The Latin Lover

by Lucy Monroe

  And honestly? She couldn’t fathom leaving him to his own devices at a time like this.

  Theopolis Petronides had raised his grandsons after the death of their parents and his own beloved wife. Neither Spiros nor Dimitri were outwardly demonstrative, but there was no doubt how devoted they were to that old man.

  Spiros’s tightly clenched jaw and white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel spoke eloquently of how worried he was.

  “He’s a strong man. He will be fine,” Phoebe said into the tense silence of the car.

  “I pray that is true.” Spiros downshifted and ran a red light. “Stubborn old man,” he said, as cars honked and Phoebe prayed for more than his grandfather’s health.

  She wanted to ask about the deal Theo had made with Dimitri. She wanted to know why Spiros had not told her the truth of it. She wanted to know so many things. But right now was not the time to ask.

  For the first time since the meeting with her father, Phoebe spared some real sympathy for Dimitri. Both of them had been pawns in an older generation’s dreams. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. And she still saw no way out for herself.

  She was not naive enough to believe that an emergency operation on his grandfather would compel Dimitri to renege on a promise made under duress. If she knew Petronides males, he would be even more set on following through than beforehand.

  It was their way.

  Personal and family honor above all.

  Dimitri was in the waiting room when she and Spiros walked in. He looked up and she gasped. He was gray with stress, his eyes haunted.

  Spiros crossed the room and took his brother in a bear-hug.

  “It’s my fault,” Dimitri said in tormented tones when Spiros stepped back.

  “It is his own fault for not having the surgery when he was told he should.”

  “No…I upset him.”

  “You two argued? This is nothing new. Again, I say, if he had had the surgery—”

  “I told him I would not marry Phoebe,” Dimitri said, interrupting Spiros.

  This time Phoebe’s knees wobbled, and she fell back into one of the waiting chairs. Dimitri’s words were so unexpected she desperately sought proof this was not some strange dream. The antiseptic air of the hospital provided it. Dreams didn’t have smells, did they?

  Dimitri’s gaze connected with hers for the first time since she had arrived. “I am sorry, Phoebe.”

  She nodded, totally clueless about what to say. That it was okay? That she didn’t mind? That she was relieved? She definitely was. But that made her feel guilty. How would her father save Leonides Enterprises now? And her relief was at the cost of Tio Theo’s health.

  “What do you mean, you told him you refused to marry Phoebe?” Spiros asked, fury sharply edging every word.

  “Some things are more important than promises.” Dimitri looked incredibly tired, but absolutely certain of that statement.

  Then the story came out, and Phoebe listened in rapt fascination while Spiros glared like a bad-tempered guardian angel. Dimitri had a mistress, just as she had surmised. What she had not realized—and neither had he, apparently—was that he loved the other woman. Enough to break his vow to his grandfather and marry Xandra if she would have him. It was obvious that Dimitri felt deadly remorse for the way he had treated both Xandra and Phoebe.

  Phoebe could not find it in her heart to blame him. She only wished they had talked before. Maybe together they could have come up with a solution.

  Now everything was tangled in a Gordian knot she had no idea how to unravel.

  Most disturbing, though, was the revelation that the other woman was pregnant and that she had disappeared without a trace. Dimitri had the best detective agencies in the world working on finding the French model, and so far nothing.

  “You kept a mistress the entire time the understanding existed between our two families regarding your eventual marriage to Phoebe?” Spiros asked in a chilling voice.

  Dimitri stood straighter, putting his shoulders back as if preparing to take whatever came his way. “Yes.”

  Spiros’s fist connected with his brother’s jaw in a resounding crack.

  Phoebe yelped, and Dimitri crashed backward into the nondescript waiting room wall. He righted himself, but made no move to return his brother’s gesture of anger.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SPIROS looked ready to take another swing at him, and that had Phoebe surging to her feet.

  She grabbed his arm. “Stop it! That whole understanding was stupid, and apparently only Dimitri and I realized it.”

  Spiros glared down at her. “You didn’t take lovers while you waited for my brother.”

  “I was not waiting for your brother—and, frankly, if I could have taken a lover and enjoyed it, I would have!”

  Spiros looked like she had hit him. “You don’t mean that.”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “And I don’t care, either. Dimitri has a right to happiness, and none of you has the right to try to steal it from him. Not with emotional blackmail or guilt trips.”

  She was talking about herself too, but that didn’t matter. Her chance at happiness had been a fleeting thing, and she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life lamenting her lot. Somehow she would help her father save the company, and one day she would get over Spiros.

  But right now someone had to stop the two brothers from becoming enemies. And it looked like that someone was her.

  “I am not trying to steal his happiness.”

  “Aren’t you? Your brother has fallen in love with a woman who carries his child. She’s disappeared because he let his duty to his family supersede his obligations to her. He’s hurting. She’s no doubt hurting.” Everyone was hurting—was she the only one who saw that? “Dimitri needs your support, not your condemnation, and if you can’t give it, you aren’t the man I know you to be.”

  Dimitri’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Thank you, Phoebe. I do not deserve your championship.”

