Forgiven but Not Forgotten?

by Abby Green

  Except that virtue had been a myth. Siena had known all too well just how touchable the vast majority of her fellow debs had been. They’d looked innocent and pure, but had been anything but. She could recall with vivid clarity, how one of the girls—a princess from a small but insanely wealthy European principality—had boasted about seducing the porter who had brought her bags up to her room while her mother had slept in a drug-fuelled haze in the next room. She’d threatened the man with losing his job if he told anyone.

  Siena’s mouth hadn’t dropped open—but only because her own sister had told her far more hair-raising stories than that, and had inevitably been a main participant when she’d been a debutante.

  That evening she’d managed to escape from her father and had tried to find Andreas, to explain why she’d lied, hating herself for the awful falsehood. She’d explored an area reserved for staff only, and had come to an abrupt halt outside a half-open door when she’d heard a newly familiar voice saying heatedly, ‘If I’d known how poisonous she was I’d never have touched her.’

  A voice had pointed out coldly, ‘You’ve done it now, Xenakis. You shouldn’t have touched her in any case. Do you really think you would ever have had a chance with someone like her? She’ll be married within a couple of years to one of those pale-faced pretty boys in that ballroom, or to some old relic of medieval Italian royalty.’

  Andreas had said bitterly, ‘I only kissed her because she was looking at me as if I was her last supper—’

  The other voice came again, harder now. ‘Don’t be such a fool Xenakis. She seduced you because like every other spoilt brat in there she was bored—and you were game. Do you seriously think she hasn’t already got a string of lovers to her name? Those girls are not the innocents they seem. They’re hardened and experienced.’

  Siena had barely been breathing by then, her back all but flattened to the wall by the door. She’d heard Andreas emit an expletive and then she’d heard footsteps and fled, unable to countenance offering up an apology after that character assassination—after hearing his words, ‘I only kissed her because she was looking at me as if I was her last supper.’

  The following morning Siena had woken early and felt stifled in her opulent bedroom. She’d dressed in jeans and a loose sweatshirt and had sneaked out through the lobby at dawn, with a baseball cap on her head in case she saw anyone she knew. She’d craved air and space—time to think about what had happened.

  That searing conversation she’d overheard had been reverberating in her head and she had run smack into a stone wall. Except it hadn’t been a wall. It had been Andreas, standing beside a motorbike, in the act of putting on a helmet. Siena’s baseball cap had fallen off, and she’d felt her long hair tumble around her shoulders, but shock had kept her rigid. In the cold light of day, in a black leather jacket and jeans, he’d looked dark and menacing. But she’d been captivated by his black eye and swollen jaw.

  Startled recognition had turned to blistering anger. ‘Don’t look so shocked, sweetheart. Don’t you recognise the work of your father’s men? Don’t you know they did this to avenge your honour?’

  Siena had felt nauseous, and had realised why his voice had sounded so thick the previous evening. She should have known. Hadn’t her father done the same thing, and worse, to her half-brother—his own son?

  ‘I—’ she’d started, but Andreas had cut her off with a slash of his hand through the air.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. As much as I hate you right now, I hate myself more for being stupid enough to get caught. You know I’ve lost my job? I’ll be lucky to get work cleaning toilets in a camping site after this…’

  He’d burnt her up and down with a scathing look.

  ‘I’d love to say that what we shared was worth it, but the only thing that would have made it remotely worth it is if you’d stopped acting the innocent and let me take you up against the wall of that dressing room as I wanted to. Then your father might not have caught us in the act.’

  The crudeness of his words—the very confirmation that all the time she’d been quivering and shivering with burgeoning need, half scared to death, he’d assumed she was putting on some sort of an act and had wanted to take her standing up against the wall—had frozen Siena inside. Not to mention the excoriating knowledge that he’d merely made the most of an opportunity, and she’d all but thrown herself at him like some kind of sex-crazed groupie.

