where he came from—it was where he had been for the weeks leading up to their wedding and
the woman he had spent his time with that bothered her.
‘We should never have married,’ she said wildly, her stomach churning at the images in her
mind of him making love to Shannon. ‘I should never have allowed myself to be talked into it…I
want an annulment.’
‘Because you think I’m not good enough for you?’ he queried furiously. ‘I know you are a
princess but I had no idea that you are also a spoilt, over-indulged snob.’
‘That’s not the reason,’ she snapped, stung by his scathing tone. She reached into her handbag
for the magazine that Vasilis had given her, all the anger and misery that had been building
inside her for the past few hours exploding in a torrent of emotion. ‘You’ve made a fool of me,
Nikos—not just here in Greece, but everywhere. Glamorous magazine has a worldwide
circulation and everyone, including most of the guests at our wedding, will have seen these …’
She hurled the magazine at him, open at the page of the damning photos. ‘Everyone must have
been laughing at me behind my back— fat, frumpy Kitty whose new husband spent the weeks
preceding the wedding flaunting his affair with his beautiful blonde mistress.
‘No wonder there’s widespread speculation about the real reason you married me. Most people
will have put two and two together and realised I’m pregnant. Like me, everyone who has seen
those pictures will know you never had any intention of being a faithful husband.’
Kitty took a deep, shuddering breath, shocked to realise that her whole body was trembling and
her heart was beating so hard that she could feel it slamming beneath her ribs. It couldn’t be
good for the baby. She placed a hand protectively on her stomach and her fury drained away as a
wave of nausea swept over her. She could hear a peculiar rushing noise in her ears and suddenly
strong hands were on her shoulders, forcing her to sit down on the bed, and her head was pushed
down towards her knees so that her blood rushed to her brain.
‘Take a deep breath…and another.’ Nikos’s voice sounded harsh with impatience, and silly tears
welled in Kitty’s eyes and slid down her cheeks when he continued savagely, ‘If you carry on
like this you could lose the baby.’
‘Maybe you’d be relieved if I did,’ Kitty whispered. ‘At least then we could end this façade of a
marriage.’
He swore long and hard and leaned down so that his face was level with hers. ‘Accuse me of
whatever else you like,’ he said grittily, ‘but never that. Our child was conceived by accident but
I do not regret it, even if you do.’
‘I don’t—of course I don’t,’ she denied quickly, scrubbing her wet face with the back of her
hand. ‘And I know you want the baby—just as I know it’s the only reason you married me.’
Nikos stared at her, his expression unfathomable. ‘You almost passed out. I’m going to call the
doctor.’
Kitty shook her head frantically. ‘I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine now, I was just upset—that’s
all.’
‘About the photos?’ Nikos glanced down at the copy of the magazine in his hands. ‘Where did
you get this? I’m surprised you read this sort of trash.’
‘I don’t usually. Vasilis gave it to me.’ Kitty flushed beneath Nikos’s hard stare. She felt
horribly embarrassed by her loss of temper, and wished he would go away and leave her alone,
but the determined gleam in his eyes warned her he was not going to let the matter drop. ‘I knew
you had flown to America after I’d agreed to marry you, but I would have preferred you to have
been honest about your reasons for going,’ she said stiffly. ‘Obviously you didn’t go on business,
but to see your mistress, and you didn’t even bother to be discreet about it,’ she added bitterly.
‘You’ve made me a laughing stock, Nikos, and I’ll never forgive you.’
When he made no reply she lifted her head to find him studying the magazine photos intently—
and probably comparing her to the gorgeous Shannon, she thought bleakly. He looked at her, and
his dark eyes seemed to bore into her skull, as if he could divine her thoughts.
‘It’s true that I went to the US with the express intention of seeing Shannon,’ he said steadily.
‘We had enjoyed a relationship for several months before I met you. It was a casual affair; we
both lead busy lives and we met up whenever we happened to be in the same country. But I owed