In fact Alexei, she conceded ruefully, was much more concerned for Nicky’s future in the event of a divorce than she would ever have believed. His own parents, of course, had maintained a stable relationship, setting their only a child a good example. She pictured Alexei as she had seen him with Nicky only two days earlier, their son lying trustingly asleep in his father’s arms. Alexei had proved to be much more hands-on with his son than she had expected as well. Indeed he had accepted Nicky straight away and had immediately wanted to get to know their child.
Of course she recognised the importance of a father in her son’s life! She wasn’t stupid, nor was she so selfish that she wanted to keep Nicky all to herself. She would make every reasonable effort to share their son with Alexei, but he was primarily based in Greece and she was not prepared to continue living abroad for his benefit. Was that so heinous a crime?
As Billie got dressed she was still rationalising the decisions she had reached the day before. Alexei no longer respected or trusted her. They had no relationship left to save. A quick divorce would be a better solution to their predicament than a long dragged-out marital breakdown. Why shouldn’t Alexei spend more time in London? Was that so much to ask of him? Surely they could both be good and effective parents even if they lived far apart?
Still stressing about the serious conclusions she had made after the trip to Paris, Billie went up the flight of stairs to the nursery, which was traditionally and inconveniently sited on the top floor of the house. She walked into the room, which was empty, and crossed it to knock on the door of the bedroom that Kasma was using. When there was no answer she opened the door. There was no sign of Nicky’s nurse or of her belongings. Indeed the bed had been stripped. Her brow furrowing, Billie went back out onto the landing. The housekeeper was emerging from her self-contained flat on the other side of the gallery.
‘Did Kasma take Nicky out for a walk?’ Billie asked the older woman.
The housekeeper looked surprised at the question. ‘Mr Drakos flew out at dawn with Kasma and the little boy…’ Her voice faltered as Billie went white and closed her hands tight round the stair rail. ‘Is there anything wrong, Mrs Drakos?’
Billie didn’t know what she said, but afterwards she went back into the empty nursery to get a grip on herself and on the shocking news that Alexei had simply taken their son out of the country with him without her permission. She looked down into the cot and finally noticed that, strangely, her mobile phone was lying on top of the disturbed bedding. She lifted it and registered that it was flashing because it had an unopened message.
‘Call me,’ ran the text, and it was from Alexei. He must have deliberately placed the phone there for her to find it.
Call him? She wanted to throw the mobile through the unopened window, tear the room apart and scream her fury loud enough to be heard in Greece! Call him? She was so shattered by what he had done that she could barely think straight. He had kidnapped Nicky and taken him abroad without her knowledge, indeed knowing that she had other plans. How dared he? How flipping dared he? Denied her son when her arms ached for him, Billie was overwhelmed by the sudden fear that Alexei was already making a bid for custody of their child. Her heart seemed to skip a beat and she felt sick as she pelted downstairs to check her handbag for Nicky’s passport. As she had expected, it had gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘WHAT the hell have you done?’ Billie yelled down the phone the minute her call was answered. ‘Where is Nicky?’
‘Here at our house in the South of France with me. He’s about to have lunch. He’s fine.’
That Alexei and her son were in France took Billie aback and she could only dimly assume that there was some advantage to that location that she had yet to work out. ‘You kidnapped him…how could you do that to me?’
‘My jet is waiting at Heathrow for you. I’m sure it won’t take you long to pack,’ Alexei countered without remorse.
Barely able to vocalise, never mind think, Billie was trembling with rage and distress. ‘If you were standing here in front of me, I honestly believe I would kill you!’ she hissed at him and she flung the phone down on her bed, folded her arms and stared at it with rampant loathing.
Arrogantly ignoring everything she had said the previous day, indeed clearly impervious to her wishes, her opinions and her feelings, Alexei had removed his son from his mother’s care and taken him to another country.
It was a shocking move that filled Billie to overflowing with dark, fearful foreboding for the future. As a gesture it was uniquely effective, for in that one outrageous act of aggression Alexei had contrived to jerk all her strings at once as though she were nothing but a puppet he was able to control.
