Adored (56 page)
“Holy shit,” said Siena, whose heart was beating like a rapid-fire machine gun. “He squeezed my hand. Jesus, Mom. I think he heard me.”
They stayed for almost two more hours, Claire talking almost constantly to Pete, and Siena doing her best to make some further show of affection for her mother’s sake, holding his hand and at one point wiping the sweat from his forehead with a washcloth. But to Claire’s dismay, he made no further noise or movement whatsoever.
She started to wonder whether Siena had imagined the squeeze he gave her. But Siena knew for certain it had happened. It had scared the hell out of her.
During the long, awkward silences, Siena was ashamed to find her mind wandering to other things. She thought about her sight and whether it would ever fully recover. She’d seen the eye specialist yesterday for an initial consultation, and he’d been guardedly encouraging but by no means certain he could make things right.
She thought a lot about Hunter too, and everything that had happened between them. She longed to go and see him, to tell him how sorry she was for everything. But when she pictured herself walking up to his door and pressing the buzzer, she found she was frozen with terror. What if he didn’t forgive her? What if Tiffany refused to give her the time of day, refused to let her in? Siena didn’t think she could bear it if Hunter were to reject her now.
Most of all, though, she thought about Max.
It was funny how, after ruthlessly blocking out all her feelings for him for over a year, she now seemed incapable of going a minute without images of his face popping up unbidden in her mind. After he cheated on her, she’d been so hurt, so blinded with misery, that it had seemed easy, cathartic even, to blame him for everything. She’d nursed her anger like a mother nursing a child, egged on of course by Randall, until it had hardened into a safe protective shell around her heart. She had remembered nothing good about him.
But now she felt as if the dam were breaking, and all those good and happy memories were flooding out, assaulting her senses, cracking what was left of her weakened self-defenses. And for the first time, she realized that perhaps it wasn’t all his fault. That maybe, in the months they were together, she might have said or done things to push him away.
She missed him so much. She wanted to say sorry, for the way she’d treated him when he crashed the party at Malibu and tried to help her. She wanted to say sorry for everything.
The thought of never seeing him again was infinitely more painful to her than any of her injuries, but she didn’t even know where he lived anymore. Besides, even if she tracked him down, she could hardly expect him to want her now, with her shattered face and her scars. She was practically a cripple. The whole thing was utterly hopeless.
Finally, Claire agreed that they should take a break and go to get some lunch.
“Do you mind if we get out of the hospital?” Siena asked her. “I really need some air. We could grab a bite up on Melrose or something, sit inside at Le Pain. No one will recognize us there.”
“Sure, honey,” said Claire. She could tell Siena felt ill at ease and had been itching to escape ever since they got there. She had also noticed her scratching and worrying at her right eye, constantly taking off her dark glasses to touch the still-red scars. She prayed that the new specialist would be able to help her. God only knew what a hatchet job Randall’s doctors might have done on her.
Mother and daughter walked hand in hand to the elevator and shot down the seventeen floors to the lobby in just a few seconds. Scarf and shades firmly in place and with her head down, Siena walked across the polished marble floor to the electric double doors, which opened as they approached to let them out into the December sunshine.
She winced as a flashbulb erupted in her face.
The noise was deafening.
“Siena! Is it true that you had a breakdown?”
“Siena, what does Randall Stein think about your reconciliation with your family?”
“How do you feel? Can you tell us anything about your father’s condition?”
“Mrs. McMahon, what’s it like to be reunited with your daughter after all these years?”
Siena tried in vain to shield her face with her hands, but the cameras kept rolling, their flashes blinding her sensitive eyes so she had to cling to her mother helplessly for support.
“Leave us alone!” shouted Claire, but she was barely audible over the frenzied pushing and shouting of the press pack that now surrounded them. “We have nothing to say.”
She looked back longingly over her shoulder at the hospital doors, but at least two TV crews stood between her and safety. She was conscious of Siena shivering like a frightened fawn beside her, clinging to her sleeve for dear life. How on earth were they going to get out of here?
