The Greek's Innocent Virgin

by Lucy Monroe

  "She owned an apartment in New York?" Rachel sounded more annoyed than overjoyed by that piece of news.

  "I suppose you're going to tell me you want to donate that to charity as well?" he asked derisively.

  "No, of course not."

  "I didn't think so."

  "If you'll have the deed drawn up, I'll sign it back over to the estate."

  Sebastian reared to his feet, sending his chair crash­ing backward. "What kind of game are you play­ing?"

  Rachel paled, but drew herself up, uncrossing her legs and moving forward on her chair.

  "I'm not playing any sort of game," she said with quiet vehemence. "Maybe you were right about me trying to put a brake on Andrea's behavior. I didn't try and I'll have to live with that knowledge for the rest of my life, but I refuse to personally profit by it. I simply won't." The fervor in Rachel's manner was either the best drama he'd seen in a long time, or she was entirely sincere.

  "There is no need for you to make a grand ges­ture," he dismissed with irritation, realizing his words the day before had instigated this conversation. "While there is no doubt your mother manipulated my uncle for her own gain, her material extravagance cost him negligibly in a financial sense."

  He listed off the few properties and cars Andrea had been gifted by Matthias in their six year long marriage.

  None of which did Sebastian have any desire to take possession of. It had been the personal cost of marriage to the grasping woman that had hurt Matthias and subsequently his family so much.

  "Then it should be a simple matter for your law­yers to see that all significant properties are returned to the estate and smaller possessions donated to char­ity."

  "My uncle would not have wanted you to give up claim to your inheritance in some misguided attempt to make up for the past and I refuse to condone you doing so."

  She shook her head and smiled, a genuinely amused expression that made her green eyes glow and his breathing go from normal to erratic.

  "You are so used to getting your own way, you amaze me."

  "Is that so?" He wasn't sure if her words were a condemnation or not.

  "Yes. You're absolutely confident that you can dictate my decisions for me." Her lips still twitched with humor.

  "And you find this amusing?"

  Her lips tucked into a prim bow. "Not really, it's merely that it apparently has not occurred to you, but it's up to me how I dispose of Andrea's property. If you refuse to accept reversion to the estate, then I will donate it all to worthy causes."

  Without warning, the amusement drained from her expression. "I want nothing of my mother's. Nothing at all."

  "It is too late. You carry her genes." The cynical words were out before he thought better of them and he cursed in Greek as Rachel's face leached of all color.

  She stood up, a visible tremor in her limbs, her eyes burning him with indictment for the pain he saw there. "If you don't have the necessary papers for me to sign before I leave Greece, I will see to the disposal of the properties when I return to America.''

  She turned and walked from the room, ignoring his demand she wait. He watched her go, frustration grip­ping his insides.

  Damn it all to hell. Why had he said that?

  Rachel had come into his uncle's study and set all of Sebastian's preconceived ideas on their head. She had proven in the most basic way that her mother's influence over her values and actions was negligible and still he had taunted her with being Andrea's daughter.

  It had been unfair and obviously painful to her.

  He could not remember the last time he had apol­ogized to a woman, but he was sure he needed to offer one now.

  Rachel sat across from Phillippa Kouros and won­dered why she'd talked herself into joining the family for dinner. She'd felt rude asking for yet another meal to be served in her room and then there had been the message from Sebastian. He'd sent a servant to in­form her he expected her to share the meal with the family.

  And she'd come, not wanting to offend him.

  Why did she care what the judgmental tyrant thought of her? He'd shown her that despite his kind­ness in the past, just like everyone else, he saw her through a glass tinted by her mother's bad blood. So what if he was the one man she'd ever felt a physical reaction to?

  Her adolescent fantasies of him as the hero of her dreams were just that and she needed to vanquish those images forever from her brain.

  Which meant she should be doing her best to com­plete the break with the Kouros and Demakis families.

  Nevertheless, she found herself trying to draw his mother into conversation. The older woman's dark eyes were too sad for Rachel's tender heart to ignore.

  Sebastian had been called from the table to take an urgent international call at the beginning of dinner. His brother had left the island with the rest of the family after the wills had been read.

  "I've only got a small patio at my apartment, but I keep an herb garden," Rachel said as the salad course was served.

  Phillippa's great passion was gardening and Rachel gave silent thanks for something to talk about unre­lated to the family's recent loss.

  "Basil and mint grow especially well in pots," Phillippa replied, her dulled eyes lighting a little with interest. "I had not expected you to like gardening. Andrea was appalled by the very idea of getting dirt on her hands."

  "My mother and I shared very little in common."

  "That is unfortunate."

  "Yes." What else could she say?