  He’d taken her chin in his fingers, holding her tight enough to hurt, and he’d said, ‘As the French say, au revoir, Siena DePiero. Because some day our paths will cross again. You can be sure of that.’

  He’d let her go, looked at her and uttered an expletive. With that he’d put on his helmet, swung his leg over the powerful bike and with a roar of the throttle had left her standing there, staring after him as if she’d been turned to stone.

  The streets of London at night made Siena’s memories fade. But the tangible anger she’d felt from Andreas that day would never fade.

  ‘We’re here.’

  Siena looked to see that they were indeed pulling up outside Andreas’s apartment. Butterflies erupted in her belly. It felt as if aeons had passed since she’d been there already that evening.

  The same young man who had parked the car earlier appeared to open her door. Siena was relieved, not wanting to touch Andreas. He was waiting as she emerged from the car with her one case in his hand. She couldn’t stop him putting a hand to her back as he guided her into the apartment block. Futile anger burned down low inside her at being so vulnerable to this man…

  * * *

  Andreas was very aware of Siena’s pale and tightly drawn features as they stood in the lift. He held her pathetically small case in his hand and had to quash the dart of something that felt ridiculously like pity at the knowledge that this was all she possessed now, when she had been one of the most privileged women in Europe. He reminded himself that this woman was one of the most invulnerable on the planet. She’d contrived every single moment of that evening in Paris, and when it had come to it she’d saved her own pretty neck.

  Back in that grotty flat, when she’d asked how long this would last, Andreas had been about to say a month until he’d stopped himself. He’d never spent longer than a week with a lover, finding that he invariably needed his space or grew bored. So to find himself automatically assuming he’d need a month was unprecedented. He wanted Siena with a hunger that bordered uncomfortably on the obsessional, but there was no way she was going to turn out to be any different from his other lovers.

  But, a snide inner voice pointed out, this was already different, because he was bringing her back to his apartment without even thinking about it. He’d never lived with a lover before. He’d always instinctively avoided that cloying intimacy. It made him feel claustrophobic. Andreas cursed himself now and wondered why he hadn’t automatically decided to put Siena in a suite in a hotel, rather than bring her to his place. He didn’t want to investigate his adverse gut reaction to that idea, when it was exactly what he should be doing.

  Andreas hated that she was already making him question his motives and impulses. It made him think of dark, tragic memories and feelings of suffocation.

  Before Andreas had left his home town at the age of seventeen he’d had a best friend who had been planning on leaving with Andreas. They were going to make something of themselves—make a difference. But that final summer his friend had fallen for a local girl and had become a slave to his emotions, telling Andreas he no longer wanted to travel or achieve anything special. He just wanted to settle down. Andreas had been incapable of changing his mind, and he’d watched his smart, ambitious friend throw away his hopes and dreams.

  When his friend had found his girlfriend in bed with someone else he’d been so distraught that he’d killed himself. Andreas had been deeply affected by this awful violence. By the way someone could lose themselves so completely and invest so much in another person. For love. When that love hadn’t even bee
n reciprocated.

  Andreas’s own father had achieved a scholarship to a university in Athens—the first in his family to do so. But before he could go he’d met and fallen in love with Andreas’s mother. She’d become pregnant and his father had decided to stay and get married, giving up his chance to study medicine.

  Andreas had always been aware of his father’s missed chance at another life. And after witnessing his friend’s descent into horrific tragedy he’d been more determined than ever to leave. He had vowed never to let himself be side-tracked by feelings.

  And he hadn’t… Until he’d had far too close a brush with disaster in Paris, when he’d lost himself for a moment with a blonde seductress who had blown hot and then colder than the Arctic. She’d been a necessary wake-up call. A startling reminder of what was important. Not to get side-tracked.

  Andreas reassured himself that this time things were different. When the lift stopped and the doors opened a rush of anticipaton and pleasure seized him, washing aside all his doubts. Siena DePiero was here and that was all he needed to know. Having her anywhere but close to him was not an option.

