Caught in His Gilded World

by Lucy Ellis

  The lowest common denominator was not going to save this theatre or their jobs.

  Khaled Kitaev didn’t care about the cabaret. He had no stake in it. He’d won the thing in a card game. All he cared about was the bottom line. Specifically at the moment that bottom being Solange’s, but Gigi could well imagine him cutting a swathe through the other bottoms of the troupe. There were some very shapely bottoms.

  Gigi swished her plumage-heavy tail like a haughty lyrebird and took off after the other girls.

  She would see about that.

  * * *

  ‘Mademoiselle...?’

  ‘Valente.’

  ‘Mademoiselle, I’m afraid I cannot give you the information you seek. At the Plaza Athénée we value our guests’ right to privacy.’

  The concierge gave her that bland smile peculiar to people in his job all over the world. Only somehow the Frenchman managed to add that extra little soupçon of superiority.

  Gigi knew her bad accent wasn’t helping. She should have brought Lulu along this morning. Lulu was half-French, and her big brown Audrey Hepburn eyes and air of delicate femininity made grown men trip over themselves to help her out. With her propensity to help herself and make a mess of it, Gigi found she was mostly sidelined and all too frequently laughed at.

  Still, you could only work with what you’d got, and given she’d left her flat in such a hurry this morning she’d left off her make-up, and with her hair still damp and messy from being dunked in the sink, it wasn’t exaggerating to say she currently had the sex appeal of an otter.

  ‘But how am I supposed to reach him?’ she tried again.

  ‘Mademoiselle could try the telephone.’

  ‘You’ll give me his number?’

  ‘Non, I would assume that as you are the friend you say you are, you will have it.’

  ‘I’m not his friend, exactly,’ Gigi prevaricated, and because she had a detestation of lies and subterfuge, having seen the chaos her father left in his wake, she opted for the truth. ‘I’m his employee. I’m a showgirl at L’Oiseau Bleu.’

  For the first time the concierge looked directly at her instead of addressing that distant spot beyond her shoulder.

  ‘Vous êtes une showgirl?’

  She relaxed. Everyone loved a showgirl. It was like carrying a great big shiny key to the city.

  ‘Oui, m’sieur.’

  The concierge leaned closer. ‘Is it true, then? The barbarian is at the gate?’

  What gate? It took Gigi a moment to catch on. She’d forgotten in the other girls’ excitement that most of Paris shared her misgivings about the ‘foreign usurper’. Giving it her best, I’m as distressed as you are look, she manufactured a theatrical sigh. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Dieu sauver la France!’ He crossed himself.

  Gigi tried not to let her surprise show. Given she was the one with her job at risk, it was odd how personally the Parisian in the street was taking the new ownership of L’Oiseau Bleu.

  Perhaps if those same people transformed their outrage into actually coming to a show and pushing up box office receipts they’d have a chance of survival. Blaming the newcomer on the scene—even if he was a Russian oligarch with questionable intentions—didn’t seem quite fair.

  But she didn’t hesitate to press her advantage—it was one of the few things she had learned from her father that she could use.

  ‘Quite. Now, can I have that room number?’

  The concierge looked most sympathetic. ‘Non,’ he said.

  Gigi didn’t push it. She turned around, her shoulders sinking, and as she wondered if she should leave a message for him, which would probably go unread, everything changed.

  Khaled Kitaev had just entered the lobby.

  He was looking at his phone, which gave her the moment she needed to pull herself together, although the aggression in his body language should have had her second-guessing her decision even to try this.

  Be brave, Gigi, she lectured herself. You’ve had more auditions than hot meals. It’s just another audition... Only this was possibly her last chance, and it could all go so horribly wrong.

  As he strode towards her she took in the unruly dark hair, the beard that framed his beautiful face and enhanced that whole macho thing he was into.

  It was working. Women’s heads were turning as if they were EMF devices, picking up on his frequency, and not a few men were looking him up and down as they reconsidered the suits they’d so carefully dressed in this morning.

  It took a lot of machismo and confidence to render a pair of trainers, sweat pants and a long grey T-shirt with some indecipherable Cyrillic lettering on it stylish against the luxury of the hotel’s interior and its swish inhabitants, but Khaled Kitaev pulled it off. Everyone else just looked wrong.

  He was coming right for her.

  There was no hiding now.

  Think about what you’re going to say. Be polite. Be professional.

  She took some deep calming breaths.

  Have some of your material ready. But don’t shove it at him. Be friendly, but formal.

  She wasn’t sure how she’d manage friendly but formal.

  He looked up from his phone and at the concierge. All the nearby hotel staff had leapt to attention. He lowered the phone long enough to ask for two brand-new laptops to be sent up to his suite.

  ‘Landslide?’ he growled into the phone. ‘There’s one a day in that part of the world. Get a bulldozer in there and clear the damn thing.’

  Gigi observed this exchange with pulse-raised interest, flinching a little as she watched his hand flatten to its full wingspan dimensions on the desk, so close to her she could have reached out and touched it. But she was glad she didn’t when he fired some aggressive Russian into the ear of whoever was on the other end of his call. Maybe now wasn’t a good time...

