Kitabı oku: «Forgiven but not Forgotten?»

‘You’ve learnt your lessons well, DePiero…in the beds of however many countless lovers you’ve entertained. Were they the ones to teach you that intoxicating mix of innocence and artless sensuality designed to ensnare a man?’

Siena looked at Andreas, stunned at his words. He had no idea. He couldn’t tell her gauche responses were all too real. And she vowed then that he never would know, however she had to do it.

She fought to find some veneer of composure and said, as cynically as she could considering she was shaking inwardly like a leaf, ‘What else did you expect? A real bona fide virgin heiress? This is the twenty-first century, Xenakis. Surely you know better than most that virgins are as mythical as unicorns?’

About the Author

ABBY GREEN got hooked on Mills & Boon^® romances while still in her teens, when she stumbled across one belonging to her grandmother in the west of Ireland. After many years of reading them voraciously, she sat down one day and gave it a go herself. Happily, after a few failed attempts, Mills & Boon bought her first manuscript.

Abby works freelance in the film and TV industry, but thankfully the four a.m. starts and the stresses of dealing with recalcitrant actors are becoming more and more infrequent, leaving her more time to write!

She loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her through her website at www.abby-green.com. She lives and works in Dublin.

Recent titles by the same author:

 EXQUISITE REVENGE

 ONE NIGHT WITH THE ENEMY

 THE LEGEND OF DE MARCO

 THE CALL OF THE DESERT

Did you know these are also available as eBooks?

Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Forgiven but not Forgotten?
Abby Green

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This is especially for Crispin Green, Polly Green,

Barney Green and Katie Green.

I’m so proud to be your half-sister

and one of the ‘Greens in Cornwall’.

PROLOGUE

SIENA DEPIERO HELD her older sister’s hand tightly as they left their palazzo. Even though she was twelve and Serena was fourteen they still instinctively sought each other for support. Their father was in an even more mercurial mood than usual today. Their car was waiting by the kerb, a uniformed driver standing by the open door. Siena knew that her father’s bodyguards were nearby.

Just feet away from the car a tall young man with dark hair seemed to spring from nowhere, stopping their father in his tracks. He was gesticulating and calling their father Papà. Siena and Serena had come to a halt too, with burly guards standing between them and this confrontation.

Siena looked around the bodyguards. She could instantly see the resemblance of this young man to their father. He had the same shaped face and deep-set eyes. But how could he be related? Suddenly there was a dull crunching sound and the young man was sprawled on the ground, looking up with shock on his face, blood running from his nose. Their father had hit him.

Siena gripped Serena’s hand tight in shock at the sudden violence. Their father turned back and gestured angrily for them to follow him. The path was so narrow that they had to step over the young man’s legs. Siena was too scared to look at him—he was so wild and feral.

They were ushered into the back of the car and Siena heard their father issue terse instructions to his men. Just then she heard the young man roar, ‘I’m Rocco, your son—you bastard!’

When their father got into the car and it pulled away, Siena couldn’t stop herself from looking behind them. She saw their father’s men dragging the young man out of sight. She felt sick. Serena was looking stonily ahead but her hand gripped Siena’s.

Their father caught Siena by the ear painfully and jerked her head round. Siena clamped her mouth shut. She knew better than to make a sound.

He forced her to look at him. ‘What do you think you are doing?’

‘Nothing, Papà.’

His mouth was a thin line of anger. ‘Good, because you know what happens if you anger me.’

Serena’s grip on Siena’s hand was so tight she nearly cried out. Quickly Siena said, ‘Yes, Papà.’

After a long, tense moment their father let her go and faced the front again. Siena knew very well what happened when she angered him. He would punish her sister Serena. It was never her. Always her sister. Because that was what amused him.

Siena didn’t look at her sister, but they kept their hands tightly gripped together for the rest of the journey.

CHAPTER ONE

ANDREAS XENAKIS DIDN’T like the strength of the thrill of triumph that moved through him. It signified that this moment held more importance for him than he’d care to admit. Bitterly, he had to concede that perhaps it did. After all, practically within touching distance now was the woman who had all but cried rape for her own amusement, to protect her untarnished image in her father’s eyes. She’d merited him a savage beating, losing his job, being blacklisted from every hotel in Europe and having to start over again on the other side of the world. Far away from anyone he’d known or who had known him.

