IT WAS not a conversation Billie wanted to have with Lauren, who had never been very good at keeping secrets. Her mobile phone rang and she answered it as a welcome distraction, wandering to the other side of the room and switching to English when she recognised the upper-class English vowel sounds of Alexei's great-aunt, Lady Marina Chalfont, his father's half-sister. Lady Marina was stranded in Athens. Billie was happy to sort out transport for her, not only because the older woman was in her eighties but because she was Alexei's favourite relative.
'You're on duty twenty-four-seven,' Lauren complained.
'It's not quite as bad as that,' Billie declared, pressing a kiss to her mother's cheek before leaving an hour later.
But nonetheless that was how it felt when Billie returned to the villa and discovered that chaos had developed in her absence. Alexei strode into the entrance hall, lean darkly handsome face hard with anger and frustration. 'Where the hell have you been?' he demanded rawly. 'I'm trying to work and the phone is ringing off the hook. Your assistant is an idiot and my cousins are doing a conga through the house!'
'I went to see my mother.'
Like a storm cloud, Alexei shrugged his dismissal of that as an acceptable excuse and strode back to the office suite in high dudgeon. A moment later, the conga crew passed Billie by and she intervened. Alexei's cousins, many of them just teenagers, were keen to treat the funerals as an excuse to enjoy some sun, sea and sand and were striking a very wrong note in the grieving household. It took all of Billie's tact to soothe everyone down before a major row broke out. Chastened, the young people went down to the beach in pursuit of more acceptable entertainment.
Her assistant, Kasia, was swallowing back tears when Billie joined her and she confessed that in certain moods Alexei scared her. Everyone on the business team kept their head down when Billie arrived and she knew that Alexei had been letting everyone feel the rough edge of his often sarcastic tongue. Alexei's great-aunt arrived soon after in the helicopter Billie had despatched to pick her up.
'Go and see Marina settled,' Alexei commanded her.
'It's you she will want to see.'
'I'm not in the mood right now.'
Billie breathed in deep to restrain herself but still couldn't hold back the words bubbling into her mouth. 'Maybe it's time you got in the mood. Lots of people badly want to speak to you. Tomorrow will only be more difficult if you don't make time for some of them now.'
An unearthly silence spread like a cloaking cloud of poison gas through the large office. There was a palpable air of shock. Alexei lifted incredulous dark eyes of hauteur to Billie's unrepentant face. Ducking his searing gaze, she spun on her heel to leave the office.
An instant later he was walking by her side. 'Don't you ever speak to me like that again,' he warned her icily.
'You know perfectly well what you should be doing.'
'You have no idea what I'm going through,' Alexei condemned.
'Oh, yes, I have,' Billie fielded ruefully, for nobody who had witnessed the camaraderie between Alexei and his parents could have failed to notice how very close the trio were. Like many only children, Alexei had spent a great deal of time with adults and his childhood as such had been short-lived. His father had been taking him on guided tours of super tankers and oil refineries by the age of five. Independent though Alexei was, his parents' deaths had left him like a ship without a rudder.
Billie showed Lady Marina, the tall and imposing daughter of a countess, into the most spacious guest suite. 'How is my nephew?' the old lady asked fondly.
'He's coping very well—'
'Which for a Drakos male means he's not coping at all,' Marina interposed with a shake of her elegant white head. 'Constantine always froze too when an emotional response was demanded. Is Alexei using work as an escape?'
Billie folded her lips and nodded.
'Alexei's in shock. Drakos men aren't used to problems that they can't solve, situations they can't fix. He needs to go wild for a while, get it all out of his system. Holding it all in is unhealthy.'
Billie almost smiled at that unlikely idea because, while the tabloids might once have depicted the fabulously wealthy Drakos heir as a wild, undisciplined playboy, Billie had learned that even though Alexei might break the rules and flout the conventions he always acted with forethought and he never, ever relinquished control. He also rejoiced in nerves of steel and the sensitivity of a granite block.
But what she saw later that evening when Alexei had abandoned his social mask shook that conviction. Unable to find him to pass on news of an unexpected movement on the New York Stock Exchange, she finally ran him to ground in the special conservatory that housed his mother's prized collection of tropical orchids. She hovered outside, watching him through the glass as he stood there and trailed a long lean finger down the stem of a white waxen bloom. He had never had any interest in the flowers that had fascinated his Russian mother, and neither had his late father. Indeed both men had regularly teased Natasha about her obsession. But, for all that, a year ago Alexei had financed an Amazonian plant collectors' trip, which had resulted in his mother having a newly discovered orchid named after her. Natasha had been thrilled beyond belief at having such an honour conferred on her.
Billie's gaze flicked up to Alexei's bold brown profile and froze at the sight of the glisten of moisture highlighting his hard cheekbones. Silent tears were rolling down his face. She could taste his sadness, his regret for times past never to be regained. Her throat thickened, her own eyes wet, and she looked hurriedly away, feeling that she could not possibly intrude on so intensely private a moment in which he believed himself alone and unobserved. But, oh, how she longed for the right to push open that door and hurry to his side to offer him comfort! But freedom of expression was not part of her role and she reluctantly walked away while scolding herself for having underestimated the depth of Alexei's loss and his feelings. His tough self-discipline had fooled even her, persuading her that he was totally in control and that business would pretty much go on as usual. Why else had she chased him down to talk about his US Stock
s? She left a note on his desk but it was a long time before she got to sleep that night because she was far too busy wondering when Alexei had last slept.