Cathy Williams - Six Greek Heroes

The rest of her E-mails were innocuous and she finished going through them in very little time.

Afterward, she continued her exploring. Across the hall, she found Sebastian’s bedroom. It was ultra-masculine and she could almost feel his presence amid the chocolate brown and vanilla decor. She spent several minutes just soaking in the reality of being inside his most private sanctuary.

She found her cases in the next room down the hall. The furnishings were decidedly feminine. Pale blue and peach with whitewashed wood made a departure from the other rooms in the apartment. Had he had the room designed for his lovers’ comfort?

But no, she couldn’t imagine him planning to have female guests overnight that were not intending to share his bed. Perhaps he’d had it decorated for his mother’s visits. That was much more in keeping with his character.

The fact that he’d had her things put in the room indicated his willingness to respect her right to choose if and when they began a physical relationship. She appreciated Sebastian not assuming she would sleep with him immediately. However, she knew that if she stayed in his apartment for any length of time, it would not be sleeping in the double size bed in the beautiful guest room.

Sebastian rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his desk chair.

It had been a long day, with one draining meeting after another. The Chinese business contacts that had shown up unexpectedly had required careful handling and a tremendous focus on what was being said in each of their get-togethers. It had taken nearly half of the day for him to discern their objective in coming and the rest of the day making sure they did not achieve something not in his company’s best interest.

The thought of going home to his apartment and seeing Rachel was very tempting, but he forced himself to go through his in-basket of personal correspondence before leaving. There were only a few letters, but some of them were over a week old.

He’d been gone for a lot longer than he’d originally planned when he’d flown to the island to take charge after his great-uncle’s death. He’d taken care of business easily, but had told his secretary to hold off forwarding personal correspondence because he’d expected to be back sooner and he’d never rescinded that order.

Why, even though he’d been gone longer than expected?

Because he’d been focused on the confusing woman waiting in his apartment and he hadn’t even thought of it.

He’d called her twice that afternoon, just like a lovesick boy. She’d responded like she was really happy to hear from him and was probably hearing wedding bells in her head.

He had no one to blame but himself. He shouldn’t encourage her to think their relationship was out of the norm for him because he was not ready for marriage and emotional entanglement was right off his list of things to do for the next century.

He’d come much too close to going that direction once already to a woman a lot like Andrea Demakis, but he’d wised up in time and had paid in experience not alimony for his stupidity. He’d determined then not to let a woman get the upper hand in his life and his uncle’s marriage had only reinforced that belief.

He didn’t want to get married.

He sure as hell wasn’t about to fall in love.

He picked up a letter that looked like it was addressed in Matthias’s hand. He must be more tired than he thought. The return address was smudged, but it…

No it couldn’t be.

It was.

The letter had been written by his great-uncle before his death, no doubt about it. The envelope was thick and Sebastian hesitated to open it. He didn’t want to read something that would add to his ambivalent feelings about Rachel. He hated any sort of confusion and that seemed to be the vast majority of what he felt in relation to her.

But he was a man, not a spineless wimp, so he slit the envelope marked personal and pulled out the several page letter. A half an hour later, the pages of the letter in an untidy heap in front of him on the desk, he sat in stunned silence, trying to digest what he’d read.

His uncle had wised up to his younger wife, but too late.

Not only had Matthias acknowledged what a horrible mistake he’d made in marrying Andrea, but he had written that he was concerned that if his mercenary wife thought she stood to gain by his death, he would not live very long. He had therefore changed his will to disinherit his wife completely.

The admission of such a mistake in judgment, not to mention the necessity of taking such action, would have been devastating to the old man’s Greek pride and reading the words had made Sebastian physically ill.

Matthias had informed Andrea of the change in his will as well and his intention to divorce her. No wonder she’d gone so completely off the rails. She’d had nothing to lose anymore and a vindictive streak a mile wide. Realizing this, Matthias had written the letter to Sebastian so that in the event he did die before he got a divorce, his nephew would know that as far as he was concerned Andrea had no claim to the care given a widow within the family.

He stared down at the letter, the sick feeling in his stomach tightening into a knot of tension.

Had Andrea told her daughter their sugar daddy intended to evict them from his life? Had Rachel been angry, prepared to conspire with Andrea to get the biggest divorce settlement possible?

His teeth gritted as he rejected the thought.

Rachel was not anything like her mother. Hadn’t she shown that to him in numerous ways already?

His rational mind reminded him that his uncle had been deceived by Andrea’s false impression of innocence. Was Sebastian just as foolish in his dealing with a Long woman? Matthias had written that he’d married Andrea in order to protect her and had only later realized that far from being prey to the vagaries of life, Andrea had been predator through and through.

She’d convinced him that she’d had a traumatizing experience with a man and had played up to Matthias’s protective instincts. It was only after the marriage that he’d realized far from being a victim, his wife was addicted to sex, not to mention alcohol and other substances that left her less than rational in her dealing with others.

But Rachel wasn’t like that. She never drank. She didn’t flirt and she didn’t lie. She told the truth even when it embarrassed her. She wanted Sebastian, but she’d made no attempt to use sex to manipulate him.

She was perhaps one of the few totally honest women of his acquaintance.

Realizing that made him all the more eager to get home to her.

“What is that incredible smell?”

Rachel spun away from the stove where she had been adding the last minute spices to a pan of simmering curry chicken and landed smack against the immovable wall that was Sebastian.

His hands clamped on her arms before she could move away and his head lowered until his lips were almost touching hers. “Now this is the way a man likes to be greeted after a trying day.”

Then his mouth finished its descent, slanting over hers with lazy affection. The scent of his expensive aftershave still clung to him from the morning, but it mixed with the smell of his skin to turn her bones to a jelly-like substance not intended to support her body in a vertical position.

Sagging against him, she clung to his shoulders, glad for his still firm grip on her arms. She had no defenses left against him and her body was making emphatic statements of desire in secret, tender places.

He must have had a glass of ouzo recently, she thought dizzily, the licorice flavor permeating her taste buds as his tongue penetrated her mouth. She loved his taste, his scent and the feel of his hard body against hers. Each of her senses was filled to over-flowing with his presence.