She was still exquisite. More so. Andreas had found himself imagining that she couldn’t possibly be as stunning as she’d been since he’d seen her five years ago. But she was. She was a woman now, not a teenager.

Her hair was so blonde it shone almost white under the soft lighting of a hundred chandeliers. It was pulled up into a high bun. She held herself with the same effortlessly regal bearing he’d first noticed in that glittering ballroom in Paris. His mouth compressed. She was a thoroughbred in the midst of lesser beings. He could see how women near her instinctively shut her out, as if sensing competition.

His eyes moved over the curve of her cheek and jaw. The patrician line of her nose more than hinted at the blue-blooded heritage of her Italian ancestry, diluted only in part by her half-English mother who had been related to royalty. Her skin was still pale and looked soft: as soft as a rose petal. Andreas’s belly clenched hard to recall just how soft it had felt under his fingers.

He’d touched her reverently, as if she were an ethereal goddess, and he’d felt as if he was marking her, staining her purity with his touch. His hands were fists by his sides now as he thought of how she’d urged him on with breathy, sexy entreaties in his ear: ‘Please…I want you to touch me, Andreas.’ Only to turn on him almost in the same breath and accuse him of attacking her…

She turned then, to face towards him, and that low, simmering anger was eclipsed when blood rushed to his head and to his groin, making him simultaneously dizzy and hard.

He couldn’t escape the impact of those huge, glittering bright blue eyes ringed with long dark lashes. But it was her mouth which drew his gaze and kept it. Sinfully lush and pink. Just waiting to be kissed…crushed under his. Andreas had to consciously will down the intense desire. He was fast being reduced to the instincts of an animal, and he hated her for having this effect on him. Still. For ever, mocked the small voice in his head.

No. Andreas rejected it fiercely. Not for ever. Just until he’d had her. Until they’d finished what she’d started when she’d upended his life so cruelly and comprehensively. Because she’d been curious and bored. Because she’d had the power. Because he’d been nothing.

Resolve firmed in Andreas’s gut. He was far from nothing any more, and thanks to a cruel twist of circumstances Siena DePiero was reduced to lower than he’d ever been, rendering her exposed and vulnerable—to him.

Her blonde head dipped out of view momentarily and Andreas’s insides contracted with something indefinable that went beyond where he wanted to investigate. He didn’t like the fact that he was uncomfortably aware of other men’s interest, of their gazes after her, covetous and even lascivious. It made him feel possessive and that was not welcome.

She’d had the gall to play with him once. Andreas desired her. That was all. His eyes caught sight of her bright blonde head again and he watched and waited as she drew ever closer to him in the crowd.

Siena DePiero was in the act of navigating through the crowd with a heavy tray, trying not to upend the contents over someone’s feet, when a broad chest at her eye level stopped her from moving forward.

She looked up and had the impression of a very tall man, broad all the way through to his shoulders. A pristine tuxedo with a white bow-tie marked him out as slightly different. As Siena’s mouth opened to say excuse me her gaze reached his face and her heart stopped.

He was no stranger.

Andreas Xenakis. Here.

The recognition was instantaneous. The knowledge was cataclysmic. It was as if mere minutes had passed since she’d last seen him, yet it had been five years. He looked bigger, darker, leaner.

She could instantly read the unmistakable light of cold hatred in his eyes and her insides contracted painfully. Of all the people to meet in this situation… No one would get more mileage out of it than Andreas Xenakis. And could she even blame him? a small voice mocked.

‘Well, well, well.’

His voice was painfully familiar, immediately twisting her insides into a knot of tension.

‘Fancy meeting you here.’

Siena could feel his eyes rake her up and down, taking in her server’s uniform of white shirt, black tie and black trousers. The effect he had on her now was as devastating as it had been five years before. It was as if she had been plugged into an electrical socket and the current was running through her blood, making it hum, as disturbing and disconcerting as she remembered—especially in light of what had happened.

Her insides contracted even more painfully.

Dark slashing brows framed his incredible navy blue eyes. High cheekbones drew the eye down to a strong jaw. And his mouth…that beautiful sensuous mouth…was all at once sexy and mocking. He lifted one brow, clearly waiting for a response.

