wallowing in your sins. I didn’t want to lose you, agapi mou,’ he murmured, rubbing his knuckles down over her cheekbone in a tender gesture. ‘I couldn’t bear to lose you. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to show you that but sometimes I feel like I’m banging my head up against a brick wall.’

‘I was so jealous and insecure about Calisto that she came between me and my wits,’ Billie confessed in a rush, finally allowing herself to believe that she was loved and revelling in the adoring intensity of his gaze on her face. ‘You have been making me very happy, but I was so hurt when you didn’t seem to feel anything when I told you how I felt about you.’

‘I’m sorry. For a while I didn’t think I could trust anything you said,’ he confided candidly. ‘I was angry, bitter and disappointed in you and it was a while before I could move on from that to concentrate on what’s really important. And what’s really important is that you had our son and now we have the rest of our lives to spend together.’

The rest of our lives. The warmth of his gaze, the buoyancy of his dark deep drawl wrapped round her vulnerable heart like a blanket of reassurance. She hugged him close, a pulse of happiness pounding through her as she let go of her fears and insecurities and finally felt free to claim her happy ending.

‘I love you,’ she whispered.

He drew her out of the shade of the oak tree into the bright sunlight and on into the dim cool of the chateau. But it was Billie who headed straight for the stairs and the privacy of their bedroom while throwing a half-embarrassed, half-teasing glance over her shoulder at him. Before they got there, however, another concern stole the lightness from her mood. ‘We haven’t even talked about Lauren, or what we’re going to do about her,’ she reminded him heavily.

Alexei swung her back to face him. ‘We’ll deal with her together,’ he murmured with quiet resolve. ‘She needs to respect our privacy as a family. But it’s only thanks to that article that I know how long you’ve cared about me.’

Billie reddened and screened her eyes. ‘I didn’t want you to know that.’

‘I cared about you too, agapi mou,’ he traded softly. ‘And in ways I couldn’t count or explain. I never liked seeing you tired or cross or unwell. I always wanted to make you happy. I hated seeing you with another man. When I had no right to be, I was very possessive of you. Your friendship with Damon Marios really got to me and made me angry and jealous.’

‘But it never was anything but a friendship.’ Billie shivered as he ran down the zip on her dress and eased it down her arms, pausing to claim a hungry, driving kiss that went on and on and on because she was clinging to him with a heart that was pounding as hard as a road drill inside her chest.

‘I love you like crazy,’ she told him breathlessly as he tugged her down on the bed with him, finally accepting that he loved her and he was hers in every way that mattered. Suddenly she finally grasped why he had stealthily instructed that all the master-suite beds in his various homes were renewed. He was thinking about her feelings and doing what he could to acknowledge them.

‘And you believe me about Calisto? I am suing the Sunday Globe over that photo of me with her,’ Alexei breathed. ‘I know now why Lauren’s story wasn’t published immediately—the paper was waiting and hoping to get proof that I was having an affair with Calisto, but when they couldn’t they dug out an old photo instead.’

‘I know you’re not having an affair.’ Billie gazed up at him with her heart in her eyes and his smile felt like sunshine on her skin. ‘And if you’re still in the mood, I have reconsidered: I would like to have another child soon.’

‘That’s a very sexy invitation, Mrs Drakos,’ Alexei purred, disposing of his shirt with careless grace and baring a hair-roughened muscular torso that seemed to beg for the touch of her appreciative hands. ‘Are you sure?’

‘More sure than I’ve ever been about anything,’ Billie confessed, regretting the hurt she knew she had inflicted when she was unable to give him her trust. There was love and tenderness in his expressive golden eyes and, although it felt as if it were the first time she was seeing those emotions, she knew they had been there in recent weeks as well, only she had been too blind to recognise them for what they were. She had been equally thick-headed when it came to acknowledging that the average boss didn’t treat his PA to hot chocolate topped with melted marshmallows at the end of a difficult day, or send her off on a spa break. Nor, if he was Alexei Drakos, did he offer to cut down on the other women for a mere fancy. But she had not read those signs, had thought too little of herself to recognise that she was special to him.

