"Then marry me."
"I don't have to marry you for you to be my baby's father.'' Only for the baby to carry his name, they did have to marry.
She hadn't considered that aspect to the situation, but he had and so would their child one day.
Sebastian released her, setting her away from him.
The expression on his face was unlike anything she'd seen there before. He looked defeated.
"So, you refuse to marry me."
All she had to say was yes and she knew as surely as she knew how to balance an account book that if she said it, he would accept her decision and let her go.
She couldn't make herself say the word.
She'd been numb with pain for months, had hidden behind an emotionless wall of self-protection when he kicked her out of his life. But learning of her pregnancy had started the disintegration of that wall and his arrival back in her life had demolished it. He wouldn't let her ignore him and in forcing her to come face-to-face with his role as the father of her child, she had also faced another irrefutable fact.
She still loved him.
She didn't want to, but if his actions the morning after they made love could not kill her love for him, she did not know what would. So she was faced with spending the rest of her life without him, or living with the man she loved, knowing he did not love her.
It was an untenable choice and not one she could make on the spur of the moment like this.
The way he had treated her that morning had to be weighed against the gentle way he'd treated her prior to Andrea's death. Also, since coming back into her life in California, he had done his best to be a caring and considerate guy... except his deplorable belief she belonged to him because she was pregnant with his child.
And then there was how he had planned their wedding without her say-so or input. "I don't appreciate having my wedding planned without me even agreeing to get married, or my opinion being taken into account on the arrangements."
"Are you saying you would marry me otherwise?"
"I'm saying I will consider it, but you have to ask me, darn it, and you are not planning my wedding without me."
A wary hope filled his eyes, making him appear vulnerable and doing more to soften her heart than anything he'd done since coming for her in California.
"Then, I will court you."
Rachel walked back into her bedroom, bemused and a little worried by Sebastian's offer to court her.
Phillippa stood beside the window, her back to the door. The wedding dress, shoes and bouquet were arranged carefully on her bed which had been made. The maids had gone, but the air of expectancy remained and the borderline positive thoughts she'd been entertaining about the overconfident man downstairs fled.
How dare he leave her in a position of having to tell his mother there would not be a wedding?
“The music has stopped.'' Phillippa turned, her expression thoughtful.
"It was a mistake."
“It is Greek tradition to play the music outside the bride's window on the morning of her wedding."
"But there isn't going to be a wedding."
Phillippa's eyes, so like her son's, reflected worry. "Did you and Sebastian argue?"
How could Sebastian have left her to deal with this?
"We never made up to begin with."
"I am sorry to hear that. I had hoped that with a baby on the way, you would find common ground."
He'd told her that too? "Your son has a big mouth."
Phillippa's mouth curved in a surprising smile as she moved away from the window. "Not usually, but I believe with you, he is out of his depth and therefore acts out of character.''
Sebastian out of his depth? Not likely. "Your son is more sophisticated than I could ever hope to be."
"But you do not hope this, is that not true? You have no desire to pursue the lifestyle your mother sought after so wholeheartedly."
"I prefer a quieter existence."
"And Sebastian has very little experience with a woman uninterested in the jet-set lifestyle. He knows nothing of women who possess such innocence and integrity."
"He does not believe I have integrity."
Phillippa shook her lovely head. "You are wrong, I think."
"He thought I lied to him about... About..." She couldn't make herself say it, but Phillippa already knew anyway as her next words confirmed.
"He regrets doubting you in that."
"Only because you told him he was wrong."
"A man does not take his mother's advice unless he wants to, Rachel," Phillippa said wryly.
"If you say so." Her gaze kept slipping to the wedding dress on the bed and finally she went over and touched the sleek satin folds.
Sebastian had spared no expense. Rachel might not shop top designers, but no daughter of Andrea Long Demakis could reach adulthood without recognizing them.
"Sebastian was engaged once before."
The comment so shocked Rachel that her head snapped 'round so she could
meet Phillippa's eyes. "He was?"
"Yes. To a woman much like Andrea."
Rachel's stomach began to churn. Would she never live down her mother's image?
Phillippa reached out and squeezed Rachel's arm. "I see the best parts of your mother in you, child. You do not share her weaknesses."
"Sebastian thinks I do." And maybe he was right.
After all, she could not control her desire for him even when she had every reason to despise him.
"Nonsense, but he finds trust difficult. The woman in his past burned him very badly and then Andrea came on the scene. She destroyed a man Sebastian loved like a father and my son's cynicism toward women cemented into rock-like certainty. It was very difficult to watch, but I could do nothing to stop it."
"He had you as an example." Rachel wasn't nearly so understanding about Sebastian's pessimism. It had hurt her too much. "He has to know that not all women are manipulative, status seeking, gold diggers."
"Ne, yes...he had me. However, he was very young when his father died and he does not remember much of my marriage. He knows only that I came from a simple fishing village and married a man twenty years my senior, a man wealthy enough to buy my village and everything in it."
"He couldn't possibly believe you married his father for money." It was unthinkable.
"I do not know, but he has few memories to combat his current view of women. My husband, though I loved him very much, was not a demonstrative man. He worked long hours and our age difference meant that we shared few friends or common interests."
"Yet you loved him."
"Just as you love my son despite the fact your own lives are so different."
She wasn't touching that one, not even in a Hazmat suit...it was a concept much too hazardous to her peace of mind.
Phillippa sighed at her silence. “Although my son's view of women was jaundiced. I had thought he saw something different when he looked at you.
He was always careful of you, so concerned for your welfare when you were younger."
"Until Andrea and Matthias died. Then he hated me." She remembered the inferences he'd made in the study the day the will was read. "It was as if when she died, he transferred his dislike of my mother to me." And it had hurt unbearably.
“He was grieving." Phillippa shook her head sadly. "My son does not express his emotions easily. You were the scapegoat for his pain and I am sorry to say I did not see it until too late."
"It wasn't your fault."
The other woman's air of guilt did not diminish. "I tried to play matchmaker, leaving the two of you alone together on the island, hoping privacy and proximity would accomplish a fond mother's dreams."
"You did that on purpose?" Rachel should have realized, but Sebastian wasn't the only one who had been struggling to come to terms with someone's death.
And she would never have expected Matthias's niece to think Andrea's daughter was a worthy candidate for wife to her so