Forgiven but Not Forgotten?

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…