BILLIE was so tense that even the shallowest breaths were rattling through her lungs at too fast a rate. Lean, strong face set in grim lines, Alexei was seething with her and every inch a Greek tycoon in his proud bearing.
'You overstepped the mark. You skirt it all the time but today you went too far,' Alexei delivered in a tone of rebuke and command that was still raw-edged with anger. 'This is your last warning. Nobody is indispensable, so, if I once gave you the impression that you were, wipe that assumption from your mind. For what I pay you, I could find someone else equally efficient—'
'Yes, yes, I'm sure you could,' Billie inserted, her skin clammy with nervous perspiration, for he had never before spoken to her in such a tone or studied her with such censure.
'Don't interrupt me when I'm speaking!' Alexei launched down at her crushingly.
Billie buttoned her mouth up tight and gritted her teeth. She could feel the tears building up behind her eyes, tears of chagrin and hurt and shock at being treated like a lowly office junior who had messed up spectacularly.
'I did not need or wish to consult Dr Melas this morning. And even had I needed to, it was for me to make that decision,' Alexei imparted succinctly. 'You wasted the good doctor's time. You lack perspective with regard to your role as an employee.'
Billie swallowed back angry defensive words and said with a determined lack of emotion, 'I was genuinely concerned about your health.'
Alexei dealt her a cold appraisal that cut her to the bone. 'That's way beyond your remit.'
'Yes. It won't happen again,' Billie told him woodenly.
Her colour high, she walked straight-backed back through the general office past the business team, who must have heard Alexei raise his voice to her, and returned to her office. Her only consolation was that Dr Melas had called in to talk to her before he left to stress that, although he had got nowhere with Alexei either, she had done the right thing in phoning him. He too wanted Alexei to see a neurologist and have a scan. Of course, wasn't Alexei just being his usual nonconformist self? Too stubborn to play safe and too convinced of his superhuman health and higher intelligence to take advice from lesser mortals? So that was the end of that road. She had overstepped her boundaries. For the moment, Alexei had forgotten their hours in the guest-suite bed. Would he ever remember? And did she even want him to?
His father's sudden death had left a couple of important business deals wide open and Alexei went straight to New York with his team to handle the fallout the next day. He stayed there for over a week, putting in workaholic hours, and followed it up with a similar week in London. Being left alone on the island shook Billie, as Alexei rarely left her behind. Her assistant, Kasia, had crumpled under the pressure of working for Alexei and had used her position as a springboard into a less taxing job elsewhere. Billie had yet to hire a replacement. Convinced that a break from her usual routine would do her good, she set off on a quarterly visit to a number of Alexei's European properties, where she checked out problems, new staff and authorised essential maintenance. She was in Venice, at his ancient palazzo, when Alexei decided to take some time off and cruise the Caribbean in his yacht, Sea Queen. He invited friends on board and several long-distance photos of gorgeous bikini-clad women appeared in the newspapers. Billie's heart sank like a stone and when she found herself poring over those pictures with a magnifying glass to see if she recognised any of the faces, she realised that jealousy and fear were eating her alive.
Yet how could she fear losing what she had never had? There was no commitment and no security in being a one-night stand
She'd had her moment and it had lasted for even less time than she might have hoped. And even while she scolded herself for being so foolish, she recognised that she already had a much more serious issue to worry about: her menstrual cycle had stopped dead in its tracks and her period was overdue.