests. In their absence I count myself a friend as well as an employer. I took care of Dean Evans in a way that he understood.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ A suspicion belatedly occurred to Billie and she gave him a shocked appraisal. ‘Surely you didn’t hit him?’
‘Did you think that I would shake hands with him for what he did?’ Alexei flung his handsome dark head back, his stunning bone structure full of proud challenge. ‘Yes, I hit him.’
In mute despair, Billie shook her vibrant head, the bright hair she had left loose to hide her swollen face behind rippling round her cheekbones. She said nothing, knew there was no point saying anything, and that any local man witnessing such an act the night before would have heartily applauded Alexei’s violence. On every primitive masculine level, Alexei had been raised to react with the raw aggression of a caveman. Crossed in business, he hit back hard and his enmity was feared in the marketplace since he never forgot a slight. He would never turn the other cheek. He would find it impossible to forgive without having first meted out punishment.
‘Well, I wish you hadn’t got involved. I don’t need anyone but myself to look after my interests.’
‘You are very fortunate to have me,’ Alexei responded as if she hadn’t spoken and he gave her a glance of such fierce conviction and confidence in that statement that he left her bereft of speech.
When the four-wheel-drive turned off the road that followed the shoreline up a rough grassy lane, Billie frowned. ‘Where are we going?’
The security guard driving them stopped the car and got out to open the door beside her, forcing her to climb out.
‘I want to show you something…’
Billie swallowed a weary sigh, knowing better than to question a male whose every thought and idea seemed embedded in a driven need to make another fortune on top of the many he had already acquired. Walking into the sloping field, sheep scattering at their every step, Billie glanced in bemusement at Alexei. ‘Isn’t this too close to your family home for a tourist development?’
‘I own this plot and I’m not planning a development here personally,’Alexei said drily. ‘ I’m offering it to you to enable you to build a house.’
Her green eyes opened very wide and she stared at him. ‘I couldn’t afford to buy this—’
‘The plot would be a gift. From my point of view it would be convenient to have you living close by.’
‘A gift? For goodness’ sake, what would your family think?’ Billie lifted an arm to indicate the fabulous view of the bay where the turquoise ocean below washed a long crescent of pale sand. ‘A site like this must be worth a fortune!’
‘I could give you a house in the village. Of course it would mean chucking out the existing tenants first.’
‘Don’t even think about it!’ Billie shot back at him in horror.
‘And a village house, even if there was one currently available, wouldn’t address your problems.’
‘For the last time, I don’t have any problems!’
‘You’re too loyal to acknowledge the strife your mother creates for you, and as long as you live in the village you will still be dragged into Lauren’s messy life. But if you have your own home at this end of the island, you will be left in peace,’ Alexei pronounced.
There was a good deal of truth in what he had said and the idea of a private base where she would be far removed from Lauren’s adventurous love life was a huge draw. ‘I couldn’t possibly accept a site from you. Your mother is already suspicious of me.’
Alexei laughed. ‘So what? Live the life you want, not the life other people would lay out for you.’
‘If only life were that simple…’
Alexei closed a strong hand over hers before she could walk away. Glittering golden eyes assailed hers in stubborn challenge. ‘It is you who makes it complicated. I have more wealth than I could spend in a score of lifetimes. You need an independent home outside the village. You can build a house here and pay for it in stages. If you require finance I will give it to you. Your only other option will be to take up permanent residence in one of my family’s guest suites.’
‘But I’m hardly ever here!’ she protested.
‘That situation is about to change radically. My father is feeling his age and I have agreed to assume control of Drakos Shipping. I will be spending much more time on the island and you are my most trusted employee. So, cease this argument right now,’ Alexei advised impatiently. ‘You could make a proper home in this place. You know it makes sense.’
Her slender fingers flexed in the hold of his. His expectant gaze was on her, his domineering will bearing down on her like a powerful weight. She made a last ditch attempt to regain equality. ‘If I accept the site, you will have to accept part ownership of any house that I build. That would be the only fair solution.’