  "A mother and a daughter can find much joy in sharing one another's lives. My own mother taught me many things, not least of which was a love of growing things."

  "She must have been a very special woman."

  "She was. She and Uncle Matthias were always close." The grief came back to settle over Phillippa like a physical mantle.

  "Did you teach your sons to garden?" Rachel hon­estly couldn't imagine Sebastian or Aristide tending plants, but she hoped the question would get Phillippa's mind off of her grief.

  The older woman smiled with indulgence. "No. Those two were always too busy for such a time intensive hobby." She shook her head. "I have two wonderful sons, but I would have liked having a daughter as well."

  "I'm sure when they marry, their wives will find you a welcome addition to their lives."

  The thought of Sebastian married to a proper Greek girl caused pain deep in the region of her heart, but Rachel disregarded it. She had grown very adept at ignoring her feelings.

  But Phillippa was shaking her head again. "They were too busy as boys for hobbies and are too busy as men making money to find wives. Sebastian is al­ready thirty and he has never even dated a woman longer than a few weeks."

  "I'm sure when the time is right..." Her voice trailed off at the strange look in the older woman's dark eyes.

  But before she could question it, Sebastian returned from his telephone call.

  He folded his tall frame into the chair at the end of the table. "Mama, there is something I would ap­preciate you doing for Rachel."

  The Greek woman looked at her son with obvious love and approval. "What is it, my son?"

  "She wants to donate her mother's possessions to auction for charity, but she doesn't want anything of sentimental value to the family to be sold." He looked to Rachel as if expecting her to confirm or deny his words.

  So, she nodded. "That's right."

  Phillippa's dark brown eyes expressed her surprise. "You wish me to go through your mother's things with you?''

  "Just the things in her room. Anything that might be considered hers in the other rooms of the house can simply stay with the villa." She'd thought about it and that seemed the easiest way to handle the sit­uation.

  "But surely you'll want the things she treasured."

  "No."

  "I have a few items of my mother's. They give me comfort when I think of her."

  "I will find more satisfaction knowing her posses­sions brought something good to the liv
es of children in need."

  The compassionate understanding in Phillippa's eyes was almost enough to make Rachel lose the rigid hold she had on her emotions. "I understand. I would be pleased to help you."

  "Thank you," Rachel replied with deep sincerity.

  The sweet fragrance of honeysuckle mingled with the warm, salt laden air off the sea, wrapping around Rachel while her toes sank into pebbly sand. Unable to sleep, she'd come down to the beach, thinking a walk would help settle her mind.

  But it wasn't her mind that needed settling.

  It was her body.

  Being around Sebastian always did this to her, made her aware of her femininity in a way she man­aged to ignore the rest of the time. After what had happened to her when she was sixteen, that wasn't hard, but somehow the powerful tycoon undermined defenses that were rock-solid around other men.

  And he didn't even try.

  Sebastian Kouros had no interest in her, had never once intimated that he was aware of her as anything other than his beloved great-uncle's stepdaughter.

  But that didn't stop her hormones from raging, or her heart from tying itself in knots over him.

  "What are you doing out here, pethi mou?"

  Spinning around at the sound of his voice, her heart climbed right up into her throat. She staggered back­ward away from that all too close masculine body, her feet hitting wet sand and then water. "Sebastian!"

  His hands shot out and grabbed her shoulders, stop­ping her from an ignominious landing in the shallow water. "You did not know I was here?"

  She shook her head dumbly.

  He pulled her forward until her feet were once again on dry land, but he did not move, leaving her way too close to him. "I made no attempt to disguise my approach."

  "I w-was thinking." She stumbled over her words, her brain processing the new sensory input from his arrival.

  His fingers were warm and solid through the silk-thin cotton of her sleeves and his scent, spicy and overwhelmingly male, dominated her senses. The full moon supplied sufficient light for his formfitting, black T-shirt to reveal every defined abdomen and well-developed chest muscle. While his light colored sports shorts drew attention to legs that would have looked more appropriate on a long-distance runner than a corporate executive. His feet were bare like hers and their toes were scant inches apart.

  For some reason that seemed very intimate.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "You must have been thinking about something very absorbing if your thoughts were so deep they pre­vented you from hearing my footsteps."

  How ironic that thoughts of the man had prevented her from preparing herself mentally to meet up with him. "Yes."

  "Why are you not sleeping?"

  Did he realize he was still holding on to her? She tried shrugging to see if the movement would remind him to release her and step back. "I couldn't."

  He ignored her silent bid for freedom, probably hadn't even noticed it. "Your mother died less than a week ago. It is understandable, this lack of rest."

  "I suppose," she replied, content to let him draw his own conclusions.

