The Greek's Innocent Virgin

So, what could Rachel say to the grieving man beside her?

There were no words to undo the pain of the last six years, pain that had culminated in him losing the man who had stood in his father’s stead since he was a young boy. Nevertheless, the compulsion to try could not be ignored.

She reached for his hand, hers trembling. “Sebastian?”

Sebastian Kouros felt the small fingers touch his, heard the tentative word quietly spoken and fought the urge to turn on Andrea Demakis’s daughter with all the rage he wanted to vent against a dead woman.

“What is it pethi mou?” The endearment slipped out much too naturally when he was feeling in no way tender toward her, but she was little—barely five feet, five inches to his six-foot-four and he had followed his great-uncle’s example, calling her by the endearment since first meeting Rachel.

“You’re going to miss him.” Her soft voice touched a place inside he could not afford to be stirred and maintain the precarious hold he had on his composure. “I’m sorry.”

He looked down at her, but all he saw was chestnut brown hair pulled into a conservative French twist. Her face was averted.

“I also.”

Moss green eyes came around to meet his own. “He should never have married Andrea.”

“But the marriage changed your life, did it not?”

Her pale features flushed, but she nodded. “For the better. I can’t deny it.”

“And yet you chose to accept employment in the States, only returning to Greece for a few short weeks out of the year.”

“I did not fit into their lifestyle.”

“Did you try?”

Her eyes widened at his cold tone, their green depths darkening in confusion. “I didn’t want to. I never liked living amid the chaos of Andrea’s hectic social life.”

“Had you no thought of trying to mitigate the effects of your mother’s selfish nature on the life of a man who had done so much for you?”

She stepped away from him, removing her hand from his as if burned. “You cannot live another person’s life for them.”

“Indeed?” Part of him knew what she said was right.

He had been unable to stop his great-uncle from making the disastrous marriage, but the deep well of pain inside him denied a totally logical view of the old man’s death.

“You profited by the marriage. The least you could have done was to at least try to curb Andrea’s destructive behavior.”

“I couldn’t have done anything.” Her words were firm, but her face was set in guilty lines and he knew she too wondered if she could have changed the steady downward spiral Andrea had made of Matthias’s life. “I couldn’t,” she repeated.

“Perhaps in this, you also had no desire to try…” His voice trailed off on the subtle accusation and she flinched.

“I gave up trying to impact Andrea’s lifestyle a long time ago.” Rachel’s voice reverberated with emotional hurt he could not ignore and he had a totally inappropriate urge to kiss the bow-shaped lips set in such an unhappy line until they were soft and glistening.

Until her eyes reflected sweet passion instead of a past filled with secret sorrows.

Damn it. There should be no room with the pain gripping his insides for this inexplicable desire.

It was the same appalling need that assailed him every time he came within ten feet of the beautiful, but reserved woman. His Greek mind could not reconcile wanting Rachel with the disdain he had felt for her mother.

By rights, he should despise Rachel as much as he had the selfish, ruthless woman who had given birth to her.

Rachel entered the masculine study with trepidation.

It had been Matthias Demakis’s domain, the only room in the large Mediterranean villa on the privately owned Greek island that her mother had not redecorated. In the past, this room with its rich red upholstered chairs and dark wood paneling had been the setting for two of her happiest moments: the evening Matthias had told her she no longer had to attend her mother’s parties despite Andrea’s demands and the day the old man had told her he was sending her to university in America.

However, today promised no joy.

She had been called down to attend the reading of the wills. Since her conversation at the graveside with Sebastian the day before, she’d spent most of her time in her room. The Kouros and Demakis families were in residence and she had no desire to make herself a whipping boy for their grief and entirely righteous anger. Justified it might be, but she was not the one who had destroyed Matthias Demakis’s life.

Sebastian’s accusation that she should have tried to stem Andrea’s devastating behavior had been ludicrous, but she’d had no desire to laugh. He held her responsible for her mother’s sins and that hurt more than she wanted to contemplate.

The one man in all the world she’d ever wanted physically, the only man she’d trusted enough to swim with or talk to alone on a balcony of the old villa late at night, hated her. Her mother’s death had not resulted in personal anguish, but the knowledge Sebastian was forever out of her reach did.

She’d paid the price for being Andrea’s daughter for twenty-three years. Must she keep paying it, even now that the other woman was dead?

“Miss Long, won’t you take a seat?” The white haired lawyer had been on Matthias’s retainer for decades, but still maintained an aura of vitality she couldn’t help but admire.

As Matthias had…before he’d married a woman more than twenty-five years his junior.

Rachel tried not to make eye contact with anyone else as she made for a small ottoman in the back of the room set against a bookcase. She sat down, smoothing her hands nervously over the oyster white loose trousers covering her legs. The current trend of tight clothes that showed strips of skin had not made its way into her closet despite the fact she lived in Skin Central—Southern California.

Phillippa Kouros, Sebastian’s mother and Matthias’s niece, came into the room to take a seat beside her son. Although the powerful man’s back was to her, Rachel had no problem reading his body language as he solicitously cared for his mother and then turned to the lawyer and gave him permission to begin.

Andrea’s will held few unexpected details. She’d left all her worldly goods to her husband, except in the event he preceded her in death, then her possessions were to pass on to Rachel. The sequence of bequeathals did not surprise her. Andrea would never have expected Matthias to outlive her and had no doubt made the stipulation as some manipulative attempt at making him believe she valued him even above her daughter.

However, Matthias Demakis’s last will and testament was somewhat surprising. Although he had left a few things of sentimental value to his family members and Rachel, the bulk of his estate had been passed down to Sebastian Kouros, including the villa.

He had made no provision at all for his younger wife, nor had he left instructions for Sebastian to care for the widow. Knowing how his family had felt about Andrea, that omission was telling to Rachel’s way of thinking. Evidently, Matthias had grown completely disenchanted with his wife’s peccadilloes and scandalous behavior.

The white-haired lawyer set the document down after he had finished reading it and fixed his blue gaze on Rachel, which effectively brought the attention of the other occupants of the room as well.

Rachel squirmed inside at the stares directed her way.

“The coroner was unable to determine which of the occupants of the car died first.” The lawyer’s gaze shifted to Sebastian. “However, I’m sure the family will not dispute you taking possession of your mother’s personal belongings.”

Sebastian’s head shook in a slight negative.

Rachel felt nothing, certainly no joy in possessing anything resulting from her mother’s misbegotten lifestyle. The one thing she would have gladly received from Andrea, the other woman had taken to the grave with her.

The identity of Rachel’s father—a piece of information her mother had refused to part with throughout Rachel’s life.

Sebastian looked up at the sound of a knock on the study door. It was open, but Rachel did not come in. She stood framed in the opening, her face cast in shadow by the light coming in from the hallway so he could not see her expression.

He didn’t like that and he waved her inside impatiently, having expected this visit, but not pleased his cynicism had been proven right. As much as he knew she was Andrea’s daughter, he’d always wanted to believe she didn’t share her mother’s avarice.

“Come in. You don’t have to stand in the hall.”