Two weeks later, Billie was in Milan with Alexei when she broached the subject of her career break over the working lunch they were sharing.
Alexei glanced up to study her with frowning force. Her burnished copper streaked hair glinting in the sunshine, she tilted her heart-shaped face back and looked back at him with wide wary eyes as green as limes. 'Surely this is very sudden?' he queried. 'Where has this idea come from?'
'I've been thinking about it for a while. I'd like to spend some time back in England with my aunt. She could do with the support.'
'She lost her husband recently,' Alexei recalled, surprising Billie. 'Well, I have every sympathy, but I'm not prepared to tolerate some idiot trying to do your job for the next six months—'
'For a minimum of eight months,' Billie corrected before he could contrive to try and bargain down the duration of her absence. 'I need a break, Alexei…I really do need the break.'
'I don't understand why.'
'I would come back to work refreshed.'
From below lush black lashes that any woman would have killed to possess, Alexei looked her over with keen bronze-coloured eyes of enquiry. He didn't think she looked in need of refreshment, although he was prepared to admit that she had got a little too thin in recent months, so that her clothes seemed to have become too big for her slight frame. He sensed that something was being concealed from him. 'What's really wrong?'
Her gaze took on an evasive slant. 'I just want a break and…' in a nervous flicker of motion her tongue crept out to moisten her dry lips as she braced herself to tell her first lie '…my aunt is pregnant and alone and she could do with my support.'
Alexei watched stinging colour warm her cheeks and wondered why she was blushing. Perhaps it was not the late husband's posthumous baby but the result of a fling with someone else since. He suppressed a sigh: Billie to the rescue. That made perfect sense to him. His wide sensual mouth flattened. 'I don't want you to take a break now. I consider you a vital member of my staff.'
'You've met Olympia. I'm training her to take my place.'
'Olympia skulks behind doors when I'm around. That isn't promising—'
'But that's better than a young woman who continually throws herself in your path,' Billie pointed out, well aware of how often that desire afflicted women in his radius and of how exasperating he found such behaviour. Yet she had never had the heart to judge a single one of those women when she herself had always been far too susceptible to Alexei's charisma.
'I can tell you now that Olympia won't cut it,' Alexei told her very drily.
Billie tilted her chin. 'She'll have to because I need you to agree to this career break.'
'I'll consider it.' Alexei's rich dark drawl carried more than a touch of ice. 'But why don't you consider basing yourself in my London headquarters for eight months instead? That would be a more sensible option and it would still give you a change of scene and new colleagues.'
Unprepared for that very reasonable suggestion, Billie stiffened in dismay. 'I would really rather have a complete break from my current employment.'
Alexei made her wait for a week for a final answer. She had thought she might have to remind him and her nerves suffered while she waited; if he refused she would have to hand in her resi
gnation. He called her into his office shortly before he was due to fly out to Paris for the weekend. She entered the room, stiff-backed as she tried to shrink inside her jacket, lest the fabric fall revealingly against the small swelling mound of her stomach.
'I'm not in agreement with this career break as you call it,' Alexei informed her without hesitation, his dark golden eyes grim and cool. 'It'll be a nuisance, but you've worked well for me for some years now and I am conscious of that. When do you want to go on leave?'
'At the end of the month,' she told him, weak with relief but taut with guilt at the tangle of deception that she was embarking on.
But she could not see a choice. Although an engagement had yet to be announced, Calisto was already said to be consulting wedding planners. Billie could only hope that the marriage would take place before her return. The passage of time, she told herself urgently, would cure her of sleepless nights and the erotic longings that embarrassed the hell out of her.
She wasn't herself any more. It was as if Alexei had picked her up and shaken her so that nothing inside her was in the right place any more. She was at the mercy of her hormones, of passionate crying jags and, sometimes, wild crazy thoughts and hopes. Distance would cure her, give her the chance to get over him, she told herself fiercely, because if she was planning to return to work for Alexei, she needed to grow a tougher skin.
'You and my sister are thick as thieves at present,' Lauren remarked when her daughter came to say her goodbyes, her burgeoning tummy carefully concealed below a loose T-shirt and a canvas jacket. 'When are you planning to tell me what's really going on?'
Billie ducked the question and gave Lauren a guilty hug, wondering how she would ever face telling the truth to her mother, who was sure to have some very cutting comments to make when the time came. But all that really mattered to her at that moment was that, step by step, her plan was working…