by Abby Green
It was so obvious now that she’d put on a monumental act when she’d been with him for that week. Uncomfortably he had to concede the many signs had given her away, if he’d cared to investigate them at the time. Her antipathy for the jewellery, her visible reluctance at being on the social scene, which he’d put down to embarrassment but which he now knew went deeper. Her innocence. Both physically and actually.
When Andreas thought of her father, he wanted to throttle the man.
And even though her brother was a billionaire she hadn’t attempted to go to him for a hand-out.
Siena’s make-up was as subtle as ever, and yet she outshone every woman in the room. She glowed. She saw him in the crowd and she smiled—a small, private smile. Andreas wanted to smile back—he could feel the warmth rising up within him, something deeper than mere lust and desire—but something held him back. That ache inside him was unyielding.
He saw Siena’s smile falter slightly and fade. Her eyes dropped and Andreas felt inexplicably as if he was losing something. Someone waving caught his eye and he looked over to see a familiar face with relief. He welcomed the distraction from thinking too much about the way Siena made him feel.
When she arrived by his side, however, he couldn’t stop himself from snaking an arm around her, relishing her proximity. His. It beat like a tattoo in his blood.
Belying his turbulent emotions, he said, ‘How would you like to meet the designer of your necklace? She’s the wife of a friend of mine and they’re just across the room.’
Siena’s hand flew to the gold chain and she looked up, eyes wide and bright. ‘Really? Angel Parnassus is here? I’d love to meet her!’
As Andreas led Siena by the hand through the crowd he pushed down the way her simple joy at meeting a mere jewellery designer made something inside him weaken. Things might have changed but the essentials were the same. Siena was with him only until he could let her go…and that day would come. Soon.
CHAPTER TEN
ANDREAS HAD ORGANISED a helicopter to take them from Athens on Sunday to a small landing pad near his parents’ town. Siena couldn’t stop the flutters of apprehension in her belly, and wasn’t unaware of Andreas’s almost tangible tension.
A four-wheel drive vehicle was waiting for them at the landing pad and soon they were driving out and ascending what looked like a mountain.
Curiously, Siena asked, ‘How often do you come home?’
Andreas’s profile was remote. ‘Not often enough for my mother.’
Siena smiled but Andreas didn’t. She couldn’t understand his reluctance to come home. If she’d come from a family like his she didn’t think she’d ever have left…
She could see a town now, colourful and perched precariously on a hill above them. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yes,’ Andreas answered.
When they drove in Siena looked around with interest. It looked modestly prosperous—wide clean streets, people walking around browsing market stalls and colourful shops. They looked friendly and happy. Siena could see a lot of construction work going on and had an instinct that Andreas was involved, for all his apparent reluctance to come home.
They drove up through winding streets until they emerged into a beautifully picturesque square with a medieval church and very old trees.
Andreas came to a stop and Siena opened her seat belt, saying, ‘This is beautiful.’
‘You can see all the way to Athens on a clear day.’
‘I can believe that,’ Siena breathed, taking in the stunning view.
Andreas got out and she followed suit, and suddenly from around the corner came a screaming gaggle of children. They swarmed all over Andreas, and Siena’s heart twisted at seeing him lift a little one high in the air with a huge smile on his face.
She intuited that he might not like coming home, for whatever reason, but he loved his family.
He put the child down and the other children disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived. He held out his hand for her and smiled wryly. ‘Some of my nieces and nephews. They’ll have heard the helicopter.’
Siena took his hand. She’d followed his lead, dressing down in smart jeans and a soft dusky pink silk top with a light grey cardigan. Flat shoes made her feel even smaller next to Andreas, fragile, and it wasn’t altogether welcome.
As they approached a very modest-looking stone house, with trailing flowers around the windows and door, there were shouts and laughter coming from inside and a baby’s wail. Siena unconsciously gripped Andreas’s hand, making him look at her.
‘Okay?’
She smiled and gulped. ‘Yes. Fine.’ But she wasn’t. Because she’d suddenly realised that if Andreas’s family were as idyllic as she feared they might be it would break her open.
But it was too late to turn back. A small, rotund grey-haired woman had come bustling out and was drawing Andreas down to kiss him loudly on the cheeks. When he straightened she had tears in her eyes and was saying, ‘My boy…my boy…’
Then Andreas drew Siena forward and introduced her in Greek, of which Siena could only understand a little. His mother looked her up and down and then took her by the arms in a surprisingly strong grip. She nodded once, as if Siena had passed some test, and drew her into her huge soft bosom, kissing her soundly.
