The Drakos Affair

They boarded the yacht together. Tension was simmering like a hissing, boiling pot between them. ‘Alexei…don’t do this,’ Billie urged half under her breath as they crossed the deck.

‘Don’t do what?’ he drawled smooth as glass.

‘It’s not fair to put me in a position like this.’

His bold profile froze.

‘I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t,’ she continued awkwardly. ‘I like my job. I want my life to stay the same.’

No woman had ever made a plea to his sense of honour on such terms and it infuriated him that Billie had done so; he felt she should somehow sense that the innate sense of integrity he possessed had the power to make him back off. Dark deep anger burning below the surface, for he was a man very much accustomed to getting his own way, Alexei murmured icily, ‘I find it hard to believe that that is what you want.’

Billie looked towards the sun and wondered how much it resembled the male ego in size and brilliance. Alexei was a hugely powerful and wealthy man, made irresistible by his Greek-god looks and notorious reputation. Women had always wanted Alexei Drakos and it was a truth he had learned so young that her surrender could only seem inevitable to him. ‘In the circumstances—my working for you,’ she extended with care. ‘I don’t want anything to change.’

‘So, if I sack you, I can have you,’ Alexei pronounced flatly.

‘You don’t really want me, you know you don’t. I’m not your type,’ Billie reasoned in a feverish undertone.

‘Make arrangements for a flight to Monaco for me and then take the next couple of days off,’ Alexei instructed just outside the office, startling her. ‘You were assaulted last night. You need recovery time. Naturally you can stay on board Sea Queen.’

And, that fast, she registered that he had listened to her at last. The strangest and most contrary sense of disappointment washed through Billie’s taut figure. The excitement of the chase was over. He had loads of eager female connections in Monaco. Quickly, Alexei would move on, find a more willing woman and forget that he had ever thought she might be worthy of a fling. Her heart felt as if it were being hurled from a cliff down onto jagged rocks. She ignored that fact, her weakness; she had done what had to be done and it was time that she lived a more full life and found a man of her own to be with. In the course of her work, she had turned down many invitations because she had yet to meet anyone who could equal Alexei. But she would have to stop being so picky. By turning away from Alexei, she reminded herself firmly, she kept her excellent job and would hopefully also retain a good working relationship with him.

Alexei was less content. Since when had he, a Drakos male, allowed himself to be upstaged and outmanoeuvred by a female? But she had appealed to his conscience and, although it went against the grain to admit it, she had talked a good deal of sense. Wasn’t that why he employed her? Common sense and calm distinguished Billie and until he had taken that kiss he would have sworn that nothing would faze her. But sex had splintered the calm and put her into retreat. She wasn’t his type, he reminded himself impatiently while he showered later that day on board his private jet. She was just an employee and only in the very early days of creating his empire had he slept with women he employed. There were excellent reasons for respecting boundaries and, even as it was, Billie was always breaking through them and crossing the line. Was that why Billie was the only person in his life who had the power to make him feel human and real? She wasn’t in awe of him, or his wealth or his status. When he had watched her eyes close in dreamy receipt of his mouth he had got a kick out of that susceptibility. At that moment, she had been with him every step of the way.

His brow furrowed. Why the hell was he even still thinking about her? His common sense and practicality did not seem to be the equal of hers, he registered grimly. His libido had him over a barrel. He would have sacrificed their working relationship in a second, had she been waiting in the cabin bed for him…and to hell with the immorality, inconvenience and poor long-term outlook of it all!

Three months after that day, Billie went out on a date with a charming Italian businessman called Pietro Castronovo. He took her out to dinner in a very fancy Florentine restaurant where she toyed with food that was too rich for her taste and tried to respond to his flirtatious chatter.

At ten o’clock, Alexei rang her and wrecked the evening. ‘You should have checked with me before you went out. Pietro is a married man with two kids.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Billie murmured flatly.

‘I’ve got some work for you to do.’

‘Right now, I’m on an evening out,’ she responded thinly.

‘Surely you’re not planning on spending any more time with a married man?’Alexei enquired sardonically.

Billie came off her phone and apologised to Pietro for having answered it. ‘I always take Alexei’s calls.’

‘You stand very high in his regard,’Pietro commented.

Billie breathed in deep. ‘Are you married?’

Her companion’s thin, good-looking face tightened and she knew the answer before he even parted his lips and acknowledged that he was. ‘I should have asked,’ she said ruefully. ‘I wouldn’t be here if I had known.’

