She wanted to agree. She did. And if that kiss had never happened she knew she would be agreeing right now. But she had one final chance at her heart’s dream and she had to take it. “I want to talk to Spiros.”
“You are always welcome to talk to him. He is your friend and your champion. But it is Dimitri you must work to love, Phoebe.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You must.”
She did not quite have the courage to tell her father of her love for Spiros. Like the man she loved, Aristotle was bound to see it as a betrayal of her honor. But it wasn’t. No one should have pushed her into the promise of future marriage to Dimitri to begin with.
Her intended could care less about her. He couldn’t possibly want to marry her. Dimitri was not the right man for her. And she was not the right woman for him. Her loving his brother was not a bad thing.
She stood up, knowing that she needed to speak to Spiros as soon as possible. He would help her sort through this mess. He had to. She crossed the office in record time.
“Phoebe?” her father said as she reached the door.
She didn’t turn around, but placed her hand on the knob. “What?”
“The money will not come from Theo…it will come from Dimitri.”
She spun to face her father. “From Dimitri? But I thought you said it would come from Tio Theo.”
“It is better this way.”
“For who?” Did Spiros even have that kind of money? Would his brother loan it to him?
Even more troubling—if it was already arranged, then had Dimitri agreed to the marriage? And, if so, why?
Maybe Spiros wasn’t the only one she needed to talk to.
“I need to go,” she said, her sense of desperation almost choking her as it grew.
“What are you going to do?” her father asked, his own desperation in no way hidden from her.
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t because she wasn’t sure. She wanted to be—oh, how she wanted to say she was going to marry Spiros and everything would be fine. But she couldn’t say the words with absolute conviction.
If his brother insisted on making good on her four-year-old promise, Phoebe very much feared that Spiros’s sense of familial obligation would not allow him to gainsay that.
Her throat clogged with tears, she wondered how her bright and shiny future had come so quickly under clouds of such doom.
“Phoebe…?” her father prompted.
But she merely shook her head and, saying nothing, left her father’s presence for the first time without giving him the courtesy of a goodbye.
CHAPTER THREE
SPIROS pressed the disconnect button on the intercom with his secretary. He’d asked her to tell Phoebe he was on a conference call. Phoebe had said she would wait for him to finish.
And why not?
When had she ever shown up at his office, at his home, even when he had been at university, and he had not made time for her? The answer was never. So it should be no surprise she assumed he would do so now.
The only problem was that for the first time in their lifelong friendship the last person he wanted to talk to was Phoebe Leonides. He should have b
een prepared for this visit. He had certainly expected it…only sooner. She’d been back in Greece for five days. Before his spectacular act of stupidity, that would have been four days longer than it usually took her to call him and arrange to see him.
And he had never minded before. Phoebe had always been one of the best parts of his life. But now she was the worst. Because she represented his loss of honor, his betrayal of his brother—something he had never believed himself capable of.
Even worse, he feared she could represent a similar loss again. He had to be stronger than that for both his brother’s sake and that of his grandfather’s health. The old man was putting off surgery until the engagement was announced formally. Dimitri’s agreement wasn’t enough.