Suddenly, she heard a male voice piercing through the racket. She couldn’t quite place it at first, although she was sure she recognized it from somewhere.
“Excuse me. Out of my way, please. Coming through.”
The voice was calm but forceful, and the scrum of reporters audibly quietened and backed away slightly to allow its owner to move forward. When he appeared beside her, Claire didn’t think she had ever been so pleased to see anyone in her life.
“Come on,” said Hunter. “Let’s get you two inside.”
He scooped Siena up into his arms—Jesus Christ, she was thin, she weighed almost nothing—and ushered Claire toward the hospital doors, elbowing aside journalists and cameramen effortlessly as he strode forward.
“Hunter!” came the yells from behind them.
“Are you here to see your brother?”
“Can you tell us about Siena’s breakdown? When did you two last see each other?”
“Has your brother’s heart attack brought the family back together? Hunter!”
As they approached the doors, hospital security surged forward to let them through and keep the cameras back. Claire glanced back to see a crowd of faces pressed up against the glass at the sides, and where the doors stood open in the middle hundreds of arms were blindly thrusting tape recorders and cameras into the lobby, desperate for one last comment or shot.
How could Siena, or anyone, ever have
chosen
to live like this?
Hunter carried Siena, who was still shaking, into the elevator, and she let out a loud sigh of relief as the doors closed behind them.
“What floor?” he asked.
He looked enormous in the confined space of the elevator, and Siena seemed little more than a limp rag doll pressed against the broad white-shirted expanse of his chest.
Claire hadn’t seen him since he was a teenager, although she’d seen pictures. He’d grown into quite a man. He looked frighteningly like a young Duke. She stood there, gazing at him blankly, and said nothing.
“What button should I press?” he asked again.
“Seventeen,” said Claire.
And to her own surprise, as the elevator lurched upward with a stomach-churning whoosh, she suddenly burst into tears.
Upstairs, the three of them filed back into Pete’s room. Hunter set Siena down gently on the softer of the two chairs and tried not to look at the pitiful spectacle of his brother, while Claire perched on the edge of the bed.
“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know what we’d have done without you down there.”
Siena seemed to have been struck dumb. She was overjoyed to see Hunter, but what was she supposed to say? “Thanks for saving my ass again, sorry for being such a manipulative bitch, and by the way, did you notice I now look like a freak?”
“Hey, c’mon, it was nothing,” he mumbled awkwardly to Claire. “I just stopped by . . . you know. I thought maybe I’d just ask how he was doing. I mean, I wasn’t meaning to intrude or anything. I wouldn’t even have come up to the room.”
“It’s wonderful you’re here,” said Claire. He would never know how incredibly touched she was that he had cared enough to come and see Pete. Hunter, of all people, owed him absolutely nothing.
“I wanna go back out there.” Both Hunter and Claire were startled to hear Siena speak. It took a moment for them to take in what she was saying. “I want them to see what Randall did to me. This is as good a time as any.”
Hunter tried not to show how shocked he was by the damage to her face. He had caught a glimpse of her injuries downstairs, but she was so well wrapped, and he’d been so focused on getting her away from the reporters, that this was the first time he’d had a chance to take in the full extent of her scars.
He felt physically sick, not because of how she looked but because of Stein’s unimaginable, bestial savagery. And because he hadn’t been there to save her when she needed him. Now it was his turn to be struck dumb with guilt.
It was Claire who spoke first. “Are you sure, Siena? This morning you were worried about seeing any press at all. There are so many of them down there, darling. Are you sure you can handle it?”
Siena nodded grimly. “I’ve handled worse.”
“And you’ve really thought this through?”
Claire wanted Randall to suffer for what he’d done more than anybody, but she was still scared of what all the publicity and perhaps a protracted, expensive lawsuit might do to her daughter. She had almost hoped that Siena would decide just to let the whole thing drop. That way they could all move on with their lives as if Randall Stein had never existed.
