With a strong air of reluctance, his lean dark features tense, Alexei sank down in the armchair beside the baby seat and leant down to Nicky’s level. ‘You don’t have to stay,’ Alexei told Billie. ‘I don’t need an audience for this.’
Billie would have preferred to stay to act as a buffer and a source of advice, but then Alexei had always been very self-sufficient in the face of a challenge. She walked out of the door and closed it, listened outside as her son started to sob at her departure and heaved a sigh as she moved away again. If there was a lesson to be learned, Alexei would only learn it the hard way and at his own pace.
Alexei had never had to entertain a child before, but his quick intelligence soon came to his aid. In no time he had the box full of toys by the wall emptied and he was demonstrating the different items for his son’s amusement. The tears dried on the little boy’s face as he slowly responded to that stimulation. He smiled when Alexei got him out of the baby seat and sat him on the carpet instead. He gurgled with pleasure when Alexei showed him the different noises one toy made and stretched out his hand for it, pummelling it with a chubby fist, only to start complaining when he couldn’t get the same sound to emerge. Alexei showed him again and took a little fist and showed him where to press. Nikolos chortled with satisfaction, thumped the toy energetically several times with his clenched hand and then suddenly held out his arms to Alexei to be lifted.
Kneeling on the carpet in front of his son, absently wondering when he would be old enough to appreciate mechanical toys, Alexei froze at that unexpected invitation. The baby gave him a huge grin and, ending his hesitation, Alexei moved forward and lifted him. Nikolos grabbed his father’s tie and yanked it, and then put it in his mouth to chew. Alexei deprived him of the tie, sprang up to find a source of distraction and found it in the view from the window. While he was showing his son the trees, the tractor and the sheep that were visible, the little boy laughed and tried to copy him and point his own fingers, brown eyes full of life and fun.
And, for Alexei, that unstudied moment of shared relaxation suddenly became one of the most important and emotionally gripping of his life. Only a few hours earlier he had decided that he was still too young and selfish to be a parent. At the speed of light he had worked out all the drawbacks of parenthood, swiftly recognising the boundaries that would now be imposed on his once free and untrammelled lifestyle. He might have had no experience of young children but he certainly knew enough to know that a child was major baggage.
But now memories were surfacing of his own father and with them a rich appreciation of the fact that he was still young enough to fully understand what his child would enjoy and to actually play with him. Constantine Drakos had never, ever played with his son and had treated him like a miniature adult. Their relationship had always been sedate and a little detached with Alexei’s mother cheerfully supplying the glue of family affection and all the fun.
Ten minutes later Alexei was sitting with Nikolos on his lap and he was reading the few words in the picture book and, what was more, he was bringing an excitement to that familiar pastime, for Alexei mimicked the noises the different animals made when Billie had merely read them.
When Billie reappeared an hour after her departure, all was quiet in the nursery. Alexei moved a silencing finger to his mouth; their son was fast asleep in his arms, as relaxed as if he had known his father from the day of his birth. Both surprised and pleased by that discovery, Billie smiled warmly, relief uppermost. She had no idea what Alexei had done to win the little boy’s trust but, whatever it was, he had clearly done it well.
‘I am grateful you had him,’ Alexei admitted outside the door and as she gazed up at him, a vulnerable light in her emerald-green eyes, his handsome mouth compressed. ‘But he deserved that you should have told me the truth right at the beginning of your pregnancy.’
Her eyes veiled. ‘Maybe so.’
His lean, strong face clenched hard. ‘You know better than that. I have work to catch up on before dinner,’ he responded, heading for the stairs, making no attempt to hide his exasperation with her.
Grovelling didn’t come naturally to her, Billie recognised ruefully as she entered the master bedroom to decide what to wear for their evening meal. He remained angry with her, while refusing to accept that she had grounds for being angry with him as well. There were two sides to every story. He needed to acknowledge that his partial amnesia had put her in an untenable and humiliating position and then Calisto’s arrival on the scene had proved to be the last straw. She had given birth to their child without his support and the deep unhappiness and loneliness that she had endured during the long months of her pregnancy still haunted her. Hilary had been marvellous but her company had also made Billie feel that she had to act as if she were a good deal happier and more positive than she actually was. For months she had lived behind a false face and had maintained that she was feeling fine.
