Her face flamed and then slowly paled as his response sank in and trampled her pride into the dust. She wished with all her heart that she had said no, pushed him away, stuck to the business of confession and blame. But what was done was done and she could not change it. In spite of that sophisticated façade, Alexei had a primal streak that ran through him like tempered steel and powered his volatility and his ruthlessness. He was a Drakos through and through. His father, Constantine had not hesitated to divorce the blameless third wife who'd adored him, and replace her with his pregnant mistress. Alexei, it seemed, would be equally quick to discard her now that she had disappointed his expectations.
'Nicky is your son,' she swore one last time, desperate to convince him of that crucial fact before he could tear their marriage apart.
'Nothing can excuse your lies and trickery,' Alexei drawled in a tone of finality. 'You cheated your way into our marriage and deserve nothing but my contempt. Naturally I'll order DNA tests, but only to ensure that you can't continue to allege that I fathered your baby.'
Humiliated by the threat of such testing being carried out on her child, Billie flung him a seething glance of condemnation. 'That's an insult! You're the only man I've ever slept with.'
Alexei rested forbidding dark golden eyes on her. 'I can't believe a word that comes out of your mouth and whose fault is that?'
He strode out of the room. Billie lingered in the shadowy office and struggled to cope with her unwieldy emotions. Their marriage had barely begun and she had wrecked it by keeping secrets from him, a little voice warned inside her aching head. She had lost his trust and it would not be easily regained. He was angry with her, very angry, but she had known he would be, she reminded herself dully. She heard the racket of rotor blades and unfroze to rush over to the desk and snatch up the phone. Captain McGregor informed her that Alexei had filed a flight plan for Monaco and had taken off in the helicopter with his security team. She thanked him for the information and replaced the receiver with a trembling hand and a heart racing like an overworked piston.
Alexei had just left her, walking out on her and their marriage. That realisation was a body blow that hit Billie very hard. She felt sick with the pain and trauma of that bold move and knew she had seriously underestimated his reaction to the secrets she had kept. It would be virtually impossible to influence a man who was determined to put an ocean between them. Few brides, however, were abandoned within hours of the wedding and Alexei's activities never passed under the media radar. The press would pick up the story of his unbridegroomlike behaviour and run with it for weeks.
Tears choking her and stinging her heavy eyes, Billie went back to the opulent stateroom in order to get dressed. It might not be dawn yet but the wedding night was well and truly over. She would take the motor launch back to Speros and go home to look after Nicky. What else could she do? Her presence on Sea Queen had driven Alexei off his beloved yacht.
Was this it? Was their marriage over as well? Over even before it got past the beginning? She tried and failed to imagine Alexei giving her a second chance. Why would he do that when he had never loved her? Without love, what hold did she have over him? She had screwed up so badly that she hated herself at that moment. It seemed just then that keeping quiet about her pregnancy had cost her any hope of a happy future.