A Stormy Greek Marriage (9 page)

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 pro-vocatively 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.’

‘Nobody is going to take my son away from me!’ Billie shot back shakily and, whirling on her heel, she sped back to the front door because she recognised that the confrontation had gone beyond the stage where she could hold her own. She had also learned what she would rather not have known: Calisto knew way too much about Alexei and Billie’s marriage, and about Nicky, whose very existence and paternity Billie had fondly imagined was still a secret known to only a precious few off the island of Speros.

Indeed the level of Calisto’s information told Billie first and foremost that the gorgeous blonde enjoyed Alexei’s complete trust. Clearly, Alexei had returned to his former lover as soon as he’d become disillusioned with his marriage, Billie registered sickly. He had to be sleeping with the Greek fashion model again.

Jealousy and despair assailed Billie in a dizzy wave. He had already discussed Nicky with Calisto, yet he had only found out that Nicky was his son early the
day before. That Calisto should already know so much was uniquely revealing and her assurance in speaking as though she was to be Alexei’s next wife was even more menacing.

As Billie walked with a down-bent head along the pavement to hide the tears spattering her cheeks in the fading light of evening a man straightened from the railings he had been leaning against and signalled the driver of the car parked further down the road. ‘Kyria Drakos?’

Billie was shocked to recognise that it was Helios, the head of Alexei’s security team, standing in her path. ‘Helios?’ she queried with a frown of surprise.

‘Your husband asked me to collect you and convey you to the airport,’ the older man told her with a caution that warned her that Helios was well aware of her obstinacy over her personal security at Hazlehurst earlier that morning and of Alexei’s anger at her behaviour.

In a daze after her upsetting encounter with Calisto and truly appalled by the suspicion that Alexei might already be aware that she had tackled his former girlfriend, Billie climbed into the waiting limousine. While the luxurious vehicle struggled through the traffic she wondered how on earth her movements had been tracked all the way to her destination in Paris. She laid her mobile phone on the seat beside her and waited for Alexei to ring her with a heart sinking like a stone but it stayed mercifully silent. Her heart was hammering with nervous stress, her skin clammy with perspiration.

Had Alexei and Calisto already discussed future living arrangements for Nicky? It had sounded to her very much as though they had and her courage was failing her in the face of such a cruel, unfeeling threat to her
love for her child. She felt sick and scared, while she inexorably recalled all the many times that she had stood back and watched while Alexei utilised every ruthless, clever and unemotional Drakos gene to come out on top. He was remorseless, determined to win every battle.

Helios took her to a private room at the airport and plied her tirelessly with magazines and refreshments as if he sensed her growing feeling of terror at her predicament. How could she be scared of Alexei? But she had never crossed him before to such an extent. It shook her that he had had her tracked down and retrieved like a wayward child even though she was in a foreign country. But in truth her own behaviour shook her even more. In one catastrophic move in facing up to Calisto she had fallen off the straight, narrow and sensible path she usually followed. But she had
needed
to know about Calisto, had needed to know that there were genuine grounds for her self-humiliating suspicions. She freshened up in the cloakroom, studying the pale drawn triangle of her face and seeing only Calisto’s glowing physical beauty superimposed over her own. There was no contest; never had been and never would be.

Helios told her when it was time to board her flight home. ‘Where is Alexei?’ she could not help asking, for she had spent over an hour in that silent room, flinching every time she heard footsteps in the passage outside.

‘Already on board,’ the older man confirmed.

Shivering a little in the cool of late evening, Billie mounted the steps to the private jet and looked straight past the assembled flight crew greeting her to see Alexei seated with his laptop at a desk. The instant he saw her he lifted his arrogant dark head and vaulted upright. Blazing golden eyes struck hers and she almost
reeled back from the force of the corrosive anger he was struggling to contain while they still had an audience. Walking down the aisle between the cream leather seating towards him felt as dangerous and daunting as walking a pirate’s plank above shark-infested seas.

T
HE
thrumming power of the jet as it took off sent vibrations rippling through Billie’s taut slender length. As soon as they were airborne the crew served drinks and snacks, after which Alexei dismissed them. As the tension in the atmosphere took on an explosive edge, Billie gnawed at the soft underside of her lip until she could no longer bear the silence.

