Forgiven but Not Forgotten? (17 page)

Eventually he pulled out a drawer and put the box in it, a sense of resolve filling his belly. It was the same sense he’d felt when he’d laid eyes on Siena for the first time in five years, except this time the resolve came with a lot of fear, and not a sense of incipient triumph.

He had to acknowledge, ruefully, that he’d felt many things in the last tumultuous couple of months, and triumph had figured only fleetingly.

A week later

It was Friday evening and Siena was leaving work. Andreas’s driver was waiting for her outside the office and she got into the back of the car. Andreas had called earlier to say he’d been held up in Paris, asking if she would come to meet him if he arranged transport. Siena had said yes.

So now she was being taken to his private plane, which would take her to Paris. Trepidation filled her. She wasn’t sure what it would be like to be in Paris with Andreas now... He’d been in a strange mood all week. Monosyllabic and yet staring at her intensely if she caught him looking. It made her nervous, and Siena had a very poisonous suspicion that perhaps Andreas wasn’t quite done with torturing her. Perhaps he was going to call time on their relationship in Paris, where it had all started?

And yet the other night he’d surprised her by asking her abruptly why she loved the birdcage necklace so much. She’d answered huskily that to her it symbolised freedom. She’d felt silly, and Andreas hadn’t mentioned it again.

At night, when they’d made love, it had felt as if there was some added urgency. Siena had felt even more shattered after each time. Last night she’d been aghast to realise she’d been moved to tears, and had quickly got up to go to the bathroom, terrified Andreas would notice...

Siena knew she wouldn’t be able to take it for much longer. Being with Andreas was tearing her apart. Perhaps Paris was the place where
she
should end it once and for all if he didn’t?

When she got to Paris her heart was heavy and the weather matched her mood: grey and stormy. The hotel was busy, and with a lurch Siena recognised that it must be the weekend of the debutante ball as she saw harassed-looking mothers with spoilt-looking teenagers.

Surely, she thought to herself wildly, Andreas wouldn’t be so cruel...

But then he was there, striding towards her, and everything in Siena’s world shrank to him. She was in so much trouble. He kissed her, but it was perfunctory, and with a grimace he cast a glance to the young debs and their entourages of stylists and hair and make-up people.

‘I’d forgotten the ball was this weekend...’

Relief flooded Siena and she felt a little weak.

Andreas was saying now, ‘I’ve booked dinner. We’ll leave in an hour. I just have some things to finish and I’ll meet you in the room.’

Siena went up and tried to calm her fractured nerves after seeing the debs and being back here again.
Still
Andreas’s mistress. She forced herself to have a relaxing bath, weary after her week in the office but still exultant to be working.

When Andreas arrived he was in a smart black suit, open shirt, and she had dressed in a gold brocade shift dress.

Solicitously Andreas took her arm and led her out to the lift, down to the lobby, and then into his car. He was so silent that Siena asked nervously, ‘Penny for them?’

He turned to look at her blankly for a second, a million miles away, and then focused. He smiled tightly. ‘Nothing important.’

He looked away again. Siena’s sense of foreboding increased.

They were taken to a new restaurant on the top floor of a famous art gallery with grand views over Paris. The Eiffel Tower was so close Siena felt as if they could touch it. They were finishing their meal before Siena realised that they’d had the most innocuous of conversations. Touching on lots, but nothing really. As if they hardly knew each other.

The bill arrived and suddenly Siena felt as if something was slipping out of her grasp. A panicky sensation gripped her, but now Andreas was standing and they were leaving... She took his hand and thought guiltily that if he didn’t say anything neither would she.

Andreas didn’t make conversation in the car on the way back—again—and Siena was quiet too, not knowing what to say in this weird, heavy silence. When they got back to the hotel one of the duty managers rushed up to Andreas with a worried look.

After a brief, terse conversation Andreas turned to Siena, ‘One of the guests at the ball has had a heart attack. I need to make sure everything is being attended to.’

Siena put a hand on his arm. ‘I’ll come with you if you like?’

Andreas looked at her and his eyes seemed to blaze with something undefinable. But then he said, ‘No, you should go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.’

