The next day Billie arrived in London and climbed into the limo that would waft her, Nicky and Kasma to Hazlehurst. She had dressed with care in a beautifully elegant dark purple suit, rescued from looking like office apparel by a short skirt, high heels and snappy accessories. Kasma, who had only been abroad once before, was excited by everything she saw while Nicky looked adorable in a practical blue-striped playsuit and little jacket. The closer they came to their final destination, the more nervous Billie became.
Basking in early summer sunlight, Hazlehurst looked idyllic. The house wore its Georgian beginnings with style and elegance. The redoubtable housekeeper looked surprised when Billie arrived with a child in tow but wasted no time in calling another member of staff to escort Kasma and her charge upstairs to the nursery floor. Even before Billie was directed into the drawing room to see Alexei, her tummy was rolling and her skin dampening with nervous perspiration.
The tall front windows had a wonderful view of the lawns that ran below beech trees clad in the fresh green of their seasonal finery. Poised to one side of that view, Alexei looked formidable, sheathed in a dark pinstripe business suit of flawless cut and tailoring. His lean, darkly handsome face was taut and unrevealing, but his brilliant eyes glittered with a light that warned her that appearances could be deceptive, and that he was by no means as calm as he might seem on the surface. Alexei was, after all, studying her as if he had never quite seen her before.
'You…know,' Billie guessed immediately, her voice emerging strangely squeaky and insubstantial from her lips. Even when he intimidated her, he could still take her breath away with his stark male beauty and high-voltage sexual magnetism. No matter what thoughts ran through her anxious mind, at the back of those thoughts she was recalling the hard driving rhythm of his lean powerful body on and inside hers and the ecstasy of release that had allowed her, for such a brief time, to feel close to him. Was it any wonder that her throat was dry and her lungs reluctant to give her more oxygen?
'I received the DNA results early this morning. At first I couldn't credit it,' Alexei imparted between compressed lips, more than a hint of ferocious self-discipline still etched in his tense stance and forbidding aspect.
'You should have known I wouldn't lie about something that was so easily proven one way or other,' Billie dared, lifting her chin in challenge. 'Of course, Nicky is your child.'
'But I remember nothing,' Alexei growled in a driven undertone, his incapacity in that field evidently now a source of deep resentment. 'Although I now know it obviously happened, it's still a challenge for me to accept that I slept with you that night and that I was so careless that I got you pregnant.'
Dismayed by that punishing choice of wording, Billie flinched. 'All I can say is that we were both upset and vulnerable that evening and when we were together it didn't feel wrong or out of place.'
His intense stare made her feel as though he would like to get inside her memory of that evening and take it from her rather than simply share it with her. She sensed his duality in the strong current of aggression that still ran beneath his self-disciplined surface and wondered at it. He was not reacting to the revelation of Nicky's paternity as she had hoped or expected and yet she could not have said precisely what was wrong with his attitude.
'I don't want platitudes from you. I want to know exactly what happened between us…'
Unsure as to what he meant by that statement, Billie worried at her lower lip with her teeth. 'The obvious happened—'
She collided with unrelenting dark golden eyes. 'I want to know what I did, what I said, what you did—every detail,' Alexei told her flatly.