Billie was truly shattered. It honestly had not occurred to her that Alexei might fight dirty from the word go. She had assumed they could be civilised—at least in the initial stages of a separation. She had most definitely not been prepared for a war in which no holds were barred to break out so fast. Why had Alexei taken their son to France? Was there some legal advantage in doing this? For the first time in her life Billie regretted not following her mother’s guidance and approaching a divorce lawyer. In business, Alexei always took keen advantage of legal advice and she was convinced that Alexei would have sought a professional opinion of what he had just done before he did it. She wished she could have grabbed at the comfort of believing that he was too stupid to appreciate that such behaviour might be held against him in a divorce court when it came to discussing his access to their son. But having worked for Alexei for so long and seeing at first hand how in touch with events and boundaries he always was, she could find no consolation in that line of thought.
Dressed in a yellow shift dress, Billie watched her luggage being stowed in the silver SUV that had come to collect her from the flight to Nice. The sun was warmer and brighter than it had been at Hazlehurst and the sky was a great bright arc of endless blue above her head. Alexei’s idyllic chateau in the unspoilt Luberon Valley had always been her favourite Drakos property so it struck her as especially ironic that he should have taken Nicky there. As they travelled deeper into the countryside hills the colour of ochre gave a dramatic edge to the scenery and fields of purple lavender stretched as far as the horizon. Stands of woodland, peach orchards and the serried ranks of highly productive vines that belonged to the chateau surrounded the little medieval settlement of Claudel that was perched high on a rocky cliff like so many other fortified villages in the area. On the uphill climb the SUV traversed the narrow streets with care, snaking across the sleepy village square past the beautiful old church to take a steep cobbled lane lined with medieval dwellings and terminated by the elaborate turreted entrance to the chateau. The electronic gates whirred shut in the vehicle’s wake.
In front of the ancient stone bulk of the chateau, which had, over the years, been burned down and ruined many times only to be rebuilt to survive another century, Billie sprang out of the car. She didn’t take the time to admire the magnificent view of the village and the valley below and she paid no heed at all to the lovely peaceful gardens where she had so often sat basking in the sunshine. Indeed she barely paused to greet the maid who opened the solid oak front door, and sped down a corridor walled with rough stone to thrust open the door of the room Alexei used as an office…and there he was: her quarry! Impervious to the warmth of the day in the air-conditioned room, he was very elegantly clad in a dark blue designer suit fashionably cut to define every sexy, virile line of his long powerful thighs, muscular chest and broad shoulders. Her heartbeat kicked up speed, her breathing straining in her throat. She hated his guts like poison at that moment but there was no denying that he was gorgeous.
Alexei surveyed her with glittering golden eyes and there was neither apology nor remorse in that bold challenging appraisal. ‘No shouting,’ he warned her.
But Billie was so violently angry to discover that he had relaxed and simply got on with working while she agonised over the disappearance o
f her son that she sought the nearest heavy object, swept it off the side table and threw it at him with all her strength. Alexei ducked in the nick of time and the metal paperweight she had lifted sailed over his shoulder and smashed through the window behind him.
Just a little shaken by the hail of broken glass noisily showering the floor, which Alexei hastily stepped back from, Billie breathed bitterly, ‘I wish I’d hit you.’
‘Mercifully you missed—your French isn’t good enough to handle a murder charge in a court here, mali mou,’ Alexei quipped, and as the door burst loudly open to frame an anxious Helios he smiled and dismissed his bodyguard with a fluid movement of a lean brown hand. ‘An accident, Helios. My apologies for disturbing you.’
Billie set her teeth together so hard she was surprised they didn’t splinter. ‘I don’t have the words to tell you what I think of you. Have you any idea how I felt when I learned that you had taken Nicky abroad? Do you know what it felt like when I saw that empty cot?’ she launched at him in a shaking voice of rage once Helios had withdrawn again. ‘He’s my son and you had no right to take him away from me.’
Alexei rested steady dark golden eyes on her angry troubled face. ‘Yet you were prepared to do the exact same thing to me,’ he said silkily.