Siena watched him stride away, so tall and proud, master of the domain from where once
she’d
had him cast out. She felt a sense of futility. It would always be between them. Insurmountable.

After Siena had got into bed she tried to stay awake for a long time, in case she heard Andreas return, but sleep claimed her. When she did wake she was groggy, and it felt as if it was still dark outside.

Andreas was saying, ‘Siena... I need you to get up... I’ve laid out some clothes for you.’

Siena sat up woozily and saw Andreas straighten.

‘I’ll wait for you outside.’

He was dressed in jeans and a light sweater. She saw a pile of clothes on the end of the bed—jeans and a similar sweater for her, and a jacket. He was walking out of the room.

Feeling dazed and confused, wondering if she was dreaming, Siena got up and quickly dressed. She looked outside for a second and saw that it was close to dawn. Where had Andreas been all night?

Pulling her hair back into a knot, she emerged and saw Andreas standing with his back to her in the salon. He turned when she walked in and even now, half-asleep, he took her breath away. His jaw was stubbled.

‘Where were you?’ she asked huskily.

‘Nowhere important. Caught up with the guests. I want to take you somewhere...’

He came and took her by the hand. There was such an intensity to his expression that Siena couldn’t decipher it, so she just said, ‘Okay.’

When they were in the lift on the way down Andreas looked ahead and didn’t say anything. Siena tried to stop her mind from leaping to all sorts of scenarios. She was waking up now, and as they walked through the hushed and quiet lobby she had a painful sense of
déjà-vu.
She thought of another dawn morning, five years ago. Of the turmoil in her heart and head as she’d walked out, unseeing, straight into Andreas’s chest.

They walked around the corner of the hotel, intensifying Siena’s sense of
déjà-vu,
and then she saw the huge gleaming motorbike. Siena blinked. Maybe she
was
dreaming.

Andreas was letting her hand go and taking out a helmet. When he drew her close to put it on her head Siena knew this was no dream. She couldn’t decipher the expression on Andreas’s face. It was forbidding. Then he was putting on his own helmet and lifting one leg over to straddle the bike.

He showed her where to put her foot, and with her hand on his shoulder to balance Siena swung her leg over the bike, sliding down into the seat behind Andreas, her front snug against his back.

He lifted up and pushed down and the bike roared to life, shattering the peace of the morning. Andreas reached back and pulled one of Siena’s arms around his waist, and then the other one, showing her where to hold him. Her heart was thumping and she knew she was definitely awake as the bike straightened and they took off.

Unbelievably, it was Siena’s first time on a motorbike, and she instinctively tightened her arms around Andreas’s waist. It was exhilarating—the wind whipping past them, feeling the bike dip dangerously as Andreas took the corners.

When they stopped at a red light he turned his head and said above the noise, ‘Okay?’

Siena nodded and then shouted, ‘Yes!’ when she realised he couldn’t see her. And then they were off again.

Siena felt as if they were the only two people in the world as the faintest of pink streaks lined the dawn sky. Only a handful of cars passed them by.

Siena looked at the closed-up shops and bars that only hours before would have been teeming with people. The Eiffel Tower appeared in the distance, grey and stoic in the dawning light, bare of its glittering night-time façade. Siena preferred it like that.

They wound their way through the streets and Siena noticed that they were starting to go uphill. And then she saw the huge white shape of the Sacré Coeur in the distance. Through a series of winding, increasingly narrow streets they got closer and closer, until Andreas brought the bike to a stop under some trees.

He got off and removed his helmet, still with that enigmatic look on his face.

Siena pulled her helmet off and asked, ‘Why are we here?’

Andreas took her helmet and said, ‘Not yet. Another couple of minutes.’

He put the helmets away and pocketed the keys. He held out his hand. Siena put her hand in his and let him lead her up a path and through a small wooded area until the iconic church loomed above them, stately and awe-inspiring.

They were already quite high up, and Andreas led the way onward until they reached the steps outside the main doors. Siena turned around and saw the whole of Paris laid out in front of them, jaw-dropping in its beauty. She’d seen this view before but never like this, at dawn, without hordes of tourists, and with a dusky mist making everything seem hazy and dreamlike.

