Caught in His Gilded World

by Lucy Ellis

  ‘I tried out.’

  ‘Did you mention your mother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nepotism.’

  She put her hands on her hips. ‘I’ll have you know I’m the best showgirl they’ve got. I earned my place on talent alone.’

  He tried not to smile, given she’d unintentionally stuck her chest out. He was tempted to point out that a significant part of her job relied on the talent that filled out her bra, but their interaction could only go downhill from that point.

  She clearly prided herself on her job.

  ‘Then you should have no problem with the Lido.’

  Gigi made an exasperated sound.

  They were going round in circles and, he recognised, they were talking about different things. Her heart was in L’Oiseau Bleu.

  But Gigi’s loyalty was misplaced and she couldn’t see it. He suspected she was blinded by that photograph on the wall upstairs.

  She was trying to reclaim something that had never existed instead of looking at the facts.

  He had always looked long and hard at the reality of things.

  The fatherless boy who wasn’t wanted had hardened into a man who understood that human relationships would always fail you. What you could rely upon was money in the bank and the things you built with your own hands.

  But it was proving difficult to dwell on the harsh reality of things with Gigi standing in front of him, vibrating with passion and determination to have her way.

  Khaled recognised that he was possibly behaving like every other man who’d crossed her path—being foolishly helpful towards her because he was slightly bowled over by her personality.

  She did offer a powerful punch of sex appeal.

  It was nicely packaged too, in tight jeans, and advertised with that glittery slogan stretched across her perky breasts.

  He was tempted to give way to instinct and just take her. Throw her over his shoulder and get the hell out of Paris.

  It was what his ancestors would have done.

  It wouldn’t be what she wanted. She was clearly happy where she was, but what she wanted was the impossible.

  Even if he recharged the cabaret’s batteries with money there were so many other variables to consider.

  When he was younger he’d thought money and success would shift things, make life somehow easier. Naturally the little things, like domestic service—knowing that his clothes would always be pressed, a car waiting for him—made the wheels turn smoother, but the bigger tests in life remained. They just assumed larger and in some cases—as in this weekend in Paris—absurd proportions.

  He was being attacked for being moneyed and successful and foreign.

  But you couldn’t change what people had decided to think about you.

  He knew that better than most.

  It was a fact he was fighting right now, in his efforts to get that road in down south.

  He exhaled, the weight of the world shifting once more onto his shoulders and the weariness he’d been keeping at bay with work making itself known. Truth be told, he wouldn’t mind just climbing into bed with Gigi for a week in this little flat in Montmartre. Ditch the friend and any reminders of the cabaret and work out this scorching lust until both of them were exhausted and he was bored and it was time to move on.

  His gaze ran over her creamy freckle-dappled skin, the curve of her lower lip, noticed the faint blush of colour in her cheeks. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Keep offstage tonight—do that for me.’

  Gigi muttered something about pay being docked and Paris being an expensive city.

  He wanted to shake her.

  He wanted even more to slide his hand around her sinuous waist under the T-shirt and feel her body temperature rise, to have the points of her breasts brush against him and take her mouth and plunder it until she was making those sounds he suspected would rise tenfold when he was inside her.

  Instead, what he said was, ‘I’ll put in a word. When you get an audition, take it.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  KHALED MIGHT HAVE had a point about staying offstage, but for an entirely different reason, Gigi realised that evening as she faced twenty-two hostile dancers in the narrow confines of the dressing room.

  ‘You sold us out, you cow,’ said Leah.

  They had just come offstage, and Gigi found herself surrounded by a lot of hot, riled-up girls who’d had to run the same gauntlet of media she had when they’d come in tonight. The atmosphere was slightly hysterical, to say the least.

  ‘What happened to all that talk about him being the enemy?’ demanded Trixie.

  ‘You just wanted him for yourself,’ said Adele.

  ‘It’s always the quiet ones,’ said Solange, narrowing her green eyes, and there was a lot of murmuring in agreement.

  Gigi folded her arms. ‘Well, that’s not true—I never shut up!’

  Her attempt to lighten the mood went nowhere.

  ‘Quiet, Valente. You’re in trouble,’ said Susie, levelling her with a look. ‘We all know what’s going on out front, and you can bet the headlines tomorrow aren’t going to be about the show. It’ll be wall-to-wall reports on how the Bluebirds are giving it up to the billionaire.’

  ‘What did he promise you?’ Inez wanted to know.

  Gigi’s mind flashed to the Lido and she reddened.

  ‘After everything you said, Gigi!’ cried Trixie reproachfully. ‘I can’t believe you’d sell us out.’

  ‘I didn’t! I tried to get him on side.’

  ‘It’s one rule for her, girls, and one for us,’ said Leah contemptuously.

  ‘I’ve got a bloody audition at the Moulin Rouge next week,’ said Susie suddenly. ‘If this stuffs it up for me I’m coming after you, Valente.’

  ‘The Moulin Rouge?’ chorused several of the girls, heads turning.

  ‘Why?’ piped up Adele.