  “Wrong.” She turned and hugged him fiercely. “You did the right thing, telling your grandfather you could not marry me. I respect that choice and admire your courage. Never believe any different.”

  “I cannot believe this,” Spiros muttered with disgust.

  Phoebe turned to glare at him.

  But he did not look repentant. “You do realize that you just hugged my brother for the first time in my memory? After you have both agreed that you will not marry.”

  “So?”

  “So I should have seen how poorly suited the two of you are a long time ago.” Spiros still looked disgusted, but maybe it was not merely with his brother. “We all should have.”

  “Yes, we should have,” her father said from behind her.

  The sound of his voice surprised Phoebe as much as the words. Not that they meant anything.

  Two weeks ago those words would have given her joy, but they were nothing but empty syllables now. Her future had not changed from an hour ago. Except for the unknown identity of the man she would have to marry. The company still had to be saved.

  Without acknowledging either man’s comment, she returned to the seat she’d practically fallen into earlier. She looked at Dimitri. “How long do they anticipate the surgery taking?”

  He answered—and from there the conversation moved away from their failed engagement. Spiros sat down beside her and she took his hand, holding it in silent comfort. He spared her a grateful glance filled with a mixture of other emotions she could not decipher.

  Then he turned to engage his brother in a more detailed discussion of his grandfather’s health. Her father asked questions, and was the first to congratulate Dimitri on his upcoming parenthood.

  Her mother had gone home with Chrysanthos, which was why it had taken her father so much longer to reach the hospital than Phoebe and Spiros.

  “I will have to tell your mother to stop the wedding preparations,” Aristotle said when there was a lull in the conversation.

 
; “I apologize for not knowing my own mind sooner,” Dimitri said somewhat stiffly.

  Her father shrugged. “It is the way of life,” he said philosophically. But as the evening wore on it became obvious it was not only his old friend’s health he was worried about.

  The survival of Leonides Enterprises lay heavily on him. And on Phoebe too. As much as she hated being the sacrificial goat, she knew as well as her father that something had to be done. She’d felt responsible before, but now, after working so closely with her father on the recovery measures, the knowledge of how dire was the situation was even more acute for her.

  Her family’s livelihood and that of hundreds of employees hung in the balance.

  Spiros swung back and forth between civility and borderline hostility with his brother. He had not forgiven the slight on family pride as easily as Phoebe had forgiven his behavior against her.

  But she had no grudge to hold onto. Dimitri loved. And if Spiros had been willing to take his place she would have broken her promise without a second’s hesitation. That their kiss had meant nothing to Spiros had nearly destroyed her, but she was honest enough to admit to herself that she would have let Spiros make love to her even when the promise to Dimitri had stood. If he had encouraged her she would have gladly given him anything.

  But Spiros did not see that side of things. All he saw was how his brother had let him down…like his parents. Phoebe hurt for them both.

  So much pain and no end in sight…not with Xandra missing, tormenting Dimitri with “what ifs”. Not with Theo in surgery and at risk. Not with Spiros so set on family pride that he was blind to love himself. She was grateful that he was ignorant of her love, but she pitied Dimitri that Spiros was so blind to brotherly love right now, and to the deep feelings Dimitri had for his former mistress, how much they were tearing the older man apart.

  Dimitri got up to check at the nurses’ station for any news, and Aristotle went to stretch his legs in the hospital courtyard. Phoebe turned to Spiros in the waiting room, now empty but for them. “You need to give him a break.”

  “Who?” he asked, as if he didn’t know.

  She glared at him. “Dimitri needs you right now. This is hard enough for him without you going all judgmental. He doesn’t need a family rejection as well.”

  “He should have thought of that before…before…”

  “Before what? Giving in to love and sullying the Petronides name?” she asked with sarcasm.

  “You think that is why I’m so angry?”

  “Yes.” Why else would he be so mad at his brother?

  “If Dimitri had told the truth to begin with—both to himself and to his girlfriend—this whole mess could have been avoided.” He looked away and then back at her, his gaze burning into hers. “You would have been saved a lot of pain.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I know I messed up that one time in my office, but, damn it, Phoebe, where do you come off thinking I care nothing for your feelings?”

  “You wanted me to marry Dimitri.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “You told me you did. Don’t lie to me now.”

  “Maybe I changed my mind.”

  And maybe the moon had fallen from the sky. She just gave him a look. “We can discuss this another time. We need to discuss your problem with your brother now—before there’s an irreparable rift between you.”

  “He did dishonor our family name, Phoebe.”

  That was more what she’d expected, but somehow he’d said it with not nearly the conviction she’d thought he would. “Are you saying that your family name means more to you than your brother?”

  “No, but the family name should mean something to him as well.”

  “It does, and he wants to give it to his child. How can that be wrong?”

  “That is not wrong. It is very right. But it is the way he went about things up to this point that is so wrong.”

  “Like you have so far to talk.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve hardly been celibate this past four years.”

  “It is nothing the same. I had no promised fiancée.”

