'WHAT the hell have you done?' Billie yelled down the phone the minute her call was answered. 'Where is Nicky?'
'Here at our house in the South of France with me. He's about to have lunch. He's fine.'
That Alexei and her son were in France took Billie aback and she could only dimly assume that there was some advantage to that location that she had yet to work out. 'You kidnapped him…how could you do that to me?'
'My jet is waiting at Heathrow for you. I'm sure it won't take you long to pack,' Alexei countered without remorse.
Barely able to vocalise, never mind think, Billie was trembling with rage and distress. 'If you were standing here in front of me, I honestly believe I would kill you!' she hissed at him and she flung the phone down on her bed, folded her arms and stared at it with rampant loathing.
Arrogantly ignoring everything she had said the previous day, indeed clearly impervious to her wishes, her opinions and her feelings, Alexei had removed his son from his mother's care and taken him to another country.
It was a shocking move that filled Billie to overflowing with dark, fearful foreboding for the future. As a gesture it was uniquely effective, for in that one outrageous act of aggression Alexei had contrived to jerk all her strings at once as though she were nothing but a puppet he was able to control.
Billie was truly shattered. It honestly had not occurred to her that Alexei might fight dirty from the word go. She had assumed they could be civilised—at least in the initial stages of a separation. She had most definitely not been prepared for a war in which no holds were barred to break out so fast. Why had Alexei taken their son to France? Was there some legal advantage in doing this? For the first time in her life Billie regretted not following her mother's guidance and approaching a divorce lawyer. In business, Alexei always took keen advantage of legal advice and she was convinced that Alexei would have sought a professional opinion of what he had just done before he did it. She wished she could have grabbed at the comfort of believing that he was too stupid to appreciate that such behaviour might be held against him in a divorce court when it came to discussing his access to their son. But having worked for Alexei for so long and seeing at first hand how in touch with events and boundaries he always was, she could find no consolation in that line of thought.
Dressed in a yellow shift dress, Billie watched her luggage being stowed in the silver SUV that had come to collect her from the flight to Nice. The sun was warmer and brighter than it had been at Hazlehurst and the sky was a great bright arc of endless blue above her head. Alexei's idyllic chateau in the unspoilt Luberon Valley had always been her favourite Drakos property so it struck her as especially ironic that he should have taken Nicky there. As they travelled deeper into the countryside hills the colour of ochre gave a dramatic edge to the scenery and fields of purple lavender stretched as far as the horizon. Stands of woodland, peach orchards and the serried ranks of highly productive vines that belonged to the chateau surrounded the little medieval settlement of Claudel that was perched high on a rocky cliff like so many other fortified villages in the area. On the uphill climb the SUV traversed the narrow streets with care, snaking across the sleepy village square past the beautiful old church to take a steep cobbled lane lined with medieval dwellings and terminated by the elaborate turreted entrance to the chateau. The electronic gates whirred shut in the vehicle's wake.
In front of the ancient stone bulk of the chateau, which had, over the years, been burned down and ruined many times only to be rebuilt to survive another century, Billie sprang out of the car. She didn't take the time to admire the magnificent view of the village and the valley below and she paid no heed at all to the lovely peaceful gardens where she had so often sat basking in the sunshine. Indeed she barely paused to greet the maid who opened the solid oak front door, and sped down a corridor walled with rough stone to thrust open the door of the room Alexei used as an office…and there he was: her quarry! Impervious to the warmth of the day in the air-conditioned room, he was very elegantly clad in a dark blue designer suit fashionably cut to define every sexy, virile line of his long powerful thighs, muscular chest and broad shoulders. Her heartbeat kicked up speed, her breathing straining in her throat. She hated his guts like poison at that moment but there was no denying that he was gorgeous.
Alexei surveyed her with glittering golden eyes and there was neither apology nor remorse in that bold challenging appraisal. 'No shouting,' he warned her.
But Billie was so violently angry to discover that he had relaxed and simply got on with working while she agonised over the disappearance of her son that she sought the nearest heavy object, swept it off the side table and threw it at him with all her strength. Alexei ducked in the nick of time and the metal paperweight she had lifted sailed over his shoulder and smashed through the window behind him.
Just a little shaken by the hail of broken glass noisily showering the floor, which Alexei hastily stepped back from, Billie breathed bitterly, 'I wish I'd hit you.'
'Mercifully you missed—your French isn't good enough to handle a murder charge in a court here, mali mou,' Alexei quipped, and as the door burst loudly open to frame an anxious Helios he smiled and dismissed his bodyguard with a fluid movement of a lean brown hand. 'An accident, Helios. My apologies for disturbing you.'