  He’d been waiting for this moment for a long time—ever since that night, when he’d felt a kind of helpless anger and a sense of betrayal that he never wanted to feel again. Ever since that following morning, when she’d emerged from the hotel like a manifestation of his fantasies, her hair tumbled around her shoulders, backlit against the Paris dawn light. He’d wanted her then—fiercely. Even after what she’d done. It had taken all of his strength to get on his motorcycle and leave her behind.

  * * *

  ‘This is your room.’

  Andreas was standing back to let Siena go into a vast bedroom. She’d just been given a tour of the jaw-dropping apartment. Silently she went in, relieved to hear Andreas say: ‘your room’. It was stunning, decked out in sumptuous but understated dark blues and complementary greys. A king-sized bed dominated the room, and Siena could see a glimpse of a white-tiled en suite bathroom and an entrance to another room.

  Exploring, she found herself walking through a large dressing alcove to a separate lounge area, with a sofa, chairs, desk and a TV. Effectively she had her own suite.

  She turned around to see Andreas leaning with his shoulder against the entrance to the dressing room, his hands in his pockets giving him a rakish air.

  ‘This is…lovely,’ she said stiffly, knowing that lovely was woefully inadequate in the face of this opulence. She was stunned again at Andreas’s world now, and stunned anew to see him in his open-shirted tuxedo and realise that only hours before Andreas Xenakis had still been firmly in her shameful guilt-ridden past, not her tumultuous present.

  But he was going to find you sooner or later, an inner voice reminded her.

  ‘I’ll arrange for a stylist and a beautician to come tomorrow, to attend to whatever you need.’

  To make her beautiful for him.

  Siena felt light-headed all of a sudden and swayed ever so slightly.

  Immediately Andreas was standing straight, alert. ‘What is it? Are you hungry?’

  Siena beat back the waves of weakness, determined not to show Andreas any vulnerability. She shook her head. ‘No. It’s nothing. I’m just tired. I’d like to go to bed now.’

  Andreas just looked at her for a long moment and then as if deciding something, he stepped back and said, ‘By all means, Siena. You’re my guest now and you know where everything is. Help yourself to anything you want.’

  He backed away, and just before he got to her bedroom door he said softly, ‘You should sleep while you can, Siena. You’ll need it.’

  Siena fought back a fresh wave of light-headedness at hearing him say that and watched as he walked out of the room, closing the bedroom door behind him. Sudden weariness nearly felled her. Her head hurt after everything that had happened. She couldn’t take any more in.

  Finding her small suitcase, she extracted what she needed and dressed for bed. She couldn’t block out the way her weak body rejoiced to sink into expensive bedclothes, and gratefully slipped into what felt like a coma.

  * * *

  Andreas knew he was in the grip of a dream but he couldn’t seem to pull himself out of it. He was back in that glittering ballroom in Paris. He could feel the ambition rising up within him to own such a place one day. It would be a remarkable achievement for a boy from a small town outside Athens with only the most basic qualifications to his name.

  And then, like a camera zooming in for a close-up, all he could see was her face. Pure and beautiful. Haughty and cold. Perfect. The white-gold of her hair was in a complicated chignon. Jewels sparkled brilliantly at her neck and ears. Her profile was as regal as any queen. The only thing marring the picture was the blood-red stain of wine that was blooming outwards from her chest and up over her cleavage.

  The dream faded and shifted, and now they were in that boutique, surrounded by mannequins in beautiful dresses and sparkling jewels behind locked displays. She was laughing, girlishly and innocently, huge blue eyes sparkling with mischief as she pointed to one of the mannequins and said imperiously, ‘I want that one!’

  Andreas bowed down in a parody of a manservant and she laughed even more, watching as he clambered into the window display to tussle with the mannequin and take off the dress. She was in fits of giggles now, watching him wrestle the stunning dress off the dummy before finally handing it to her with a flourish of triumph.

