The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Rrincess(44)

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