Kitty’s horrified protest died on her lips when they emerged from the shop and were half
blinded by the flash of a dozen cameras. The paparazzi had caught up with them. But fortunately
Stavros was there and used his massive frame to shoulder a path to the car where he wrenched
open the door so that Nikos could bundle Kitty inside.
‘Why are they so interested?’ Kitty cried as the car accelerated away and she watched the
photographers weaving dangerously in and out of the traffic on their motor-scooters, in hot
pursuit. ‘It’s not as if I’ve done anything to warrant such attention. I haven’t done something
wonderful for charity, or saved a life. I’m just drab, boring Kitty Karedes, who happens by an
accident of birth to be a princess.’
‘You are Kitty Angelaki now,’ Nikos reminded her, ‘and you are neither drab nor boring. But I
agree that people seem to be increasingly celebrity obsessed.’
‘The people on Aristo aren’t,’ Kitty muttered. ‘Nothing like this ever happened to me there. I
even used to ride around the island on my bike and the most attention anyone ever paid me was a
smile or a wave.’ She leaned her head back against the leather seat and placed her hand
protectively on her stomach, more shaken than she cared to admit by the overwhelming media
fascination with her. She felt desperately homesick for the peace and tranquillity of the palace,
and the freedom that she had taken for granted on Aristo. Of course she’d had her royal duties to
perform, but attending the opening of a new wing of the hospital had attracted only mild interest
from the Aristan press and she wasn’t used to being in the constant glare of the media spotlight.
She wished she could go home, back to where she felt safe. But home was now Nikos’s elegant
but characterless apartment that felt more like a five-star hotel than a comfortable bolt hole, and
her misery was compounded by the news that tonight Nikos was taking her to a party where she
would meet many of his sophisticated friends.
Sotiri greeted them when they walked into the apartment. ‘Some boxes have arrived from Aristo
for you, Miss Kitty,’ he said, throwing open the door to the living room where four huge trunks
were stacked.
‘My books…’ Kitty forgot the horrors of the shopping trip as she tore open one of the boxes and
smiled at the sight of the dozens of books packed inside.
‘ Theos! Are all these crates full of books?’ Nikos picked up a battered hardback. ‘Where are you going to put them all? The apartment is spacious, but it’s not big enough to house an entire
library.’
‘They’re the books that I use for my research work, and I need them here,’ Kitty said
stubbornly.
‘Well, there’s no room for them in my study. I’ll ask Sotiri to move the boxes into one of the
spare bedrooms, and I suppose we can turn it into an office for you if you intend to carry on
working—although I doubt you’ll have much free time, and of course financially there is no need
for you to work.’
‘I definitely want to carry on writing my book about the early history of the Adamas Islands,
and I’d like to continue with my advisory work for Aristo’s museum, certainly until the baby is
born,’ Kitty said slowly. ‘If you are at your office all day, what else will I do?’
‘I assumed you would want to get involved in charity work. A friend of mine, Melina Demakis,
is a well-known social hostess in Athens who organises lunches and other fund-raising activities
for a number of charities. I’ll ask her to contact you.’
Kitty’s heart sank at the prospect of filling her days lunching with wealthy and no doubt well-
meaning doyennes of worthy organisations, and ‘doing her bit’ for charity. There had to be
something more worthwhile she could do with her life, she thought heavily. ‘I was thinking
perhaps that I could volunteer to help out at the local hospital—visiting patients and maybe
working a few hours in the coffee shop like I used to do at the hospital on Aristo.’
‘You mean where you were once subjected to a vicious attack by a mentally ill patient?
Sebastian told me that your father forbid you to go back there after the incident,’ Nikos said in a
scathing tone that showed what he thought of her idea.
‘It wasn’t a vicious attack. The patient lashed out and caught my cheek, but he didn’t know what
he was doing, poor man. My father was always rather overprotective,’ Kitty added ruefully.
‘As I am,’ Nikos replied. ‘How could you possibly work at a hospital with the paparazzi tailing