‘What were you doing in Paris today?’ she demanded thinly.

‘The Drakos foundation was staging a charitable lunch,’ Alexei answered, referring to the global charity set up by his father. ‘I had a speech to make.’

She had a vague recollection of the luncheon benefit and compressed her lips. ‘How did you know where I was?’ she asked tautly.

‘Helios only tracked you down when you arrived at the airport for your flight out to Paris.’ Alexei’s cool, controlled diction unnerved her and merely increased her wariness. ‘So where did you go in London beforehand and who were you meeting? You were very keen to ensure that there were no witnesses.’

Billie turned her head and finally focused on him. ‘I didn’t want you to know that I was planning a trip
to Paris as well,’ she admitted baldly. ‘I had no other motive and no reason to hide where I was going or what I was doing. Actually, I had my first meeting in London with my father over lunch today—’

That announcement certainly did grab Alexei’s attention and his expressive brows drew together. ‘Your father?’ he exclaimed in disbelief. ‘But I thought you had no idea who he was!’

Billie dug into her bag to retrieve the letter Desmond had written and leant across the aisle to pass it to Alexei.

His bold bronzed profile set hard while he scanned the comparatively brief communication. ‘And until now you never even thought to mention this man’s approach to me?’ he ground out.

Billie reddened, for he sounded so astonished that she could have neglected to share the contents of that letter with him sooner. ‘There was so much else going on between us at the time—’

‘But you still just went ahead and arranged to meet this guy, taking him on trust?’ Alexei thundered in interruption, springing upright to stare down at her in frank disbelief. ‘You didn’t even have a background check done on him! Have you any idea what a risk you took?’

‘There was no risk,’ Billie disclaimed. ‘Desmond is a perfectly ordinary middle-aged businessman.’

‘But this letter could have been a con trick to lure you into a vulnerable position.’ His striking cheekbones prominent below his dark skin, golden eyes blistering, Alexei slowly shook his handsome head in angry wonderment. ‘You could’ve been kidnapped, robbed,
anything
!’ he spelt out angrily.

‘Don’t be so melodramatic—’

‘Don’t be so stupid,’ Alexei retaliated with icy bite. ‘You’re part of my world now and worth more money as my wife than most people could earn in a lifetime. People maim and kill others for a great deal less. Round-the-clock protection is a necessary precaution to ensure your safety.’

A good deal paler than she had been after receiving that graphic warning, Billie nodded acceptance of his concern, which did ironically have the side effect of briefly lifting her mood. Alexei could be so cold and unemotional that it was good to know he cared enough to worry about her well-being to this extent. ‘I promise that I won’t be so trusting with anyone again, but my father is a very agreeable man.’

‘That doesn’t mean that he couldn’t also be a fraudster on the make,’ Alexei proclaimed with crushing cynicism. ‘I’ll have him thoroughly checked out before you see him again.’

Quietly convinced that her father was exactly who and what he purported to be, Billie made no comment. It struck her as deeply sad that she had had to look to Alexei’s anger to find solace in the idea that he cared about what happened to her. Had their relationship always been so one-sided, so empty? Then he did not reciprocate her feelings, nor had he ever pretended to. She sipped her cold drink to moisten her dry mouth. ‘Please don’t let’s talk about what I was doing in Paris,’ she urged him in hasty appeal.

‘How can I ignore what you did? What the hell were you thinking of when you went there?’ Alexei responded with censorious golden eyes. ‘You’re my wife. I expect you to behave with dignity. That does not mean
confronting Calisto in one of our homes and accusing her of having an affair with me.’

Her face burning at that rebuke, Billie lifted her chin. ‘I wasn’t sure that you still regarded me as your wife. Most of our conversations since our wedding have ended with you walking out or talking about us being over as a couple…’

Golden eyes gleaming, Alexei loosed a harsh laugh of challenge. ‘You make me sound
so
unreasonable. Nobody would credit that you spent more than a year lying to me and then produced my son like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat the same day that I married you!’

