Free The Pregnancy Shock by Lynne Graham Page B

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 across Alexei’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 occasionsand 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