“I’ve thought about nothing else for the last two weeks,” said Siena. Despite her bruises, Hunter could see the flash of strength and determination he remembered so well lighting up her eyes. He felt immensely proud of her. “I’m gonna get that fucker.”
Emerging through the front doors a few minutes later, supported by Hunter, she was greeted by a second furor of flashbulbs and shouted questions. But this time she was ready for them.
Slowly, as if savoring the moment, she removed her dark glasses and scarf, allowing the astounded photographers and film crews a full minute to capture every angle of her ravaged face.
She had thought through her strategy carefully. She wasn’t going to explicitly accuse Randall and open herself up to a lawsuit and police investigation. This was a town where might was right, and she knew that there was a solid chance, despite the evidence of her injuries, that Randall could defeat her in court and quite possibly bankrupt her into the bargain.
She would be silent, let the pictures speak for themselves, and damn him by implication. That should easily generate enough negative publicity to destroy his career, and reveal him to the world as the monster he truly was, without allowing him the opportunity of a legal defense. Why should Siena need to accuse him herself, when she could get the rest of the world to do it for her?
After a decent interval, and once she was sure they all had the shots they needed, she held up her hand for quiet and announced that she wanted to make a statement. It took a further minute for the crowd to quiet down sufficiently to allow her to speak.
“As you can appreciate,” she began in a soft but steady voice, “this is a very difficult and emotional time for me and for my family.” Hunter squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. “My father is very ill. And I am also in the process of recovering from a violent attack.”
A murmur of questions began building, but she held up her hand for silence before continuing.
“I will not be making any comment today, or at any other time, about the circumstances of that attack. Or . . .” She paused dramatically. “Or disclosing who did this to me. For personal reasons, I don’t wish to press charges against that individual, or to involve the police. However, I would like to take this opportunity to correct an earlier statement by Mr. Randall Stein—that’s S-T-E-I-N”—the reporters laughed at that, and Siena couldn’t help but smile back; she was still the media’s darling—“implying that I had been suffering from a nervous or emotional breakdown. The only sign of mental illness I’ve shown in the last year was moving in with Mr. Stein in the first place.”
More laughter.
“Thank you all for your support. That’s all I have to say.”
She turned to go back into the building with the deafening shout of more questions ringing in her ears.
“Why aren’t you pressing charges?”
“Have you seen or spoken to Randall since the attack?”
“Will Stein be making a statement, Siena? Siena!”
With some difficulty, Hunter ushered her back into the elevator.
“You okay?” he asked as the doors closed.
But it was a stupid question. Her face was flushed with triumph. She’d just pulled the pin out and lobbed a hand grenade right into Randall’s life. What could be better than that?
“I’m fine,” was all she said. “I’m sorry, Hunter. For everything.”
“Me too,” he said, and pressed her fragile body into his chest as if trying to prove it. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop him.”
Randall’s financial backers heard the news before he did.
He took the call in the car.
“Listen, John, it’s all bullshit, okay? She can’t prove a thing. I’ll be talking to my attorney about it within the hour, this has to be libelous.”
But they weren’t interested in listening to his scrambling.
“That’s your problem, Randall. Look at your contract. It’s very clear. The morality clause says we pull out if continued association with the project can be shown to reflect detrimentally on Orion Enterprises,
for any reason.
”
“But John, these are just rumors. Come on. You can’t seriously expect me to fall on my sword to the tune of nine million dollars on the basis of some unsubstantiated, malicious gossip. I’m telling you, she’s unstable. John? Hello? Hello?”
But the line had already gone dead.
The next few weeks were a tumult of emotions for Siena.
The pictures of her battered face outside the hospital made the front pages all across America, and speculation about her injuries was rife. The accusations against Randall were all made indirectly, with cautiously worded caveats and lots of “allegedly”s sprinkled around for good measure—the papers didn’t want to get sued any more than she did—but the damage was done. Both of Randall’s main backers had pulled out of
1941,
and he’d taken a huge financial bath on the failed movie. What no one could put a price on, though, was the damage to his reputation.