For a split second Billie was transfixed by that unexpected comeback. ‘You can’t compare my choosing to live in England to what you did today!’
‘Can’t I?’ A well-shaped black brow lifted. ‘Speaking as someone who knows my commitments as well as I do, how often do you think I was going to get to see my son?’
Billie lost colour and compressed her lips, refusing to be drawn on that score.
‘But you were quite happy to impose that loss on me,’ Alexei declared with a raw edge to his deep voice. ‘And do you know why? You’ve spent the past five months ignoring my rights as a father and you see no reason why that can’t continue.’
‘You’re twisting things—I’m not that selfish!’ Billie protested.
‘You are where our son is concerned,’ Alexei contradicted in Greek. ‘And that’s why I took him today, knowing that you would follow us.’
‘Never in my life have I heard anything more reckless or irresponsible!’ Billie fired back at him furiously. ‘I was so scared when I realised you’d taken him…it was wicked and unpardonable to put me through that.’
‘You knew he would come to no harm in my care and Kasma’s. I would consider it equally wicked were you to deprive our son of his father,’ Alexei drawled with a steely sibilance that cut through her defences.
‘Message received!’ Billie flung back at him angrily, her complexion reddening. ‘But you didn’t have to go to such lengths to make your point!’
‘Didn’t I?’ Alexei replied, unimpressed. ‘You’re even more stubborn than I am when you get the bit between your teeth.’
‘What you did was wrong.’
‘I agree, but you didn’t give me a choice,’ Alexei reasoned, having astonished her with that initial admission of fault. ‘I have no intention of being an occasional father. Our son will need my guidance as a child and as an adult, and if we don’t forge a close relationship now you can kiss goodbye to me having any influence with him when he’s older.’
For just a moment, Billie recalled how wild Alexei had been as an adolescent, with unlimited wealth and two very indulgent parents. Constantine Drakos had only ever interfered in Alexei’s life when he believed his son might be in physical danger. It dawned on Billie that one day Nicky might be just as rich, wilful and careless of his own safety as Alexei had once been, and when that day came it very probably would take a personality as forceful as Alexei’s to exercise control over their son.
Billie stiffened. ‘I do appreciate that you have an important role in Nicky’s life as well.’
‘But until this moment you weren’t prepared to make any allowances for the fact.’
The pink tip of her tongue slid out to moisten her dry lower lip. She was beginning to feel like someone pinned between a rock and a hard place. ‘Maybe I was a little hasty in some of the things I decided.’
Lush ebony lashes fanned down low on his electrifying golden gaze, and as he stared at the glistening curve of her voluptuous lower lip a nerve ending pulled taut in her pelvis. She shifted uneasily off one foot onto the other. Alexei strolled towards her as lithe as a hunting cat on the prowl. The atmosphere hummed with sexual awareness and she fought her responses with all her might. Alexei made no such attempt, closing his hands to her hips to urge her close. As she parted her lips to object he brought his sensual mouth down hungrily on hers, his tongue delving into the tender interior between her lips with an erotic heat that made every nerve ending in her treacherous body sit up and take notice. A trembling started low down inside her, her bra constricting her swelling breasts, a snaking burn and surge of moisture tingling between her thighs. And in that fiery instant she learned that she could hate Alexei but still want him with a remorseless, bone-deep craving that was terrifyingly strong.
‘No!’ she told him fierily, striking her fist against a broad hard shoulder and when he didn’t immediately draw back doing so again.
He lifted his arrogant dark head. His bronzed gaze burned her like honey heated to boiling point, unbearably sweet and tempting. ‘Even if it’s what we both want, glyka mou?’
Billie threw back her head, jewelled green eyes bright as rapier blades. ‘I don’t do just sex, Alexei. You should know that by now.’
‘You have impossible standards.’
