by Lucy Ellis
He grunted noncommittally, which made Gigi think she’d got it right.
‘So I’m the mountaineering kind?’
‘You don’t strike me as particularly outdoorsy, Gigi.’
‘Oh, I am. I’ve just never climbed a mountain before.’
‘There’s a first time for everything.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HE SHOWED HER waterfalls where the water was crystalline and made love to her in a hot stream where the minerals were said to cure everything from aches and pains to old age—neither of which were on Gigi’s mind as her wet, naked body cleaved to his against a slippery boulder, where they were afforded the smallest privacy from anyone else trekking in the area.
They climbed high enough to find wild mountain goats grazing on meadow grass and he told her about his youth, working as a shepherd with his stepfather’s flock. About his dog, his knife and the wild animals he’d encountered.
He told her about the threat from poachers who had nearly wiped out the entire mountain bison population here. He took her up to the top of Mount Elbrus by chopper and pointed out the area where his company was putting in a resort using prefabricated eco-friendly modules from Denmark.
‘The more eco-tourism we encourage into the region the further we can push the poachers out.’
Gigi understood his commitment to the natural world. How he kept it in tandem with the oil holdings that had made his fortune. And it made sense that he was diversifying as he moved further away from an industry known to be aggressive against the planet. How could you grow up in this place and not care about keeping it alive?
She knew now that he was an extraordinary man—nothing like the one-dimensional, showgirl-eating beast the whole of Paris believed was going to devour their candy-coloured theatre. He was her lover, and she thought her friend, and really she’d do better with the latter.
Maybe when this was all over she could keep him as a friend.
But that wasn’t likely, was it? Her pain when this was over was going to be intense. They were sexually involved now and there was no going back from that.
Nobody lived in that world.
Nor would she want to.
They headed for the truck. It was the middle of the afternoon and everything was bathed in sparkling sunlight.
It was difficult to believe this had ever been a place of darkness for Khaled.
But it had, and she didn’t want to ignore that. He hadn’t ignored her poor, damaged feet.
She angled a look up at his beautiful broad features. ‘How old were you when you left here?’
He stopped, and the look on his face had her heart pounding like a drum. He looked...surprised, then thoughtful. She’d expected him to clam up.
‘Do you remember the highway we came in on? When I was fifteen I filled a duffel bag and hiked up it all the way to Nalchik.’
‘For a job?’
‘You could say that. I was working for the local crime boss.’
‘Oh,’ said Gigi.
‘Welcome to twenty-first century Russia, malenki.’
‘I take it you did well out of it?’
‘Well enough to start selling black market imports at a local market.’
‘I guess you did well out of that too?’
‘Enough to invest with a friend in a company. Then I did national service. After that I made the move to Moscow.’
He folded his arms, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He looked so inherently masculine as he surveyed the valley around them that he took her breath away.
‘It doesn’t say any of this on the internet.’
He gave her a bemused look, but there was affection in it. ‘I don’t broadcast it, Gisele.’
No, but he’d told her.
‘Why did you leave when you were fifteen, Khaled, when you clearly have this place in your blood?’
The remnants of his smile reconfigured into something she had seen in his face before when he talked about his past but hadn’t understood.
‘I would have killed him if I’d stayed.’
‘Your stepfather?’
‘I was big enough then—and angry enough. I also had the skill. There was just the two of us. He taught me how to track and make a clean kill, and how to cover my traces.’
Gigi said nothing, because now she understood.
‘He taught me everything I knew at that age about being a man—and that’s the catch. He was a man without honour, and yet he taught me our code the same way the army taught me how to assemble and disassemble a rifle in the dark—and because of that he got to live a little longer before liver cancer dragged him off, and I got to live with the question I ask myself every day. Did I make the right choice?’
‘Of course you did.’ Gigi turned up her face, wet with tears. ‘You were just a child. You did the right thing and you survived.’
‘I haven’t shocked you?’ he asked, and she could see the strain behind his eyes.
He cared what she thought of him.
‘The only thing in that story that shocks me is how you became this man. This good, kind, decent man.’
He blinked, as if her words made no sense to him.
‘I’ve never seen you cry,’ he said, as if this were the wonder, and not the fact that he’d survived as he had.
‘I only cry when there’s something to cry about,’ she said, wiping at her eyes.
He took her face between his hands and kissed her. Sweetly at first, then fiercely, and then they just stood wrapped around each other by the truck.
He stroked her hair. ‘What am I going to do with you, Gisele?’
