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Siena’s hands tightened in her lap. In a way it was karma. She’d lost him his job and now he was losing her hers. Just like that. With a mere click of his fingers, Andreas was changing her life and ripping her very new independence out from under her feet. If she only had herself to worry about she wouldn’t be here now, she assured herself inwardly, and hated the tiny seed of doubt that even then she could have held out against Andreas’s will, or the guilt she felt.
She wondered what Andreas would have done if he’d known that she couldn’t care less for his fortune? That his money wasn’t for her at all? But she was forgetting that this man didn’t care. Just as the younger man from five years ago hadn’t cared. He’d only wanted her because it had been a coup to seduce one of the untouchable debutantes; their supposed virtue had been more prized and guarded than a priceless heirloom in a museum.
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.
