Aiesha laughed off his assessment of her but she worried he had seen too much. Knew too much. Sensed too much. She prided herself on being hard to read. No one got under her guard. No one ambushed her emotionally. Not even smarmy Antony had engaged her emotions. She had seen him as a means to an end—a first class ticket out of Vegas.
But James Challender wasn’t like other men. He was not easily manipulated. He didn’t lie and cheat and lather on the charm to get his own way.
He didn’t fight dirty.
He didn’t play dirty.
She wanted to keep things physical between them but he kept pushing against her emotional armour. He wanted to uncover her. To expose her. To know her. The thought terrified her. Opening up to someone, laying it all bare was what weak people did. She was strong. Resilient. Self-sufficient. She relied on her wits and her body to get where she wanted to go. Her heart was not up for sale. ‘You like playing, too, don’t you, James? You want to play so bad.’
His eyes dipped to her mouth. She could read the battle playing out on his face. He wanted her but he was fighting it every step of the way. He took a deep breath and dropped his hold as he stepped back from her. ‘I’m going out.’
‘But it’s snowing.’
He gave her a black look over his shoulder as he left. ‘Good.’
* * *
James drew in a deep draught of icy air but it didn’t do much to quell the fire of wanting burning in his flesh. It was like trying to extinguish a wind-driven wildfire by spitting on it. Aiesha was living, breathing dynamite when she put her mind and body to it. He was hanging on to his self-control by a gossamer thread. He had never wanted anyone the way he wanted her. It was all he could think of—how he wanted her. Ached for her. Needed her. Hungered for her. Every sultry look she gave him made him throb with intense longing. She was the ultimate tease, ramping up his need every chance she could, switching tactics so deftly he didn’t know what to expect from her next. Temptress or doe-eyed innocent. Wild-child whore or lost waif. She did them all so well.
Last night had revealed a tiny chink in her armour but she was back to business now. He didn’t like being played. He didn’t like being a pawn in one of her mischief-making games. She got way too much power by playing the vamp. He had tried to get under her guard, to see the girl behind the mask, but she had pulled the curtain on him.
But he had seen enough to make him want to see more.
She had no close friends. She holidayed alone. She had taken the rap for a scandal caused by a wandering husband who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. She had lost her job and pretended it didn’t matter.
She composed music that was hauntingly beautiful for someone who had clearly meant a great deal to her....
Had anyone else heard that poignant piece of music? The depth of emotion in those few bars he’d heard had stopped him in his tracks. He could have listened to her for hours. She had looked so absorbed, so in the moment, she’d seemed to be lost in an internal world in which the music was somehow translating emotions she dared not or would not voice aloud. Those rising and falling cadences, those heartstring-pulling minor chords were still playing in his head, moving him, and haunting him still. The way the rhythm flowed, paused, and flowed again. But he had a feeling that particular piece was something she kept private. Why else had she looked so annoyed when he’d disturbed her?
There was so much about Aiesha he didn’t know. There was so much she kept hidden.
There was so much he wanted to discover.
She was complicated and contrary. Beguiling and bewitching and beautiful and bold and brazen. Maddening.
And yet...likeable.
His instincts had been right. She had been genuinely upset after her knockout blow to his nose. Even though she tried her best to hide it, her gaze kept going to his black eye with a little flicker of concern. He saw the way she chewed at the inside of her mouth when she thought he wasn’t looking. The way she deliberately tried to seduce him, but then pulled back whenever he took the lead. What was that all about?
James turned up his coat collar against the snow. He shoved his hands into his pockets and frowned.
It would be dangerous but he would have to get even closer to her to find out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AIESHA WAS TRYING to get to Archie in time... She was running as hard and as fast as she could but her legs were useless, powerless. They were shaking so much they felt as if they were made of overcooked spaghetti. Fear clotted the blood in her veins, it stole the oxygen from her lungs, it churned her stomach contents, liquefied and soured them in panic. She got a little closer. But then she stumbled over someone’s skateboard, fell to her knees, her arms reaching out, her voice hoarse from screaming, ‘Noooo!’
Aiesha sat bolt upright in bed, her throat raw from gasping and her chest pounding so hard she could hear the echo of it in her ears. The sound of her ragged breathing was deafening in the dead silence of the night.
She hadn’t screamed out loud...or at least she didn’t think so. Her room was a fair distance from James’s and there was no sound of him stirring. There was no sound of a door opening. No footsteps running down the passage. No voice calling out to see if she was all right.
She waited in the darkness, poised, tense, agitated.
Long minutes passed.
She lay back down and closed her eyes but it was impossible to relax, let alone sleep with those horrible images flickering behind her eyelids like an old black-and-white film set on permanent replay.
Aiesha threw off the bedcovers and reached for her wrap. A hot drink with a shot of brandy would have to do as James might not appreciate hearing her running through her scales at this hour. She hadn’t seen him since he’d found her playing Archie’s song earlier that day. But she could still feel the impact of his kiss reverberating through her body like the humming of a tuning fork.
