by Abby Green
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 cl
osely. 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…’
Siena remembered what he’d said that night and started to speak, not wanting to be reminded, but Andreas squeezed her hand.
‘No. It was unforgivable and cruel, what I said. You touched a nerve and I lashed out. And I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve it. You are not a cold-hearted tease. Any child would be lucky to have you as its mother, Siena.’
Siena felt tears prickle and blinked rapidly. His apology was profound, and she couldn’t speak, so she just nodded in acknowledgement. Andreas drew in a shaky breath and reached into the pocket of his jeans to take something out. And then he got down on one knee before her, with the whole of Paris bathed in dawn light behind him.
Her eyes grew huge as she saw that he held a small black velvet box. His hands were shaking.
He looked at her and admitted, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this… I always associated this with the death of ambition and success. I had a horror of somehow ending up back in my home town, having nothing. I thought my father had sacrificed too much by not taking up a college scholarship, by getting my mother pregnant and then marrying her having baby after baby. Staying stuck.’
‘But your parents…’ Siena said softly, still moved by his apology, trying not to let her heart jump out of her chest as she thought about that box. ‘They created something wonderful. And if you hadn’t had that secure foundation you might never have believed you could escape.’
Andreas smiled wryly. ‘I know…now.’ His smile faded slightly. ‘When you admitted to me how you felt about meeting my family…my mother…I knew I had to stop fighting it. That I had to stop trying to box you into a place that made it easier for me to deal with you… I tried to make you admit you hated it, but that was only to bolster my own pathetic determination to avoid looking at how it made me feel. The fact is, going home with you…it made all those demons run away. I saw only love and affection. The security. And I felt for the first time as if I could be part of it and not be consumed by it.’
Siena looked from the box to Andreas. He was still on his knees. ‘Andreas…?’
He opened the box and Siena looked down to see a beautiful vintage ring nestled in silk folds. It had one large round diamond at its centre, in an Art Deco setting, and was surrounded by small sapphires on either side. It was ornate, but simple, and Siena guessed very old.
Andreas sounded husky. ‘I know you said you never wanted another piece of jewelry, but this was my grandmother’s engagement ring. My mother gave it to me for my future wife when I was eighteen and heading off to Athens to work for the first time. I resented the implication that I would have to get married. I hated it and everything it symbolised and I vowed that it would be a cold day in hell before I gave it to anyone. Consequently it’s languished at the back of many safes over the years—until this week. When I took it out and got it cleaned. Because I’d finally met the one person I could contemplate giving it to.’
Siena felt slightly numbed. Andreas held the ring up now, out of the box, and took her hand. She could feel him trembling—or maybe it was her trembling.
‘Siena DePiero…will you do me the honour of becoming my wife? Because you’re in my head and my heart and my soul, and you have been for five years—ever since I first saw you. First you were a fascination, then you became an obsession, and now…I love you. The thought of you being in this world but not with me is more terrifying than anything I’ve ever known. So, please…will you marry me?’
Siena opened her mouth but all that came out was a sob. Her heart felt as if it was cracking open. Tears blurred her vision. She tried to speak through the vast ball of emotion making her chest full.
‘I…’ She couldn’t do it. She put her hand to her mouth, trying to contain what she felt.
She saw the look on Andreas’s face—stark sudden pain as it leached of colour. He thought she was saying no. Siena put her trembling hands around Andreas’s face and looked at him, fought to contain her emotion just for a moment.
‘Yes…Andreas Xenakis…I will marry you.’ She drew in a great shuddering breath. ‘I love you so much I don’t ever want to live with
out you.’
That was all she could manage before she put her arms around his neck and noisy sobs erupted. His hand was on her back, soothing until the sobs stopped and she could draw back. Siena didn’t care how she looked. Andreas was smiling at her as he’d smiled a long time ago, with no shadows of the past between them. Just love.
He took her hand and slid the ring onto her finger. It fitted perfectly and she looked at it in shock, still slightly disbelieving. She looked into his eyes. Her breath hitched. ‘That morning…when you left on your bike…I wanted to go with you.’
Andreas smiled and ran his finger down her cheek. ‘I wanted to take you with me, even as I cursed you.’
‘I wish you had,’ Siena whispered, emotional as she thought of the wasted years.
‘Your sister,’ Andreas reminded her ruefully.
Siena smiled too, a little sadly. ‘Yes…my sister.’
Andreas moved back onto the steps beside her and held her face in his hands. ‘Serena is being looked after and she will be okay, I promise you. Here and now is for us. This is where we start…and go on.’
Siena looked at him, her smile growing, joy replacing the feeling of regret. ‘Yes, my love.’
And then, after kissing her soundly, he drew her between his legs, wrapped his arms around her and together they watched the most beautiful city in the world emerge from the dawn light into a new day.
EPILOGUE
TWO AND A HALF years later Siena stood under the shade of a tree on the corner of the square near Andreas’s parents’ house. It was a fiesta day: long trestle tables were laid out, heaving with food and drink, and Andreas’s extended family were milling around, children running between people’s legs, causing mayhem and laughter. Flowers bloomed from every possible place.
Siena could see the bright blonde head of her sister Serena, where she sat at one of the tables. Just then Andreas’s mother came past and bent to kiss her head affectionately.