Struggling to retain some sense of composure, when she felt like a tiny boat being lashed on high seas, Siena managed to find her voice and said coolly, ‘Mr Xenakis. How nice to see you again.’

His arched brow went higher and he let out a curt laugh. His voice wasn’t so heavily accented any more. It had more of a mid-Atlantic twang. ‘Even now you can make it sound as if you’re greeting me at your own dinner party—not serving drinks to people you once woudn’t deign to look in the eye.’

Siena flinched minutely. She didn’t have to be psychic to recognise that the man who stood before her now was a much harder and more ruthless creature than the man she’d met in Paris. Xenakis’s meteoric rise to become one of the world’s most prominent hoteliers at the ridiculously young age of thirty had been well documented in the press.

‘I’m flattered you remember me,’ he drawled, ‘After all we’ve met only once—as memorable as that meeting was.’

He mocked her. Siena felt like pointing out pedantically that it had actually been twice. After all, she’d seen him again the morning after that catastrophic night. But that memory was far too much to handle right now.

‘Yes.’ She glanced away for a minute, uncomfortable under that dark gaze. ‘Of course I remember you.’

Suddenly it was too much. The tray of glasses started to wobble alarmingly in Siena’s hands as the full magnitude of seeing him again hit her. Surprising her, Andreas took it competently out of her white-knuckled grasp and put it down on a nearby table before she could object.

Just then they were interrupted by Siena’s boss, who was shooting none too subtle daggers at Siena while smiling obsequiously at Andreas.

‘Mr Xenakis, is everything all right here? If my staff have been in any way remiss—’

‘No.’ His voice was abrupt, cold. He truly was Lord of all he surveyed now. Exuding power and confidence and that tangible sexual charisma.

Feeling a little dizzy, Siena tuned back in to Xenakis’s voice, being directed to her boss.

‘Everything is fine. I am acquainted with Miss—’

Siena cut in urgently before Xenakis could say her hated name, ‘Mr Xenakis, like I said, it was nice to see you again. If you’ll excuse me, though, I really should get back to work.’

Siena picked up the heavy tray again and, without looking at Andreas Xenakis or her boss, fled on very shaky legs.

Andreas followed the progress of the bright blonde head, inordinately annoyed with this small rotund man for interrupting them. He was saying now, in a toadying voice, ‘I’m so sorry about that, Mr Xenakis. Our staff have the strictest instructions not to make conversation with any of the guests, but Miss Mancini is new—’

Andreas bit out coldly, ‘I spoke to her, actually.’ Then he realised something and looked at the man, ‘You say her name is Mancini?’

‘Yes,’ her boss said absently, and then he smiled even more slimily, saying sotto voce to Andreas, ‘Of course her looks are a bonus—she could be a model, if you ask me. I don’t know what she’s doing waitressing, but I can’t complain. I’ve never had so many requests for her phone number.’

Andreas desisted from informing the man that she was waitressing because she was persona non grata in polite society across Europe. He pushed aside the fact of her name-change and felt something like rage building inside him. He fixed the manager with a look that would have felled many. ‘I presume you do not give out her number, of course?’

The man immediately went puce and blustered, ‘Well, I… Well, of course not, Mr Xenakis. I don’t know what kind of a service you think I’m running here, but I can assure you—’

‘Don’t worry,’ Andreas sliced in cuttingly. ‘I will be assured once I’ve checked out your company thoroughly.’

With that he turned and walked in the direction he’d last seen Siena moving. He had something much more urgent to take his attention now: making sure Siena DePiero didn’t disappear into thin air.

A couple of hours later Siena was walking quickly through the moonlit streets around Mayfair. She still hadn’t fully processed that she’d seen Andreas Xenakis, here in London, where she’d come to hide and move on with her life. To her everlasting relief she hadn’t bumped into him again, but she’d been horribly aware of his tall form and had endeavoured to make sure she stayed on the far side of the room at all times.

Now, as she walked and felt the blisters on her heels, she cursed herself for letting Andreas get to her like that. Yes, they had history. She winced inwardly. It wasn’t a pretty history. She didn’t want to be reminded of the blazing look of anger and betrayal on his face when she’d stood beside her father five years ago, holding her dress up over her chest, and agreed shakily: ‘Yes, he attacked me, Papa. I couldn’t stop him…’

Andreas had cut in angrily, his Greek accent thick. ‘That’s a downright lie. She was begging me—’

Her father had held up an imperious hand and cut Andreas off. He’d turned to face Siena and she’d looked up at him, terrified of his power to inflict punishment if he chose to believe Andreas.

