the airport in Edinburgh.’
What was his mother thinking? This was getting crazier by the minute. He hadn’t known his mother had been in contact with Aiesha over the years. What was she thinking bringing the daughter of the devil back into her life?
Was this a set-up? A practical joke?
Surely not... How on earth could it be? His mother had insisted he not worry about the dog. Surely she knew how dangerous it would be to put Aiesha in the same house as him. She was a ticking time bomb. She courted trouble. She craved attention from anyone wearing trousers, making it her mission to get them out of them as fast as she could. She was ruthless and shameless and as sexy as a pin-up girl. Damn it. ‘Right, well, I’ll drive you back to the airport first thing in the morning,’ he said. ‘Your little stint as dog-and house-sitter is over.’
She sashayed over to him, deliberately trailing one of her fingertips along one of the whitened tendons on the back of one of his clenched fists. ‘Loosen up, James. You’re as wound up as a tight spring. If you need an outlet for all that pressure—’ she batted her impossibly long eyelashes at him ‘—just call me, OK?’
James forced himself to endure the electric shock of her touch without flinching. He forced himself not to look at her mouth, where the tip of her pink tongue had left a moistly glistening trail. He forced himself not to slam her against the nearest wall and slake the fireball of his lust by plunging into her hot, wet warmth and doing what he’d always wanted to do to her. Every cell in his body was vibrating with need, and what sickened him the most was she damn well knew it. ‘Get the freaking hell out of my sight.’
Her eyes glinted with devilment. ‘I love it when a man talks dirty to me.’ She gave an exaggerated little shiver that made her braless breasts jiggle beneath her sweater. ‘It makes me come in a flash.’
James curled his fingers so tightly into his palms he felt every one of their joints protest. ‘Be ready at seven. Understood?’
She gave him another sultry little smile that sent another scorching flare to his groin. ‘You can’t get rid of me that easily. Didn’t you hear the weather report for tonight?’
A fist of panic clutched at his insides. He’d heard it in the car half an hour ago but back then he’d welcomed the thought of a blizzard snowing him in for a few days so he could put the final touches to the drawings on the Sherwood project before Phoebe joined him at the weekend.
He glared at Aiesha with such intense loathing he could feel it burning through his eyeballs like hot pokers. ‘You planned this, didn’t you?’
She tossed the length of her glossy chestnut hair back over one of her shoulders as she laughed that spine-fizzing laugh again. ‘You think I’ve got that much power that I can manipulate the weather to suit me? You flatter me, James.’
He sucked in a breath as she moved to the stairs with her swinging hip gait. Carnal lust roared in his body but he wasn’t going to let her win this. They could be snowed in for a month and he would still resist her.
He would not give in.
He. Would. Not. Give. In.
CHAPTER TWO
AIESHA LEANED BACK against the door of her bedroom and let out a long ragged breath. Her heart was still flapping like a loosely tied flag in a gale force wind. This couldn’t be happening.
James Challender wasn’t just a press magnet. He was press superglue. Where he went the press followed, especially if anyone got a heads-up on his upcoming engagement. He was one of London’s most eligible bachelors—the epitome of the Prize Catch. Every woman under the age of fifty panted after him. He was suave, sophisticated. Not a playboy like his father, but a classy specimen of modern sexy corporate man. Before she knew it, her sanctuary would be invaded by hundreds of journalists and prying cameras, hoping to get the latest scoop on him.
She would be hunted down. Found. Exposed. Mocked. Shamed.
The scandal she was trying to distance herself from would arrive on the doorstep. The shame of being at the centre of something so sordid wasn’t new to her. She’d spent most of her life attracting scandals, encouraging them, relishing in them for the attention they gave her, which made up for the lack of attention she’d received as a child.
But that chapter was supposed to be over.
She wanted to put that part of her life behind her and move forward. The meeting with Antony Smithson—aka Antony Gregovitch—was supposed to have been her big break. The chance to get out of the club scene and nail the recording contract she’d longed for since she was a little kid singing into her hairbrush in front of a mottled mirror in a council flat. Instead, she’d found out he wasn’t a music producer at all. He’d lied to her from the moment he’d sat down to listen to her sing through her shift. He’d come night after night, staying to talk to her between breaks, buying her drinks, telling her how beautiful her voice was, how talented she was. Fool that she was, she had sucked it all up and basked in his praise.
That was what angered her the most—the fact she hadn’t seen through him. How could she have been so gullible, especially the way she’d been dragged up by a bunch of tricksters and sham artists? He hadn’t been the handsome prince to rescue her from a life of singing to people who were too drunk to even listen to a word of her lyrics. He was a married man with a wife and family who was looking for a bit of cheap fun on the side.
Now she was painted as a heartless home-wrecker and her chance to prove she was so much more than a nightclub one-trick pony was over. She had no recording contract. She didn’t even have a job. Antony’s wife’s smear campaign had seen to that. There wasn’t a club in Vegas—possibly in the entire world—that would take her on now.
And now she had to deal with James High-and-Mighty Challender.
In spite of everything, Aiesha couldn’t help a tiny smile of self-congratulation. She knew exactly how hard to tug on his chain. She had practised her moves on him when she was fifteen. He had a little more self-control than his sleazeball of a father, but she hated him just as much. But then she hated all men, especially superrich ones who thought they could have anyone they wanted just by fanning open their wallet. Sexually they were OK, quite useful for a bit of fun now and again, but as people? No. She hadn’t met any she respected as a person. The men in her life had always let her down. Tricked her. Betrayed her. Exploited her.
James Challender might think he could control her but she wasn’t leaving Lochbannon on his say-so. His mother had given her permission to stay for as long as she liked. She wasn’t going to be pushed around by a stuffed shirt whose vocabulary didn’t possess the words fun or spontaneity. He was a nitpicking, timekeeping workaholic who got antsy if the cushions on the sofa weren’t neatly aligned.
And as for his so-called fiancée...what a joke! They deserved each other. Phoebe whatever-her-name-was did nothing but smile inanely at the cameras, showing off her perfect toothpaste-commercial smile and her perfect clothes and her perfect figure while her equally pampered and perfect parents pumped up her trust fund.
Bitch.
Aiesha tapped her fingers against her lips. Maybe there was a way for her to get this unexpected little speed bump to work in her favour. Why would anyone think she was hooking her claws into a boring old married politician back in Vegas when someone as staggeringly gorgeous as James Challender was spending the week cloistered with her up here in the Highlands?
She