Randall Stein’s Hollywood glory days were over.
He made only one public comment on the matter, telling a journalist as he emerged from his limo at a charity gala that he and Siena remained friends and that he wished her well, and categorically denying any involvement in her injuries.
Siena noticed with a wry smile that he was accompanied to the event by none other than Miriam Stanley, the starlet who’d been so desperate to get her moneygrubbing claws into him that night at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Good luck to her!
Now that Siena had had her revenge, she felt nothing, nothing at all toward Randall. She couldn’t even muster much anger anymore. He existed for her only in a past life, a life that was now gone forever.
But it wasn’t all good news. Some of the comments about her scars were hurtful, although Siena found herself feeling more resilient than she’d thought she would be. Now that she had her family back, she no longer felt defined by her beauty, or her fame, in the way that she had before, and the barbs about her lost looks felt more like nettle stings than piercing arrows.
Mercifully, the media had begun to lose interest in Pete’s illness as the weeks went by without any noticeable change in his condition. The doctors had told them that he might never regain consciousness, but Claire refused to give up hope. She continued to visit him every day, and Siena accompanied her occasionally, mostly without overt harassment from the press.
Hunter began spending a lot of time at Hancock Park, at both Siena and Claire’s request. Tiffany was very wary at first about his building bridges with Siena yet again. “I just don’t want to see you hurt again,” she’d told him when he first suggested it one weekend at their little house in Venice. “Every time she’s down, she needs you, but as soon as she gets her strength back, she forgets all about you and moves on.”
They were sitting on the sofa together in front of the fire, watching the unexpected rain outside as it hammered mercilessly against the windowpanes and gushed along the walk streets in torrents, like some biblical flood. In L.A., rain was an event, and Tiffany had been happy just to sit and watch it with Hunter—until Siena’s name, as usual, shattered her peace and contentment.
Inevitably, he insisted that this time was different, that she really had changed, and he pleaded with her to come with him over to Hancock Park for dinner. Tiffany remained skeptical.
“Just one dinner, baby. Please?” he persisted. “And if you never want to see her again after that, I swear to God, I’ll understand.”
“
One
dinner?” She was weakening.
“One, I promise you.” He beamed at her. “Only one. I just want you to see her, that’s all.”
The evening marked a turning point for all of them.
Tiffany didn’t know what was more shocking, Siena’s ravaged appearance or her obviously genuine remorse for her past behavior.
“I was jealous of you,” Siena admitted when the two of them took a private walk in the moonlit grounds after dinner. For Tiffany, who had never been to Hancock Park before, the whole experience was surreal. She’d heard so much about the unhappiness of Hunter’s childhood here and the emotional torture he’d been put through by just about every adult member of his family, that in her mind she’d built the place up as some sort of House of Horrors. But now that she was actually here, walking around the orangery with Siena, the reality of the estate in all its beauty and opulence took her breath away.
“Jealous of
me
?” Tiffany was incredulous. “Why?”
“Because you had Hunter’s love,” said Siena. “Because you deserved it.”
She still walked slowly due to the recurrent pain in her ribs, and Tiffany had to make a conscious effort to slow down her own pace in sympathy. When they came to the rose garden and an old wooden bench, Siena eased herself down onto it to catch her breath, and Tiffany sat beside her.
“He always loved you too, you know,” she said. “Always.”
Siena nodded weakly. She looked so fragile, as if the slightest gust of wind might pick her up and blow her away. “I know,” she said. “It’s hard to explain. But I always felt . . . I always
knew
that I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve his love. I was scared that if he knew what I was really like, what a selfish, horrible person I was, he’d run away from me like everyone else. He’s so perfect, you know?”
“I know.” Tiffany couldn’t help but beam. “He really is. Did, er, did he tell you our news?”
She’d sworn to Hunter that she wouldn’t say anything, but somehow the time felt right. Siena shook her head and looked up at her inquisitively.
