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“You did?”
“Yes.”
“I…uh…”
“You will be my brother for real.” For a moment the numbness was pierced, and agony made her almost bend double, but she forced herself to straighten and pushed the pain away to that place deep inside where it could not make her cry anymore.
“Phoebe? Are you okay?” He sounded like he really cared.
“My mother is already making wedding plans,” she said, rather than answer that question again.
It didn’t really matter what she said, did it? Her father had asked her the same thing after dinner. But if she said no would it make any difference? She knew it wouldn’t. Both her father and Spiros would simply feel compelled to convince her what a good man she was getting in Dimitri. Why it was “best for her” to go through with the wedding. And really? She didn’t want to hear it.
“Is she?” Spiros asked, his voice tinged with something odd she made no effort to decipher.
“Yes.”
Another short silence. “You should probably expect Grandfather to put his oar in as well.”
“He and Mama will have to battle it out.”
“Not you too?”
“No.”
“Why not? Don’t you care what your wedding is like?”
“No.” It wasn’t her wedding. It was a business merger…a wedding others wanted…and she was going along with it, but it wasn’t hers. It could not be hers and have the groom be the eldest Petronides brother.
“Phoebe—”
“I need to go. Mother has more plans she wants to go over.” She was sure that was true, but was even more certain she had to get off the phone. Talking to Spiros was too detrimental to the sense of detachment she needed so badly to get her through the next few weeks.
She did not think her father or Theopolis Petronides would want a long engagement.
“I’ll talk to you later.” Funny…he sounded as numb as she did.
It must be a trick of her hearing. “Goodbye, Spiros.”
He didn’t know it, but she was saying farewell to a lot more than a simple phone call. She clicked the phone shut before he had a chance to answer or say anything else. It was time to start her campaign to rid herself of a love that had caused her far too much pain and brought not nearly enough pleasure.
CHAPTER FOUR
SPIROS left Phoebe yet another voicemail and then clicked his phone shut. For the past two weeks she had either ignored his calls or kept their dialogues short. She responded to one out of three e-mails with pithy notes that did not encourage further correspondence. Apparently she had decided to cool their friendship.
He should be glad. With the attraction he felt toward her, it was no doubt for the best for them both. But he missed her. More than he’d thought possible. And every day that drew them closer to her marriage to Dimitri, Spiros hurt more.
He couldn’t stand talking to or about Dimitri, he was so envious of what his brother had. Phoebe. So he avoided his family as assiduously as Phoebe avoided him.
He was worried about her.
She refused to discuss anything personal. He’d tried, wanting to somehow fix everything going wrong with and around them. But she’d refused. The one time, in desperation, that he’d brought up the kiss, she’d hung up on him and ignored any attempt to communicate for three days after. She was missing the spark that was so much a part of who she was and he didn’t know how to bring it back.
When he asked how the engagement plans were going, she told him they were fine as far as she knew. As if her marriage to his older brother had nothing to do with her. He couldn’t be nearly as sanguine.
Phoebe might say she was fine with the merging of their two families, but she obviously wasn’t. And there was nothing he could do about it. She shut him down when he tried to talk to her, refusing to acknowledge anything was wrong, and had managed to imply that her emotional state was none of his business.
He knew it was his own fault, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. For the first time since she was a year old he felt disconnected from her. He had never realized before how much he relied on their relationship, how much it meant to him. It all left him feeling helpless.