There was just one other couple. The woman was wearing what had to be her boyfriend’s dinner jacket over a long dress and they were arm in arm, leaning over the balustrade that looked out over the ascent from the hill. They were too engrossed to notice Siena and Andreas.

‘Let’s sit.’

Siena looked to see Andreas indicate the steps. They sat down. He muttered something that Siena couldn’t make out and then said, ‘It’s too cold.’

The stone
was
cold, but Siena wouldn’t have swapped it for the world. ‘No, it’s fine... Andreas, why are we here?’

For the first time Siena noticed that Andreas was avoiding her eye and then she looked more closely. Her heart lurched. She might almost say that he looked nervous... He seemed to take a deep breath, and then he turned to look at her. The tortured expression on his face nearly took her breath away. Then he took her hands in his and she didn’t say anything.

He looked down for a moment, and then back up. Siena had never seen him hesitant like this, and her heart beat fast.

‘That morning...the morning after...when you came out of the hotel and I got on my bike and left...this is where I came. I came to this exact spot and sat on these steps and I looked out over this view and I cursed you.’ Andreas gripped her hands tight, as if to reassure her, and then he continued.

‘But mostly I cursed myself for being so stupid... You see, I thought
I
was the fool, to have been seduced by you. I thought you were like those other debutantes. Worldly-wise and experienced. Spoilt and bored.’

Siena tried to speak, familiar pain gripping her. ‘Andreas—’

He shook his head. ‘No. Let me speak, okay?’

Siena’s heart lurched and she nodded. Andreas looked impossibly young at that moment.

‘From the moment I saw you in that room I wanted you. When the opportunity came to be alone with you I jumped at it. And you were nothing like I’d expected. You were sweet and funny, so sexy and innocent.’

His mouth twisted. ‘And yet those were all the very things I thought you’d fabricated when you stood at your father’s side and denounced me. When his men took me outside I felt I deserved a beating for having been so duped... When I was called into my boss’s office I lashed out at you—you received the full brunt of my pain. You see, I was arrogant enough to believe that no woman could enthral me. I wasn’t going to have my head turned so easily. I’d vowed to get out of my small town and make something of myself. I wasn’t going to get caught up in suffocating domesticity like my father had and waste my life...and I wasn’t going to fall in love with some girl only to find out she didn’t love me, as my friend Spiro did to his tragic cost. Yet within minutes of setting eyes on you you’d turned me inside out and I didn’t even know it.’

Siena wasn’t sure if she was breathing. His eyes burned like two dark sapphires.

‘After what happened I put you down as a rich, cold-hearted bitch. But I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I wanted out of my world and into your world so badly. I wanted to be able to stand in front of you some day and show you that I wasn’t nothing. Prove that you had wanted me. You heard that conversation with my boss, didn’t you?’

Siena’s eyes were locked on Andreas. Slowly she nodded, and whispered, ‘I went looking for you. I wanted to apologise, to explain.’

Andreas’s mouth thinned. ‘I probably wouldn’t have believed you—just like I never gave you the chance to speak the next morning.’

Siena’s hands tightened in his. Her voice was pained. ‘You had to
leave
Europe.
I
did that to you.’

Andreas extricated one hand and lifted it to tuck some wayward hair behind Siena’s ear. He smiled. ‘Yes, and it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. I got to America fired up with ambition and anger and energy. I caught Ruben’s eye...and the rest is history. If that night hadn’t happened and I’d stayed here I might be lucky enough to be managing that hotel now. I certainly wouldn’t
own
it... I don’t think I even knew my own potential until I went abroad.’

Siena said fiercely, ‘You would have succeeded, no matter what.’

Andreas’s hand cupped her jaw and he said seriously, ‘Would it even mattter to you if I was just the manager of some middle-of-the-road hotel?’

Siena’s heart stopped for a second and then galloped on. She shook her head and said honestly, ‘No, not in the slightest.’

Andreas’s fingers dropped from her chin and he took her hand again. He looked pained. ‘There’s something I should have said to you long before now...when you asked me if I wanted children...’