“I’m not supposed to tell you.” Tiffany smiled. “So you have to promise not to say anything. But, well, I’m pregnant.”
“Oh! Oh, how wonderful!” Siena threw her arms around her in genuine affection and excitement. “A baby! Oh, I hope it looks like Hunter.” She immediately clapped her hand over her mouth, realizing that what she’d just said might be considered rude. “I didn’t mean . . .” she began, but Tiffany just laughed.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I hope it looks like him too.” She took Siena’s arm in hers, and they began walking back toward the house. Bathed in silver moonlight, it looked incredibly romantic, like a medieval Spanish castle. No wonder the whole world had envied Hunter for growing up here. If only they knew . . .
“You realize,” Tiffany said as they approached the steps to the huge oak front door, “that this baby is going to be your cousin?”
“Holy shit!” said Siena, now laughing herself. “Really? How fucked up is that?”
At least her bad language was still intact. Tiffany had begun to worry that the real Siena had been abducted by aliens and she was talking to a sweet and charming impostor.
It wasn’t until after Christmas, and some two weeks after this conversation with Tiffany, that Siena finally summoned up the courage to ask Hunter about Max.
She had been hoping that he or Tiffany might offer some information voluntarily, or at least casually mention Max’s name in passing so she could raise the subject naturally. But whether it was out of sensitivity to her feelings or for some other reason, neither of them had said a word. In the end, she could bear it no longer and tackled Hunter about it one morning at breakfast.
She put down her newspaper and smiled at him across the table. The bruising around her eyes was finally starting to fade, he noticed, and thanks to a recent visit to Claire’s doctor, her broken cheekbone had been reset correctly, making her look more like a bashed-up version of the old Siena than the stranger he’d taken in his arms at the hospital. She still had almost no vision in her right eye, but she was definitely on the mend.
He smiled back.
“Do you . . .” She cleared her throat. Her heart was pounding violently, but she made herself go on. “Do you ever hear from Max anymore?”
“Sometimes,” said Hunter warily. He had been anticipating this question and also dreading it. He didn’t want Siena to have to go through any more pain.
“Only sometimes? You used to be so close.”
“Well, he moved back to England a while ago. We are close, but you know, we don’t speak as much as we used to. Life moves on.”
“Yes, it does,” said Siena sadly, retreating behind her paper again.
Hunter could tell that her thoughts were already miles away. He didn’t want her to pin her hopes on a reconciliation with Max only to be disappointed. He wanted her to look forward, not back.
“Listen, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m not sure things ever would have worked out between the two of you in the long run. Even if he hadn’t . . .” He paused, not wanting to rake up any more unhappy memories for her. “Even if things hadn’t happened the way they did. You’re very different people.”
“Is he still in England?” Siena couldn’t help but ask. She knew Hunter was right, she should let it go. But she had to know where he was, where she should picture him in her thoughts and dreams.
“No,” he said brusquely. “He moved to New York. He’s directing a play there, I think.”
“Oh.” She digested this information silently. “Does he have a girlfriend?”
“Siena.” Hunter frowned. “You have to move on, honey. Forget about Max. He’s part of the past, remember? You have a whole new life now. One day you’re going to meet someone else, someone who’s going to be wonderful to you and love you and give you all the happiness and stability you need. Trust me. I know you don’t believe it now, but it’s true.”
“Does he?” she insisted. She had to know.
Goddamn. He was clearly never going to get her to drop it. So Hunter took a deep breath and did something that he couldn’t remember ever having done before. He lied to her.
“Yes,” he said, picking at a crumb on the table and not meeting Siena’s eye. “A French girl. I think it’s fairly serious.”
He hated himself for saying it, since he knew full well that Max had ended things with Freddie before he moved. But it was the only way he could think of to make Siena let go. The only way to protect her.
Every word knifed into Siena’s heart like a razor, but not by a flicker did she betray her emotions. Once she gave in to that pain, once she let it show, she was scared she might never be able to stop crying.
