The Latin Lover

Phoebe didn’t respond to her father, but simply shook her head and walked out of the room.

Spiros stood to leave as well. “Again, I am profoundly sorry for the effect my brother’s actions have had on your family. I will wait to hear from you.”

Both Aristotle and Basila hugged him before he left.

CHAPTER SIX

PHOEBE bumped into a tall, wiry body as she left the drawing room.

“Ooph…you’re more solid than you look,” her brother complained as he grabbed her shoulders to steady her.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No problem. You look like you could use a break. Come with me—I’ve got just the thing.”

Before she had a chance to say yes, no or maybe, she was being steered outside to Chrysanthos’s waiting car.

“Get in. It’s safe,” he said, as she hesitated at the open passenger door.

“Uh…”

“She’s a classic, not decrepit. I did all the renovations myself.”

“Papa let you?” Phoebe asked in shock as she allowed herself to be guided into the seat.

Her brother waited to answer until he had gone around the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. “He didn’t know I was doing them until it was finished.”

“But…” Hadn’t her father offered to buy her brother a car, the same as her? Or had things been tighter in their personal finances than she’d realized?

“He never brought up buying me a car, and neither did I.”

“I bet he regretted that when he saw this.”

“She’s a beaut.” The car certainly sounded healthy, purring to life as her brother started it.

“I’m just amazed you did this…I had no idea your strengths were in this direction.”

“Oh, it’s just a hobby. A guy’s gotta have ’em, you know?”

She smiled for the first time in days. “Sure.”

“So, I was listening at the door when Spiros was talking to you all.”

“Didn’t Mama teach you better?”

He just snorted. “Please. I’m no mushroom.”

“You don’t like being kept in the dark?” she guessed, doing her best to translate his teenspeak.

“Would you?”

She thought of all the things her father should have told her over the past four years but had not—and the things Spiros had kept from her as well. “No. I don’t like it at all.”

“So what’s the big deal with this marriage thing?”

“You said you were listening.”

“I was. I got that Leonides Enterprises is in trouble and we need a lotta money, yeah?”