Flash bulbs went off. Betsy kept her head down while Dolius strong-armed a passage into the church porch where he slammed shut the heavy wooden door. The calm and peace enfolded her, soothing her nerves. She was about to marry the man she loved, she reminded herself: it was going to be a fantastic day.
At the altar, formally garbed in a superb light grey suit, Cristos looked so spectacular, her tummy flipped. During the ceremony, he made his responses in a clear, crisp voice. She stumbled badly over his middle name, which she had never heard until that moment, and blushed in severe embarrassment. He was still smiling. when he put the ring on her finger. They went to sign the register and she whispered, 'How on earth do you pronounce that name?'
'Xanthos' II
'I needed coaching for that one.'
As they walked down the aisle there was standing room only in the packed church. Cristos had a light arm curved to her spine. Her head was high and her eyes shone because he leant close to tell her how fantastic she looked.
'Now… you are a Stephanides and you must learn how to deal with the paparazzi,' Cristos informe4 her in calm continuance.
'How?'
'You ignore them,' he instructed her. 'No matter what you are asked, you don't listen, you don't answer, you don't look at them and you don't ever let your face reveal any response.'
'In other words, I am to stick my nose in the air and act like the press are absolutely beneath my notice,' Betsy paraphrased with bubbling amusement because she was in such a happy mood she could not be serious.
His arm tightened round her. 'The press can be cruel. Be warned, yineka mou.'
They walked out onto the church steps. The cameras went into a frenzy of flashing and clicking and requests to look this way and that flew from all directions and in more than one language. At the same time questions were being shouted. Cristos was urging her towards the limo when a raucous voice from quite close at hand yelled clear as a bell, 'Betsy… when's the baby due?'
Almost imperceptibly, she flinched but kept moving.
'Being kidnapped with Cristos has really paid off for you!' A dirty laugh punctuated that statement. 'Care to comment?' someone else bawled.
'Are you sure the kid wasn't fathered by your lover, Joe Tyler?:
When she fell abruptly still, white with shock and horror, Cristos let go of her and launched himself at the man who had hurled that final insulting question. Dolius practically lifted Betsy to get her into the shelter of the limo and then went back in haste to bodily retrieve Cristos from the fistfight breaking out. Hands braced to steady herself on the seat, her face stiff with humiliation, Betsy was trembling in disbelief.
Her pregnancy was no longer a secret known only to her family. The press knew she was expecting Cristos' baby. How could that have happened? The paparazzi also knew about the kidnapping and about Joe as well. She felt stripped naked and exposed. Her wedding day was absolutely destroyed.
Cristos swung into the car with athletic ease. He met her anguished gaze and shrugged. 'I knew they were on to us before I arrived at the church. I didn't want it to spoil your day-'
'It's a nightmare…' Betsy mumbled.
Temper back under control, Cristos flexed bruised knuckles with very male cool and acceptance. 'If it's any consolation, I hit the bastard who made that filthy comment.'
It wasn't. The guy who had told her how not to behave around journalists had just broken all his own rules because of something that had been said to her. She had become a source of embarrassment to Cristos. The whole world was now acquainted with the lowering fact that he had made a shotgun marriage. Even worse, nasty rumors about her relationship with the late Joe Tyler we~ doing the rounds. And, to top it all, Betsy reflected in positive anguish, absolutely everybody would be thinking what a slut she had to be to have gone to bed with Cristos when she hardly knew him!
'How did all the stuff about the kidnapping come out?' she pressed.
'It most probably came from more than one source.
We did what we could to keep it quiet but per4aps too many people knew too much for it to remain buried,' Cristos breathed in a tone of regret.
Betsy could not really see why the kidnapping had
had to be hushed up to such an extent. She was a great deal more concerned by the much more personal nature of the revelations that had been thrown in her face in front of an audience. 'But who told them I was pregnant… who told them I'd ever even been out with Joe Tyler?' she gasped. 'I'd swear nobody at work knew about that one date!'
'I suspect that only a woman would time the revelations in the hope of wrecking our wedding day. No doubt tomorrow's papers will educate us as to the source of the leaks.' Cristos dealt her a bracing appraisal. 'Today, however, we have a wedding to celebrate and we must put this unpleasantness back out of our minds again.'
'But all your friends and family know that I'm pregnant now!' Betsy wailed.
'So we're fertile…' Cristos shrugged a broad shoulder with a magnificent disregard for her mortification. 'People love to gossip. Our guests will revel in all this controversy. Most weddings are rather boring.'
'Any day of the week, I'd choose to be bored rather than humiliated!'
'How does having my baby inside you humiliate you?' Cristos enquired, pulling her up against him and without warning splaying a bold hand across her stomach, lean brown fingers striking warmth and intimacy through the fabric that separated him from her skin.
Betsy found herself backtracking. 'I didn't mean it precisely that way. But 1 think it's really embarrassing that people should know that 1 slept with you so soon after meeting you… they'll all think I'm a slut,' she pointed out in a stifled undertone.
Cristos flipped her round and gave her a wholly unrepentant grin that radiated his natural charisma.
That grin made her want to hit him but it also sent her heart racing in a dual response that was becoming all too familiar to her in his radius.
'I'll take out full-page ads in all the major newspapers announcing that you were a virgin when we first shared a bed,' Cristos suggested levelly. 'Would that make you feel better?'
Thrusting herself free of him, Betsy studied him aghast. 'You're not serious?'
Glittering dark eyes gazed steadily back at her. 'I'm rather proud of the fact 1 was your first lover… I'd need very little encouragement to go public with the news. If you truly feel so humiliated-'
Betsy was pink to the roots of her hair. 'I don't feel that humiliated… you don't tell people stuff like that!’ Cristos closed an assured hand over hers, flung back his darkly handsome head and laughed with rich enjoyment.
Betsy launched herself back up against him and looked at him with a combination of chagrin, relief and grudging respect. 'You were teasing me!' she gasped, mortified that he had succeeded in fooling her.
Cristos folded an arm back round her and suddenly she twisted round and pressed into him to wind her arms tight round his neck. The feel of his lean, muscular body and the wonderfully familiar scent of his skin made her weak with longing. 'Sorry, I've been acting the diva,' she muttered guiltily. 'You're right… nothing should be allowed to cloud our day.'
In response, hard fingers tipped up her face. He drove her soft lips apart in a sensually savage kiss that brought her body alive with almost painful enthusiast. 'I'm burning for you, pethi mou,' he growled with roughened urgency.
They had arrived at the hotel where the reception was to be held. The passenger door opened. Dolius' craggy face split into a smile at finding the bridal couple in each other's arms and then went poker-straight again.
Betsy had never met so many people in her entire life as she met at the wedding reception. Her head whirled with names and snatches of conversation. She was seated with Cristos before it dawned on her that she had yet to meet her bridegroom's closest relative, Patras Stephanides.
'Where's your grandfather?' Betsy asked in an urgent whisper. 'Didn't he want to sit at this table?'
'It may have passed your notice but my grandfather
is not among our guests,' Cristos said stonily.
Betsy flushed. 'He's not here… why? Is he ill?' 'He chose not to attend.'
'For goodness' sake, why didn't you tell me?' Betsy whispered back in dismay. 'What an awful thing to do to you