Pietro tried to dissuade her from cutting the evening short, but Billie stood firm and wondered why she was so much angrier with Alexei than with Pietro. After all, Alexei’s warning had been a timely one, coming as it did before she could get any more involved with the handsome Italian. But, somehow, being saved at the eleventh hour from a mistake by a male who had very few morals of his own simply incensed Billie.

When she returned to the penthouse hotel suite Alexei was occupying, Alexei was at work with the rest of the team. She sent him an accusing glance but would not have dreamt of telling him how she felt about his previous phone call in front of an audience. When the business was dealt with, he called her back before she could leave.

‘Did you shake Castronovo off? He was born with the gift of the gab,’ Alexei said very drily. ‘I should have warned you about him.’

‘I am able to look after myself,’ Billie told him starchily. ‘Thank you for the warning on this occasion, but please don’t interfere like that again.’

‘Naturally I interfered. I knew that you wouldn’t intentionally date a married man.’

There was a little devil inside Billie’s head and it deeply resented his assumption that she would never do anything untoward. ‘Actually, that’s not necessarily one hundred per cent true.’

‘You were back at the hotel within thirty minutes of my phone call,’Alexei countered with dark amusement. ‘Don’t be ashamed of your principles. Too many people have none at all.’

And still she had wanted to slap him. Her long-overdue venture onto the dating scene had gone bellyup and left her with egg on her face. The person she most hated for his interference was, without a shadow of a doubt, Alexei. She would never choose to date another woman’s husband, but Alexei had once again managed to make her feel a fool.

Eight months after that mortifying evening, Billie was in a better mood. She was sitting in her office in the Drakos villa on Speros, watching beautiful people through the windows. Got up in their fabulous evening outfits, the guests were laughing and drinking on the terrace outside the entertainment suite. The party she had arranged for Constantine’s eightieth birthday was a huge success. Having made an appearance as instructed and stayed around long enough to check that the party schedule was running smoothly, Billie had bowed out to finish off some work.

In recent months her working hours had been very long, even though she now enjoyed the services of an assistant because her duties currently stretched to taking charge of Alexei’s parents’ social and travel arrangements as well. At the same time, she was making a hundred and one decisions about the building of her new house, which was currently two-thirds of the way towards being completed. She had picked the doors, the door handles, the bathroom and kitchen fittings and tiles. By spring the following year, she would be living under her own roof and could still hardly believe it.

In the planning stage the house had been a nightmare. Since anyone doing anything on Speros always looked first to the local community to supply services and skills, she had hired the island architect, Damon Marios, to design her new home. Damon, long since married and the father of two sturdy children, was still a friend. Alexei, however, had insisted on seeing the plans and changing things, pointing out that if he had an interest in the house, he also had the right to voice his viewpoint and ensure that the property was worthy of the site.

‘I wanted something that fitted in with the island architectural style,’ Billie had argued, fighting for the simple little cottage that Damon had designed.

‘There is no style here.A century ago, dirt-poor people built dwellings that were the cheapest of the cheap,’Alexei had derided, urging Damon to use a little creativity and open up windows and doors to the fabulous views in a much more contemporary—and expensive—approach.

‘Plain can be stylish,’ Billie had said sharply.

‘No wonder people talk about you and Alexei,’ Damon had remarked in the aftermath of hearing that rough-edged exchange of views between them. ‘I can’t believe the way you argue with him.’

‘It may be an unconventional working relationship but it works well for us,’ Billie declared lightly.

It had been easy to silence Damon, make him cloak the curiosity she saw in his eyes, for he was too polite to persist. She was accustomed to being questioned about Alexei and her relationship with him. Just about everyone was madly curious about Alexei: how he lived, what made him tick, his women, his houses, his yachts and his sporting prowess. He provided an endless stream of fascination for others. Since he had taken the helm of Drakos Shipping, he had become a hugely powerful tycoon. The richer he became, the more the media wanted to know about him and the less they found out, because Alexei didn’t grant interviews. Paparazzi lay in wait for his every public appearance but his brutally efficient security team barred and evaded their invasions. Some of his lovers had, of course, gone to the press to sell stories, acts of betrayal that had only increased the level of interest in him and his lifestyle.

‘Billie!’ A voice intervened, separating Billie from her thoughts and making her look up from her computer screen to smile in some dismay at the slender brunette in her fifties framed in the doorway. ‘I knew you would sneak off to work!’ Natasha Drakos scolded. ‘Come back to the party, please.’

Billie surrendered gracefully; Alexei’s mother was a strong-willed woman. From the moment Alexei had taken over the family shipping business, Billie had started working long hours in the office suite at the Drakos villa and inevitably the two women had got to know each other better. While her son flew one woman after another out to Speros for entertainment during his hours of leisure, Natasha had soon realised that she had nothing to fear from Billie and had been considerably more concerned about some of the wilder females in her son’s incomparable little black book.