  ‘Why do you think?’ Susie folded her arms. ‘Gigi’s right about one thing: this ship’s going down fast. Probably a lot faster now, with half of the French media out front, zeroing in on what a hokey show we put on. Add in the hated Russian owner living it up in a hotel with one of the Bluebirds and we’re the joke of Paris!’

  ‘What’s she talking about?’ asked Trixie. ‘We’ve got a full house tonight.’

  ‘That’s only tonight,’ Susie scoffed. ‘Kitaev isn’t going to hang on to us. He’ll hand this place over to the Conseil de Paris, it’ll be heritage-listed and you know what that means—we’ll all be out on our derrières.’

  Gigi frowned. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘What else is he going to do? He won’t be able to sell the place now. We’re a joke.’

  The other girls were humming with consternation. A couple were glaring at Susie, but Gigi knew she wasn’t off the hook.

  Sensing the shift in hostility, Susie turned her way again and looked her up and down contemptuously. ‘You, Valente, have turned us into a joke. Why don’t you ask your new boyfriend what he’s got planned, Gigi? Or are you too busy dropping your knickers for him at the Plaza Athénée?’

  Heads swivelled Gigi’s way again, effectively pushing Susie’s defection to the side—which had clearly been her intention.

  Gigi almost told them that her knickers had stayed very firmly in place, only that wasn’t entirely true. They’d slipped... But she didn’t want to think about that right now.

  Fed up, she picked up her things and shouldered her way out of the room. At least she’d tried!

  Barricading herself in the second dressing room, she checked her phone. She’d been too chicken until now. For good reason, it turned out. The girls were right. It was all over the internet. Photos of her and Khaled in the street, an ‘eyewitness account’ of them in the lobby of his hotel. Even a shot of
him climbing into his car on her street.

  Kitaev and feathered friend!

  No wonder those journalists had been yelling her name out front.

  Gigi said a bad word and shoved her phone into her change bag.

  Wonderful. She was officially the Bluebird who’d sold out—not just in the eyes of her troupe mates but in the opinion of the rest of Paris!

  It was all she could think about as she waited in the wings for her next cue.

  Because right now she had to go out there and perform in front of people who believed she was some sort of Mata Hari. What on earth did people think? That she’d traded sexual favours for...what? Job security?

  A sort of shock was stealing over her. She’d had such good intentions, and yet in the span of a single day she’d lost everyone’s respect, probably her job, and risked any future jobs. And what happened to the cabaret was anyone’s guess.

  It wasn’t Khaled’s fault. Gigi knew she’d walked into this on her own two feet. But as she did her best not to fall apart so close to stage time she couldn’t help feeling his exit this afternoon meant she’d been hung out to dry.

  * * *

  ‘I’m looking for Gigi Valente,’ Khaled told the first stagehand he found.

  The kid just stared at him, bug-eyed. ‘She’s j-just gone onstage, Mr Kitaev,’ he stammered.

  His driver hadn’t been able to get the SUV within a block of the entrance to the theatre tonight. There were protesters picketing on the pavement, and the media presence spilling onto the road was causing traffic mayhem. He’d also seen that the billboard advertising the show out front had been defaced with graffiti.

  The police had been throwing up a blockade as he’d arrived.

  And Gigi had chosen to go onstage.

  ‘What the hell are those idiot brothers thinking?’ he snarled, and the kid jumped, but Khaled was already making his way out into the audience.

  He’d fed Gigi’s name into an internet search engine this afternoon. It turned out that Gisele Valente had a charlatan for a father—which wasn’t surprising, given what she’d already told him. But what she had neglected to mention was her own role in his all-singing and all-dancing revue as the Valentes had travelled the English provinces, ripping off the punters.

  A grainy photograph of Gigi aged eighteen outside court, with a physically imposing, defiant-looking middle-aged man sent mixed feelings through him. He’d seen her scars, and he knew enough of her story to know she hadn’t had it easy, but she’d purposely left out the part about her being her father’s accomplice.

  It was a neat little con, and he had to wonder what she was up to now.

  Although as he took in once more the faded glamour of the theatre he had to acknowledge that she’d achieved something this afternoon. The cabaret did look different to him after her presentation. She might not have sold him on the place, but her proposal had gone a lot further than all the media-manufactured ire of Paris and the bumbling excuses of the Danton brothers to bring him on side.

  Speaking of which, the Danton brothers, alerted to his presence, were on his heels.

  L’Oiseau Bleu had its first full house in months, according to an excitable Jacques Danton. They’d never seen anything like it.

  ‘Mr Kitaev, we know members of the press are in the audience, but we can’t do anything about it if they have tickets.’

  Martin Danton was wringing his hands as Khaled shouldered his way along the perimeter of the auditorium.

  ‘Who sold them tickets?’

  There was an uncomfortable to-ing and fro-ing between the brothers.

  Buffoons.

  Onstage an act was in full swing, involving the tank he’d seen yesterday being put to a different use. Tonight it was full of bubbling water, like a cauldron, and inside two monstrous Burmese pythons glided to and fro.

