'She was a slut,' Betsy told him in disgust.

'But honest about what she was,' Cristos traded, cool as ice. 'She didn't pretend to love me. I should add that I'm not looking for love from you.'

Long after he slept, Betsy lay awake watching the thread of moonlight that pierced between the curtains dancing across the ceiling. She felt hollow and hurt. She would not be confessing to true love in an effort to get closer to Cristos. Even though they were married, he had rejected that emotional bond most conclusively. In fact the icy note in his rich dark voice had chilled her. Was it possible that he already suspected her feelings for him? Look at the way she had behaved after he had made love to her! She'd been all over him like a rash. Did he found that kind of enthusiasm a big turn-off?

In the morning she wakened alone but a white rose and a jewellery box sat in a prominent position on the pillow beside hers. She pulled back the curtains and opened the box. Sunlight illuminated the creamy perfection of the pearl necklace, which was brought bang up to date with a glittering diamond pendant in the shape of a daisy.

'Wow… ' she breathed, fastening it round her neck and pausing only briefly to admire herself.

Hauling on the toweling robe on the back of the bathroom door, she sped off in search of Cristos to thank him. If she lived to be a thousand years old, she would never work the guy out! One minute he was telling her that he wasn't looking for love from her and the next he was giving her a rose and a fabulous necklace to wake up to on the very first day of their married life.

Her bare feet made no sound on the antique rug in the elegant flagstone hall. She could hear Cristos speaking in his own language and his voice was coming from the room next door to the library. Catching a glimpse of him through the ajar door, she suppressed a loving sigh. Had he been born with a phone in his hand?

'Petrina… ' he was saying with low-pitched urgency.

Betsy fell still, her skin turning clammy. She heard every word he said after that but understood nothing because it was all in Greek. What she did grasp was that Cristos sounded concerned and strained and that he was definitely trying to soothe and comfort the woman at the other end of the line. How selfish and blind she had been, Betsy thought then in a sick daze of shock.

All along she had been ridiculously reluctant to contemplate the personal dimension to his broken engagement. She had not even wanted to think about Petrina Rhodias. Why? She had been too jealous. She had never wanted to credit that Cristos might genuinely care for the Greek woman. Now that she was being forced to accept that Cristos did have feelings for the gorgeous blonde, she could finally understand why he didn't want his shotgun bride to love him. He knew that there was not the slightest possibility of his returning her feelings…

CHAPTER EIGHT

ELEGANT in a short sleeveless dress that had a tiny flower print on a yellow background, Betsy carne down to breakfast.

'Thanks for the pearls… ' she said woodenly, taking a seat at the dining table.

Cristos waited while the manservant tried to attend to her needs before she attended to them on her own account and then dismissed his employee with a nod. 'I think it would be a good idea if you didn't read any newspapers today,' he imparted.

Betsy was no great fan of reading newspapers but in one sentence he had ensured that she would spend the whole of the day perusing the printed word. 'Why?'

'I've always attracted a lot of press coverage. I'm used to it. It doesn't bother me.' Concerned dark golden eyes rested on her delicate profile. 'But you have no experience of how the tabloids sensationalize personalities and #vents. I don't want you to be distressed.'

Chin at an angle, Betsy was already standing up. 'Where are the newspapers?'

'Betsy-'

'Don't try to tell me that I can't read what's been written about us!' she exclaimed. 'I'm not a little kid!' – 'OK… but first I have to explain something about the kidnapping. A member of my own family was behind it,' Cristos delivered grimly.

That did grab her attention. 'You're joking me… a relative of yours?'

'I wish I were joking.' Cristos told her about Spyros Zolottas, who had, she now learned, been one of the men who had died in the helicopter crash with Joe. Tyler. 'Unlike my grandfather, I believed that the leopard could change his spots. I was wrong. Spyros decided to use his knowledge of my movements to stage a kidnapping and extract money from Patras. He was with me the first time I saw you. Obviously he realized how he could use my interest in you to his advantage. '

'He's the man you said arranged for me to pick you up that weekend as a surprise,' Betsy recalled.

'To meet you, I was prepared to overlook my security team's concerns and expose myself to a degree of vulnerability that made the kidnapping more likely to succeed.'