He’d said quietly, ‘He’s lying, isn’t he? You would never let a man like this touch you, would you? Because you know you’re infinitely better than him.’

Struggling to hide her disgust and hatred, Siena had given the only answer she could. She’d nodded and felt sick. ‘Yes, he’s lying. I would never allow someone like him to touch me.’

Thinking of the unpalatable past made Siena feel trembly and light-headed. She didn’t want to contemplate the very uncomfortable fact that he still had such a profound effect on her.

Once again, though, she marvelled at how far removed he was from the man who had once presided over servers in a hotel. In all honesty she was surprised he’d recognised her at all from his lofty position. She knew how easy it was to see only the hand that served you, not the person. Siena recalled her father’s blistering anger when he’d berated her once for aiding a waiter who’d dropped a tray at one of his legendary parties. He’d hauled her into his offce and gripped her arm painfully.

‘Don’t you know who we are? You step over people like him. You do not stop to help them.’

Siena had bitten back the angry retort on her lips. Just like you stepped over your own illegitimate son in the street? Our own brother? That audacious comment alone would have merited her sister a severe beating. That was his preferred twisted form of torture—if Siena provoked him, Serena would be punished.

Siena saw the bus stop in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief. Tomorrow she would have forgotten all about bad memories and running into Andreas Xenakis. Her insides lurched, mocking her assertion. For one second earlier, when she’d first seen Andreas, she’d imagined she was dreaming.

She’d never forgotten what she had done to that man by falsely accusing him. More often than she cared to admit she remembered that night and how, with just a look and a touch, he’d made her lose any sense of rationality and sanity. On some level, when she’d read about his stellar success in the newspapers, she’d been relieved; to see him flourishing far better than she would have ever expected assuaged some tiny part of the guilt she felt.

Resolutely Siena pushed down her incendiary thoughts. Familiar nagging anxiety took their place. She wondered now, as she approached the bus stop, if the two jobs she had would be enough to help her sister. But she knew with a leaden feeling that nothing short of a miracle could do that.

Siena had just arrived under the shelter of the bus stop when she noticed a sleek silver sports car pulling up alongside where she stood. Even before the electric window lowered on the passenger side Siena’s heart-rate had increased.

The starkly handsome features of Andreas Xenakis looked out and Siena backed away instinctively. His presence was evidence that he wasn’t about to let her off so easily. He wanted to torture her and make the most out of her changed circumstances. In a second he’d jumped out of the car and was lightly holding her elbow.

‘Please.’ He smiled urbanely, as if stopping to pick up women at bus stops resplendent in a tuxedo was entirely normal for him. ‘Let me give you a lift.’

Siena was so tense she felt as if she might crack in two. Very aware of her ill-fitting thin denim jacket in the biting early spring breeze, and the fatigue that made her bones ache, she bit out, ‘I’m fine, thank you. The bus will be along shortly.’

Andreas shook his head. He had that same incredulous expression that he’d worn when she’d spoken to him before. ‘Are your co-workers aware you could probably have conversed with every foreign guest in that room in their own tongue?’

Hurt at this back-handed compliment, and his all too banal but accurate assessment of her misery Siena pulled her arm free. She acted instinctively, wanting to say something to prick his pride and hopefully push him away. ‘I said I’m fine, thank you very much. I’m sure you have better things to do than follow me around like some besotted puppy dog.’

His eyes flashed dangerously at that, and Siena hated herself for those words. They reminded her of the poison that had dropped from her lips that night in Paris. They were the kind of words Andreas would expect her to say. But they weren’t having the desired effect at all. She should have realised that he wasn’t like other men—she remembered the way he’d stood up to her father with such innate pride. One of the very few people who hadn’t cowered.

He merely looked even more dangerous now, and grabbed her arm again. ‘Let’s go, Signorina DePiero. The bus is coming and I’m blocking the lane.’

Siena looked past Andreas and saw the double-decker bus bearing down. A sharp blast of the horn made her flinch. She could see the others waiting at the bus stop shooting them dirty looks because their journey home was being held up.