With every last ounce of her willpower, she held back the tears and even managed a weak smile.
“I’m happy for him,” she said. Hunter looked at her doubtfully. “Really, I am. He deserves it. He deserves to be happy.”
“I think I need help. I know it’s ridiculous and self-indulgent and, well, damn stupid after everything that’s happened. But I’m still so unhappy. Some days I feel like I can barely breathe.”
The elderly doctor looked at Max and smiled reassuringly. It wasn’t every day that a young, talented, newly minted millionaire walked into his office with glaring symptoms of depression: sleeplessness, uncontrolled crying, loss of energy, inability to concentrate; this guy had the lot.
“You
are
showing signs of mild clinical depression,” he announced, trying to be gentle. Max looked shocked. “I can refer you to a psychiatrist, who may be able to prescribe something.”
“What, like Prozac?” said Max, aghast. “I’m not sure I’m ready for all that.”
The doctor smiled again. “You could try counseling of some sort. A lot of people find cognitive behavioral therapy to be useful in combating emotional or mood disorders. You’d probably have to do it privately, though, if you wanted to start soon. It’s about fifty pounds a session, I believe.”
Max grinned. “Yeah, well. I guess I can afford it.”
He was back at Batcombe after an extended Christmas vacation and had decided on a whim to pop into the doctor’s office in the village while on one of his many solitary walks.
Having given Henry and Muffy a huge injection of cash with which to buy off the odious Ellis and reclaim the farm, he’d been the guest of honor at Christmas. The last of the trucks and the building equipment had gone by early December, and all that was left to remind them of the whole sorry nightmare was a muddy drive and a couple of big piles of bricks in the corner of the old farmyard.
“I’ll pay you back. I’ll make good every penny,” Henry had assured him, endlessly, although Max had no intention of letting him do any such thing.
“Pay me back for what? For giving you some money that I did nothing to earn and certainly don’t need? Behave yourself.”
“It’s not just
some money,
Max,” said Muffy, who was busily putting the last of the children’s presents around the Christmas tree. “It’s a bloody fortune.”
“Believe me,” he told them both, “I’m doing this as much for myself as for you. Manor Farm has always been like home to me. I’m as happy to be rid of that bastard as you are.”
Ellis, as it turned out, had proved a lot easier to buy off than they had feared. The golf course was already running behind schedule and way overbudget, and the bad feeling on-site after Gary’s ill-advised lunge at Muffy had caused him no end of trouble with his foreman. Along with most of the men, Ben McIntyre had developed a lot of sympathy for the Arkells and disapproved of the way his boss had maliciously taunted and harassed them for months on end.
“I want a damn sight more than I paid for it,” Gary had told Max gruffly when he first floated the idea of a buyback on the lease. “I’ve lost a small bleedin’ fortune on that place so far, and I’m sure as ’ell not leaving while I’m down on the deal.”
But despite his bravado, he’d agreed on a fair price. Now that the new section of the M40 was no longer being routed via Witney, Batcombe was no longer the ultra-desirable site it once had been. That, combined with the fact that he was clearly never going to get anywhere with Muffy, made him glad to be rid of the place.
Max knew he ought to have felt happy. Happy for Henry and Muff about the farm, happy at his own unexpected good fortune. He had never dreamed that
Dark Hearts
would make good in such spectacular style. And it wasn’t just the money he had to be thankful for. There was the opening of the play and his new life in New York to look forward to as well.
Plus, he was finally free of the stifling relationship with Freddie that had caused him such torments of guilt for so long. Darling Freddie, she had even sent him a Christmas card from France, full of kindness and without any bitterness or reproach, telling him all about her new life and friends back in Toulouse. Oh, to be so young and resilient, thought Max.
Christmas came and went, and he did his best to smile through it all and join in the festivities. But even the children could see something was wrong. Maddie had asked him one night at supper why he only smiled with his lips. “You’ve switched your eyes off,” as she put it; he’d had to leave the table and bolt upstairs to his room to cry.
