How much of that innocence was real?

Considering the discussion they were about to have, he would have to assume a very small part.

“I shouldn’t be surprised you expected me.” A smile briefly lifted the corners of Rachel’s mouth. “You’ve always seen things others tend to ignore.”

“Certainly more than my uncle did when he looked at your mother.”

An emotionless mask descended over Rachel’s porcelain features, all vestiges of her smile dissipating like mist under a warm sun. “No doubt.”

“And I suppose this is what you wish to discuss with me?” The fact Matthias Demakis had finally wised up to his grasping, faithless wife leaving neither her, nor her daughter anything of real value in his will.

“In a way, yes.” She sat up straight in the chair and then shifted her legs so that one crossed over the other. “I need to return to my job fairly soon.”

“Yes?”

“And there are my mother’s things to be gone through.”

“Did you want to delegate that task to the servants?”

“No.” Her mouth pursed as if in distaste at the thought. “That wouldn’t be right, but I need to know what you want me to do with them.”

“Surely that is a decision you must make.”

“I’d considered donating her clothes and jewelry to charity, but then I realized there was the possibility Matthias had given her family heirloom pieces. I’m sure you wouldn’t want them to go to strangers.”

Ah…the first salvo. “And you would like me to buy them from you?”

Her eyes widened, the distaste in her expression blatant this time. “Don’t be ridiculous. I simply need you to take a moment to identify which of the jewelry are heirlooms. If you don’t have the time, perhaps your mother would be willing to do it. Anyway, I can’t and I want to make sure your family takes possession of them before I dispose of the others.”

“You propose to give me the family pieces?”

“Yes.” She looked at him as if she was doubting his intelligence.

It was a new experience for him and he almost found himself smiling.

“It would actually help quite a bit if someone could go through all of the things in her bedroom with me to make sure anything of sentimental value to the family is kept before I have the removalists come.”

“Removalists?”

“I’ve been in contact with an international association dedicated to the welfare of children. They’ve agreed to take possession of Andrea’s things and sell them at auction to raise funds for their cause.”

Reeling with the unexpected direction the conversation had taken, Sebastian’s superior brain took several seconds to compute the import of Rachel’s words. “You don’t plan to keep anything of your mother’s?”

“No.” Rachel’s now completely dispassionate expression told him nothing of her thoughts.

“But her clothes alone are easily worth over one-hundred-thousand American dollars.”

“That’s wonderful news for the charity.”

“But means nothing to you?” He refused to believe it. No one was this uninterested in financial gain. “And the apartment in New York. You plan to give that to charity as well?”

“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.