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CHAPTER ONE
Rachel Long felt curiously nuraveside, the scent of da the hot Greek air
Andrea Dee of forty-five and Rachel felt nothing No outrage a life should be cut so short, no pain in the loss of a parent, no fear for the future
She si at all
Not even relief The emotional turer Rachel's personal sword of Daain And yet, she experienced no sense of liberation at the knowledge, merely emotional numbness in the face of the finality of death
Her feether away from the final stateratification
The service was long over and the other one All but one Sebastian Kouros stood in the absolute stillness of extrerave He had thrown the first handful of dirt onto the coffin, his steel gray gaze stoic, his big body rigid beneath the unrelenting Greek sun
She stopped beside him, unsure what to say
Or indeed if she should say anything at all
His falimmered in more than one pair of eyes when they had settled upon her today No ot the look that said no doubt she'd been cut from the same cloth as her hedonistic mother, it hurt Only Sebastian had never allowed his obvious dislike of Andrea Dehter He had always been kind to Rachel, gentle toward her shyness and even protective
He had been the one to convince his great-uncle to pay for Rachel's university education, but would Sebastian's tolerance continue in the face of his beloved uncle's death?
After all, everyone knehy the old man was dead
He'd ret it, he'd died because of it
The truth was, he could have died on any of numerous occasions over the past six years when Andrea had teased hi physical feats better left to e Only he hadn't He had died in a car accident, driving under the influence of alcohol and too ument with Andrea
He'd caught his young wife in bed with another ain
They had fought in front of witnesses and then left the party Rachel had learned her mother had only been in the car because when she'd refused at first to leave with him, Matthias had threatened to cut her off without a penny and divorce her Motivated by self-interest when shaone with him
And they had both died
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 cul theboy Nevertheless, the conored
She reached for his hand, hers tre "Sebastian?"
Sebastian Kouros felt the sers touch his, heard the tentative word quietly spoken and fought the urge to turn on Andrea Deainst a dead woman
"What is it pethi mou?" The endear 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 exa 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 saas 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 ed 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 e 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 ate the effects of your mother's selfish nature on the life of a man who had done so much for you?"
She stepped away fro her hand from his as if burned "You cannot live another person's life for them"
"Indeed?" Part of hiht
He had been unable to stop his great-uncle froe, but the deep well of pain inside hiical view of the old man's death
"You profited by the e 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 firuilty lines and he knew she too wondered if she could have changed the steady doard 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 io" Rachel's voice reverberated with enore 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
Da his insides for this inexplicable desire
It was the sa need that assailed him every time he came within ten feet of the beautiful, but reserved wo Rachel with the disdain he had felt for her mother
By rights, he should despise Rachel as iven birth to her
Rachel entered the masculine study with trepidation
It had been Matthias Dee Mediterranean villa on the privately owned Greek island that her mother had not redecorated In the past, this roo had been the setting for two of her happiest er had to attend her mother's parties despite Andrea's de 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 rief and entir
ely righteous anger Justified it ht be, but she was not the one who had destroyed Matthias Demakis's life
Sebastian's accusation that she should have tried to ste 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 h to sith or talk to alone on a balcony of the old villa late at night, hated her Her uish, 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?