perfect peace. I want you to come back and work for me again.’
Billie was tense: she was flattered and troubled at one and the same time. ‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea—we didn’t gel.’
‘From my point of view, I barely noticed you were around most of the time,’ Alexei volunteered. ‘You’re very quiet.’
Not best pleased to hear that she was just part of the wallpaper as far as he was concerned, Billie met his stunning dark eyes unwarily and her tummy performed a somersault. ‘I assumed that that was what you would want.’
‘Why are you always so tense?’ Alexei demanded with a sudden frown. ‘You were like that around me even when you were a kid. Look at you now—sitting there as frozen as if you’re waiting to be tipped into a pool of hungry sharks!’
In a defensive move, Billie folded her arms. ‘I never know what you’re going to do or say next. It’s…unnerving.’
‘You could learn to live with it. If you start back to work tomorrow, I’ll double your salary,’ Alexei murmured silkily, watching the sunshine play across the gold and copper shades in her auburn hair, which was much longer than he had appreciated and surprisingly attractive. He went for blondes, not for redheads, but for the first time ever he could see the draw of her striking colouring, particularly in the contrast between her hair and her pale, flawless skin.
‘But I haven’t even said I’ll come back yet and offering to double my salary is just crazy and extravagant!’
His expressive mouth took on a humorous quirk. ‘I can afford to be. If having to occasionally deal with the women in my life is a sticking point, you can hire an assistant to deal with them on your behalf. I don’t care.’
It was a compliment to her efficiency that he should be so keen to have her working for him again. As he smiled that lazy smile and remained poised there in the sunshine pouring through the windows she was, for the first time, hugely conscious of his compelling charm. He was offering her an amazing salary to do a job she enjoyed. With that amount of money coming in, she would no longer need to worry about Lauren falling behind with the rent or not being able to buy her own property.
‘All right,’Billie said gruffly. ‘I’ll start back tomorrow.’
‘You didn’t get another job, did you?’
‘I couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse for leaving your employ after only six weeks!’ Billie responded with spirit.
Alexei laughed. ‘Where were your wits? You should’ve said I made a pass at you. With my reputation everyone would have believed it.’
Billie turned a slow hot pink and evaded his keen gaze. ‘That idea never occurred to me.’
Probably because it would never have occurred to her either that anyone would believe she had actually found his attentions unwelcome and turned him down, Billie acknowledged ruefully…
‘THAT should wrap it up,’ Alexei pronounced, stabbing a final button on the keyboard before pushing away his laptop in a rare gesture of rejection. Rising up, he stretched like a lion, flexing strong muscles bunched up by the constraint of sitting at a desk before shrugging back his sleeve to check the slender gold Rolex on his wrist. It was after one in the morning. ‘You should have told me how late it was.’
Blinking, Billie stifled a yawn. ‘I did.’
That quiet rejoinder made his handsome mouth quirk. Billie was the only employee who ever answered him back. He studied her with narrowed eyes, taking in the white sleeveless top she wore and the full rounded thrust of her breasts against the fine cotton that was pulling at the pearl buttons. More than a lush handful, he calculated, pressure building at his groin as he instinctively pictured the baring of her firm pink-tipped flesh. He was startled by his reaction. Evidently, it had been too long since he had been with a woman, he reflected in exasperation.
Even as he looked, Billie was reaching for the jacket she had removed. In the past two years during which Billie had been on his staff, she was always covered up, buttoned up, zipped up, just as her hair was always clipped, plaited or tied—everything held in tight restraint. In an age when other women were happy to reveal as much flesh as possible, Billie’s modesty made her stand out from the crowd. Even when she went swimming she donned a modest black swimsuit that would not have shamed a nun. Yet the feminine mystique she was careful to preserve was strangely and powerfully sexy,Alexei acknowledged. Odd, too, how he felt guilty even thinking about her in such a way. But then he was almost certain that, rare as it would be, Billie was still a virgin.
‘You’ll have to stay here tonight. You can’t disturb your mother this late,’ he commented, lifting the house phone to issue instructions to the housekeeper, Anatalya.
‘I’m sure it won’t bother her if I wake her up,’ Billie protested, uneasy at the prospect of spending the night at the Drakos villa where she generally felt like a peasant-born intruder.
‘Don’t make a fuss,’ Alexei groaned in all-male irritation, silencing her.
Behind his back, Billie flushed at the reproof. The door opened, revealing not the maid she had expected, but Alexei’s mother, Natasha.
‘I’ll show you upstairs,’ the tall, still-beautiful brunette said with an artificial smile. Billie was never more conscious of her humble little-island-girl beginnings than she was in the radius of Alexei’s glamorous and patronising mother.
Alexei said something in Russian to the older woman. Dark eyes warming only as they rested on her only child, Natasha left the room to escort Billie up the palatial staircase. ‘Do you often work this late for my son?’
‘Not that often. But I’m very well paid, Mrs Drakos. Occasional long hours go with the territory,’ Billie pointed out.
A door was pressed open. Rather stiff and taut, Billie walked in. She was always aware that Alexei’s mother didn’t approve of her working for Alexei. She had no idea why, only the vague suspicion that Natasha didn’t think Lauren Foster’s daughter was good enough to work in so trusted a position.
Her reluctant hostess was already turning to leave when Billie noticed the man’s shirt lying discarded on the carpet and put two and two together fast. ‘Is this…Alexei’s room?’ she breathed in dismay.
‘Why, yes, I assumed that…’ Natasha Drakos gave a little suggestive shrug of her slim shoulders.
‘You assumed wrong.’ It was Alexei’s assured drawl from behind the older woman that broke the tension and the brief, awkward silence that had fallen.
Billie’s face was drenched with colour and she could barely bring herself to look at him or his parent. ‘I really think I should go home—’
‘I’m sorry,’ Natasha Drakos murmured. ‘I misunderstood.’
Rather than make more of a scene, Billie allowed herself to be shown into the room next door but she felt humiliated. She was well qualified and she performed her job to the highest standards, for no Drakos had yet been born capable of accepting shoddy work. Why did Alexei’s mother have to assume that her role automatically extended