Billie, a slim, vibrant figure in an apple-green dress, reflected that she had had to build an armour-plated shell to cope with the heartache of constantly seeing Alexei with other women. Her sole consolation was that none of them seemed to have the power to hold onto him for very long. But constantly controlling her thoughts, reactions and expressions in Alexei’s radius was a strain. Even now when she was chatting to his mother about the party, Billie was already bracing herself for a glimpse of Alexei with his current love, the English socialite Tia Flint.

Alexei was so tall that it was the work of a moment to pick him and Tia out of the crowd. Tia, an eye-catching blonde in a black glistening sheath dress, was wound round him like a vine. Billie studied Alexei, noting the stubborn angle of his strong jaw and the distance in his brilliant dark eyes. Tia was giggling and gesticulating with her hands to a bunch of friends nearby. In his tailored dinner jacket, Alexei looked as coolly beautiful and remote as a classic bronze statue.

‘Tia is on the way out,’ Natasha forecast knowledgeably. ‘He’s bored.’

‘Maybe,’ Billie responded, watching the way Tia’s fingers were smoothing acrossAlexei’s shirtfront with the familiarity of a lover. It hurt her to look, yet some awful fascination prevented her from snatching her gaze away.

As the hostess drifted off to relocate her husband Damon crossed the floor to greet Billie. ‘You owe me a dance.’

Billie tensed because Damon’s wife, Ilona, was the possessive type. She had visited the site on several occa-sions and had made it clear that she wanted to be sure that any interaction between her husband and his former school friend remained strictly related to business. ‘Do I?’

‘Sorry, Damon, you missed the boat a long time ago,’ Alexei breathed sardonically, stepping between them without warning and closing an arm round Billie to sweep her straight out onto the dance floor.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Billie gasped, thoroughly taken aback by his sudden appearance and that crack that harked back nine years to her first crush as a schoolgirl.

‘Saving your good name,’ he censured with a curled lip. ‘Damon’s wife took the kids and went home to her parents last week. His marriage is over. Damon making a beeline for you is a bad idea as you’ll get the blame for breaking them up.’

‘You couldn’t care less about my good name,’ Billie riposted.

Hooded dark golden eyes dropped to her tense heart-shaped face. ‘Damon’s looking for consolation, so give him a wide berth. Remember the guy who cut you dead on the ferry all those years ago. You look sexy in green—’

‘Out of line, Alexei,’ Billie framed, wildly aware of the strength and power of his tall, well-built body against hers and the hand splayed to her taut spine. She was barely able to breathe for nerves. ‘Where’s Tia?’

‘With her friends. She’s drunk and angry I won’t go to the races with her next week. Organise a flight home for her tomorrow.’

‘Yes.’ So, Tia was yesterday’s news. However, the ef-fervescent blonde had lasted six weeks, which was a good month longer than many did.

The hand at her spine eased down to her derrière. Heat curled in her pelvis, her breasts stirring within the confines of her bra, the nipples distending in response.

‘Oh…look at your parents out on the terrace!’ Billie suddenly exclaimed, and she stilled to watch the older couple dancing outside alone. ‘They’re really enjoying their party.’

Alexei lowered his arrogant dark head, his breath fanning her cheek. The familiar scent of him, a specific aroma composed of warm husky male and the designer cologne he wore, assailed her nostrils and sent an arrowsharp dart of longing through her. If he came too close she suffered that instinctive response half a dozen times in her working day. The awesome physical awareness he could inflict on her was terrifying.

Alexei held her back from him the better to look at her. Simmering dark golden eyes roamed over her like caramel melting on a hot day, burning everywhere his gaze touched. ‘Stop trying to change the subject,’ he husked. ‘The way that fabric clings to your breasts is indecent and very flattering.’

And she glanced down and saw that her prominent nipples were clearly visible beneath her frock. Mortification engulfed her like a tidal wave. A hot pink flared up below her fine skin and washed her face with colour. Turning on her heel, she walked off the floor, furious with him, furious with herself. He was baiting her. He knew she was still attracted to him and he used it like a weapon against her. But she shouldn’t have reacted.

The party, Billie decided ruefully, would be fine without her. She smiled at the touching recollection of Alexei’s parents wrapped in each others’arms as they danced alone outside. It did not occur to her, nor indeed to anyone else that evening, that this image might be one of the last she or they would ever have of the older couple…

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