The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Rrincess(60)

chubby cheeks if the baby took after her, she thought ruefully.



Afterwards they strolled around the park next to the hospital, where the late afternoon sunshine

filtered through the leaves of the cypress trees and made patterns of gold on the paths.



‘What do you hope it is—a boy or a girl?’ she asked curiously.



‘I don’t know.’ Nikos looked startled for a moment, as if it was the first time he had considered

that the baby would be one or the other. ‘I don’t mind,’ he said seriously, echoing her own

thoughts, and she glanced at him and shared the unspoken message that what really mattered was

that their child would be healthy and born safely.



‘It’s exciting, isn’t it—to think that in a few months from now the baby will actually be here?’

Kitty felt her heart flip as she imagined cradling her child in her arms. Since the scan she

couldn’t stop smiling. Her pregnancy had been unplanned and a huge shock, but she did not

regret it, and she couldn’t wait to be a mother.



‘Yes, it’s exciting.’ Nikos returned her smile and slipped his hand into hers as they walked.

Their child would form a bond between them that would last a lifetime, Kitty realised, loving the

new closeness she sensed was developing between them.



‘Tell me about your childhood,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve told you about mine, but yours must

have been very different, growing up in a palace with the other members of the royal family.’



‘Well, I certainly never wanted for anything,’ she murmured. ‘The palace was an amazing place

to grow up, although of course when I was a child I didn’t realise how privileged I was. But it

wasn’t just material things. There were five of us children, so I was never lonely. And although

my parents were busy much of the time with state affairs, they always had time for us.



‘I was especially close to my father,’ she revealed with a soft smile as she remembered the late

king. ‘I adored him. When I was a little girl he used to come to the nursery every night and read

stories from my favourite book— Russian FairyTales and Fables.’ Kitty’s smile faded and she

felt the familiar pang of sadness that she would never see her father again, or hear his deep,

rumbling tones. ‘He used to tell me that I would grow up to be a beautiful princess like in the

fairy tales, and that one day I would marry a handsome prince.’



But in fairy tales the prince always fell in love with the princess—which just went to show the

difference between fantasy fiction and real life, she thought bleakly as she stared at Nikos’s

sculpted features and saw the inherent toughness in the hard line of his jaw.



‘I wish I still had the book,’ she said wistfully. ‘Unfortunately it was lost in a fire that destroyed part of the palace nursery a few years ago. It’s out of print now, and the few copies that exist are owned by private collectors, so I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to read it to our child.’



‘We’ll buy new books, and toys—everything the baby needs,’ Nikos murmured, thinking of his

own childhood that had lacked even basic necessities such as food, let alone toys and books.

Kitty had said that a child needed love more than material possessions, and maybe she was right.

He knew without doubt that he would love his child, but what kind of father would he be when

he had never had a role model? He felt singularly inadequate for the job, especially when Kitty

would surely compare his efforts at fatherhood with her own father, whom she had obviously

idolised.



Her life had turned out vastly different from the life she must have imagined as a child, he

brooded. Instead of meeting a prince with an aristocratic lineage she had been forced to marry a

commoner who had no idea who had fathered him. And she missed Aristo and the royal palace—

she never said so, but he knew she didn’t enjoy living in the apartment in the centre of a busy

city, and that when he was at work she often visited Athens’ famous National Gardens.



‘Maybe we should start looking at houses,’ he startled Kitty by saying. ‘Somewhere in the

suburbs, with a garden for the baby to play in when it’s older. Would you like that?’



‘It would be nice,’ she replied slowly. ‘But you like the apartment. It’s your bachelor pad.’



‘Mmm, but I am not a bachelor any more, and I want what is best for our child—I’ll contact

some estate agents,’ Nikos said decisively. ‘But moving takes time, and for now I was thinking

that we could turn your dressing room into a nursery so that we are close to the baby if it wakes