  * * *

  Khaled slammed his hand against the nearest solid surface. He couldn’t believe it. Another meeting pushed back by the village council. Another surveyor’s report held up because of a landslide.

  He wouldn’t put it past the clan elders to plant a stick of dynamite into the escarpment and bring down half the mountain onto the highway below just to damn well spite him. Two years and he was no closer to putting that road in.

  No road—no resort.

  How many people had he sent into the gorge to explain the benefits a new infrastructure would bring? Any infrastructure in a corner of the world where the men still herded sheep on horseback. Always there was the same response: initial agreement, new contracts drawn up and then at the last minute something would interfere.

  When he had spoken with the clan council they had taken him to task about his Russian investors and the lack of consultation. Khaled had stood, arms folded, at the back of the low dark room that served as a community hall in the town and refused to react or engage.

  All he had seen was the memory of his stepfather’s eyes, narrow like slits, as he beat him with a piece of horse tack as if that would make him less another man’s son.

  Unable to withstand the brutality of the memory, without a word Khaled had walked out into the bright daylight, jumped into his truck and driven out of the valley. His last communication with the council was when he was much further north, flying over the Pechora Sea, inspecting a Kitaev oil platform, and a message had been sent to him via his lawyers.

  Where is your home? Where is your wife? Where are your children? When you have these things come to us in the proper way and we will talk.

  In other words, Respect our customs and we’ll see it your way.

  Customs... He was a modern man, and he had made his fortune in a modern world—he wasn’t entering into that kind of old-world game-playing...

  He turned away from the desk, snapping his phone clo
sed, catching his elbow on someone’s round, firm...

  ‘Ow!’

  He looked down and golden-lashed blue eyes turned up to his like searchlights, complete with a little scowl that brought her fine coppery brows together and formed a knot.

  ‘You...’ he said, clearing his throat.

  ‘Yes, me!’ Her low-pitched, softly accented voice was like Irish whisky—unexpected in a girl so slight and young. She had one hand clamped over her breast and was tenderly massaging the area, her expression pained.

  ‘Forgive me.’ His gaze dipped to what little he could see, given her hand was stashed under her jacket.

  When she’d pulled out that bit of libel yesterday she’d flashed a purple bra cup and the swell of a firm milk-pale breast marked on the gentle upper slope by a single dark brown freckle. It was a freckle he’d had on his mind ever since.

  Only today she appeared to be wearing some kind of pink T-shirt, high-necked, completely unrevealing, along with jeans and a blue wool jacket.

  She’d also ditched the pigtails, and her hair hung heavily over her shoulders—coppery red, long, thick and wavy...messy, if you got down to it. Sexy.

  Sexy he didn’t need. For one thing, he was signing her pay cheques. Ostensibly. Although he’d seen how much those girls were paid. He’d laid down more on a tie than on her monthly wage.

  All the more reason to keep moving...

  Which he did.

  * * *

  Gigi watched him walk away from her without another word, as if their encounter had never happened. She tried not to be offended. She’d pretty much expected it would take some effort. After all, she wasn’t sexy Solange, offering who knew what? She was woman-on-a-mission Gigi, offering flyers and a presentation.

  Not that he knew that. But she guessed he only needed a glance to work out the difference between them.

  Nevertheless, she hurried after him, swinging her backpack forward over one shoulder and rummaging inside for the vintage-style flyers she’d brought to show him—evidence of how classy the Bluebird had once been and could be again.

  He’d see that she was serious and had done her research, and he might sit down and talk to her.

  She was right behind him when there was a whoosh of movement in the air beside her—and for the second time in as many days Gigi found herself on the floor, the stuffing knocked out of her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A MALE VOICE GRUNTED, ‘Do not move.’

  Gigi didn’t think she’d be moving. No, not moving at all. She was too stunned to do anything other than lie there, even once the knee resting on the base of her spine was gone and her arms, which had been pinned to her sides, were once more her own.

  She only began to react when she was being hauled—not ungently—to her feet. She swayed as blood rushed back into her head and an arm came around her waist to support her. She staggered, and her nose and forehead banged against a hard male chest. She inhaled faint spicy aftershave and heat.

  Gigi edged up her chin and her gaze locked on eyes so lustrously dark it was like being dropped into a hot, dark night.

  The world shrank down to his thick, steady heartbeat and her short, rapid breaths.

  He was speaking to her, but it was like being underwater. All she could make out was that no one was attacking her and the big male arms clamped around her felt like protection.

  Which was when she spotted a gorilla—the same one who had knocked her down—turning out her backpack.

  It was a replay of her worst memory.

  Her limbs exploded and she desperately tried to free herself.

  ‘‘That’s mine! Give me back my things! You have no right to touch my things!’

  She made a hopeless grab for it, but Khaled Kitaev had hold of her elbow.

  ‘Calm down, dushka.’