Desperate to escape the circuitous anxiety of her thoughts, Billie took out her father’s letter and read it again. She decided to phone Desmond Bury there and then, have a chat and see how she felt about him without making a major production out of establishing contact. After all, Desmond might be her father but he was also a stranger with whom she might have nothing whatsoever in common. At the same time, however, she and her mother were so different that she could not help hoping that she might find something of her own nature reflected in her other parent.
Her heart was in her mouth when she made the call and a crisp businesslike male voice answered on the fourth ring. She heard his surprise when he realised who she was and then, with an endearing warmth and enthusiasm that touched her, he aimed a flurry of eager questions at her. He was surprised when she told him that she had a son and marvelled that there had been no mention of Nicky’s existence in the newspaper article he had read. When she admitted that she was actually in England, rather than Greece, he asked if she would like to meet him and in receipt of a positive response immediately offered to get together with her in London. She arranged to meet him the very next day for lunch.
Proud that she had had the courage to make that phone call, Billie showered and set out black silk trousers and a sapphire-blue evening top to wear, before lifting a magazine she had bought at the airport to read. She frowned with distaste when she came on a little newsy segment on Calisto, ph
otographed looking every inch a top model dressed in the latest fashion and talking about how much she loved living in Paris. Billie stilled and studied the building in the backdrop of the photo, which struck her as familiar. It dawned on her that she knew that street, knew it really well because she had on several occasions visited the splendid town house that Alexei owned there. Just as suddenly she was recalling that photo of Alexei with Calisto in Paris and appreciating that the pavement café they had been patronising could well be the one she recalled being just round the corner from the town house.
Could Calisto currently be living in Alexei’s Parisian home?
Or were the photos just a ghastly coincidence? His town house was, after all, situated in a very trendy and photogenic part of Paris. Was insecurity making her suffer from increasingly paranoid suspicions? Billie grimaced. Suspicions about the fidelity of a male whom every paparazzo in Europe nourished suspicions about? A guy to whom fidelity was a dirty word, if it came between him and a woman he wanted? Of course, she was suspicious. Alexei might have married her, but he hadn’t come with any cast-iron guarantee of loyalty and there was every possibility that he saw her lies and deceit over Nicky as an excuse to stray. Hadn’t he already told her that they as a couple were over?
Just how had she contrived to overlook that fact? We’re over, we’ve got to be, he had said before flying to London. Her mother, Lauren, who rarely suffered from rose-tinted glasses when it came to the male sex, had believed her daughter’s marriage was already over as well. Only Billie had been naïve enough to arrive at Hazlehurst, groomed within an inch of her life, in the foolish hope that Alexei, having discovered that Nicky was his son, might greet her with apologies, understanding and forgiveness.
CHAPTER SIX
LATER, before dinner that evening, Alexei called Billie on the house phone, told her that two of the business team were off sick and asked her if she would mind helping out for a while.
Billie was quick to agree and stayed only long enough in the bedroom to dress in casual clothes. In the ground-floor office suite, she stepped into the working role she had given up as if she had never been away and although the other staff were now somewhat overawed by her new position as Alexei’s wife she very much enjoyed being kept busy.
‘I miss working,’ she told Alexei when she joined him later for dinner, having finally donned her slinky evening trousers and blue top.
Supremely handsome in his dark suit, Alexei surveyed her slight figure and the bright hair flaming round her pale heart-shaped face and his wide sensual mouth compressed. ‘But you’re a mother now.’
‘Surely I could still work part-time with you?’ Billie prompted, longing for the closeness of that working relationship to be restored.
‘Not when I’m travelling,’ Alexei pointed out drily.
And Billie had overlooked that necessity when she’d come up with her proposition. While she was ready to allow her son to be cared for several hours a day, she was not prepared to leave him for several days at a time or to disrupt his routine by taking him travelling round the world with her.
‘But your talent for efficient organisation and working well under pressure is much missed,’ Alexei conceded wryly.
‘I think I could still work several hours a day from the villa without Nicky suffering any deprivation,’ Billie responded with quiet determination.
His brilliant dark eyes lingered on the obstinate set of her small face and his lush lashes screened his gaze. ‘I’ll think it over.’