The Pregnancy Shock by Lynne Graham

and abuse, Billie wondered if she ever would be under the same roof again. That violent response from her mother had gouged a big hole in Billie’s heart. She knew alcohol had probably had a lot to do with her mother losing her head but it still hurt that Lauren could trust a man she had only met a few weeks ago more than she trusted her daughter.
    ‘Well, it’s too late now,’ she muttered ruefully.
    His attention still nailed to her swollen face and reddened eyes, Alexei breathed grimly. ‘We’ll see.’
    Another knock sounded on the door and Alexei opened it to reveal the familiar, careworn face of the island doctor. The older man was taken aback by the state of Billie’s face and, with all the assurance of someone who had known her as a child, he told her not to be silly when she insisted that an examination was unnecessary. He checked her eye and a steward brought a cold pack to help reduce the swelling. The doctor’s probing revealed no further injury and the cut was minor enough to require no further attention.
    ‘Now go to sleep,’ Alexei instructed, leaving the cabin in the older man’s company as soon as Billie had swallowed the painkillers she had been given. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’
    Billie could not think what they could possibly have left to discuss. She lay curled up in the bed, tears seeping from below her lowered eyelids and stinging her sore face. She heard the doctor leave on the launch and its return when the sun was high in the sky because sleep had evaded her once again. A cup of tea was brought to her and she peered at her reflection in the mirror inhorror: she looked a sight with one eye half shut by purple bruising and swelling that had destroyed the symmetry of her face. The phone by her bed buzzed.
    Sunglasses firmly attached to her nose, she went up to the main deck to join Alexei for breakfast. He was on the phone and, sketching a movement with an imperious brown hand, he indicated that she go ahead and eat without waiting for him to join her. There were a couple of faces at the windows of his office and she reddened, knowing that the breakfast invite would be viewed as a sign of favouritism by the rest of the team, while anxiously wondering if word of her sudden arrival on board the yacht in the middle of the night had spread among the crew.
    Alexei’s dark rich masculine drawl took on the subtle change that warned her that he was talking to a woman. In Spanish? She had learned to recognise a number of the languages he spoke even if she couldn’t speak them herself. He could well be talking to the actress, Lola Rodriquez, whom he had recently met in London. It was none of her business, Billie told herself urgently, squashing the beginnings of an envious daydream in which she, got up in a fabulous dress, dined out with Alexei, leaving him open-mouthed in admiration over her looks, her wit and her sex appeal.
    ‘Let me see you,’ Alexei urged, bending down to filch the sunglasses off her nose and inspect her battered face in the full unforgiving light of day.
    Mercifully unaware of the heights her imagination could take her to, Alexei grimaced. ‘Nasty. It’ll be a few days before you look normal again.’
    Billie snatched back her sunglasses and replacedthem on her nose with a shaking hand. His input on how she looked was overkill, for wasn’t she already wincing over the rainbow bruising round her eye and the swelling distorting her face?
    ‘Your mother’s boyfriend is gone,’ Alexei informed her.
    Her brow furrowed. ‘Gone? Where? What are you talking about?’
    ‘I dealt with him.’
    ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Billie queried nervously.
    ‘I took the launch back to the harbour with the doctor last night and confronted the man to tell him to leave.’
    Billie rammed back her chair to stand up. ‘You had no right to interfere!’
    ‘Your mother is full of apologies but she caught the ferry with him this morning. The neighbours are up in arms and I think