James straightened from ruffling the dog’s ears to give her a sardonic look. ‘Running away from another scandal, are we?’
Her lips tightened, her eyes burning with the dislike she had always assaulted him with. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know. It’s been in every paper and newsfeed.’
Was there anyone who didn’t know? The news of her affair with a married politician in the U.S. had gone viral. James had pointedly ignored it, or tried to. But then some unscrupulous newshound had unearthed Aiesha’s role in the break-up of his parents’ marriage. It had only been a sentence or two and not every paper or newsfeed ran with it, but the shame and embarrassment he had been trying to put behind him for a decade was back with a vengeance.
But what else could he expect? Aiesha was a wild child who attracted scandal and had been from the moment his mother had brought her home from the back streets of London as a teenage runaway. She was a smart-mouthed little guttersnipe who deliberately created negative drama, even for the people who tried to help her. His mother had been badly let down by Aiesha’s disreputable behaviour in the past, which was why he was puzzled that she had allowed her to come and stay now. Why would his mother invite the unscrupulous girl who had stolen not only heirloom jewellery from her, but tried to steal her husband from her, as well?
James shrugged off his coat to hang it in the cupboard in the hall. ‘Married men are a particular obsession of yours, are they not?’
He felt the stab of those grey eyes drilling between his shoulder blades. He felt the sudden kick of his pulse. He got a thrill out of seeing her rattled by him. He was the only person she couldn’t hide her true colours from. She was a true chameleon, changing to serve her interests, laying on the charm when it suited her, reeling in her next victim, enjoying the game of slaying yet another heart and wallet.
But he was immune. He’d seen her for what she was right from the start. She might have got rid of her East End accent and chain-store clothes, but underneath she was a pickpocket whose aim in life was to sleep her way to the top. Her latest victim was a U.S. senator whose career and marriage were unravelling as a result. The press had captured a damning shot of her leaving his suite at the Vegas hotel where she worked as a lounge singer.
‘No one must know I’m here,’ she said. ‘Do you understand? No one.’
James turned from neatly arranging the sleeves of his coat to face her. She was still looking at him with hatred but something else moved in her gaze, a flicker of uncertainty, or was it fear? She quickly disguised it, however. She jutted her chin and flattened those delectably full lips. Her mouth had always fascinated him. Ripe and soft and full, a mouth built for sin and sex and seduction. There was nothing innocent about her mouth or her body. She was a five-foot-eight knockout package of sinuous catlike curves that could wrap around a man until he was strangled by his need of her.
And she knew it.
James moved past her to stride to the warmth of the sitting room. Thinking about that mouth was a bad move. He could practically feel those plump lips clasped around him, drawing on him until he went weak at the knees. He suppressed a shudder of traitorous desire. He would not think about that mouth. He would not think about that body. He would not think of the lust that burned inside him.
‘No one will find you here because you’re not staying.’
She followed him into the sitting room, her bare feet padding over the Persian carpet like the paws of a light-footed lioness. ‘You can’t throw me out. This is your mother’s house, not yours.’ She stood with her arms folded across her chest, looking exactly like she had a decade ago, all pouty, sulky teenager even though she was now twenty-five years old.
He let his gaze run over her in a leisurely sweep as if inspecting a cheap and tawdry item he had no intention of buying. ‘Pack your bags and get out.’
She slitted her eyes like a wildcat staring down a wolf. ‘I’m not leaving.’
James felt his blood skip and then roar through his veins. It thickened in his groin, reigniting the embers of a fire that had never quite been extinguished. He hated himself for it. He saw it as a weakness. It reduced him to the baseness of a wild animal with no other instinct than to mate with whatever willing female was available.
He wasn’t cut from the same low-quality cloth as his father. He could control his impulses. Aiesha had tried her seduction routine on him ten years ago but he hadn’t taken the bait.
And he wasn’t going to take it now.
‘I’m expecting a guest,’ he said.