‘Only to someone like you.’ Deep inside, she was squashing a wealth of pain and regret that it should be that way. She didn’t do just sex but he didn’t do love or for ever and, even worse, she wasn’t even sure that he knew how to do them. For a little while she had assumed he loved Calisto, but nobody witnessing the smooth, unemotional way he had moved on from that affair could have believed that he was nursing a broken heart. If he had decided that he wanted Calisto back, it was most probably because she suited him and his lifestyle better than Billie could.
‘I’ve always enjoyed a challenge,’ Alexei riposted, a strong hand on her spine trying to urge her back into his arms.
‘Right now, I just want to see my son,’ Billie announced, hectic colour in her face but sincerity shining in her clear gaze.
And the darkening of Alexei’s beautiful eyes, the tensing of his stunning dark features, would have signified annoyance had she been naïve enough to believe that his responses could be that human. He freed her, thrust open the door and escorted her in silence up the sweeping staircase, which would have looked more at home in an antebellum mansion than in a hilltop chateau with the core of a medieval fortress. But then it was exactly that endearing quirkiness that she had always loved about the Chateau Claudel. Each new owner had added personal touches, few of which were historically accurate.
Nicky was lying in his cot, Kasma busy tidying away toys. As Anatalya’s daughter moved to greet her Billie recognised the relief the younger woman couldn’t hide and knew that Kasma had been uneasy about her charge’s removal from his mother’s care. Her son kicked up his bare toes and gave her a wide gummy smile, which told her that while her world might have been rocked on its axis, all was right in his. Her heart beating very fast, Billie reached down into the cot and scooped the baby up, loving the weight of him in her arms and the sweet familiar smell of his skin as she cuddled him close. Alexei was watching and she gave him a fierce warning look before she gave her attention back to the child she adored.
‘Where are you going?’ he enquired as she headed for the stairs.
‘I think I’ll sit in the garden for a while…before I pack his things,’ she tacked on as casually as she could, for she refused to reward Alexei’s cruel manipulation of her attachment to her child by staying on in France.
His lean dark face shadowed, dense ebony lashes fanning down on his stunning eyes as he absorbed that unapologetic statement. ‘I can’t let you do that,’ he murm
ured very softly, but she was not taken in by that softness of tone because she knew that the cooler and the quieter Alexei was, the more dangerous he was.
She didn’t reply. She walked with Nicky in her arms outside into the afternoon heat and sought the bench in the shade of the ancient oak tree in the walled garden. There she had often sat to enjoy the magnificent view. I can’t let you do that. Did he mean to physically prevent her from leaving with Nicky? Or was he planning to flex his muscles in some other way?
‘Your father is so, so tricky,’ she sighed into her son’s tousled black hair.
The tranquillity of the garden and the silence enclosed her, soothing her anxious thoughts. But she could not escape her recollection of her dialogue with Alexei. At first she had been so angry with him that she couldn’t think, but then he had made her think of what her plans would mean to him. Regardless of what happened between them, she had never wanted to shut him out of his child’s life or to damage their chances of developing a normal father and son relationship. But she was only beginning to get used to the concept of sharing her son with his father and she knew that the concept of sharing anything was a worryingly alien concept to any Drakos male.
If she insisted on living in England she would be making it very difficult for Alexei to develop strong ties with his son. Yet the alternative of living on the island would cruelly restrict her life in every way and make it virtually impossible for her to move on as an independent woman. She supposed the bottom line ought to be what would most benefit her son, not herself. Perhaps there was no happy-medium solution that would be beneficial to both her and her son. But enabling Nicky to enjoy a close relationship with both his parents would be the wisest, kindest option, she acknowledged ruefully. It was just unfortunate that that might well have to come at the price of her freedom.
Hearing a step, she glanced up and saw Alexei with Kasma and a pushchair in tow. Nicky had drifted off to sleep and when the nursemaid offered to take him, Billie passed him over. As Kasma wheeled him away Billie glimpsed the momentarily tender and unfamiliar expression on Alexei’s lean strong face as he gazed appreciatively down at his son and her heart stabbed her. Alexei, who had all his life been adored but who, as far as Billie was aware, had never truly responded to any woman after his mother, had somehow and in a very short space of time contrived to become deeply attached to his infant son.