would have been a suitable father for anyone, let alone a brood of kids. He was too immature and selfish, like a spoilt child who had been overindulged and always expected everything to go his way. Aiesha had seen that from the moment she had been introduced to him when Louise brought her home from the streets, where she’d been living since her stepfather had kicked her out a week after her mother had overdosed on heroin. She’d refused to take her mother’s place in his bed so he’d turned her out of the house, but not before committing an unspeakable act of cruelty that still caused her nightmares all these years on. If only she had thought to get Archie out of the house first.
If only. If only. If only...
Watching as her beloved dog was strangled to death in front of her had destroyed her belief in humanity. Archie had only yelped the once but his cry had haunted many a sleepless night since.
Aiesha blinked the distressing scene out of her head as best she could. She wasn’t that powerless young girl any more. She was the one in control now. She allowed no man to have an advantage on her.
Clifford Challender might wear bespoke clothes and speak with an upper-class accent but underneath he was no different from her brutish, despicable, drug-dealing stepfather. She had proven it. It had only taken five minutes alone with him in the study to set it up. She had planned it to the last detail. They’d agreed to meet at a hotel in London’s West End to ‘begin’ their affair. Clifford had taken the bait—as she had known he would—with the press waiting to capture the moment, but, looking back now, she regretted that Louise had been hurt in the process.
Although she had never told Louise, or indeed anyone, how deeply traumatised she had been from that last interaction with her stepfather, over time she had been able to understand why she had behaved as she had. She had been so angry, so viciously angry, at the injustice dished out to her and to poor little Archie that she had come into the Challender household with the sole agenda to cause as much mayhem as she could. Like a wounded animal, she had scratched and bitten at the hand that was trying its best to comfort and feed her.
Aiesha had apologised to Louise since and they had never mentioned it again by tacit agreement. But if Louise was bitter or still held any resentment she certainly gave no sign of it. If anything, Aiesha got the impression that Louise was much happier without the shackles of a marriage that had limped along for years for the sake of appearances.
But James’s bitterness was another thing entirely.
He hadn’t forgiven her for the attention she had drawn to his family. Drunk on the power of payback, Aiesha had sold her story to the press. Although no crime had been committed, for Clifford Challender hadn’t done anything other than agree to meet her, the press had run with the Lolita angle and run wild. Selling her story hadn’t necessarily been about the money—although it had come in very handy at getting her set up until she came of age—but about showing the world she would not be ignored or silenced just because she was from the wrong side of the tracks.
The impact on the Challender name in the architectural sector had been catastrophic. At the time she hadn’t thought or cared how her actions would impact on James, but impact they did. Along with his father, he’d lost current and potential clients, and it had only been in the last year or so that he had been able to redress the effects of the fallout of the scandal.
No wonder he hated her.
And no wonder he couldn’t understand what possible reason his mother would have for staying in contact with her, even sporadically, much less invite her to stay in her home for as long as she wanted.
Aiesha wasn’t sure she understood it herself.
‘Your mother isn’t one to bear grudges,’ she said. ‘Unlike someone else I know, she’s prepared to let bygones be bygones.’
His glittering eyes, his knitted brow, his flared nostrils and his iron-hard jaw visibly quaked with contempt. ‘My mother’s a fool to be taken in by you again. You haven’t changed an iota. You’re still a smart-mouthed, conniving little gold-digging tramp on the make. The fact that you want money to pose as my fiancée proves it.’
Aiesha tossed her head in a devil-may-care manner. ‘Take it or leave it, James. It’s your reputation on the line, not mine. I don’t have anything to lose.’
His hands balled into fists as if he didn’t trust himself not to reach for her and do her an injury. A perverse part of her was excited to see him teetering on the cliff edge of the iron-strong self-control he so prided himself on possessing. It made her want to push and push and push until he fell into sin. It was why she goaded him so shamelessly. She wanted to prove he was no different from all the other men she’d had dealings with throughout her life. He might have been surrounded by silver spoons and salvers, and slept on silk and satin sheets, but behind that stiff, upper-lip, straitlaced demeanour was a brooding, simmering passion that was as primal and earthy as any other sexually mature man.
His eyes nailed hers like blue darts, his mouth so tightly set it looked physically as well as morally painful for him to get the words out. ‘How much?’
Aiesha pictured the cottage in the country she had dreamed of since she was a little girl living in council flats with walls as thin as diet wafers. She had dreamed of a place surrounded by flowers and fields and forest, of peace and calm instead of shouting and swearing and fighting. No pimps. No drugs. No violence.
Solitude. Safety.
She named a figure that sent James’s brows shooting towards his hairline. ‘What?’ he choked.
She folded her arms in an implacable manner. ‘You heard.’
He frowned at her blackly. ‘You’re joking, surely?’
‘Nope.’
He coughed out a disbelieving laugh. ‘This is ludicrous.’ His hand scored a jagged pathway through his hair. ‘Am I even having this conversation?’
‘Want me to pinch you?’
He quickly stepped back from her, holding his hands up in front of himself like a barrier. ‘Don’t touch me.’
Aiesha smiled as she deliberately stepped closer. It was thrilling to have so much sensual power at her disposal. The air vibrated with electric voltage; she could feel it lifting the skin of her arms in a carpet of goose bumps and wondered if his body was undergoing the same sensual overload. Was his blood thundering through his veins, thickening him? Extending him to full erection? Was he feeling that primal ache that consumed everything but the desperate need to copulate?
Maybe she should ignore that silly little foghorn inside her head. What would it hurt to have a little bit of fun to pass the time? He had always been the subject of her fantasies.
Now she could make them real.
She lazily stroked her fingertip over the thick and neatly aligned Windsor knot of his tie, close to where a pulse was beating like a piston in his tanned and cologne-scented neck. She breathed in lemon and lime and something else that was elusive and yet potently addictive. ‘What are you afraid of, posh boy?’ Her fingers slipped down from the knot to play with the end of his tie like a mean cat with a mouse’s tail. ‘That this time around I might prove to be irresistible?’
She heard his jaw lock. Heard his teeth grind. Saw his pupils flare as his eyes flicked to her mouth for a nanosecond.
‘I can resist you.’ His voice was so deep and so husky it sounded
