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“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 lives 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 through 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.
Her hands went to his chest of their own accord, drawn by a lure as inexplicable as it was inescapable. She tentatively explored the ridges of muscle that had fascinated her earlier and her fingertips encountered hard points. Mesmerized by this unexpected indicator of his excitement, she investigated the phenomena completely.
He groaned and yanked her into his body, his hold growing fierce, the kiss turning incendiary. Fiery passion sizzled between their lips and she did not pull away. That fact registered with what was left of her conscious mind along with the realization she felt not one iota of fear.
There was no room inside her for anything but an all-consuming erotic craving and physical delight, both sparked by him. He tasted good, so different from her and yet infinitely right and desirable.
Without really knowing how it had happened, his tongue was in her mouth and he was teaching her how to find pleasure in an intimate kiss she had always considered much too invasive. She wanted to give it back and copied his movements with instinctive feminine sensuality she had been sure she no longer possessed.
Growling, he lifted her off the sand, grinding his pelvis against hers and causing shock waves to ripple throughout her body.
But still, she felt no trepidation…nothing that would dilute the molten lava of need flowing through her veins.
When he pressed against her bottom, causing her thighs to drift apart, it was the most natural thing in the world to lift her legs and lock her ankles tight behind his back. Her skirt rucked up, leaving her skin bare against him in an unbearably exciting connection and sexual hunger exploded inside her as her sweet spot rubbed against his hardened male flesh.
She needed something and she pressed herself against him as intimately as possible, gyrating her hips to increase the sensations exploding in her most intimate flesh.
His hand trespassed the silk of her panties to touch a place that had not been touched in seven years. The feel of his fingertip at the entrance to her body brought forth a rush of dew drenched pleasure. Then his finger moved to possess her and old fear rushed through her in an unstoppable torrent, dousing her pleasure and filling her with a desperate need to be free.
She tore her mouth from his. “No. Stop. What are we doing?”
“You do not know?” he asked incredulously, his voice thick with desire.
She didn’t answer. Could not answer. The feel of that finger almost inside her had brought forth memories that would drown her if she let them.
Unlocking her ankles, she frantically tried to scramble from his arms.
After a second of unequal struggling, he let her go, spewing words in Greek she had no desire to know the translation for.
“I’m sorry,” she jerked out, yanking her skirt down to cover her wobbly legs.
Her heart was beating her to death, her palms were damp and her mouth was cottony and dry.
His hands clenched and she stepped back, unable to prevent a reaction born of the past but called forth in the present.
His face a mask of frustrated desire, he threw his head back and inhaled deeply before looking at her again.
When he did, the feral intensity had been muted, but his mouth was set in a grim line. “No. It is I who should apologize. A man should not take advantage of a woman’s weak emotional state. It was wrong to kiss you when you were already upset from the week’s events.”
She couldn’t believe he was taking it on himself, but then hadn’t she always known he was no common man? He stood above all others in her mind and had been elevated to almost saint status with his understanding of her rejection.
He didn’t know why she had pulled back and had not asked, creating a well of gratitude that ran soul deep inside her.
“I didn’t mean to let it go that far,” she said, remembering accusations from the past of being a tease, tormenting words that haunted her nightmares.
“I did not mean for it to happen at all,” he admitted ruefully, making her smile when it should have been impossible. “I saw you from my room and came out to check on you and to apologize for my inappropriate remark earlier. Instead, I took advantage of an attraction neither of us would benefit from acting on.”
While his words completely exonerated her from blame and set her mind at ease, they left gaping wounds in her heart. He was saying that they did not belong together in any sense.
She’d known that.
Had always understood he was way out of her league, but it still hurt. He’d given her her first taste of real passion and the possibility she could know the entire gamut of sexual experience with him tantalized her. She’d gotten frightened, but only when he touched her like she’d been touched that one fateful night.
If she could tell him about it…ask him to avoid doing that, would she be able to make love completely without fear?
Why was she even asking herself these questions? He had made no secret of the fact that he was appalled by the fact he’d kissed her. Sexual intimacy with Sebastian Kouros was not on the cards for her.
She forced her lips into a semblance of a smile. “You’re right. A relationship between the two of us would be out of the question.” She was trying to sound sophisticated and casually accepting of his reading of the situation, but she was afraid the façade would crack any second. “I—I think, I’ll go to bed now.”
He insisted on walking her to her room, not relieving her of his now grim presence until she shut the door on his formal goodnight.
Sebastian walked away from Rachel’s room calling himself six kinds of a fool. What in the hell had he been thinking to kiss her like that?
To kiss her at all?
Okay, so he had wanted her for years, but she was not the woman for him. Not even for a brief affair. She might be different from Andrea, but Rachel was still daughter to a piranha.
As well, it would hurt his family if he got involved with her. They deserved better than a second serving of the kind of gossip that had surrounded Matthias’s marriage. He had loved his great-uncle very much, but the old man had been ruled by his libido when it came to Andrea and he had brought shame upon their family.
