She shrugged. “I have been working.”
“With your father?” he asked, looking genuinely interested.
“Yes. I’m sure I told you that.” She had mentioned her temporary position at Leonides Enterprises during one of their few phone calls. Hadn’t she?
“So he offered you a job after all?”
“Of sorts,” she said noncommittally.
Clearly if she moved to Paris to live with Dimitri she could not continue to work at Leonides Enterprises. They did not have an office in the City of Lovers. Her mouth twisted at the thought of that name for her future home. She was not even sure she would be sharing Dimitri’s bed. It was something they would have to discuss.
She might very well be the first married Greek woman to die a virgin, but she had no intention of allowing Dimitri access to her body if he kept a mistress. She also did not intend to tell him to get rid of the other woman. Every time she thought of having sex with the ice man, bile rose in her throat. So she avoided thinking of that aspect of her upcoming nuptials as much as possible.
Spiros looked bothered about something. Phoebe reminded herself that, whatever it was, it was of no concern to her. She was marrying his brother.
For the first time in two weeks the numbness of her soul was pierced, and the mental reminder of her future caused unwelcome agony deep in her soul. She looked away from Spiros and toward her brother, intending to ask about how school was going, but she couldn’t make the innocuous question come out.
Not while she was screaming inside. How was she supposed to marry Dimitri when she loved Spiros? How could she spend family holidays with him while intimately tied to his brother? Even if it was in name only?
Before the kiss Phoebe might have been able to do it, but now she felt like she would shatter at the mere thought.
She would simply have to avoid family events in future. Dimitri would have to understand. If he didn’t—too bad. She wasn’t putting herself through that kind of hell on a regular basis. And maybe as time went on it would get easier. It had to.
Unreturned love could not live forever.
She forced her mouth to form words, asking her brother the question she’d meant to, only to receive a very teenage roll of the eyes. “We aren’t in school right now, sis.”
“Oh. I guess I’m out of the loop, huh?”
“Only a little,” he said, with humor-filled sarcasm. “Don’t sweat it. Mama says you are working like a slave at the company.”
“Not a slave…but a lot of hours, yes.”
“Will Papa expect the same of me right out of school?” Chrysanthos looked disturbed at the prospect. “I’m the son, and it’ll be worse, won’t it?”
“There are some things going on right now—hopefully nothing like it will be happening when you finish school.”
“You think so? I really wanted to do some traveling before buckling down to my destiny, you know?”
She smiled. “I understand. You could always attend college overseas, like I did.” He was due to start university the following year.
“You don’t think Papa would be disappointed if I don’t attend his alma mater?”
“I think you have to do some things for yourself. You never know when that opportunity will no longer be open to you.”
“Like you, you mean?” he asked shrewdly.
Her heart stuttered. “What do you mean?”
“You think I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m a teenager, not an idiot.” He gave her the most serious look he ever had. “If you are doing it for me, don’t.”
She leaned forward and kissed his cheek with spontaneous affection. “Don’t worry about me, little brother. I’m a grown-up. I can take care of myself.”
“Just so long as you aren’t sacrificing yourself to take care of everyone else.”
Her brother’s concern when there had been nothing of the kind from her parents was almost enough to destroy her cool facade, but she took a deep breath and bucked up her resolve. “Thank you, but I will be fine.”
They had been speaking in whispers, and when she looked up she caught a speculative look on Spiros’s features, the same stoic expression on her father’s, and a slightly worried frown on her mother’s.