swept over her. To be sick in front of him would be the ultimate humiliation, and she gritted her
teeth and waited while the room righted itself and her head stopped spinning.
‘There is a glass of water on the table next to you. I suggest you drink some,’ he said in a terse
voice. Kitty reached for the glass and lifted it to her lips. Her hands were shaking so much that
she could barely take a sip, but the water was ice-cold and refreshing, and gradually the sickness
passed. She stood up and risked a furtive glance across the room, and could not restrain a startled
cry when she saw the livid bruise on Nikos’s jaw.
‘What happened to your face?’
‘Sebastian,’ he informed her shortly.
Kitty shook her head disbelievingly. ‘He hit you?’ She recalled the expression of shocked
understanding she’d seen on her brother’s face just before she had slipped into unconsciousness,
and a heavy dread filled her.
‘After the news he’s just given me I don’t blame him,’ Nikos said, still in that cold, clipped
voice that could not disguise his fury. ‘In case you’re worried, I did not retaliate. Sebastian was
defending your honour, and to be honest I would have thought less of him if he hadn’t taken a
swing at me.’ He paused, and in the tense silence the ticking clock and the sound of Kitty’s
heartbeat both sounded over-loud to her ears.
‘But all things considered, it was a rather dramatic way to learn that I am going to be a father,’
he drawled—sarcasm his only outlet for the murderous rage burning inside him, because if he
lost control and vented his fury at the top of his voice he would alert the palace guards standing
on duty outside the door. ‘With you passing out, and the Prince Regent giving a good impression
of a prize knuckle-fighter in front of a hundred or so dignitaries and members of the press, the
story is likely to make the newspaper headlines worldwide.’
Nikos sucked in a harsh breath and swung round to stare blindly out of the window. Below, in
the courtyard, the crowds were dispersing and streaming through the palace gates, many
clutching flags bearing the national colours of Aristo and the coat of arms of the House of
Karedes. He felt a deepening sense of unreality, a feeling that his life was about to change
irrevocably, but he knew he must bring his anger under control and establish the real facts.
‘Is it true?’ His voice rasped in his throat, and he had to force himself to turn away from the
window. ‘Are you really pregnant, or are you playing another peculiar game of charades?’
‘It’s true,’ Kitty choked, forcing the words past her numb lips. ‘I did a test, and yesterday my
doctor confirmed it.’
She did not know how she had expected Nikos to react. She hadn’t dared picture a scenario in
which she told him she had conceived his child, let alone imagined what he would say. He was
clearly shocked, and she could understand that he might be angry, but the icy rage in his eyes
shook her.
‘And is the child mine, as Sebastian seems to think?’
His harsh tone triggered a flare of anger inside Kitty, and she flushed. ‘Of course it’s yours. I
was a virgin when I met you and I haven’t leapt into bed with half a dozen lovers since then. I
didn’t want to involve you. I don’t even understand how I can be pregnant,’ she added, dropping her eyes from his cold stare. ‘You used protection.’
‘It failed,’ Nikos said bluntly. ‘I discovered when I woke up that there was a slim chance I could
have made you pregnant. When I realised you had left the cave I searched for you, fearing you
may have gone for another swim and got into trouble in the current. It was only when I saw your
clothes had gone that I faced the fact that you had run out on me.
‘If you had stayed I would have told you there was a possibility you could have conceived, and
insisted we kept in contact until we knew either way,’ he finished curtly.
Nikos drew a ragged breath, recalling his concern in the days after he had had sex with Rina in
the cave that a faulty contraceptive could have resulted in a child. When he had tried to trace her, and found that she seemed to have disappeared from the planet, his concern had turned to a gut-wrenching fear he could not dismiss, despite telling himself that history could not repeat itself.
Now he knew that it could.
Memories of the past that he had ruthlessly suppressed for so long surged into his mind. Five
years ago his lover had fallen pregnant with his child. During his relationship with Greta he had
confided that he felt as though a part of his identity was missing because he did not know who