LYNNE GRAHAM - The Drakos Affair - The Pregnancy Shock

Of course, had she been a more normal girl perhaps she would have formed a crush on Alexei as she grew up. After all, he was the island pin-up, worshipped by every girl between ten and twenty-five on Speros. From his film-star looks to his growing bad-boy reputation and the sexual exploits diligently reported by the gossip magazines, Alexei made headlines almost from the moment he hit puberty and followed faithfully in the lusty footsteps of his father and his grandfather. But after the terrible row Billie had with her mother because she’d admitted to others that she’d been left alone for a week, and a subsequent, very embarrassing visit from the island priest, who had been tasked with the challenge of telling Lauren that leaving her daughter for so long was unacceptable, Billie’s main impression of Alexei was of a frighteningly dominant and interfering personality who did exactly as he liked at all times, regardless of the damage he might do to anyone else.

While Billie boarded in Athens during the week and attended secondary school, it was Damon Marios she fell for while they travelled back and forth on the ferries at weekends, he to his private school, she to her far less fancy state institution. By then she was seventeen years old and, for quite a few weeks, believed her feelings were reciprocated for she and Damon met secretly for coffee, going for walks, talking a mile-a-minute to each other and discovering similar interests.

Of course, she should have known better than to believe that dreams came true or that she could ever be seen as anything other than shameless Lauren’s illegitimate daughter, a murky step below the other girls on the island. She still remembered the cold hard fear that gripped her one evening at the ferry terminal when Damon suddenly dropped her hand and turned away from her. Looking up, she saw Alexei strolling towards them. Already a qualified pilot, Alexei had had to ditch his plane in the sea the previous month and the shock of his son’s near-death experience had traumatised his father, who had grounded him. Now in his last year at university, Alexei was very much an adult. For the rest of the journey, Damon ignored Billie as studiously as if she had been a stranger.

‘I’ll drop you off,’Alexei declared at the harbour while Damon hurried off homeward with a down-bent head.

‘I don’t need a lift.’ Sixth sense warned her and she didn’t want to get into the sports car but she did anyway.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Alexei said drily. ‘I’m only trying to protect you from making a big mistake. Your mother won’t bother.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’

‘Damon, the leading light of the Marios family. He’ll screw you but he’ll never take you seriously or take you home with him. Didn’t you get that message today when he acted like he didn’t know you around me?’

Like a knife cutting through tender flesh, his blunt forecast tore through Billie and she looked back at him, focusing on the lean bronzed beauty of his features with furious condemnation. ‘You don’t know him!’

‘I know Damon very well. His family will never accept you and he hasn’t got the backbone to fight for you. He’s a nice guy but he does as he’s told. Cut your losses and ditch him now before you get in any deeper—’

‘I don’t want your advice!’ she shrieked at him in Greek.

‘Suit yourself,’Alexei drawled silkily. ‘But whatever you do, keep your knickers on. All Greek men fantasise about having a virgin in the marriage bed.’

‘That is a disgusting thing to say!’ Billie launched back at him in a positive rage. ‘I love Damon—’

‘You’re seventeen. You’re not old enough to love anyone,’Alexei derided, stopping outside her house and leaning across her to throw open the door as if he couldn’t wait to be rid of her. The male scent of his skin tinged by some expensive cologne wafted across her. She froze, rigid at that first taste of intimacy with a man, a fleeting intimacy that had the miraculous power to make her body prickle all over with uneasy awareness. That response shook her up because she had never reacted that way to Damon.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever disliked anyone quite so much,’ Billie snapped in as cold and controlled a voice as she could manage.

‘I’m always knee deep in women who are crazy about me,’Alexei countered with amusement. ‘I doubt if I’ll notice the absence of one little girl from my hordes of fans—’

‘You’re so incredibly bigheaded!’ Billie flung, stepping out of the car in one electrified movement of rejection, her cheeks still burning hotly from that crack about keeping her underwear on.

A shockingly charismatic smile slanted across Alexei’s wide sensual mouth and his stunning dark golden eyes gleamed. ‘But still much more of a man than Damon will ever be…’

A YEAR later, Billie finished school and fought her mother hard for the freedom to go to university to study for a business degree. To survive, she had to work endless hours in a student bar where, mercifully, the low pay was matched with free meals. Aged twenty-one, she took her first job in a small import firm in Piraeus where, no matter how hard she worked, her male colleagues got the recognition and she got all the routine administrative tasks. When she saw Drakos Industries advertising a well-paid PA post on the Internet the following year, she wasted no time in applying.

Alexei Drakos had quickly tired of working for his billionaire father in the family shipping line. Breaking away, he had set up Drakos Industries at the age of twenty four, had made millions and was already well on the way to becoming a formidable tycoon in his own right. ‘The Shark,’ Time magazine had labelled him in an article marvelling at the speed with which he’d shaken off his reputation as a jet set playboy to demonstrate his worth as a shrewd entrepreneur.

As part of the application process for the job, Billie was one of the lucky few allotted a place in a day-long assessment. It was a gruelling experience comprised of working against the clock and handling difficult personalities but, forty-eight hours later, she learned that she had passed this first stage and had won an interview withAlexei. She was surprised he took so active a part in recruitment.