LUCY MONROE - The Greek's Innocent Virgin

“Yes.” Rachel had promised herself a long time ago to be as honest as it was possible for her to be. “Do you need to hear that I’m stupid enough to care about you so your ego is bolstered? Or maybe you just want revenge?”

“It is not that.”

“I don’t understand you, Sebastian.” She swallowed against the constriction in her throat. “You kissed me in Andrea’s room. And the other night, you kissed me on the beach and touched me. We almost made love, for goodness’s sake, but then you told your mother you could never love me.”

His hand traveled down her cheek and neck, one finger softly brushing the rapid pulse he found there.

“Sex is not love.”

Coming in July:

Pregnant by the Greek Tycoon

by Kim Lawrence

#2480

Harlequin Presents ®

They’re the men who have everything—except brides…

Wealth, power, charm—what else could a handsome tycoon need? In the GREEK TYCOONS miniseries, you have already met some gorgeous Greek multimillionaires who are in need of wives.

Now meet the arrogant, sensual and very proud Sebastian Kouros in Lucy Monroe’s

The Greek’s Innocent Virgin

This tycoon thought he could believe what others told him—now he has to learn to trust his heart to find the love of his life!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Kim Young, an editor of beautiful creative vision and insight. Thank you for taking a chance on me, for working with me and pushing me to be the best I can be with every book. You are a tremendous blessing in my life and will always have a special place in my heart.

Your Forever Fan,

Lucy

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

RACHEL LONG felt curiously numb as she walked away from her mother’s graveside, the scent of damp earth filling the hot Greek air.

Andrea Demakis had died at the age 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 simply felt nothing at all.

Not even relief. The emotional turmoil her mother had visited on those around her was no longer Rachel’s personal sword of Damocles, hovering above her and ready to shred her life again. And yet, she experienced no sense of liberation at the knowledge, merely emotional numbness in the face of the finality of death.

Her feet moved without her directing them, carrying her away from the final statement of a life that had been lived with only one goal, self-gratification.

The service was long over and the other mourners had gone. All but one. Sebastian Kouros stood in the absolute stillness of extreme grief beside his great-uncle’s grave. 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 family had despised her mother and that contempt had glimmered in more than one pair of eyes when they had settled upon her today. No matter how many times she got 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 Demakis to impact the way he treated her daughter. 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 knew why the old man was dead.

He’d married the wrong woman and not only had he lived to regret 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 him into attempting physical feats better left to men half his age. Only he hadn’t. He had died in a car accident, driving under the influence of alcohol and too much tension after yet another horrific argument with Andrea.

He’d caught his young wife in bed with another man…again.

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 shame would have never swayed her, Andrea had gone 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 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.