Gazing down at her with deceptively indolent eyes of dark gold, a wicked slanting grin slowly slashed Alexei’s wide sensual mouth. ‘If I were to own a share of your house, it would give my mother sleepless nights!’
‘But it would give me peace. I just couldn’t accept the site as a gift. It’s too valuable,’ Billie told him in an urgent rush. ‘You could explain the situation to her.’
‘It is no business of hers.’Alexei stared down intently into the vivid little face so familiar to him that he could instantly discard any awareness of her bruises. Sincerity shone in her clear green eyes while her coppery hair snaked in bold strands across her cheekbones. No woman had ever fought to come up with a way of accepting a gift from him while returning the value of it. He wondered why money had less of a hold on her than on others of her sex. He wondered why he had never noticed before that she had a soft pink mouth as firm and luscious as a ripe peach. Hunger stirred arousal and a familiar delicious heaviness formed at his groin.
Billie felt the change in atmosphere with every fibre of her being but could no more have stepped away than she could have stopped breathing. His gilded gaze was mesmeric in its power to hold her. Her mouth ran dry, frantic tension holding her fast. The pool of liquid heat forming in her belly was sending an electrifying surge of responsiveness through her entire body, pinching her sensitive nipples taut, creating heat and dampness at the secret heart of her.
Alexei closed his arms round her. Cupping her hips with an intimacy that shocked her, he drew her up against his hard muscular length and kissed her. It was a kiss full of a passionate demand that rocked her where she stood. It was like being hit by lightning as she sizzled like meat under a grill and her knees almost crumpled beneath her weight.
It was Alexei’s strong arms that kept her upright while he lightened the pressure of his intoxicating mouth and teased her reddened lips with tiny provocative caresses. Having reduced all resistance to rubble, he finally went in for the kill, dipping his tongue between her lips in a piercingly sweet invasion of her unbearably sensitive mouth and provoked a series of whimpering shivering gasps from somewhere inside her. It was the very first time she had experienced true sexual hunger and it was a raw need so powerful it rolled through her like thunder, blanking out all thought and control. For those split seconds she was both defenceless and aggressive, clinging to his lean hard physique, angling her head back to enable him, her entire body yearning for much more of the same.
‘Will I be the first?’ Alexei prompted in a roughened undertone.
‘Yes,’ she answered before she retrieved her wits and intelligence came back in a floodtide of anxiety and anger and regret. As she pulled free in response to those promptings the slivering pain of sudden separation from him cut through her as sharply as a knife.
Retaining a controlling grip on her slender hand, Alexei walked her back towards the car.
Billie hauled her fingers free of his. ‘No!’ she protested strickenly. ‘I don’t want this!’
Alexei stilled and sent her a frowning look of incomprehension. ‘What don’t you want?’
‘I don’t want to be another notch on your bedpost. Just roll back time a few minutes, please! The kiss didn’t happen, forget it. You’re my boss. I work for you…Neither of us wants to change that relationship!’
‘You sound almost hysterical.’ Hot golden eyes semi-screened by luxuriant black lashes, Alexei squared his aggressive jaw line. ‘Everything changes, nothing stays static—that’s life and you can’t control it. You can’t turn the clock back either. I want to take this attraction to its natural conclusion, moraki mou.’
‘Only because you’re not accustomed to any woman calling a halt…but I am calling a halt. I’m not like your other women…I don’t do casual,’ Billie proclaimed with proud vehemence.
‘The spark we fired between us is too hot to douse,’ Alexei delivered thickly, dark golden eyes locked to her like an incoming missile attack, making it clear that nothing she had said had impressed him.
‘It was just sex,’ she argued. ‘And sex you can get anywhere with women far more beautiful than I am, so forget it and me in that line!’
