Read The Greek Billionaire's Innocent Princess for Free Online Page A

Aristo?’

    That was easier to answer, and Kitty nodded. ‘I was born here, and I never want to live
    anywhere else. Aristo is the most beautiful place on earth.’

    Nikos laughed. ‘Have you visited many other places, then—on a waitress’s pay?’

    ‘Well…no,’ Kitty faltered. She could hardly tell him that she had spent a year travelling around
    Europe and had visited Paris, Rome, cosmopolitan London, Venice and Florence, followed by
    six months at an exclusive finishing school in Switzerland. She had been a guest at royal palaces
    and country mansions, had wandered around fabulous art galleries and been taken on tours of all
    the famous sights, but nowhere compared to Aristo, the jewel of the Mediterranean. ‘Aristo is my
    home and I love it here,’ she told Nikos firmly.

    Her passion for the island intrigued him, and he wondered why she felt so strongly about it. Was
    it the place or people that held her heart? ‘Do you have a family here?’ he asked curiously.

    What would he say if she revealed that her family had ruled Aristo for generations? Kitty felt as
    though she were falling deeper and deeper into a mire. She wasn’t lying exactly, she told herself.
    She just wasn’t telling the whole truth. ‘I have a mother, sister, brothers…’ She faltered, thinking of the person who was missing from the list, and her heart contracted. ‘My father died a few
    months ago.’

    ‘I’m sorry.’

    It wasn’t a throwaway remark—Kitty heard the note of compassion in Nikos’s voice, and tears,
    sudden and unbidden, stung her eyes. ‘I miss him so much,’ she admitted thickly. ‘Sometimes I
    see his face in my mind, hear his voice, and I can’t believe he isn’t here any more.’ She brushed
    her hand across her wet eyes, and was startled when Nikos captured her fingers in one of his
    strong hands and traced his thumb pad down her cheek, following the damp trail.

    ‘I’m sorry.’ She didn’t want to cry in front of him. Her grief was a private matter that she shared
    with no one, not even her family. She had been especially close to the king, and he had called her
    his gentle dove, but she had been taught never to display her emotions. One of the golden rules
    of the royal family was to exert self-control at all times. Embarrassed by her weakness, she tried
    to draw away from Nikos but he curled his arm around her shoulders and tugged her towards
    him.

    ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I know how devastating it is to lose a parent. My mother died
    many years ago, but I will never forget her. You won’t forget your father, Rina, but the
    memories will become easier, and eventually you will think of him without the sadness you feel
    now.’

    He smoothed her hair back from her face, and Kitty closed her eyes, soothed by the rhythmic
    stroking of his fingers. She felt his warm breath on her face and when she lifted her lashes she
    drowned in the depths of his midnight-dark gaze. He was so strong, so alive , and she wanted to absorb some of his strength because she felt weak and lost and achingly lonely inside.

    Tentatively she rested her hand on his chest and felt the steady thud of his heart beneath her
    fingertips. It was utterly silent in the cave, as if they were cut off from the outside world and
    were the only two people in the universe. She could hear the sound of Nikos breathing—no
    longer steady but quicker, like his heartbeat; and she lifted her eyes to his face and stared at him, mesmerised by his masculine beauty.

    Nikos knew he should move and break the spell that had been cast on him in the witching hour,
    but his muscles were locked. In the lamplight the tears that spiked Rina’s lashes glittered like
    tiny diamonds and the shadow of pain in her eyes moved him. It was more than fifteen years
    since his mother had died. He had been sixteen, a boy suddenly forced to be a man, but he still
    remembered the pain in his gut, the feeling that his insides had been ripped