James clenched his jaw. He knew she was deliberately baiting him. It was her favourite pastime. But it annoyed him that she seemed not to be the least worried or conflicted by their situation. She wanted him and she’d got him. The trap had been set on day one and, like a fool, he had stepped into it. Now she was playing the hired hooker to make him squirm with guilt. She was well aware of how much he hated the thought of being compared to his father, of being tarred with the same cheap, dirty little brush. She was well aware of it and was maximising it for...for what? More money? Revenge? Just for the sheer heck of it? Didn’t her behaviour prove how little she cared for him as a person? She was in it for what she could get and was shamelessly brazen about it.
‘You are currently my fiancée,’ he said. ‘That’s what the press thinks and I want them to continue to think it until such time as I inform them otherwise. Understood?’
She gave him a mercurial smile. ‘Then you’d better get a wriggle on and buy me a big, expensive ring or no one will believe you.’
James muttered an expletive under his breath. ‘Be ready by lunchtime. If we can’t drive out I’ll hire a helicopter to fly us out.’
CHAPTER TEN
AIESHA DECIDED JAMES’S anger was a good thing. He kept his distance on the trip over to Paris, barely speaking a word to her, keeping himself busy with his laptop, as if they were two strangers travelling together. But that was fine by her as she needed time to regroup. It was becoming confusing to be playing one role while feeling something else. Feeling was something she wasn’t used to doing. Feeling was dangerous. Attachment was dangerous. Bonding was dangerous. She could be physical with someone without emotional engagement.
Of course she could.
Men did it all the time. Sex was a physical need like any other. She was not going to be stupid and fall in love. Not with James. Not with the one man who would never love her back. Why would he? She had all but destroyed his precious family. She knew he wasn’t close to his father, but a relationship with her was only going to make his relationship with him so much worse.
His mother, Louise, might accept her but even that was stretching a dream way too far. The world Aiesha came from was so disparate, so foreign, so totally alien it was as if she had come from another universe. How could the chasm ever be breached? Everyone would look down on her, watching for her to make a slip-up. To say something she shouldn’t say. To wear something not quite appropriate. To bring more shame and disgrace on the Challender name.
It was stupid to think of a future with James. He would never allow himself to love someone so unsuitable. She was a lounge singer from Sin City. Fairy-tale endings didn’t happen to girls like her.
And the sooner she accepted it the better.
The press didn’t show up until they arrived at the boutique hotel, a short walking distance from the Eiffel Tower. James took Aiesha’s hand and led her through the foyer, answering in fluent French the barrage of questions from the crush of journalists and photographers. From her limited grasp of the language, Aiesha was able to pick up one or two phrases that communicated James’s delight at their engagement and how he was looking forward to their wedding at some point during the year. He even managed to get her to the private lift to the penthouse floor without losing his urbane smile.
But once the doors closed he dropped his arm from around her waist and let out a stiff curse. ‘This is ridiculous. How long are they going to hound us like this? It’s not as if we’re celebrities. Why are they so interested in us?’
Aiesha leaned against the waist-height brass rail on the wall of the lift. ‘You’re rich. You’re handsome. People want to know what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.’
He pushed a hand through his hair, his frown formidably dark. Aiesha knew he hated all the press attention because it made him appear like his father, holing up in a hotel with his latest lover. James was so private about his life it would torture him to have his every move anticipated and speculated and commented on. Her presence in his life was only intensifying that speculation. Was that why he was so brooding and prickly now they were back in the spotlight? At Lochbannon he could temporarily forget about the rest of the world, but now the world was after him for an exclusive on his engagement and wedding plans. No wonder he was looking antsy and conflicted. Which made her all the more determined to show she wasn’t...even though she was. Desperately.
‘I’ve organised an outfit for you to wear for the dinner tomorrow night and one for this evening,’ he said into the silence. ‘I’ve also arranged for a jeweller to bring some samples of rings to our room.’ He pushed his sleeve back to glance at his watch with a preoccupied frown. ‘He should be here in a couple of hours.’