Siena felt inexplicably shy and blushed profusely, not used to this amount of touching from a stranger. But Andreas’s mother had her hand in hers and was leading her into a lovely bright house, very simple.
There seemed to be a bewildering amount of people and Siena tried to remember all of Andreas’s sisters’ names: Arachne, who had the new baby, which slept peacefully in a corner; Martha, Eleni, Phebe and Ianthe. They were all dark and very pretty, with flashing eyes and big smiles.
Andreas brought Siena over to meet his father, whom she could see was quite bowed with arthritis, but it was easy to see where Andreas’s tall good looks had come from. The man was innately proud, his face marked with the strong lines of his forebears.
Lunch was a somewhat chaotic affair, with children running in and out and everyone talking over everyone else. But the love and affection was palpable. Andreas had one of his nephews curled up trustingly in his lap, and Siena’s womb clenched as she saw how at ease he was with the children.
And then Siena recalled his cruel words when she had asked him if he wanted children.
When Arachne, his youngest sister, approached Siena after lunch with the new baby Siena froze with panic. Being faced with this brought up all her deepest longings and fears. For how could she ever be a mother when she had no idea what it felt like to have a mother?
But Arachne wouldn’t take no for an answer and she handed the baby into Siena’s arms, showing her how to hold her.
Andreas had seen Siena’s look of horror when Arachne approached her with the baby and had got up, incensed at the thought that she was rejecting his family, but his mother stopped him.
‘Wait. Let her be,’ she said.
It was only then that Andreas watched and saw Siena’s look of horror replaced by one of intense awe and wonder. He realised it hadn’t been horror. It had been panic. He could remember his own panic when he’d held a baby for the first time. He realised that Siena had never held a baby before.
Before he could stop himself he was walking over to sit beside her.
She glanced at him and smiled tremulously. ‘She’s so perfect and tiny. I’m afraid I’ll hurt her.’
‘You won’t,’ Andreas said through the tightness in his throat. To see the baby at Siena’s breast, Siena’s hair falling down over her cheek, her little finger clutched in a tiny chubby hand… Andreas dreaded the inevitable rise of claustrophobia but it didn’t come. Something else came in its place—a welling of emotion that he couldn’t understand and which wasn’t the habitual grief for his dead best friend that he usually felt in this place. This felt new. Far more fragile. Tender. Dangerous.
When the baby mewled Siena tensed and whispered, ‘What did I do?’
Weakly, Andreas used it as an excuse to break up that disturbing image, gently taking his niece and putting her over his shoulder, patting her back like a professional. Siena’s worried face made emotion swell.
‘Nothing,’ he said gruffly. ‘She’s probably just hungry again.’
His sister came and took the baby out of Andreas’s hands. Andreas watched as Siena stared after Arachne and the baby with an almost wistful look on her face. That galvanised him into moving up onto his feet and he caught her by the hand. She looked at him.
‘We should leave if we’re to get back to Athens and make our flight slot this evening.’
Just then Andreas’s mother came up. She was saying something but she was speaking too fast for Siena to understand. When she was finished Siena asked, ‘What did she say?’
Andreas looked at Siena with an unreadable expression. ‘She asked if we’d stay for the night…’
Siena couldn’t help the silly fluttering of something, but then Andreas reminded her, ‘You have to be back for work in the morning.’
Siena’s stomach fell. Work. ‘Oh, yes…’
Andreas’s eyes glinted. ‘You don’t want to miss that, do you?’
Siena looked at him and saw the challenge. He would stay if she relented over her work. She met it head-on and took her hand out of his. ‘No, I don’t.’ Even though she found herself wishing that they could stay here longer. Not that she would admit it to Andreas.
Andreas’s family bade them a friendly farewell, with Andreas suffering under copious kisses and hugs from his sisters and nieces and nephews. And then his mother came and pulled Siena close again, hugging her tight. When she put her away from her his mother tucked some wayward hair behind her ear in an effortless yet profoundly simple maternal gesture.
She looked at Siena with the kindest dark eyes, and Siena felt as if she could see all the way through to her deepest heart’s desires and pain. A ball of emotion was spreading inside Siena and for a panicky second she wanted to burst into tears and bury her head in this woman’s chest, to seek a kind of comfort she’d only dreamt existed.
But then Andreas was there and the moment was defused. And soon they were back in the Jeep, and in the helicopter, and by the time they’d got to the plane Siena felt as if she was under control again.
‘What did you think?’
Siena turned to look at Andreas, where he was sprawled across the other side of the aisle on the small private jet. She’d been avoiding looking at him because she still felt a little raw. How could she begin to explain to this man that seeing his family had been like a dream of hers manifested? All that love and affection in one place…
‘I liked them very much.’
