LITMIR.BIZ

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by that assurance. ‘What happened? Who did this to you? Get over the idea that it’s not done to admit to being hurt!’

      ‘I really appreciate your concern but I’d prefer not to talk about it,’ Billie mumbled, her eyes stinging like mad beneath her lowered lashes, because his concern on her behalf was more than she could bear while the thought of sharing such a kitchen-sink family drama with him just made her want to cringe in humiliation.

      ‘Save the nonsense for fools. Talk,’Alexei instructed in an emphatic growl of threat that ratcheted up her tension and widened her gaze to focus on the harsh set of his darkly handsome features.

      ‘Storm in a teacup,’ she said shakily. ‘Mum’s boyfriend made a pass at me. He’d been drinking and he came into my room and lay down on my bed while I was sleeping—’

      ‘He…did…what?’ Alexei roared, springing back upright and glowering down at her in angry disbelief. ‘You could have been raped!’

      ‘But I wasn’t. He gave me such a fright I screamed at him, and that woke Lauren up and she stormed in and misread the situation…’ Billie was becoming too uncomfortable to hold his gaze. ‘She slapped me—’

      ‘Blamed you as well, no doubt,’ Alexei incised with a gritty lack of hesitation. ‘Why on earth did you waste your money buying her a house?’

      ‘She’s my mother and I know she’s not perfect, but she’s the only one I’ll ever have,’ Billie proffered, tight-mouthed.

      ‘She’s no mother at all when there’s a man in the equation,’Alexei derided. ‘If you had been more aware of your own interests you would have bought that house for your own use. You shouldn’t be under the same roof as her.’

      After Lauren’s attack and abuse, Billie wondered if she ever would be under the same roof again. That violent response from her mother had gouged a big hole in Billie’s heart. She knew alcohol had probably had a lot to do with her mother losing her head but it still hurt that Lauren could trust a man she had only met a few weeks ago more than she trusted her daughter.

      ‘Well, it’s too late now,’ she muttered ruefully.

      His attention still nailed to her swollen face and reddened eyes, Alexei breathed grimly. ‘We’ll see.’

      Another knock sounded on the door and Alexei opened it to reveal the familiar, careworn face of the island doctor. The older man was taken aback by the state of Billie’s face and, with all the assurance of someone who had known her as a child, he told her not to be silly when she insisted that an examination was unnecessary. He checked her eye and a steward brought a cold pack to help reduce the swelling. The doctor’s probing revealed no further injury and the cut was minor enough to require no further attention.

      ‘Now go to sleep,’ Alexei instructed, leaving the cabin in the older man’s company as soon as Billie had swallowed the painkillers she had been given. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’

      Billie could not think what they could possibly have left to discuss. She lay curled up in the bed, tears seeping from below her lowered eyelids and stinging her sore face. She heard the doctor leave on the launch and its return when the sun was high in the sky because sleep had evaded her once again. A cup of tea was brought to her and she peered at her reflection in the mirror in horror: she looked a sight with one eye half shut by purple bruising and swelling that had destroyed the symmetry of her face. The phone by her bed buzzed.

      Sunglasses firmly attached to her nose, she went up to the main deck to join Alexei for breakfast. He was on the phone and, sketching a movement with an imperious brown hand, he indicated that she go ahead and eat without waiting for him to join her. There were a couple of faces at the windows of his office and she reddened, knowing that the breakfast invite would be viewed as a sign of favouritism by the rest of the team, while anxiously wondering if word of her sudden arrival on board the yacht in the middle of the night had spread among the crew.

      Alexei’s dark rich masculine drawl took on the subtle change that warned her that he was talking to a woman. In Spanish? She had learned to recognise a number of the languages he spoke even if she couldn’t speak them herself. He could well be talking to the actress, Lola Rodriquez, whom he had recently met in London. It was none of her business, Billie told herself urgently, squashing the beginnings of an envious daydream in which she, got up in a fabulous dress, dined out with Alexei, leaving him open-mouthed in admiration over her looks, her wit and her sex appeal.

      ‘Let me see you,’ Alexei urged, bending down to filch the sunglasses off her nose and inspect her battered face in the full unforgiving light of day.

      Mercifully unaware of the heights her imagination could take her to, Alexei grimaced. ‘Nasty. It’ll be a few days before you look normal again.’

      Billie snatched back her sunglasses and replaced them on her nose with a shaking hand. His input on how she looked was overkill, for wasn’t she already wincing over the rainbow bruising round her eye and the swelling distorting her face?

      ‘Your mother’s boyfriend is gone,’ Alexei informed her.

      Her brow furrowed. ‘Gone? Where? What are you talking about?’

      ‘I dealt with him.’

      ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Billie queried nervously.

      ‘I took the launch back to the harbour with the doctor last night and confronted the man to tell him to leave.’

      Billie rammed back her chair to stand up. ‘You had no right to interfere!’

      ‘Your mother is full of apologies but she caught the ferry with him this morning. The neighbours are up in arms and I think she decided that a short break from island life was in order.’

      ‘Oh, my goodness!’ With a groan of protest, Billie flung herself back down in her chair. ‘What on earth did you say to Mum?’

      ‘That if she ever hurt you again she would be charged with assault—’

      A whimper of dammed-up fury and frustration escaped Billie. ‘It was none of your business!’ she bawled back at him. ‘How dare you?’

      ‘It’s how we deal with problems on Speros—you know it is. Every community must have rules. Lauren’s boyfriend could have raped you, although the neighbours are so nosy I think you would have been rescued before he got very far,’ Alexei conceded with a gleam of dark sardonic humour in his unrepentant gaze. ‘All that matters is that he is no longer on the island and he won’t dare to come back.’

      ‘But Lauren’s gone as well, driven out of her own home!’ Billie condemned emotively.

      ‘Your mother will be back, don’t worry. She’s too clever to abandon the easy life she has here, thanks to you,’ Alexei countered carelessly, his interest in the subject patently on the wane. ‘However, I’ve come up with a solution to your problems.’

      ‘I don’t have any problems,’ Billie told him stonily, abandoning the table and turning on her heel to head back at speed to her cabin.

      ‘Billie!’ Alexei breathed rawly. ‘Get back here right now!’

      Trembling with fury over his meddling in her private life, Billie was outraged by that glossy impenetrable Drakos assurance that made Alexei believe that he could do whatever he wanted to do, particularly on Speros. But the particular note of command in his strong voice stopped her dead. She could storm off but where to and why? They had gone toe to toe once before and, though she might have got her job back, she knew her tycoon boss well enough to know that it had been a one-chance-only deal. Slowly, as if every movement physically hurt, Billie turned round again.

      ‘Finish your breakfast,’ Alexei told her harshly, his exasperation unconcealed. ‘We’re leaving the ship in ten minutes.’

      Clashing with the warning in his hard dark eyes, Billie breathed in slow and deep, suddenly aware that the exchange was taking place right outside the office windows and

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