‘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.
‘We have to talk,’ Alexei delivered as soon as Kasma had headed back indoors with her charge.
Billie viewed his tall, powerful figure with pained eyes. ‘You didn’t need to steal him to make me understand how much he meant to you as well. You could just have told me.’
His hard jaw line clenched as if her candid reference to his obvious attachment to Nicky had embarrassed him. ‘You weren’t willing to listen.’
Billie didn’t want to plunge them back into an argument by referring to all that had passed between them since their wedding. She had done wrong but so had he. Yet he was still the guy that she loved with all her heart, she acknowledged unhappily. No matter how angry or frustrated he made her, she never lost sight of what he meant to her. ‘I was very shocked that you just took Nicky’s passport and whisked him away from me,’ she admitted tautly. ‘What would you have done had I called in the police?’
Alexei froze, his lean powerful face washing clean of expression, his eyes glittering dark as night in the shade of the tree. ‘I would have informed them that I have legal custody of my son.’
Her smooth brow indented. ‘What the heck are you talking about?’
The blankness of his features was put to flight as he bit out a rare curse in Greek before saying, ‘You didn’t read the pre-nuptial agreement, did you? I couldn’t credit you would be that trusting, but obviously you were…’
Billie leapt upright, all her attention locked to him. ‘Why? What was in the agreement?’
‘If you gave me a child you signed away all rights over that child to me.’
Billie stared back at him in disbelief, her flush in the heat of the day fading to be replaced by pallor. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘Billie….’ Alexei spread fluid brown hands in instinctive appeal to her natural intelligence ‘…when you only hire the very cleverest lawyers in the world, anything you want is possible.’
CHAPTER NINE
FOR the longest period of her life, Billie stared at Alexi in horror. ‘But you didn’t even know we had a child when we got married.’
‘But I hoped there would be one eventually and, after my father’s various costly excursions into matrimony, my legal team naturally sought to protect me against every possible threat in the future. If we break up, I retain custody of our children.’
Her legs wobbling, Billie slowly sank down on the bench again. ‘I would never have knowingly signed such a contract. It’s immoral. I trusted you and you cheated me…’
‘There was no deception. You signed the document without reading it,’ he pointed out drily. ‘How wise was that?’