Andreas pulled out a chair at right angles to his and said coolly, ‘Sit down and have something to eat. You’ve lost weight.’
Siena came forward and avoided his eye. She had lost weight. She’d hadn’t had much money for food. Sensing his gaze, Siena looked at Andreas and it was intense.
Tightly he said, ‘I’m sorry for lashing out at you like that last night… It was just…a lot to take in.’
Siena’s heart contracted. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘I checked out what you told me about Serena.’ He sounded defensive. ‘I would have been a fool not to after everything…’
The brief warmth that had invaded Siena cooled. ‘Of course.’
Siena felt fear trickle down her spine even as hurt lanced her. He hadn’t trusted her. ‘What are you going to do?’
Andre
as’s mouth tightened. ‘Nothing. Your sister deserves all the care she can get after a lifetime of being subjected to that kind of treatment.’
Siena felt momentarily dizzy. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and then she blurted out, ‘I’ll pay you back…the money. If you could let me set up a payment plan…?’
Andreas looked at her incredulously. ‘On the kind of wages you’ve been earning? You’d be paying me out of your pension.’
Siena flushed and straightened her back, clinging to the small amount of pride she had left. ‘I’ll find another job. There are grants for people on minimum wage, training schemes…’
Andreas was grim. He poured her some coffee and pushed a plate of bread towards her. ‘You don’t need to pay me back. If you’d told me in the first place what you needed the money for I would have helped you.’
Now Siena was the one to look at him incredulously, and she remarked bitterly, ‘Forgive me if I don’t believe you. You hate my guts. You wanted revenge. If I had told you that my feckless sister was in a clinic to sort out her addictions and mental health issues you would have sneered in my face.’ Siena looked down. ‘I was afraid you might try to use her to get back at me—after all, that’s what my father always did.’
Siena missed the way Andreas winced slightly.
He said heavily, ‘My best friend committed suicide years ago, and I witnessed the devastation it wrought. I don’t underestimate mental health illness for a second. I might not have been initially inclined to help, but if you had explained to me—’
Siena looked up, unsettled by this nugget from his past. ‘What? Explained the tawdry reality of our lives? The sadistic bullying of our father?’
Andreas’s eyes narrowed on her. ‘Why did Serena not leave once she could?’
Siena swallowed, ‘She didn’t leave because of me. She wouldn’t leave me behind. And then…once I got older…she was too dependent on our father’s money to fuel her drink and drugs addiction. When she could have left she didn’t want to. As perverse as that sounds.’
Andreas was grim. ‘And so as long as she stayed you were stuck too?’
Siena nodded.
Andreas put down his napkin. ‘Now that I know…everything…I will take care of Serena’s bills. You don’t have to pay me back.’
Siena’s heart lurched. ‘But I do. You don’t owe me—us—anything.’ The line of her mouth was bitter. ‘I owe you so much. More than I can ever repay. If it wasn’t for me you would never have been sacked or had to leave Europe.’
To Siena’s dismay she could feel tears threaten, but she forced herself to look at Andreas. ‘You don’t know how much I wanted to go back in time, to undo what happened.’
Andreas’s eyes grew darker and he leaned forward. ‘That’s wishful thinking. If we had that moment over again nothing could have kept us from touching each other. It was inevitable.’
Siena’s heart beat faster. Her belly swooped. ‘What are you saying?’
‘What I’m saying is that the chemistry between us was too powerful to ignore. Then and now.’
Stupidly Siena repeated, ‘Now?’
Andreas nodded and stood up. He came around the table and took Siena’s hands, pulling her up out of her chair. He was suddenly very close, very tall. Siena could feel his heat reach out and envelop her, and a wave of intense longing came over her, setting her whole body alight. She’d not even admitted to herself how much she’d missed him in the past month, how she’d ached for him at night.
‘We’re not done, Siena.’