When she got to the kitchen, Bonnie got up off her bed and looked up at Aiesha with a sheepish look in her brown eyes, her feathery tail slowly wagging back and forth like a metronome on three-two time.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Aiesha said and reached for the fridge handle. ‘You’ll have to cross your legs or something.’
The dog gave a little whine and padded towards the back door, looking back over her shoulder as if to say, Come on—what’s taking you so long?
Aiesha closed the fridge and put the milk carton on the counter with a muttered curse. ‘How come you don’t use a pet door? I thought golden retrievers were supposed to be smart? You’re the dumbest one I’ve met.’
She opened the back door, wincing as a blast of the icy wind whipped it back against the wall. The dog ambled out, sniffing the ground as she went, looking as if she had all the time in the world. ‘Will you hurry up?’ Aiesha said, shivering as the wind skirted around her bare ankles. ‘Hey, don’t go out of sight. I’m not going looking for you.’
The dog disappeared behind the low hedge that surrounded the vegetable garden. Aiesha swore under her breath as she reached for a jacket hanging by the door. She could smell Louise’s perfume on it and for a moment she felt as if it were Louise herself wrapping her arms around her as she slipped her arms through the sleeves.
She stood for a moment in the darkness, wondering what life would have been like with Louise as her mother. Her music would have been celebrated, encouraged, nurtured... She would have been loved, celebrated, encouraged.
She would have been safe.
She looked up at the night sky, the sprinkling of stars and planets like peepholes in a dark blue velvet blanket. How many times as a child had she looked up there and wished upon a star? Wished for her life to be different? For everything to change?
She sighed and stuffed her feet into a pair of Louise’s boots by the door. But before she had taken two steps the howling wi
nd whipped around again and slammed the door behind her.
‘Shoot!’
* * *
James woke to the sound of a door slamming. He thought he’d locked up everything securely on his last round downstairs. But the house was old and the wind was gale force so it didn’t surprise him that a catch had come loose. He shrugged on a robe and went downstairs. Aiesha’s bedroom door was closed and there was no light on, which meant Sleeping Beauty was fast asleep. He hoped.
When he got to the back door off the kitchen he could hear frantic knocking and swearing. He opened the door to find a shivering Aiesha on the doorstep. She was dressed in one of his mother’s jackets with the hood pulled up over her head. Her body was quaking with cold but her eyes were blazing. She pushed past him with a savage imprecation. ‘Took you long enough.’ She stomped snow all over the floor. ‘That stupid dog needs a tracking device. You go and find her. I’m frozen stiff.’
James caught the jacket midair before it landed on the floor where she’d kicked off the boots. She was in a towering rage, which seemed out of proportion to the circumstances. ‘She won’t stay out long in this wind,’ he said. ‘I didn’t hear her barking to be let out. Did she wake you?’
‘No, I was...already awake.’
Something about her expression was suddenly furtive. Secretive. What had she been doing downstairs in the middle of the night? He narrowed his gaze. She was backed against the kitchen counter, her chin at that defiant height, her cheeks pink from cold or guilt, or both. Suspicion crawled along his skin. Was she putting away a stash of his mother’s jewellery or other valuables for when she left? A little bit here, a little bit there, hiding it away in incremental bits so as not to be detected.
The back of his neck prickled in anger. So this was how she was going to repay his mother for her kindness, was it?
‘What were you doing downstairs at this time of night?’
The pink in her cheeks went a shade darker but her eyes remained diamond-hard. ‘I was getting a drink.’
His gaze briefly went to the milk on the bench. ‘Is that all?’ he asked.
Her brows snapped together and the pink in her cheeks turned red. Angry red. Defensive red. ‘What do you mean, “Is that all?” What—do you think I’m pilfering the silver while you sleep?’ Her eyes flashed at him, her mouth flattening in a whitened line. ‘Why don’t you check each drawer to see if I’ve pinched any of your precious heirlooms?’
She started marching about the kitchen like an angry cop armed with a long-awaited search warrant. Opening cupboards wildly, banging doors, pulling out drawers with savage jerks of her hands. There was an air of mania about her. Of hysteria about to erupt. She pulled open the silverware drawer of the oak sideboard so quickly the contents landed in a clattering, deafening heap on the floor.
She stood looking at the jumbled mess of his mother’s silverware in frozen silence.
And then, right in front of his eyes, she started to crack. It was like watching an ice sculpture fracture, centimetre by centimetre. Her eyes darted and flickered. Her tongue dashed out over her lips. Her stiff angry posture faltered. Her shoulders trembled. Her torso folded. ‘I’m sorry...’ She swallowed and dropped to her knees and began to reach for the silverware but he could see her hands were shaking almost uncontrollably and she barely managed to pick up a teaspoon before it dropped with a ping to the floor.
He crouched down beside her and put a hand over her trembling one. ‘Leave it.’
Her eyes were trained on his chin as if she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze, but her tone was resentful and snarly. ‘Don’t you want to count them?’
Something about her attempt to sound defiant when she was clearly so upset touched him. Ambushed him. She reminded him of a kitten puffing its fur up to look tough against a big scary dog. ‘It can wait.’ He searched her expression for a moment. ‘Hey, are you OK?’
