A Stormy Greek Marriage (The Drakos Baby 2)

‘I’m following your husband’s orders, kyria,’ Petros replied in some surprise. ‘It is the wish of Kyrios Drakos that you enjoy protection whenever you leave home.’

‘But I’m afraid it is not my wish,’ Billie replied firmly. ‘You may tell my husband that I refused to allow you to come with me.’

Feeling guilty at having put the bewildered Petros in that awkward position, Billie left Hazlehurst without any further ado. Just before Billie got out of the limo at the rural station where she was to catch a train to the city, Alexei called her on her mobile phone.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he demanded without any preliminary chat. ‘You need a security team—’

‘I don’t need anyone following me every place I go. I like my privacy.’

‘Privacy in which to do what?’ Alexei queried in a glancing challenge that startled her.

Billie released an angry laugh. ‘So now we’re getting to the truth of the matter. It’s not my personal safety you’re concerned about, but what I might be doing. You want me to have bodyguards so that you can spy on me and I won’t accept that!’

Buoyed up with a sense that she had to stand up for her rights before Alexei’s powerful personality and controlling nature steamrollered her bid for independence flat as a pancake, Billie switched off her mobile phone and plunged it back into her bag. She caught the train to London and walked to meet her father in a quiet restaurant that lay not far from the station.

Her first impressions of Desmond Bury were good and her tension slowly began to drain away. She found unexpected pleasure in the fact that she had evidently inherited her father’s small stature, auburn hair and green eyes. Smartly dressed in what was obviously a new suit, the older man felt familiar from the first moment he joined her with a rather shy smile at her table. He asked her a great deal about her childhood experiences on Speros and she wrapped up the truth as best she could, while suspecting that he had known Lauren well enough to deduce that her daughter might well be glossing over some disagreeable realities. In turn Desmond answered Billie’s questions about his side of the family tree and his business. His marriage had been childless and his parents were long dead so, with the exception of a couple of elderly great-aunts in Scotland, there were no other close relatives for her to discover. Billie asked him if he thought they should get a DNA test to confirm their relationship and he looked taken aback momentarily. Then he grasped her hand firmly to assure her that she was the very picture of his late sister and that he was already fully satisfied that she was his flesh and blood. His unquestioning faith in their bond warmed her heart as much as Alexei’s distrust had chilled it.

Lunch lasted much longer than Billie had originally planned and she parted from her father only after accepting an invitation for her and Nicky to spend a weekend at his home in Brighton. She was grateful that he had not asked awkward questions about her marriage and only realised afterwards that having confided that Alexei knew nothing about their get-together had probably revealed more than she would have preferred to have admitted about the state of her marriage.

In early summer, Paris was packed with tourists and the traffic from the airport was heavy. Desperate to escape the stuffy cab and calm her frantic thoughts, Billie chose to be dropped a block from Alexei’s elegant eighteenth century town house on Ile St-Louis. The tree-lined quai could not have looked more attractive in the sunlight but Billie had never been less aware of the beauty of the ancient buildings because she was a bag of nerves beset by doubts and insecurities.

As she approached the steps to the imposing front door, she asked herself what she was most afraid of. Was it of what she would find, or of having to deal with the fallout from a husband’s extra-marital affair? That latter discovery would mean the death of hope and the end of their marriage, but she could not live in fear; she had to know one way or another if Alexei had resumed his affair with Calisto. She rang the doorbell before she could think better of it.

Calisto answered the door. Luxuriant blonde hair waving round her slim shoulders, her big dark eyes haughtily enquiring, her tall slender body was sheathed in a stretchy miniskirt and top ensemble that was provocatively tight and short. Her gaze hardened as she recognised her caller. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded baldly.

‘As this is Alexei’s house, I think I could more easily ask you that,’ Billie dared to reply in Greek, trying not to be intimidated by the reality that the beautiful blonde towered over her like an adult beside a small child. ‘I would like to come in.’

Calisto dealt her a scornful glance and, turning on her heel, walked away from the door, leaving it open. ‘If you feel you must…’

‘I do,’ Billie replied, closing the door behind her with a trembling hand. ‘Alexei isn’t here, is he?’

Calisto cast her a maddeningly amused smile. ‘He will be soon. Feel free to sit down and wait. I would enjoy being a fly on the wall at that meeting.’

Icily calm on the surface, Billie lifted her chin. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’

Calisto released a scornful and unimpressed laugh. ‘Of course you are—why else would you be here?’

As the other woman’s laugh echoed eerily in the cool marble hallway with its high ceiling nausea stirred in Billie’s stomach. She felt lost and hopeless and the very thought of being found in the town house with Calisto by Alexei made her blood run cold. All of a sudden she had no very clear idea why she had decided that she had to confront Calisto face to face, or of what she had come to Paris to say. Leave Alexei alone? Stay out of our marriage? She was, after all, fairly certain that Calisto didn’t have a good side to which she could appeal.

Calisto raked her imperious gaze over Billie from her head to her toes and with a contemptuous toss of her head made it clear that she could not see what the source of her attraction was. ‘Alexei and I were in love. You stole him from me. Did you really think it was going to be that simple? He’s a Drakos and you’re just a little office girl who got herself knocked up—oh, yes, I know about the kid,’ she confirmed as she saw Billie’s eyes widen in surprise.

‘Alexei and I are married,’ Billie heard herself say rather desperately, for she could think of no stronger verbal comeback.

Calisto just laughed again, a six-foot-tall Amazonian blonde of spectacular beauty and shining confidence. ‘That may be so but it doesn’t change the fact that Alexei is my lover—’

‘Alexei broke off your engagement,’ Billie

reminded her, struggling not to flinch at that bold claim that pierced her heart like a knife.

‘He got cold feet—you must know the feeling well. After all, he abandoned you within hours of the big wedding. The press had a ball with that little detail, didn’t they?’ Calisto sniped with her perfect white-toothed smile. ‘Alexei was on the rebound. He and I belong together but I should really thank you for having the all-important son and heir for me…’

‘Thank me?’ Billie frowned in bewilderment. ‘What on earth are you trying to say?’

‘That I’m not remotely kiddy-minded or interested in the idea of breeding babies, but that Alexei would have insisted that I have at least one child. I’m quite happy for that child to be your child. I’m not into stretch marks and saggy bits. I’m very proud of my perfect body. I’ll be much happier as a stepmother than I would ever have been as a mother.’

‘There is no way that I will ever let you near my son!’ Billie snapped back in shaken retaliation, anger surging through her in a sudden adrenalin rush.

‘Famous last words—do you really think that Alexei will give you a choice?’ Calisto purred in a poisonously sweet response. ‘He’s very taken with the kid, isn’t he? The next generation of the family dynasty and all that…when he divorces you, you’ll be very lucky if he lets you keep custody of him.’