  There was also a girl in there, but he hadn’t been paying it much attention, more interested in finding Gigi as unobtrusively as possible. Where the hell was she?

  Impatiently he glanced at his watch. He didn’t have time for this.

  His attention was diverted when he noticed one of the monsters appeared to have wrapped itself around the swimming girl and was dragging her down to the base of the tank.

  ‘Is that monitored?’ he snarled.

  ‘A handler is ready to intervene if there’s a problem, Mr Kitaev,’ Jacques Danton scrambled to assure him.

  ‘It looks like they are having a problem. Those snakes—what size are they?’

  ‘Almost three m-metres,’ stuttered Martin Danton.

  ‘Then they’re capable of crushing the life out of a human being.’

  ‘Only a small human being,’ Jacques Danton countered, ‘and Gigi is a robust girl—she’s stronger than she looks.’

  Gigi?

  Khaled shoved the smaller man out of his path and made his way to the stage. He was about to breach the safety rail when the swimmer broke free and shot through the water, breaking the surface to emerge gracefully from the tank, seemingly no worse for wear, dripping water.

  It was Gigi, all right. Painted gold from neck to toes, with the lights strobing over her body and the music as seductive as any snake-charmer’s medley.

  She was also naked.

  There was an appreciative intake of breath from the audience as she struck a pose and the lights slid over her gold-painted body in what was frankly an erotic tribute.

  Only Gigi posed as if she was the star attraction that she was.

  From the darkness of the audience came a shout. ‘Kitaev’s whore!’

  He went cold, and then something hot and virulent licked up inside him.

  Gigi, instead of vacating the stage, had climbed down from her perch and begun to search the darkness for the origin of the slur.

  In a moment she had gone from glorious, sensual goddess, bewitching her audience, to the sturdily game girl who had chased him down the Champs-Élysées and stood up to his detractors like Liberté defending her people.

  Khaled had already discovered he really liked that girl.

  It galvanised him.

  He vaulted up onto the stage, stepped over the footlights and strode towards her. Gigi’s expression was one of total bewilderment as she saw him coming.

  That’s right, his id growled, worrying about me is the first smart thing you’ve done all night.

  Such was her shock, she didn’t so much as utter a squeak as he hoisted her up over his shoulder. She only began to struggle and scissor her legs as they came offstage, shouting something about him being a madman and telling him to put her down and that he’d ruined the act.

  On the contrary—this felt like the sanest he’d been in years.

  * * *

  Gigi was quickly made aware that they were headed for the exit, with her riding his shoulder like a surfboard, through a sea of gaping showgirls, past gawping stagehands and their own security men, Jules and Jean, who made no attempt to stop him.

  ‘Put me down!’ she shouted. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘Da.’

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Out of harm’s way.’ He said this as if it were obvious.

  ‘Put me back onstage, Mr Kitaev. I have a show to do!’

  ‘Mr Kitaev?’ he growled.

  ‘I think we should be professional at work.’

  ‘Your work—not mine.’

  ‘I refuse to go with you!’

  ‘Bad luck. You’re not climbing back in that tank.’

  ‘It’s my act!’

  ‘Tonight Paris wants to drown you, and those idiot brothers thought it was a good idea to put you in a tank of water in front of them?’

  ‘Nobody wants to drown me except the other girls, and now you’ve just made it worse!
’

  He kept going.

  ‘You can’t just carry me out of here. What are people going to say?’

  ‘The same thing they’re already saying,’ he snarled, as if this was the last thing he wanted. ‘That I can’t keep my hands off you.’

  There was shouting behind them, but Khaled was kicking open the exit door.

  ‘You can’t take me out of here—I’m naked!’ she shrieked.

  ‘Yes,’ Khaled said, and he didn’t sound happy about it, ‘you are.’

  The cold air and the night rushed at her, and then she was being lifted into a waiting SUV.

  Khaled leapt in after her and the door slammed. They took off at speed.

  Gigi scrunched herself up against the opposite door, arms plastered across her chest, legs crossed, horribly aware that she was practically naked, covered in gold paint and dripping wet. Humiliated.

  ‘Are you insane?’ she exploded.

  He reached for her and she began kicking out at him with her feet.

  ‘Don’t you touch me, you pervert! You’re a madman!’

  One of her six-inch stilettos caught against the denim of his jeans and tipped the shoe off her foot. He grasped her other foot and yanked off the second glittery shoe, whisked down the window and threw both of them out into the passing night.

  Gigi watched on in utter disbelief.

  ‘Those shoes are the property of L’Oiseau Bleu! They’re hand-made!’

  ‘There are paparazzi crawling all over that theatre,’ he snarled, as if this were her fault, and she retreated like a turtle who had stuck its neck out and almost had it cut off—before she realised he was holding a phone in one hand while warding off her pummelling feet with the other. ‘I want to know how and why they got into the building.’

  He pocketed his phone and sat forward, to shrug his big shoulders out of his wool coat.

  ‘The paps will have photographs of us, but they can’t do any more damage.’

  ‘It was you they wanted!’

  ‘Don’t be so naïve,’ he growled, ‘and stop hammering me with your feet.’