'So it was your cousin who was responsible for it all…' For a wordless moment she sat there slowly shaking her head, but deep down inside more turbulent reactions were being born. 'But you're only telling me this now because the newspapers have got a hold of it… am I right? When did you find out that Spyros whatever-you-call-him was behind it all?'

'When I made my first phone call to Patras after we had escaped.'

'But you didn't tell me. We had spent almost a week living together. We were lovers facing the same fears and challenges… and yet you dido' t think that I had the right to know who had put us on that island?' she demanded shakily, her temper and her hurt rising by equal degrees.

'It was a family matter,' Cristos countered with measured care. 'When Spyros was killed, my grandfather felt that his family had suffered enough. He saw no advantage and neither did 1 in publicly exposing Spyros' wife and daughters to the disgrace of his criminal behavior.'

Betsy was barely listening. Her mind was hopping like a rabbit from mortified peak to peak. 'Was Petrina excluded from the same information?'

'No.'

A bitter laugh fell from her lips. 'That says it all.' 'Theos mou…it says what?' Cristos demanded,

plunging upright in an expression of mounting frustration.

'Even though 1 went through that kidnapping with you, 1 was nobody on your terms. 1 really was just the silly slapper you seduced to amuse yourself!' Betsy vented painfully.

'That is not how 1 thought of you… '

'How you behaved tells me exactly how you thought of me!' Tempestuous emotions were pulling at Betsy and a wounded sense of rejection and inadequacy lay at the heart of her agony. 'When 1 think of how you dared to accuse me of being involved with the kidnappers an‹t all the time one of your own blasted relations had organized the whole thing!'

'I know it looks and sounds bad-'

'And you have never yet apologized for misjudging me!'

'I thought we had gone beyond that level.'

Rising to her feet, Betsy settled furious green eyes on him. 'Where are the newspapers?'

'The library,' Cristos advanced, darkly handsome face taut. 'I won't apologies for believing that it's my duty to protect you from anything that might upset you-'

'Go lock yourself up behind bars, then!'

In the library, Betsy sat down to study the papers.

She was shattered to realize that her whole family had come under scrutiny with her. One of her parents' neighbors had used their anonymity to make cruelly cutting comments about Corinne Mitchell. Betsy's eyes filled with tears for she knew how her mother would writhe to see herself castigated in print for all their friends and relatives to see. That Gemma was an unwed mother was also pointed out with a glee that could almost be felt. Stories were angled at presenting Betsy as an ambitious young woman who could only have taken a job as a chauffeur in the hope of meeting and marrying a rich man. Salacious stabs were made as to what must have occurred on the island. Never had she felt more humiliated.

However, at the turn of a page, Betsy learnt that there were still greater depths for her to plummet to in the humiliation stakes. There was more than one two-page spread on Cristos' long and colorful reign as a womanizer.

'I don't want you looking at rubbish like that,' Cristos ground out from behind her.

'I'm sure you don't…' Her tummy churning, Betsy was studying a photo of Cristos getting into a brawl on her behalf at their wedding. She was trying not to feel hideously responsible for what the gossip columnist asserted was a very rare loss of temper for Cristos and 'very revealing of his state of mind on the day he married his pregnant bride'. That was followed by a quote purporting to be direct from Petrina Rhodias in which the Greek heiress referred to Cristos as 'a man of honor shamelessly entrapped by his own decent values'.

'Did Petrina phone you to commiserate with you?' Betsy launched at him, quivering with pain and humiliation.

His jaw line squared. 'What kind of a question is that to ask me?'

'I heard you on the phone to her this morning!' 'As 1 haven't spoken to Petrina today, that is an impossibility-'

'I heard you say her name!' Betsy practically sobbed in her distress.

His ebony brows had pleated and then the light of comprehension flashed through his lustrous dark eyes. 'I did speak to Spyros' eldest daughter before breakfast. She is called… Petrine. Petrina and Petrine. Could you have misheard me?'

Betsy flushed. The difference between the two names was almost indistinguishable and she felt foolish. At the same time she was intensely relieved that she had jumped to the wrong conclusion. 'Yes, obviously I did mishear you,' she conceded almost cheerfully. 'Sorry, my mistake.'