  She curtseyed and said, with a flicker of those black lashes, ‘Why, thank you, kind sir.’ And then she vanished into the dressing room, pulling velvet folds of material behind her.

  There was a fizzing sensation in his blood. Andreas felt buoyant when only minutes ago, surveying the crowd in the ballroom, he’d felt cynical…

  And then she was there, in front of him again, and Andreas was falling into eyes so blue it hurt to look at them. And then the hurt became a real pain, and he looked down stupidly, to see a knife sticking out of his belly and blood everywhere.

  He looked up and she was smiling cruelly. ‘No, I did not ask you to touch me. I would never let someone like you touch me.’

  His friend who had died, Spiro, was behind Siena, laughing at him. ‘You thought you could remain immune?’

  And then Andreas was falling down and down and down…

  Andreas woke with a start, clammy with sweat, his heart pounding. He looked down and put a hand to his belly, fully anticipating seeing a knife and blood. But of course there was none. It was a dream. A nightmare.

  He’d had that dream for months after he’d left France but not for a long time. He remembered. Siena. She was here, in his apartment. His heart speeded up again and he got out of bed, pulling on a pair of boxers. He assured himself that it was just her presence that had precipitated the dream again.

  But it had left its cold hand across the back of his neck. He went into the darkened drawing room and poured himself some whisky, downing it in one. He slowly felt himself come back to centre, but was unable to shake the memory of that evening.

  Andreas had been duty manager, overseeing the exclusive annual debutante ball, making sure it went without a hitch. He’d viewed all those beautiful spoilt young women with a very jaundiced eye, having heard all sorts of stories about their debauched ways.

  Still, he’d barely believed them. They’d all looked so innocent. And none more so than the most beautiful of them all: Siena DePiero. He’d noticed that she was always slightly apart from the others, as if not part of their club. And the way her father kept her close at all times. He’d read her aloofness as haughtiness. And then he’d seen the moment when her dinner partner had accidentally spilled red wine all over her pristine white dress. Andreas had clicked into damage limitation mode and smoothly offered to take her to the boutique for a fresh dress.

  Her father had been clearly reluctant to let her out of his sight but had had no choice. He wouldn’t let his daughter be presented at the ball in a stained gown. And so Andreas had
found himself escorting the cool beauty to the boutique, and had been very surprised when she’d confided huskily, ‘Please excuse my father’s rudeness. He hates any sort of adverse attention.’

  Andreas had looked at her, taken aback by this politeness when he’d expected her to ignore him. Shock had cut through his cynicism because she’d looked nervous and blushed under his regard. To his complete embarrassment he’d found his body reacting to her…this very young woman, even though he’d known she wasn’t that young. Her eighteenth birthday was the following day, and her father had already organised a brunch party with some of the other debutantes to celebrate.

  He’d said something to put her at ease and she’d smiled. He’d almost tripped over his feet. By the time they’d reached the boutique his body had been an inferno of need. Siena had been chattering—albeit hesitantly and charmingly.

  In the empty shop the sexual tension between them had mounted, instantaneous and strong enough to make Andreas reel. He’d had lovers by then—quite a few—and thought he knew women. But he’d never felt like that before. As if a thunderbolt had connected directly with his insides.

  Her artless sensuality and apparent shyness had been at such odds with her cool and haughty beauty. With the reputation that had preceded her. That preceded all the debs every year.

  She’d grimaced after a few minutes and looked around the shop, before glancing at a dress on a mannequin in the window. It was fussy-looking, but not far removed from what she wore.

  ‘That’s the one my father will approve of.’

  She’d sounded so resigned and disappointed that Andreas had inexplicably wanted to see her smile again. He’d hammed it up, extricating the dummy from the dress. And he’d made her laugh.

  Then she’d disappeared into the dressing room and Andreas had found every muscle in his body locked tight as he thought of her in a state of undress, fantasising about hauling back the curtain, pulling down his trousers, wrapping her legs around his hips and taking her there and then, against the wall…