Having paled at that accurate if acerbic summing-up of her sins, Billie swallowed hard. She registered that in his eyes she was never going to live down her past and concentrated on what mattered most to her at that moment. ‘I’m still entitled to ask you what’s going on between you and Calisto.’

‘Nothing sexually.’ Alexei’s wide sensual mouth took on a sardonic twist. ‘It’s business now. Her father died during our relationship and in his will he placed me in charge of her inheritance. As she was one of three children the legacy was not particularly large. But when I parted from Calisto it was on poor terms and it was easier for me to ignore the responsibility her father had given me. While I was doing that, she got into considerable debt.’

‘Debt?’
Billie leant forward to question in unabashed surprise at that statement. ‘I thought Calisto was a wealthy woman in her own right.’

‘So did she, but she didn’t get a big divorce settlement because of the pre-nuptial agreement she signed with Bethune,’ Alexei informed her wryly. ‘And as the
wife and then the girlfriend of two very rich men there was never any need for her to watch her expenditure. But once she was living on her own income, she quickly got into trouble.’

‘And because of this, she’s now living in your town house in Paris?’ Billie had already worked out the direction his cool explanation was going in and she was not overly impressed by it. So, poor Calisto had finally been forced to live as an independent woman and settle her own bills! She could see that such an obligation would have been uncomfortable for Alexei in the aftermath of a broken relationship, but she did not accept the need for him to have got involved again with Calisto on such a very personal basis. He could easily have brought in an accountant or lawyer to take charge of the Greek woman’s financial affairs and have kept Calisto at arm’s length.

‘If I had done my duty by Calisto as her late father expected of me, her finances would never have got in such a mess,’ Alexei reasoned as if his involvement and sense of guilt were the most natural and understandable reactions in the world. ‘As she’s currently working for a Parisian fashion house, it made sense for her to use my property as a base and reduce her outgoings.’

Billie wondered why he hadn’t just settled his ex-fiancée’s debts in compensation for his neglect of her affairs. Billie could not help thinking about the amount of very private information about their marriage that Calisto had apparently had full access to and she reckoned that she was only receiving part of the truth from her volatile husband. Alexei and his former lover were clearly on very close terms again. It was possible that that intimacy had not yet stretched to accommodate
a renewed sexual relationship, but it could only be a matter of time until it did. Perhaps Calisto was also being given a second chance to prove herself and Alexei was biding his time before reaching any firm decision about his future plans. After all, he had dived at unchar-acteristic speed into their marriage and what had that gained him? A son she’d dragged like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat?

‘You shouldn’t have gone anywhere near Calisto,’ Alexei breathed grimly, his hard gaze cutting into her like a laser beam. ‘Today, when you subjected her to a jealous scene, you embarrassed me. I expect more from you than that kind of gutter behaviour.’

While inwardly cringing at that rebuke, Billie perfectly understood how Calisto had delivered her into Alexei’s hands, gift-wrapped and tagged, and as a jealous vengeful witch. Calisto must have got onto the phone within minutes of Billie’s departure to get her version of events in first. Alexei believed she had gone to fight over him with another woman and, as she had never really known how she planned to tackle Calisto or indeed what she would say to her, she could not have come up with a more dignified explanation for her visit.

Alexei surveyed her steadily, lush black lashes screening his gaze to the hot gleaming gold of a hunting animal, while his dark accented drawl took on a husky deep note that shimmied down her sensitive spine like a caress. ‘Before today, I would never have dreamt that you would act in such a primitive way,
moraki mou.
I’ve always admired your restraint and intelligence.’

‘Well, it just goes to show that you never really know anyone,’ Billie quipped unevenly, marvelling at
the stunning beauty and power of his eyes and feeling her treacherous body quicken in a physical response as natural to her in his presence as the feel of her own skin. Her nipples peaking into straining buds, she wondered whether she should shout at him for calling her ‘primitive’ or revel in his evident fascination because something equally basic in him clearly liked the idea of her fighting for him. And nothing had ever illustrated for her so clearly the innate dichotomy of Alexei Drakos the man, censuring her behaviour while reserving the right to sexually savour it.