How could a Greek man with any kind of pride stay married to a woman he knew to be unfaithful?
And yet Matthias had.
The night of the crash had not been the first time his uncle had found evidence of his much younger wife’s sexual exploits outside the bounds of their marriage. Each time, Sebastian had been sure the old man would finally come to his senses and kick the bitch out of his life, but Matthias never had.
Sebastian would never allow a woman to make such a fool of him. He had no tolerance for lies and subterfuge of the type that had marked Matthias’s second marriage. He abhorred any type of dishonesty and would not give the time of day to a woman who lied about her age, much less her fidelity.
His great-uncle had been smart enough to prevent his beautiful, conscience-less wife from cleaning him out financially and had shown his brain was still functioning on some level within the bounds of his marriage in not leaving her anything in his will, but there was no doubt Andrea Demakis had bankrupted the old man’s pride.
For a Greek male, that was the worst consequence imaginable.
Sebastian had found it impossible to comprehend Matthias’s willingness to stay married. How could he have allowed himself to be manipulated by his sexuality into pursuing a lifestyle the total antithesis of what he had known his first sixty-plus years? A man should live his final years with dignity, but his uncle had not.
Humiliation had been his companion, particularly for the past year. What had spurred Andrea to wave her sexual conquests in her elderly husband’s face? What had made her behave so foully? And why had Rachel ignored it all, never once attempting to stop the abhorrent behavior?
The dark night outside his bedroom window offered no answers, but the questions served to remind him that no matter how different Rachel appeared on the surface, she had been too self-interested to care about Matthias Demakis.
Just like her mother.
Rachel finished packing the last box in her mother’s bedroom and closed it. A sense of accomplishment warred with disappointment. She’d searched Andrea’s room thoroughly and found nothing related to her life before she married Matthias Demakis. No indication of who the man who had fathered Rachel might be.
Considering her mother’s taste in companions, she would have given up her desire to find him years ago but for two poignant memories from her childhood.
She’d been little, three, maybe four, and sitting on a man’s lap. He’d been reading to her and while she had no idea what he’d been reading, she could still remember the sense of love and security she’d felt. She’d called him, “Daddy,” and kissed his cheek when he’d finished. He’d hugged her tight and when she closed her eyes she could remember that hug.
It had made her feel safe.
And she remembered waking in the night and searching an apartment in the dark for her daddy, crying and calling his name. She’d been about five, or six then. Her mother had slept on, no doubt passed out from alcohol or something more potent, but Rachel had stayed up all night, accepting that her daddy wasn’t coming back only when the first rays of sun indicated a new day.
She didn’t know if her father had chosen to stay out of their lives as her mother had claimed or if he had been unable to find them. Andrea and Rachel had lived in various parts of Europe since Rachel had started school. Her mother’s exploits had made the gutter press at times, but wouldn’t have been noteworthy in the States. She had been neither filthy rich, until Matthias, nor a celebrity.
Even her marriage to Matthias Demakis had only made her of interest to a few gossip rags in the States. While other students at her university had learned enough about her exploits to judge Rachel on them, that didn’t mean a man who hadn’t seen Andrea in over twenty years would recognize her in publicized photos, or even read that type of paper.
Rachel wanted to believe her father was an American man, unaware of Andrea’s recent notoriety and longtime residence in Europe. However, she had to acknowledge that he could very well be as permanently gone as Andrea.
Shaking off thoughts that led nowhere, Rachel ran tape along the box’s seam. For whatever reason, her father was lost to her and that was that. She tore the tape off and straightened, blowing at a strand of hair that had fallen from her ponytail. Emotionally detached, she surveyed the once decadent room now stripped of much of its sumptuous decor.
Sebastian had encouraged her to pack everything for the auction. He planned to redo the room in the near future, erasing Andrea’s influence on the villa as thoroughly as possible. Of course, that’s not how he’d put it. He’d been very tactful since their discussion in the study three days ago, but his feelings regarding Andrea Demakis were no secret.
Stretching tired muscles, Rachel reached toward the ceiling and then bent from one side to the other. Her muscles ached and her eyes burned with fatigue. She’d spent a lot of time on her knees packing and sorting in the past three days and had slept poorly at night, too much time given to reliving Sebastian’s kiss.
Bending forward, she touched her fingertips to the plush carpeting. Straightening, she leaned backward, doing almost a backbend, and saw a pair of trouser covered male legs.
The Greek curse that met her ears was instantly recognizable and just as startling.
Her balance gave way and she could do nothing to stop falling flat on her back, bumping her head in the process.
Sebastian dropped to his knee beside her, his gorgeous features set in concerned lines. “Are you all right, pedhaki mou?”
She couldn’t speak, her breath having been knocked right out of her. The best she could do was a series of guppy-like movements with her lips.