‘Still,’ Andreas said, with something Siena couldn’t decipher in his voice, ‘it’s not really your scene is it? The rustic nature of a backwater like that and a big, sprawling messy family?’
Siena felt nothing for a second, as if protecting herself, and then hurt bloomed—sharp and wounding. After everything he now knew about her Siena couldn’t believe that he still had her very much placed in a box.
It seemed as if not much had really changed at all, in spite of the last few weeks. She wanted to berate him, ask him what his issues over going home were, but she was feeling too fragile. Clearly she still had to play a part.
Feeling very brittle, Siena forced a short sharp laugh. ‘As you said yourself, we’re from worlds apart.’
And she turned her head and looked out of the window, blinking back the hot prickle of tears, feeling like a fool.
Andreas pushed down the uncomfortable awareness that Siena was upset. Bringing her to see his family had been a mistake. He should have gone on his own. Maybe then he wouldn’t have seen them in another light, and not in the usual suffocating way he usually did. Maybe then he wouldn’t have noticed his father with one of his nieces on his knee, telling her a story. Wouldn’t have had to wonder for the first time in his life what the anatomy of his family would have looked like if his father hadn’t stayed to support his wife and children.
There were plenty of marriages in that town that were fragmented because the men had had to go to Athens to work, leaving their family behind. But his father had chosen to stay, and as a result they’d all had a very secure and stable upbringing.
Andreas didn’t like to acknowledge that seeing Siena in that milieu hadn’t been as alien as he’d thought it would be. She’d charmed them all with that effortless grace, and he could recognise now her genuine warmth.
Andreas glanced at Siena but her face was turned away, her hair spilling over her shoulders and touching the curve of her breast. She was not the woman he’d believed her to be. Not in the slightest.
Andreas looked out of the window beside him blindly, as if she might turn her head and see something he struggled to contain. He thought of how quickly she’d dismissed meeting his family and clung to that like a drowning man to a raft. Of course she’d liked his family, but she would never be a part of that world in an indelible way.
Andreas assured himself that the very ambiguous emotions she’d evoked when he’d seen her cradle his baby niece had merely been a natural response to his realisation that one day he too would have to settle down and produce an heir. For the first time it wasn’t an image that sent a wave of rejection through his body.
But it wouldn’t be with Siena DePiero. Never her.
* * *
In bed that night, Siena and Andreas came together in a way that Siena could only lament at. This heat was inevitable between them, and it was good at hiding the fact that there was little else. She wished she could be stronger, but she felt as if time was running out and so she seized Andreas between her legs with a fierce grip, urging him on so that when the explosion came it was more intense than it had ever been.
When he was spooning her afterwards, and she was in a half-asleep haze, Siena opened her eyes. What she’d said earlier about Andreas’s family hadn’t been truthful, and she was sick of lying to him.
She turned so that she was on her back, looking into Andreas’s face. He opened slumberous eyes and that heat sizzled between them again. Already. Siena ignored it valiantly and put her hand on Andreas’s when it started exploring up across her belly.
‘No… I wanted to say something to you…’
Siena felt the tension come into Andreas’s big body. He removed his hand from her.
She took a deep breath. ‘Earlier, when you said that your home town and meeting your family probably wasn’t really my scene, I agreed with you… Well, I shouldn’t have. Because it’s not true. It’s more my scene than you could ever know, Andreas. That’s the problem. I dreamed my whole life of a family like yours. I longed to know what it would be like to grow up surrounded with love and affection…’
Siena couldn’t read Andreas’s expression in the dim light but she could imagine she wouldn’t like it.
‘When your mother hugged me earlier…she really hugged me. I’ve never felt that before, and it was amazing. I’m glad you took me. It was a privilege to meet them.’
There was a long moment of silence and then Andreas said in a tight voice, ‘You should sleep. You have to be up early.’
* * *
When Siena’s breaths had evened out and he knew she was alseep Andreas carefully took his arms from around her, noting as he did so that not one night since she’d come back had they slept apart. He got out of bed and pulled on a pair of loose sweats and walked out of the bedroom.
He went into the drawing room and spent a long time looking out of the window. Until he could see the faintest smudge of dawn light in the sky. The knowledge resounded inside him that he couldn’t keep fighting it.
Then he went into his study and opened his safe and took out a small box. He sat down and opened it and looked at it for a long time. For the first time since he’d met Siena again the dull ache of need and the emotions she caused within him seemed to dissipate.
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.