The Pregnancy Shock Read Online Free PDF

contempt that Lauren’s lifestyle had roused in so many people? In every way possible Billie drew a clear boundary line between her life and her mother’s. She never wore revealing clothes. She didn’t flirt with other women’s men. Casual uncommitted sex was anathema to her. She’d only ever had three relationships—Damon, and two at university that had come to nothing after her boyfriends sought easier conquests. A highly sexed and very handsome philanderer like Alexei Drakos was Billie’s worst nightmare in the partnership stakes.
    Billie returned via Athens to the island of Speros, where Lauren soon dragged the story of her dismissal out of her daughter.
    ‘Why didn’t you just laugh at those women? Why do you take everything so seriously?’ Lauren demanded, her incomprehension patent. ‘You’re your own worst enemy—you land the job of a lifetime and straight away you screw it up!’
    ‘I don’t need this, Mum,’ Billie breathed tautly. ‘But don’t worry. I can still cover your rent for the next couple of months and by then I should have found another job.’
    ‘You certainly won’t find one as well paid. What got into you?’ Lauren snapped. ‘Alexei Drakos is a young, good-looking single guy and all he is doing is what comes naturally. Of course he doesn’t want to be tieddown at his age or with his opportunities. What does it have to do with you?’
    ‘I just don’t like his lifestyle or his attitudes and I’m with him so much I can’t avoid either.’
    Lauren dealt her smaller daughter a scornful look. ‘You’ve got the hots for him and you’re jealous—’
    ‘No, I haven’t!’ Billie argued, incensed and shaken by that accusation.
    ‘He’s gorgeous. I wouldn’t say no,’ Lauren replied with a voluptuous pout and a toss of her blonde head.
    Billie resisted a shrewish urge to agree that no wasn’t a word that came easily to her mother’s lips. In her forties, Lauren was no longer the siren she had once been and there were fewer men in her life. Eighteen months had passed since Billie had last come home to find that she was sharing her mother’s house with a resident toy boy. But the very suggestion of Alexei and Lauren together made her feel physically sick and this knowledge worked on her that night while she tossed and turned and failed to find restful sleep.
    Was she attracted to Alexei more than she was prepared to admit? Had she been mortally offended by Katia and Kerry because they had shared Alexei’s bed? Was that because in some dim dark corner of her mind she was jealous of the carefree and sexually confident twins? She shuddered at the suspicion. Alexei was as bronzed, beautiful and flawless in feature and physique as a Greek god and she was a flesh and blood ordinary woman who could hardly be impervious to that reality. But being aware that he was a very good looking guy did not mean that she was physically attracted to him,did it? And even if it did, what did it matter? Nothing was ever likely to come of the fact. Alexei only went for gorgeous women and she was much too sensible to be tempted even if he should have a weak moment in her radius. Mortified by her growing suspicion that she might not be as unprejudiced or as principled as she had fondly believed, Billie lay awake until dawn.
    The following day, she returned to Athens and the apartment she shared with two other women. She needed to be on the spot to job-hunt. She put her short-lived job with Alexei into a mental box and hammered it shut, but she soon discovered that the very brevity of her employment with him had harmed her standing in the eyes of others. A month later, she was less angry with Alexei and angrier with herself for damaging her career prospects. By then her proud and impulsive walkout on a matter of principle was beginning to strike her as more foolish than brave.
    That was the mood she was in when the doorbell went one evening and she answered it to find one of Alexei’s security team