Siena looked at Andreas and he said ominously, ‘Don’t test me, Siena. I’ll leave the car there if I have to.’

Another blast of the horn had someone saying with irritation, ‘Oh, just take the lift, will you? We want to get home.’

For a second Siena felt nothing but excoriating isolation. And then Andreas had led her to the car and was handing her into the low seat before shutting the door. He slid smoothly into the other side.

‘Do up your belt,’ he instructed curtly, before adding acidly, ‘Or are you used to having even that done for you?’

His words cut through the fog of shock clouding her brain and she fumbled to secure the belt with hands that were all fingers and thumbs.

She retaliated in a sharp voice. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Andreas expertly negotiated the car into the stream of traffic. It was so smooth it felt as if they were gliding above the ground. It had been long months since Siena had been in such luxurious confines, and the soft leather seat moulded around her body, cupping it in a way that was almost sensual. Her hands curled into fists on her lap against the sensation and her jaw was taut.

She unclenched it. ‘Stop the car and let me out, please. I can make my own way home. I got in purely to stop you causing a scene.’

‘I’ve spent six months looking for you, Siena, so I’m not about to let you go that easily.’

Six months ago her father had disappeared, leaving his entire fortune in tatters, and leaving Siena and Serena to stand among the ashes and take the opprobrium that had come their way in their father’s cowardly absence. Siena looked at Andreas with horror on her face and something much more ambiguous in her belly. Tonight hadn’t been an awful coincidence?

Shakily she said, ‘You’ve been looking for me?’

His mouth tightened and he confirmed it. ‘Since the news of your father’s disappearance and the collapse of your fortune.’

He glanced at her and she held herself tightly, wanting to shiver at the thought of his determination to find her again. To punish her? Why else? a small voice crowed.

Softly, lethally, he said, ‘We have unfinished business, wouldn’t you agree?’

Panic constricted Siena’s throat. She wasn’t ready for a reckoning with this man. ‘No, I wouldn’t. Now, why don’t you just stop the car and let me out?’

Andreas ignored her entreaty and drawled easily, ‘Your address, Siena…or we’ll spend the night driving around London.’

Siena’s jaw clenched again. She saw the way his long-fingered hand rested on the steering wheel. For all of his nonchalance she suddenly had the impression that he was actually far more intractable than her father had ever been. He’d certainly proved that he had a ruthless nose when it came to business.

Siena had on more than one occasion closeted herself in her father’s study to follow Andreas’s progress online. She’d read about him shutting down ailing hotels with impunity, his refusing to comment on rumours that he didn’t care about putting hundreds out of work just to increase his own growing portfolio. In the same searches she’d seen acres of newsprint devoted to his love-life, which appeared to be hectic and peopled with only the most beautiful women in the world. Siena didn’t like to admit how she’d noticed that they were all lustrous brunettes or redheads. Evidently blondes weren’t his type any more.

Suspecting now that he would indeed drive around all night if she didn’t tell him, Siena finally rapped out her address.

‘See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

Siena scowled and looked right ahead.

There was silence for a few minutes, thickening the tension, and then he said, ‘So, where did you get Mancini from?’

Siena looked at him. ‘How did you know?’ Then she remembered and breathed out shakily. ‘My boss must have mentioned it.’

‘Well?’ he asked, as if he had all the time in the world to wait for an answer.

Tightly, Siena eventually replied, ‘It was my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. I didn’t want to risk anyone recognising me.’

‘No,’ the man beside her responded dryly, ‘I can imagine why not.’

Anger at his insouciance, and the ease with which he’d just turned up to humiliate her, made Siena snap, ‘You really shouldn’t have followed me, you know.’

He replied all too easily. ‘Look on it as a concerned friend merely wishing to see how you’re doing.’

Siena snorted scathingly but her heart was thumping, ‘Friend? Somehow I doubt you’ve ever put yourself in that category where I’m concerned.’ It was more likely to be a definite foe.

Andreas Xenakis shot her a look then, and Siena recoiled back in her seat. It was so…so carnal and censorious.

He growled softly, ‘You’re right. We were closer to lovers. And friends don’t, after all, cry rape when it suits them to save face.’