  She wasn’t going to calm down! The last time she’d had her belongings confiscated she’d had handcuffs slapped on her wrists and spent a night in the cells, thanks to her dad.

  She struggled, but his strength was all over hers. Gigi lashed out with her elbow and struck him in the chest. Unlike her own chest there was nothing soft and tender about it—instead there was considerable muscle and definition and she only jarred her shoulder.

  ‘That’s enough!’

  She stopped flailing long enough for him to release her. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with hands that were shaking uncontrollably. So much for being professional. Both of them.

  ‘Mr Kitaev, do we have a problem?’

  The discreet enquiry was made by the concierge she had spoken to earlier. He materialised at her side, every inch the gatekeeper for the wealthy and influential. Gigi’s insides turned to liquid.

  Khaled saw the effect on Red. She looked as if he was about to throw her to the lions.

  ‘Nichevo. No problem. A slight misunderstanding.’

  ‘Yes, sir, these things can happen. But the young lady—’

  ‘Mademoiselle Valente,’ said Khaled smoothly, and her name was right there, given he’d just happened to take a look at her file last night, ‘is my guest.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  ‘My security team didn’t recognise her and were over-zealous. I apologise for the inconvenience to your other guests.’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Kitaev.’ But the concierge continued to regard Red with interest.

  The look on her face had been comic in its alarm and indecision as she followed this exchange, but now as they both turned their attention her way she visibly pulled herself together.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said gamely. ‘I’m here to speak to him.’

  Him being the hotel’s highest paying guest.

  Khaled fully expected the staff to evaporate, but to his credit the concierge lingered. ‘Are you certain, mademoiselle?’

  The hectic look on her face was ebbing away as she appeared to realise that the hotel management was offering her real assistance and not showing her the door.

  She nodded slowly, and added, ‘Merci beaucoup,’ with an almost comically sincere look on her face, even as her eyes kept zoning in on her backpack.

  Khaled gave it a light shake.

  What did she have in there? The Crown Jewels? A nuclear weapon? After her little display, neither would have truly surprised him.

  ‘You’re not hurt?’ he asked as the hotel staff evaporated back into the luxurious fittings.

  ‘No,’ she huffed, looking around as if expecting another attack. ‘No thanks to your lunatic friends.’

  ‘Bodyguards.’

  She blinked, clearly not familiar with the concept.

  ‘They are employed to look to my safety.’

  ‘Why?’

  Why...? Khaled wasn’t often asked this question. Usually people were calling him sir and getting out of his way. ‘It is common in my line of business.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘Yes, well, you need to put them on a leash.’

  Struggling manfully with a desire to throw back his head and laugh, Khaled murmured, ‘I apologise unreservedly. It was an unforgivable breach of your human rights.’

  She eyed him suspiciously. ‘You don’t sound particularly sincere.’

  Was she going to argue with him about this too?

  ‘I guess you’re having some fun at my expense,’ she allowed slowly.

  Unexpectedly he remembered the lack of support given to her by the other dancers yesterday, and the laughter that greeted her pronouncements.

  ‘My papa used to say all I needed was a curly wig and a red nose and I’d have a new job.’

  He frowned. ‘Most fathers think their daughters are princesses.’

  Gigi wondered if being seventeen years old and dancing onstage in a costume made of balloons sh
e’d strategically popped with five other girls, until she was virtually down to her little yellow bikini, while her father systematically fleeced the audience had an attendant fairy tale.

  ‘My father raised me to live in the real world,’ she said uncomfortably, darting another glance at her backpack. Was he ever going to give it back?

  Following her gaze, he proffered it. ‘I believe this belongs to you?’

  She was obviously trying not to appear too eager but she still snatched at it, and clearly couldn’t help plastering it to her chest.

  ‘So, does this happen to you all the time? Bodyguards leaping out and knocking people over?’

  ‘You were coming towards me and you’d reached into your bag.’

  She frowned. ‘Why is that a problem?’

  He made a trigger gesture with his hand.

  Her frown deepened.

  ‘A gun,’ he clarified.

  ‘A gun?’ Her voice rose. ‘They thought I had a gun!’ This notion was clearly as foreign to her as the French language she was so deliciously butchering with her accent.

  A passing couple stared at them and she shut up.

  Khaled tried not to smile.

  ‘I really don’t see that there’s anything funny about this,’ she said tightly.

  ‘Nyet—nothing funny.’

  ‘I didn’t come to shoot you—obviously. I came to speak to you about the cabaret.’

  There was an awkward silence as he just looked at her.

  She tried again.

  ‘I know it’s unorthodox, but I figured as we’d met...’

  He folded his arms. ‘I remember you lying on the floor.’

  Gigi wondered whether, if she’d been lying on the floor right now, he would have stepped over her and kept going. Probably.

  She reviewed her options. She’d gone over it with Lulu last night and decided her best hope of success was to bring all the material she’d compiled on the cabaret’s star-studded history and her ideas for its future and lay it before him.

  Be confident. Make an appeal to his better nature and leave any mention of Solange out of it. The last had been Lulu’s firm instruction.