  “Only because you are younger than him. If you’d been the oldest you would have been the one in that ridiculous agreement.”

  “Had I been, I would have honored it.”

  “That is so easy to say, Mr. Casanova, when you didn’t have to live like a monk for four years.”

  “Dimitri did not.”

  “No, and you of all men should understand why.”

  “Why me?”

  “As you told me, Spiros, you have kissed many women—and done more with them—but you haven’t married anyone yet. What does that say for your sanctimonious judgments?”

  He stared at her in shock, as if he could not believe she would take him to task. “The women I took to my bed understood there was no commitment involved.”

  “That is so sad, Spiros…and I bet Dimitri thought Xandra understood the same thing.”

  “She got pregnant. What are the chances?” His tone was more tired than judgmental, though.

  “I don’t know, but I certainly consider it a blessed gift from God, and that you don’t does not speak well of you in my eyes, old friend.”

  “I never said I didn’t. You take a lot of things for granted, you know that? And you have not treated me like a friend these past two weeks.” Hurt shadowed his beautiful eyes.

  She steeled herself against it. “Ditto.”

  “I have called you many times. You only respond infrequently.”

  “You knew the truth about Dimitri being blackmailed into marriage to me.” Her heart stung with humiliation. As if this situation was not detrimental enough to her pride—and her heart. “Yet you didn’t tell me. That is not the action of a friend.”

  “I thought telling you would only cause you more pain.”

  “Do you think he and I could have built a marriage on that kind of foundation?” she asked in disbelief.

  Spiros shook his head tiredly. “What does it matter what I think? You’ve refused to discuss anything of a personal nature with me since you ran from my office.”

  “You’re the one who pulled away from me.”

  “I made a mistake.”

  “No. If I had ended up married to your brother that distance would have been necessary,” she was compelled to admit.

  “But intolerable.”

  She wanted to believe that. She really did. But right now trusting anything, even in his lifelong affection for her, was pretty hard. There had been too many disappointments, too many betrayals…too much pain lately.

  She stood up. She was suffocating in emotion and she just wanted it to stop.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going home,” she said, making a snap decision. “My father can bring news.”

  “Don’t leave, Phoebe.”

  She clenched her hands. “Why?”

  “I need you now.” His shoulders hunched. “You are my best friend.”

  She could not deny that need—was not sure she would ever be able to. “I need some caffeine. Do you want anything?”

  He stood. “I’ll go with you. We can bring drinks back for your father and Dimitri.”

  Okay, so that scuttled her plans of some time alone. But, true to her see-sawing emotions tonight, she didn’t mind.

  She slipped her hand in his again and squeezed. “All right.”

  The sound of her mother’s voice laced with hysteria drew Phoebe away from her original course. She had intended to get something to eat now that she’d woken. She’d slept quite late after getting home in the wee hours of the morning. They had all waited until Theo’s surgery had been pronounced a success and the doctors had assured the Petronides brothers that the old man was on the mend.

  She walked into the drawing room and found her mother pacing back and forth, practically yelling into the phone. Tabloid and more reputable newspapers were stre
wn over the sofa as well as the coffee table. The thing they all had in common was that each one was graced with pictures of Dimitri with a woman Phoebe assumed must be Xandra.

  Some pictures showed them sitting together at a café table. Some showed them in an obvious argument. Next to these images—and it appeared to be in every single paper—was a photo of Phoebe from her university yearbook.

  She picked up one of the tabloids and started to read. The lurid headline had nothing on the baseness of the article itself. It implied everything from her being a duped innocent to being a participant in a sleazy ménage à trois. She picked up another paper and read its article. This one focused on Xandra’s “supposed” pregnancy and her recent disappearance. Foul play was alluded to, and the reporter couldn’t decide if Phoebe or Dimitri was the most likely culprit.

  Several of the articles speculated about the monetary aspect of her merger with Dimitri, and some went so far as to suggest her father’s company might not be as solvent as it appeared. Since it was not a publicly held company no one had been able to get any firm numbers to back up the theory, but that didn’t stop them from guessing.

  She had no doubt her father’s pride was taking a severe beating today. Her mother was almost incoherent in her upset, but Phoebe couldn’t tell if it was on her daughter’s behalf or simply her own. Obviously the articles were embarrassing for everyone involved. Including poor Dimitri—and he was carrying a big enough burden of Petronides’ guilt as it was.

  She really pitied him. But judging from her mother’s continued haranguing of her father things weren’t going to be cherries and ice cream around here either.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t warn me,” her mother said in an aggrieved voice, several decibels down from when Phoebe had first entered the room. “You told me there wasn’t going to be a wedding, but not about this. It is a disgrace.”

  Phoebe didn’t stick around to hear more of the same. If the knowledge that his grandson was backing out of the marriage had sent Theopolis Petronides into heart failure, she couldn’t imagine what these news stories were going to do. She needed to call Spiros.

  Spiros stared at the ringing phone, but could not make himself pick up. The caller I.D. said it was Phoebe’s cell phone. He’d wanted to talk to her for the last two weeks, but not right now.