Aiesha suppressed an involuntary shiver. She wasn’t interested in being overcome with passion. Unlike most women, she could always separate sex from emotion. She could get down and dirty, but her heart and her head were never in it, only her body. Her body had needs and she saw to them if and when the right opportunity came along.
But something warned her about getting physical with James Challender, like a foghorn sounding in the distance. She couldn’t put her finger on it, or describe it accurately, but she knew if she stepped over the boundary of becoming involved with him sexually then it might not just be her body that would receive him.
No one but no one had access to her heart and she was going to keep it that way.
His slate-blue eyes seared hers. ‘How long have you been in contact with my mother?’
Aiesha held his accusing look with a defiant hoist of her chin. ‘She wrote to me the year after her divorce from your father was finalised.’
His brows snapped together. ‘You’ve been in contact that long?’
‘On and off.’
‘But...but why?’
Aiesha had been surprised by Louise’s first phone call eight years ago. With the benefit of hindsight and a little more maturity, she knew she had acted appallingly to the only person who had ever shown her a shred of genuine affection.
Louise Challender had always wanted a daughter; she was the type of woman who should have had a brood of children to love and nurture, and yet she’d been unable to have another child after giving birth to James. It had put an enormous strain on her marriage to Clifford, but then Clifford wasn’t the type of man who 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.