There was a whining at the back door and Aiesha’s mask slipped back on like a glove. ‘You’d better get that. Can’t have your mother’s dog carking it while she’s under your protection, can you?’
It only took James five seconds to let the dog in but when he turned around Aiesha had disappeared.
* * *
Aiesha leant heavily on her bedroom door with bated breath, waiting for the sound of James’s footsteps along the passage. Her heart thudded as each long second passed. What was he thinking of her after that crazy little show? What was he thinking of her brash attitude now she had let it slip? He had seen her at her worst. Out of control. Panicked. Upset. Vulnerable. She had lost it in front of him. She’d acted like some screwed-up nut job, throwing the contents of the kitchen around like one of her creepy mother’s boyfriends in a drunken tantrum.
Would he mock her? Laugh at her?
Or, worse, would he try and understand her? Know her?
Aiesha thought of telling him...of finally being able to share some of the pain she carried like toxic waste in her bones. The shame of her childhood, the sense of being an outsider, the one no one wanted. The crushing weight of guilt she felt about not being able to protect her mother and Archie. The niggling despair that she might never be able to get her life on track. To reach her potential instead of being stymied by her past. How would James react to finding out she was not as tough as she made everyone think? That, underneath the brash facade, she was as sensitive and caring as his mother? Maybe even more so...
She heard the stairs creak as he came up them. She heard each of his footsteps, unhurried, steady and sure. She heard him pause outside her bedroom door. Heard the deep gravel-rough baritone of his voice. ‘Aiesha?’
She clamped her teeth together to stop from calling out to him. She didn’t need his comfort. She didn’t need anyone’s comfort. She had been on her own for the last ten years—for most of her life—and that was the way it was going to stay. So what if she’d got a little panicked over losing the dog in the dark? Big deal. The dog came back. No harm done.
The silence stretched and stretched and stretched along with her held breath. Aiesha wasn’t sure which would break first—the silence or her lungs.
‘Can we talk?’ James said.
She clenched her hands into tight balls of self-containment. No. Go away.
‘What I implied downstairs...’ he paused momentarily ‘...it was uncalled for. I’m sorry.’
Another endless silence passed.
Then she heard him give a long sigh, as if he, too, had been holding his breath too long.
And then she heard the sound of his footsteps as he went further along the passage to his room, and then the soft click of his door closing.
Aiesha squeezed her eyes shut to stop the blinding stinging tears from escaping.
She. Would. Not. Cry.
* * *
When Aiesha looked out of the kitchen window the next morning she saw James clearing the driveway with a shovel. There had been a new fall of snow overnight but the sun was out and shining brightly, giving the wintry scene a sparkling brilliance that was blinding. James looked strong and lean as he loaded each shovel with snow and tossed it aside. He had taken off his coat and worked in his shirt and sweater. Even through the layers of fabric she could see the play of his muscles. He wasn’t the gym-rat type but he still looked good. Damn good. He dug the shovel in the snow again and again, tossing its load to the side in a mechanical fashion, his brow deeply furrowed as if he was mulling over something...her, most probably.
Was he thinking she was a tantrum-throwing child in a woman’s body? Was he thinking she was in need of a psychiatrist’s couch? Was he thinking she was in need of a straitjacket?
She gritted her teeth. Best to get it over with. No point hiding away from him. If he mocked her then she would mock him right on back.
She pulled on her coat and mittens and wrapped a scarf aroun
d her neck. The cold air hit her face like the slap of an icy hand across her cheeks. She drew the scarf closer and wandered over to where James was shovelling with such vigour. ‘Looking for my buried stash?’
He stopped shovelling to look at her with a rueful expression. ‘I suppose I deserve that.’ His eyes moved over her face as if searching for something. ‘Are you OK?’
She made her gaze as direct and steely as she could. ‘Never better.’
He gave a slow nod, which she took as an acknowledgement of her decision not to mention her meltdown episode last night. He went back to the task at hand, shovelling the snow. Shoosh. Whoosh. Plop. Spade after spade. Aiesha got the impression he was trying to distract himself from her presence. Did she disgust him? Did she repulse him with her out-of-control behaviour? Was that why he was keeping himself so busy? He didn’t want to be with her. He didn’t desire her now he knew how childish she could be. Fine.
‘The forecast is improving,’ he said without looking her way. ‘We should be out of here by Friday. Maybe even earlier if the snowploughs come this way.’
She folded her arms. ‘We?’
He paused his shovelling to look at her. ‘You’ll have to come with me to Paris. I have a meeting with a client.’
She frowned at him. ‘Hang on a minute. You said you were coming up here for a week and that what’s-her-name was joining you at the weekend. Why the sudden rush off to Paris?’
‘My client wants to go over the plans I’ve drawn up.’
‘Why can’t you email them to him?’
‘He prefers to meet in person,’ he said. ‘He’s old-fashioned that way. Besides, he wants to meet you.’
‘Why on earth would he want to meet me?’
His look was still inscrutable. ‘You’re my fiancée, remember?’ He went back to shovelling. ‘We’ll stay at a boutique hotel in Montmartre. There’s a fund-raising dinner being held there for one of the charities my client is involved in.’
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