Siena blanched. ‘I never used that word.’

Andreas’s jaw clenched hard. ‘As good as. You accused me of attacking you when we both know that only seconds before your father arrived you were begging me to—’

‘Stop!’ cried Siena, her breathing becoming agitated.

She could remember all too well how it had felt to have Andreas Xenakis pressing her down into the chaise longue, the way she’d strained up towards him, aching for him to put his hands on her everywhere. And when he’d moved his hand up between her stockinged legs she’d parted them…tacitly telling him of her intense desire.

‘Why?’ Andreas drawled. ‘You can’t handle the truth? I thought you were made of sterner stuff, DePiero. You forget you showed your true colours that night.’

Siena turned her head and looked stonily out of the window. The truth was that she had no excuse for her reprehensible behaviour that night. She had begged Andreas to make love to her. She had kissed him back ardently. When he’d pulled her dress down to expose one breast she’d sighed with exquisite pleasure and he’d kissed her there.

The car pulled up to a set of traffic lights at that moment, and the urge to escape was sudden and instinctive. Siena went to open her door to jump out, but with lightning-fast accuracy Andreas’s arm restrained her with a strength that was awesome. Long fingers wrapped around her slender arm, and the bunched muscle of his arm against her soft belly was a far more effective restraint than if he’d locked the doors. Her skin tightened over her bones, drawing in and becoming sensitised. Her breasts felt heavy and tight, her nipples stiffening against the material of her bra.

The car moved off again and Siena pushed his arm off her with all her strength. That brief touch was enough to hurtle her back in time all over again and she struggled to contain herself. The fact that he was so determined to toy with her like this was utterly humiliating.

He pulled up outside a discreetly elegant period apartment building on a wide quiet street. He’d hopped out of the car and was at her open door, holding out an expectant hand, before she knew what was happening.

Siena shrank back and looked up at him. ‘This isn’t where I live.’ It’s a million miles from where I live, she thought.

‘I’m aware of that. However, it is where I live, and as we were passing I thought we’d stop so we can catch up on old times over a coffee.’

Siena held back a snort of derision and crossed her arms, looking straight ahead with a stony expression. ‘I am not getting out of this car, Xenakis. Take me home.’

Andreas’s voice was merely amused. ‘First I couldn’t get you into it and now I can’t get you out of it. They say women are mercurial…’

Before she knew it Andreas had bent down to her level and reached in to undo her seat belt. Siena flapped at his hands in a panic until he stilled them with his. His face was very close to hers and Siena could feel her hair unravelling. She was breathing harshly. His scent teased her nostrils, exactly as she remembered it. Not changed. Oaky and musky and very male.

A voice came from behind Andreas. ‘Mr Xenakis? Do you want me to park the car?’

Without taking his eyes off Siena’s, Andreas answered, ‘Yes, please, Tom. I’ll be taking Ms DePiero home shortly, so keep it nearby.’

‘Aye-aye, sir,’ came the jaunty response.

Siena struggled for a few seconds against Andreas’s superior strength and will. She saw the boy waiting behind him. Innate good manners and the fear of causing a scene that had been drummed into her since babyhood made her bite out with reluctance, ‘Fine. One coffee.’

Andreas stood up, and this time Siena had no choice but to put her hand in his and let him help her out of the low-slung vehicle. To her chagrin he kept a tight hold of her hand as he tossed his keys to the boy and led her into the building, where a concierge held the door open in readiness.

Once in the hushed confines of the lift Siena tried to pull her hand back, but Andreas was lifting it to inspect it. He opened out her palm and his touch made some kind of dangerous lethargy roll through her, but she winced when she followed his gaze. Her palm sported red chafed skin, calluses. Proof of her very new working life.

He turned it over and Siena winced even more to see him inspecting her bitten nails—the resurgence of a bad habit she’d had for a short time in her teens, which had been quickly overcome when her father had meted out a suitable punishment on Serena, her sister.

Her hands were a far cry from the soft lily-white manicured specimens they’d used to be. Exerting more effort this time, and knowing that she’d just been cured of her nail-biting habit once again, she finally pulled free of Andreas’s grip and said mulishly, ‘Don’t touch me.’

With a rough quality to his voice that resonated inside her, Andreas asked, ‘How did they get like this from waitresssing?’