  She had enough to deal with not moving those re­maining inches and snuggling into the warmth and safety his tall body offered. She wanted him physi­cally and that in itself was shocking enough, but she wanted something else from him, something she'd learned long ago was not on offer in her life. Love. Commitment. Security.

  "I understand. My uncle's death has caused much grief in my family."

  That was probably as close as Sebastian would come to admitting his own weakness and the fact he was no doubt awake because of his own undiluted grief. Any feelings of sadness she had at the death of her mother were weakened by relief that the emo­tional pain of living in the shadow of her misdeeds was over.

  She licked her lips, trying to maintain her concen­tration when his nearness was wreaking havoc with her ability to focus on what was being said. ''Matthias was a good man."

  Sebastian's hands dropped away from her shoul­ders finally, but he remained too close to ease her awkwardness. "He was, but I should not have dis­missed your own grieving."

  "What do you mean?" She had not expressed any real grief, so how could he have dismissed it?

  She wasn't even sure if she was capable of mourn­ing her mother's death.

  "I was not kind to you this afternoon and I am sorry." The words came out stilted, not at all like his usual smooth conversation.

  He probably apologized about as often as she dated, which was never.

  "It's no big deal. Don't worry about it."

  "I hurt you and I should not have added to your pain in that way."

  Oh, man, when he got going on the remorse thing, he took it seriously. And it made her feel guilty be­cause while he'd hurt her it had not been in addition to the pain of loss, but to the pain of a lifetime lived as Andrea's daughter.

  "Thank you for your concern, but honestly, I'm used to comments like that."

  The sound he made said her words had not soothed him.

  She sighed, unable to stifle the urge to reach out, to touch in an age-old gesture of comfort. Her fingers settled gently against his hair roughened arm and it was all she could do to remember what she was going to say. Oh, yeah...

  "I'm not angry with you." Not anymore. "Matthias was a kind and caring man. I'm sorry he died the way he did. I'm sorry my mother's life ended the way it did, but I don't blame you for pointing out the truth. I am her daughter and I've learned to live with that."

  An indecipherable expression settled over his an­gular features. "Earlier, I was worried you might take your story to the tabloids, but I realize now you would not do so."

  Chills of horror skated along her nerve endings. ' 'Never.''

  "Andrea courted publicity of the worst kind."

  "And I had to live with it all my life."

  "You did not like it."

  "I hated it. As a child, I got teased and was ex­pelled from two different private schools because of her behavior." Andrea had been caught having sex with one of Rachel's teachers by the man's wife and the second time, she'd been arrested for cocaine pos­session. "It wasn't much better at university. The world seems like such a big place until you're the one in the middle of ugly media attention."

  And by then, her mother had married a rich Greek tycoon old enough to be her father. It was the stuff of fantasy for would-be journalists making their name in the tabloid press.

  Which was why Rachel had legally changed her last name upon graduation. She'd never told Andrea, not wanting a big scene, but no one in Rachel's cur­rent life knew that she was related to a woman notorious for her sexual exploits and questionable social activities.

  In the United States, the story of Rachel Long, daughter of Andrea Long Demakis, simply did not exist.

  Being shy and rather average looking had its ad­vantages.

  She realized this time it was she who continued to hold on to him and quickly pulled her hand away. "Sorry."

  "I do not mind."

  She swallowed. "Yes, well, I should get back. I'm sure I can sleep now," she said, lying through her teeth, but needing to get away from his unnerving presence.

  His hands caught her waist, halting her body and her breathing all in one go. "Are you sure?"

  "I..." She choked trying to get air into her lungs and he pulled her closer, soothing her back, his ex­pression too heated to be labeled concern.

  She started to breathe again, but still couldn't speak. His silver gaze was doing things to her insides she'd long since convinced herself was the stuff of fantasy. Shivery sensations traveled along nerve end­ings she didn't even know she had and a heavy, ach­ing sensation in her womb radiated downward to make her thighs clench.

  Firm, masculine lips tilted in a knowing smile and she was sure he knew just what was happening to her.

  He never broke eye contact as he drew her near until their bodies barely touched and she could not help the involuntary shudder that went thr
ough her at contact.

  His eyes filled with primal male triumph. "Yes. I knew you felt it too."

  "Felt what?" she asked, knowing her attempt at prevarication was hopeless.

  He ignored it completely.

  "I need to know." His head lowered until his lips were a breath from hers.

  "Don't you wonder too?"

  She would have asked, "Wonder what?", but his mouth closed over hers.

  And she stopped thinking.

  All she could do was feel.

  It was entirely alien, this merging of their mouths, the mingling of their breath, the gentle seduction of knowing lips. She had not known men like him, with so much power and masculine strength, could be gen­tle.