‘I don’t know,’ she murmured against his neck, aware that he’d probably told her much more than he’d meant to over the last few days and later would be uncomfortable about it and withdraw back into that place where she couldn’t follow him. But right now she had him out here in the sunlight and she was going to do what she could to keep him there.
She looked up and gave his beard a gentle tug. ‘I do think it’s time to take this off.’
But even as she spoke her phone vibrated in her back pocket.
‘Your friend is doing me a favour,’ said Khaled as she took it out.
Sure enough, it was a text from Lulu.
It had been sent yesterday, but the WiFi in the tower was sporadic at best.
Dantons out. Theatre shut. Thought you should know.
For a moment Gigi did nothing. Then Khaled’s hand closed over hers and he took the phone. He didn’t even look at the message. He just looked into her eyes.
She stumbled back.
‘Why did you fire the Dantons as managers?
Khaled rested his hands on his lean hips. ‘The Dantons couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag.’
‘That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?’
He shrugged.
Gigi shook her head, utterly confused by his refusal to see this as important. Didn’t he care about her feelings at all?
He was watching her closely, and bizarrely Gigi wondered if this was a test.
‘I have shut the theatre down for renovations, not for sale. This is what you wanted.’
The wind in the trees was the only sound.
Gigi ventured a little closer. ‘You’re not selling?’
‘I have heard nothing but how important this place is to you—why would I sell?’
Gigi put her hands against her sides, because there was a sudden feeling like a stitch under her ribs.
‘It will reopen in six months. I want you to manage it.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
The stitch stabbed at her. She was suddenly utterly terrified. She turned and wrenched open the truck do
or and climbed inside, slamming it shut after her.
In the warm quiet of the cabin she tried to make sense of what had just happened.
Khaled took his time coming round, swinging his larger frame inside. He wound down a window, propped an elbow on the ledge and said, so reasonably and so authoritatively that she could only stare at him, ‘You’ve got the passion, the vision—you’ve even got the skills. With the right people behind you I can’t see why you won’t make a success of it.’
‘What skills? I’m a dancer, Khaled, I’m not a businesswoman. I thought that would have been obvious when I turned up at your hotel like a crazed stalker and chased you through the streets of Paris and thrust a laptop at you.’
‘Imagination, guts, determination. I’d hire you, Gigi, if we weren’t in a relationship.’
‘You are hiring me!’ Gigi’s whirling thought processes ground to a halt. Hang on. Rewind. ‘Did you just say we’re in a relationship?’
‘It makes things—what was your word?—murky. It smacks a bit of nepotism, and I know you’re touchy about that.’ He drummed his left hand on the window frame, looking out across the gorge below. ‘But sometimes, Gigi, great things grow out of the most unlikely seeds.’
Gigi was busily sorting through everything he was throwing at her. It was a bit like being tied to a circular board—as she had been as a fourteen-year-old—and being spun while someone threw knives at her. Only some of the knives had turned into bouquets of flowers.
‘But what if I fail?’
‘I’ll replace you.’ His dark eyes settled on her now and his expression was serious. ‘This is a genuine business decision, Gigi. It has nothing to do with how beautiful you are, or how incredible you are in bed.’
Was she? Beautiful? Incredible in bed?
‘This is all about what you showed me on that first day. Best job interview I’ve taken.’
‘What usually happens in your job interviews?’ she asked unnecessarily.
‘I grill people.’
‘You didn’t grill me.’
‘What do you think that run down the Champs-Élysées was about?’
‘Now you’re funning me.’
‘The bathroom vanity was all about the fringe benefits, and back at your place I was checking out the facilities.’
Gigi wanted to laugh, but she also felt sick—because he didn’t know the one thing about her that made all of this impossible.
He’d find out soon enough—someone would object to her elevation and then all the old stories would emerge. It wouldn’t take much digging at all.
Carlos Valente, small-time con artist and his dancing daughter.
She didn’t know what was on the internet—she’d never wanted to look. But she could guess that there would be some record from past English newspapers.
She’d been lucky it hadn’t come up in the current coverage of ‘The Showgirl and the Oligarch’. She guessed the main thing exercising people’s minds was her showgirl feathers tickling Khaled’s chin...and other parts. The story of a teenage girl travelling round England’s provincial theatres several years ago with her sleight-of-hand father was less sensational than a sex scandal with a rich man.
It would, however, be of interest to Khaled when he discovered the truth.
He would look at her differently.
He would know of her less than savoury background and he would judge her.
And she couldn’t blame him.
You couldn’t let someone like her undertake this kind of job.
It was a position of trust. The first thing that went wrong and the finger of blame would be pointed at her.