‘While I can still taste you in my mouth,’ Alexei murmured huskily, shooting her a shockingly sensual appraisal that burned through her like a hot burning coal. ‘I won’t forget how you made me ache.’
‘Stop it…’ Billie raised her hands to silence him in a rare physical show of eloquence. ‘Stop it! It was a stupid kiss, a mistake, but it’s not important and it’s never going to happen again.’
Alexei stretched out his arms without warning and hauled her back to him, reconnecting her to the lean, tensile power of his muscular thighs and the potent thrust of his erection. Holding her entrapped, he stared down at her with all the cool of a predator stalking prey who knew he had all the time in the world. ‘You can’t tell me it’s not going to happen again—that will only make me want you more.’
Awesomely conscious of the deep desperate longing still whirling inside her and crying out for satisfaction, Billie rested pleading green eyes on him. ‘You know this is wrong. You know you would much rather have me working for you than having sex with you,’ she told him feverishly.
‘But having you fulfil both functions could well be an amazing tour de force,’ Alexei countered with single-minded conviction. ‘I would cut down on the other women.’
Billie almost screamed in frustration because no statement could have told her more clearly how out of alignment they both were. He was not only not getting her message, but also stubbornly refusing to listen to it.
‘And that statement just shows how ill-suited we would be, because I wouldn’t accept you having any other women! I wouldn’t share you. No matter how many diamonds and treats you flung my way it wouldn’t buy you back your freedom at the same time as you were with me.’
Alexei dealt her a lingering appraisal, searching her still-dilated pupils and the revealing redness of her lips while a rueful smile shadowed his beautiful sexy mouth. ‘You’re trying to scare me off—it’s kind of sweet. But you know me better than that. When I want something I keep going until I get it. I don’t switch off to order.’
‘Was this all one big set-up, then? Is this why you’re offering me this magnificent site to build on? Were you trying to buy me?’ Billie flung at him in an emotional surge of accusation.
‘You know me better than that, moraki mou. In any case, I’m more likely to give a reward to a lover at the end of the affair rather than at the beginning,’ Alexei pointed out without an ounce of discomfiture.
Standing there in the sunshine, daring her censure, his lean bronzed features breathtakingly handsome, he could still take her breath away. Billie dropped her gaze and got into the car, wondering if the driver had seen that embrace, praying that he had not. If he had seen it, every member of Alexei’s staff would know about it within twenty-four hours. The Drakos employee grapevine was terrifyingly efficient and the slightest hint that she was more intimate with Alexei than she ought to be would be sufficient to destroy the respect of her coworkers and her reputation.
‘I’ve always been curious about you,’ Alexei volunteered as the car took them back to the harbour. ‘But I didn’t suspect that we might be dynamite together.’
Curious? Would he make love to her out of curiosity alone? Sadly Billie thought that, yes, he would, for novelty attracted Alexei, who with every passing year became more bored with the myriad choices he enjoyed. Why the heck had she admitted that she was still a virgin? It was like whetting the appetite of a big game hunter with the offer of the ultimate quarry. After all, she was different and his lovers, strung across every continent, were almost interchangeable, she reflected tautly. They were actresses, models or socialites, usually tall and blonde, always beautiful, sophisticated and aware that no woman held Alexei’s interest for very long. They entered his life and left it again without causing a single ripple in his routine.
Only one woman had ever dented Alexei’s ego and it had been Lauren who shared that story with Billie. According to island gossip, Alexei had fallen for Calisto Kolovos, the daughter of a rich manufacturer, when he was twenty-one years old. But all along Calisto had had another boyfriend: Xavier Bethune, a much older man who had been a good deal richer and more powerful than Alexei who, in those days, was still dependent on his father. Calisto was said to have married Xavier for his money and, ever since then, Alexei had had a heart of stone when it came to women. Billie was not naïve enough to believe that she could change him. She wanted more than sex from him and, if that was not forthcoming, valued her job more than any short-lived sexual fling that would only last long enough to satisfy his curiosity.