‘I’ll never stop loving you,’ he swore with all the passion and intensity of his powerful temperament.

‘Well, I did try to get over you lots of times, but it just never worked,’ Billie admitted more prosaically.

And Alexei laughed with considerable appreciation…

Eighteen months later, Billie tucked her infant daughter, Kolena, into her cot.

Dark-eyed and red-haired, Kolena was a delightful mixture of her parents’ genes. Nicky hung over the side of the cot watching his sister and pushed a stuffed toy at her hand. The little starfish fingers closed round the bear, but then the baby’s eyes slid drowsily shut.

‘Kolena’s sleeping again,’ Nicky complained, his little boy’s restive body humming with suppressed energy.

‘It’s been a long day for her.’ Billie smiled as she thought back on a day of great enjoyment at the christening party held at Hazlehurst Manor. For the first time in her life she had contrived to have both of her parents in the same room. It was true that at the outset of laying eyes on her former fiancée and daughter’s father, Lauren had merely nodded frostily across the room at Desmond, but her resistance had crumpled when Desmond complimented her on her continuing youthful good looks. Billie had last seen her mother and father chatting companionably at the buffet and was relieved that her parents could now meet without any awkwardness.

Of course, the past eighteen months had proved more than usually eventful for her mother and had led to a much-changed lifestyle. Lauren had stayed on in London to paint the town red and, within six months of the publication of the story she had sold, she had spent all the money she had earned from it and the hotel where she’d been in residence had contacted Alexei, just before throwing Lauren out onto the street for unpaid bills. At that point, Hilary had persuaded her sister to go into rehab for, by that stage, there had been little doubt that Lauren had a problem with alcohol. But, unhappily, the treatment hadn’t worked on that occasion, probably because Lauren had merely surrendered to Hilary’s arguments rather than acting on a genuine need to seek help for herself. It had been Billie who’d taken charge of her mother the next time that her lifestyle had got her into trouble—because, by then, Hilary had been abroad on her honeymoon. Now Lauren herself was willing to acknowledge that she had a serious addiction problem.

This second stay in rehab, followed by regular attendance at AA meetings, had helped Lauren to stay off the booze and she and her daughter were getting on much better since then. Sobriety had softened Lauren’s sharp tongue and lessened her dramas, while happiness had made Billie more accepting of her mother’s weaknesses.

The previous year, Hilary had married Stuart McGregor, the captain of Alexei’s yacht, in a quiet ceremony. Still working on her history book, which had since found a publisher, Hilary was—to her astonishment and delight—now four months pregnant with her first child. Up until then the little terrier, Skye, which Alexei had given to Billie on their wedding day, had been the apple of her aunt’s eye. Skye had, after all, lived with Hilary while Billie and Alexei were enjoying their extended honeymoon in France, and by the time the couple returned Hilary had confessed that she couldn’t face giving the puppy up because she had become so attached to the little animal.

Billie currently worked several hours a day in Alexei’s company and occasionally accompanied him abroad. These days he travelled less because he was keen to take an active ro

le in his children’s daily life. Billie had found her husband wonderfully supportive during her pregnancy and it had wiped out all the memories of her lonely sense of isolation while she’d carried Nicky. She had enjoyed her second pregnancy and had also been blessed with a straightforward delivery. It would be a long time before she forgot Alexei’s eyes shining with tears of pride and fascination when he saw his daughter for the first time.

As Nicky pelted out of the nursery and greeted his father at the top of his voice Billie turned to greet Alexei.

‘Your mother’s flirting like mad with your father. He’s mesmerised,’ Alexei revealed with a wicked grin.

‘Oh, dear, I do hope she doesn’t hurt his feelings.’ Billie sighed.

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