Claiming His Replacement Queen (Monteverre Marriages 2)

But the flipside had meant she’d failed to mention Nikos to her parents. Far less the fact that she had rushed headlong into an engagement with him. That she intended to marry the remarkable Greek man as soon as possible.

Because Kate had known full well the ruckus it would cause. She knew her mother would hit the roof and insist that the engagement was broken off immediately—that there was no way she was going to allow her daughter to marry some penniless Greek bum. And then her poor father would be dragged into it, torn between the two women in his life the way he always was, doing his best to keep the peace.

Kate had decided that she was going to keep the engagement a secret for as long as she could. But when news had arrived that her father had been taken seriously ill her little secret had suddenly begun to grow, to take on a life of its own.

As she’d rushed to make plans to return to New York Nikos had assumed he would be going with her. But Kate hadn’t been able to let that happen. Her parents hadn’t even known of his existence—she couldn’t arrive back home with him by her side, knowing the way her mother would react and risking damaging her father’s fragile health still further.

So she had insisted Nikos stayed behind in Crete. She could still remember the look of hurt on his face when she’d told him. Standing there in the Greek sunshine, so tall and proud, his dark brows pulling together in surprise, his features had set like stone.

It had all but broken her heart, but Kate had stood firm, slinging her rucksa

ck over her shoulder and turning away when all she’d wanted to do was to fall into his arms and stay there for ever.

If she had come clean there and then, confessed everything, would things have turned out differently?

Kate had gone over that moment in her head a thousand times. But the fact was she hadn’t. And as Nikos’s hurt had quickly turned to a carefully controlled anger, a cold cloud of animosity had descended over them as they’d said their goodbyes.

Nikos’s dry peck on her cheek had only accentuated the widening rift between them.

Her father had died two weeks later. And in the melee of trying to organise everything—taking care of her mother, who had always suffered from fragile mental health, as well as coping with her own crippling grief—suddenly Nikos had arrived. Unannounced. Uninvited. And even though her heart had leapt at the sight of him—even though he had been the person Kate had wanted to see more than anyone else in the world, needed more than anyone else in the world—she had panicked.

Hadn’t she expressly told him not to come? His arrival was going to cause nothing but trouble. And that trouble had started almost immediately.

Within minutes her guilty secret had been exposed. Dropping his bag, Nikos had looked around the luxurious apartment with a puzzled expression on his face before pulling her into a stiff hug.

With immaculate timing Fiona O’Connor had walked in at that precise moment, demanding to know who this person was. And as Nikos had stepped forward to offer his condolences, and to introduce himself as Kate’s fiancé, she had let out a little scream, her hand fluttering to her throat.

Kate had had no choice but to try and do whatever she could to mitigate the damage, to calm Fiona down. Even though that had meant pushing Nikos away.

And then, on that last evening—the evening of her father’s funeral—her whole shaky world had finally collapsed.

When she’d been at her lowest ebb Nikos had turned on her, slashing through her battered defences, inflicting the sort of crippling pain from which there was no recovery...

Turning on her side, Kate curled herself into a ball as the memory of how Nikos had looked tonight imprinted itself on her brain. Gone had been the laid-back guy she had once known, casually dressed in faded jeans slung low on his hips or board shorts frayed at the hems by the sun and the sea. Gone the mass of wind-blown dark curls. Now his hair was tamed, styled, carefully groomed like the rest of him. Now he wore a dinner suit with the easy confidence of a wealthy man, giving off an air of urbane arrogance that told the world he had made it, that life was his for the taking.

Feeling a stab of pain, she buried her head in her pillow. Not for the first time she conceded that Nikos was the one man who had the wealth and the contacts to save her precious business. But there was no way she would ask him. She might only have a shred of pride left, but she was damned if she was going to give that shred to him. No, hell would freeze over before she ever went crawling to him.