Billie closed her eyes tight on temptation. And he was the ultimate temptation for her and always had been. But the time for that kind of behaviour was past, she told herself firmly, crushing the inner quivers of desire that would have destroyed her self-respect had she let them linger. Unlike him she refused to take refuge in sex when their relationship was falling apart and she could not accept his current intimacy with Calisto Bethune either.

Maybe he hadn’t yet got back into bed with his ex-fiancée but that did not make his betrayal of their marriage any easier to bear. He had shared
their
secrets and evidently even discussed who would get custody of their son. She could not forgive him for that disloyalty. He had been right on one score though. Until she had spoken to Calisto, Billie would have fought for their marriage with whatever weapons came to hand. But loving Alexei was no longer enough and she
had
made some terrible mistakes, she acknowledged painfully. Now, however, she felt alienated and on the brink of being discarded, a humiliating sensation that did not sit well with her pride. It was really time for her to look out
for her own interests and those of her son and prepare for a future that did not include Alexei. Furthermore, rather than wait to be pushed she was discovering that she would very much prefer to jump.

‘Billie…’ Alexei murmured thickly.

‘No, don’t look at me that way, don’t talk to me that way either,’ she told him tautly. ‘It’s no longer appropriate.’

Alexei frowned at her evasive eyes and cool intonation, the sensual heat dying out of his intent gaze. ‘What are you talking about?’

Billie breathed in deep. ‘Marrying you without telling you about Nicky was a huge mistake,’ she admitted heavily, lifting her head to study her husband with pained eyes. ‘But fortunately we don’t have to live with that mistake for ever.’

Alexei had fallen very still. ‘Meaning?’

‘You were right. We should get a divorce,’ she extended flatly, pinning her tremulous lip line firm as she voiced that ground-breaking decision.

‘I only entertained that idea
before
I knew we had a child!’ Alexei raked back at her with disdainful force. ‘Now that I do know, a divorce is out of the question.’

‘But we’re not working out as a couple.’

‘And whose fault is that?’ Alexei raked back at her.

‘It’s not
all
my fault,’ Billie told him, green eyes flaming back at him like highly polished jewels. ‘Your renewed intimacy with Calisto—’

‘There
is
no intimacy!’ Alexei broke in angrily.

Billie gave him a stony look. ‘Well, there’s a closeness that I find unacceptable.’

‘You find it…unacceptable?’ Alexei framed in a raw undertone of wrath.

‘As you said, trust is gone,’ Billie reminded him tightly. ‘Calisto was a major part of your life for many months while I was pregnant and I refuse to stand by on the sidelines again while you entertain her.’

Black-lashed bronzed eyes brilliant with fury at her daring to lay down the law to him, Alexei spread his arms wide in an angry movement of dismissal. ‘You are my wife,’ he growled between compressed lips. ‘That should be enough for you.’

‘But it’s not enough. I feel like an accidental wife, not a real one. You said I cheated you. You regretted marrying me within hours of the ceremony.’ While Billie grimaced, she also held her head high as she reminded him of those facts. ‘I can’t rewrite our past and neither can you.’

A screaming silence that flared along the edges like an inflamed wound fell in the opulent cabin.

‘I won’t give you a divorce,’ Alexei delivered in sardonic challenge.

‘I don’t mind waiting a bit longer to get the legal stuff over and done with,’ she said wearily, a thumping headache beginning to pound behind her temples. ‘But while you can hold things up you can’t stop me getting a divorce. I know enough about the law to know that.’

Bronzed eyes shimmering like polished metal, Alexei set his even white teeth together.

Billie sensed his brooding dark fury and watched his long brown fingers tighten to show the white of bone round the glass in his hand. He was a Drakos, an Alpha male with a very powerful personality, and he was outraged that
she
should talk of divorcing
him
when
he blamed her for the disintegration of their marriage. She understood that, she understood that perfectly, but she was fed up of eating humble pie, turning the other cheek and staying quiet when she wanted to demand answers and felt she deserved more understanding. As yet she could not even imagine a life without Alexei in it, but in time she would get stronger and she would get over him…
oh, yes, she would!
She had more than enough strength and resolve and courage, she told herself fiercely.