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 as if it had been scraped along a rough surface and only just survived the journey.
Aiesha looked at the dark pinpricks of regrowth surrounding his mouth and chin. He had a strong, uncompromising mouth, his top lip neatly sculpted, but his lower lip was fuller, rich with sensual promise. Something unfurled deep and low inside her belly, like a satin ribbon running away from its spool.