had told her.
‘I’m grateful. I just want Lauren to have a secure home that no one can take away from her,’ Billie had confided, not bothering to add that, from her point of view, buying a small house outright was cheaper and safer than trusting Lauren to use the money Billie gave her to pay the rent.
Lauren was delighted with her new home and had gone to unusual effort to furnish and decorate it.
Smiling at the window box of bright geraniums ornamenting the blue-painted front sill, Billie knocked on the rough-wood front door of the tumbledown whitewashed house at the end of a crumbling terrace. Her smile slid away a little when the door was opened by a strange man. Around thirty years old with long brown hair and an unshaven face that made him look more unkempt than trendy, he sported shorts and a T-shirt.
‘You can only be Billie,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Lauren’s in her studio.’
The tiny sunroom at the back of the house had become her mother’s workplace. Her deeply tanned, leggy parent turned from her easel to say, ‘When I saw the yacht had docked in the bay last night I expected you home.’
‘I had to work late. If I’d known you were expecting me I’d have phoned.’ Billie stretched up to dab a kiss on Lauren’s cheek. ‘Who’s your guest?’
‘Dean? He was a deckhand on a boat that called in a few weeks back. We met at the taverna and he decided he’d like to stay a while. I’m enjoying the company. You know how it is,’ her mother told her, shooting a flirtatious glance at Dean, who was stationed in the doorway, denying Billie the privacy she would have preferred with her parent.
‘I’ll just go upstairs and change.’ Billie came to a halt and had to say, ‘Excuse me, Dean…’ before her mother’s boyfriend let her pass.
And, as Lauren had commented, Billie did indeed know how it was when it came to Lauren’s boyfriends. They were usually backpackers, dropouts or seasonal workers, happy to latch onto the chance of free board and lodgings on an idyllic Greek island. Billie could not recall when her mother had last had a guest who contributed in any way to the household budget. But she was determined not to let Dean’s presence spoil her brief stay.
Billie made a salad lunch for the three of them in the kitchen, coolly clad in a pair of shorts teamed with a tankini top. She glanced up while she was setting the table and noticed that Dean was staring lasciviously at her cleavage. A hot flush marking her cheeks, she looked hurriedly away again. After they had eaten, she said she was going down to the beach and went upstairs to put on a T-shirt. When she came back down again Lauren and Dean were whispering and kissing on the sofa and she couldn’t get out of the house quickly enough.
Not for the first time she wished she had her own bolthole on Speros. If she moved out it would be yet another nail in her mother’s coffin as far as the locals were concerned but after so many years did that really matter? On the other hand, she had very little time off and was usually staying on the yacht or in one of Alexei’s other properties when she was free. How much use would she get out of an independent home on the island? It would not be much of an investment either as privately owned houses on the island had to be offered to the locals first for sale, which kept prices artificially low.
That evening, they dined at the taverna—Billie’s treat, of course. By then she was noticing that her easy-come-easy-go mother seemed unusually keen on Dean, and that Dean drank too much and talked too loudly. Billie was revolted by the way he kept on staring at her breasts and the jokes he began to crack about busty women. She went to bed early and stirred only when her door opened some hours later.
‘Mum?’ she mumbled, drowsily trying to unclog her lashes to open her eyes when the side of the bed gave as someone came down on the mattress and tilted it.
The smell of beer and male sweat assailed her in warning a split second before a bristly jaw line made scratchy contact with her cheek. ‘It’s Dean,’ her mother’s boyfriend whispered thickly. ‘Keep your voice down or you’ll wake your ma, and we don’t want to do that, do we?’
The instant he made physical contact her eyes flew wide in panic and her arms flailed wildly to push him away from her while her body frantically squirmed and heaved up to escape the weighty imprisonment of his body lying half over hers. ‘Get off me! Get out!’ she screamed at the top of her voice.
Within thirty seconds Lauren was in the room demanding to know why her boyfriend was falling off the end of her daughter’s bed. Her mother had had a great deal to drink as well and the older woman lost no time in accusing Billie of trying to steal her man. In the midst of the resulting madness, in which her mother slapped her face hard, Billie got out of bed, gathered up her clothes, fought past Lauren’s hysterical attempt to hold onto her and escaped into the bathroom to get dressed. By the time she emerged, her mother was shouting at her to get out of her house and never come back and the neighbours were banging on the party wall in complaint. Billie paused only long enough to grab up her bag, which she had not unpacked, and her phone.
Tearstained and trembling, she sat on a bollard down by the harbour, wondering what to do next. The sun was slowly rising in a crimson glow on the horizon. Nothing would make her go to the Drakos villa in such a state to ask for shelter, but Sea Queen was anchored out in the bay and she had no reservations about calling the yacht and asking for the launch to be sent out to pick her up. The crew would think little of her request since she often went on board at odd hours without Alexei. The launch came quickly and she climbed in, her heart thudding fast as the boat drew closer to the giant white yacht that towered above them like a skyscraper. She was embarrassed when she realised that Captain McGregor had got out of bed to greet her. She thought he looked at her a little suspiciously and, after apologising for interrupting his sleep, took her leave of him as soon as she could.
Still shell-shocked by her ordeal at Dean and Lauren’s hands, Billie felt dizzy and she kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed in the opulent cabin Alexei had long since assigned to her in the guest—rather than in the crew—quarters. Her head was aching, her face was sore where she had been slapped and her hands were shaking so badly she had to set down the glass of water she was trying to drink. How could her mother have believed that she might welcome her boyfriend into her bed?
A loud rata-tat-tat on the door made her sit up with a start against the headboard. ‘Come in!’ she called with a frown; even that movement of her face hurt.
She was shocked when Alexei strode through the door looking rather less elegant and laid-back than was his wont. His black hair was tousled, he needed a shave and he was wearing jeans and a half-buttoned white dress shirt below a dinner jacket.
‘What are you doing on board?’ Billie burst out.
‘McGregor phoned me.’ His probing gaze a clear hot gold, Alexei came down on the bed on his knees beside her, suddenly, disturbingly close. But where Dean had brought her out in a cold sweat of fear and disgust, Alexei sent her heart racing in an all-out sprint.
‘Why did the Captain phone you?’ Billie dragged in a feverish breath, a bubble of heat bursting low in her tummy when she collided with his level golden gaze.
‘My goodness, I’m so sorry you were disturbed, Alexei. I seem to be causing an awful lot of trouble, but I only needed a bed for the night and I couldn’t face your mother. I’m sure she would’ve thought I was being cheeky turning up at the villa,’ Billie gabbled, embarrassed and scarcely knowing what she was saying
His brilliant scrutiny oddly intent, Alexei lifted a bronzed long-fingered hand to turn her face into the pool of light shed by the lamp. His sleek ebony brows pleated and a stifled Greek curse escaped his taut mouth. ‘McGregor phoned me because he could see that you had been attacked and naturally he was concerned.’
‘Attacked?’ she echoed in consternation.
‘You have a long scratch and blood on your cheekbone and I suspect you may have a black eye by morning,’Alexei enumerated in curt explanation. ‘Have you any other injuries?’
Billie lifted a tremulous hand and let the pads of her fingers