Embarrassment swallowed Billie whole and glued her tongue to the roof of her mouth. 'I don't remember much,' she fibbed in desperation.
Alexei dealt her a gleaming look of contempt. 'Just another forgettable shag, was I?'
'I wouldn't know about that—I don't have anyone to compare you to!' Billie snapped back at him furiously. 'I was a virgin.'
Alexei nodded acceptance of that fact. 'Okay, so talk…'
Billie wandered restively over to the window and turned her narrow back to him in self-defence. In truth she had near-perfect recall of their time together and she repeated snatches of conversation and mentioned the sharing of the shower and the reason for his departure. 'I think you fell down the steps because you tripped over my handbag…I'd dropped it on the floor by the door on the way in,' she completed woodenly.
The silence stretched and gnawed at her nerves. Throwing back her head, vivid coppery hair falling back from her pale cheeks and brow, Billie straightened her stiff shoulders and spun back to him. 'So, now you know that Nicky is your son—'
Her husband's lean powerful visage hardened from the reflective look he had worn. 'And I so easily might never have known,' he interrupted. 'Had I married Calisto, you would never have told me—'
She was alert to the renewed tension in the atmosphere. Billie's spine went rigid and a smidgeon of colour warmed her cheeks. 'I don't know what I would have done if you had married her,' she contradicted.
An ebony brow quirked, for he was unimpressed by that claim. 'Don't you? You would have deprived me of my son, denied my son his father and disinherited him of his Drakos heritage,' he condemned, taking her breath away with those hard-hitting charges. 'Both he and I would have paid a very steep price for our ignorance of our bond. Were you planning to lie to him when he got old enough to ask who his father was?'
'I hadn't got that far, for goodness' sake. I hadn't even thought about stuff like that!' Billie disclaimed in a tone of unconscious appeal. 'Nicky's only a baby—'
Alexei raised his head high, dark golden eyes hard with censure. 'Nikolos is my son and you passed him off as someone else's, even brought him into my home in that false guise. As a mother, you failed in your duty to him.'
Shaken by those accusations, Billie felt her cheeks grow hot. 'And as a wife?' she chipped in helplessly.
'You leave more than a little to be desired,' Alexei delivered without hesitation and he swung open the drawing-room door and stood back with contrasting courtesy for her exit. 'Now I would like to see my son. At least you had the good sense to bring him here with you.'
Billie felt rather as if a whip had somehow contrived to lash her skin below her clothes. Anger sparking, she tried to defend herself. 'In my position some women would have opted for a termination and your son would never have been born.'
'Maybe you saw his existence as money in the bank for a future power-play. Certainly that is how your mother thinks and don't try to tell me otherwise. Lauren is always out for what she can get.'