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“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.”