Gigi panicked. Her heart went into overdrive.
She wanted out of this car.
Only even as she looked at the door handle she knew she wasn’t going to run from this.
‘Khaled, there’s something you need to know.’
She clutched her hands together in her lap and began in a low voice to tell him about her father, his petty thefts up and down the country, and how it had all caught up with him one night in a Soho nightclub.
Khaled said nothing and allowed her to spill it all out.
She told him how she’d been arrested, put in a cell, interviewed, bailed. She told him about being acquitted nine months later, and that her father had been given a suspended sentence.
She told him how one of the reasons she’d gone to Paris was because no English club or theatre owner would employ her.
‘I like the other story better—about my mum being a showgirl.’ She bit her lip. ‘But it didn’t really start out that way. I don’t know if I ever would have had the guts to try out for the Bluebirds if it hadn’t been impossible for me to get a job in London. Not even Lulu knows the real story. I’m not really as brave as you seem to think I am.’
Khaled was looking out across the gorge, his profile unreadable.
‘I won’t make a fuss if you’ve changed your mind now,’ she said huskily, her tongue sticking to the top of her mouth.
In response Khaled started the engine.
‘I won’t be changing my mind,’ he said.
Gigi released a huge, shaky breath.
* * *
‘Do you trust me?’
‘A woman who has a blade poised at my carotid artery? Why not live a little dangerously?’
Gigi gave a nervous laugh, but she was sincerely worried about this first stroke of the blade. Trust Khaled to insist that an electric version wouldn’t do the job and produce this cutthroat razor. After they’d returned from the mountain he’d stropped it for her and spent half an hour taking her through the procedure.
They nestled in the grassland that lay beyond the tower, Khaled perched on a fisherman’s stool and Gigi standing with a towel over her shoulder, a bucket of warm water and the cutthroat razor in hand.
‘You’ve never shaved a man before?’ he queried as she practised using the blade on a small section of her forearm, where fluffy golden hairs grew.
‘The opportunity has never arisen.’
She’d never actually lived with a man, and her former boyfriend had used an electric razor as far as she knew. Frankly, none of the boys she’d dated had been as hairy as Khaled. The male dancers she performed with had almost as little hair on their body as she did, and she had a regular appointment with the Bluebird’s beautician and her little pot of pink wax.
‘This makes me your first,’ he said, with a great deal of satisfaction in that deep, dark Russian voice that made her hand shake.
‘Yes, Khaled...’ she’d give him that ‘...you’re my first.’
He chuckled.
‘Thirty degrees to the skin...perpendicular to the edge,’ she muttered under her breath, and then she took the first stroke, running the blade up his throat.
Gratifyingly, only soapy hair fell away and no blood. Yet.
‘I still think you should have gone to a barber,’ she murmured.
His dark eyes flashed to hers and held them. ‘If you want the kill, your honour is the head.’
Gigi made a humming noise. ‘I’m going to leave that one alone. It sounds too weird.’
He chuckled. ‘I’m doing it for you—you should have the privilege.’
He was being incredibly patient with her, watching her face as she concentrated on the task, telling her he’d never seen a woman make so many grimaces in his life.
Finally she was done and he got up and thrust his face into the bucket of cold water, bringing his wet head up like a wild animal and shaking off the beaded residue.
Gigi stared at him in astonishment.
She was looking at a man she only half recognised. It unnerved her for a few seconds—perhaps because of the dream she’d been having since arriving in this strange place. In the
dream she’d woken to an empty tower room. She called and called and when Khaled finally came up the steps he was a different man.
Silly. She gave a self-conscious laugh and reached up to stroke the clean sweep of his jaw. He grinned back at her. It really was Khaled. Just not as she’d ever seen him before.
The beard was gone, but so was something else—the weight in his eyes. And he was breathtaking.
If she’d thought it would render him more vulnerable she’d been wrong. The sweeping planes of his cheekbones and jaw lay fully visible; the clean, subtle lines of his lips and the strength of his chin gave him solidity. Sure, he was bleeding a little here and there, from her nicks and cuts, but it only added to his rugged appeal.
Now she knew why she’d clung to that idea of ‘just sex’. Thrust it at him constantly like a shield and a sword to keep him from getting too close to the truth. Or maybe to keep her own feelings at bay. She’d tried so hard to ‘be a guy’ about it, but in the end she was just a woman, with not a lot of relationship history, trying to make sense of how to be with this man. This big, tough, complicated man. The kind of man older, wiser women would probably reconsider before scaling.
She hadn’t hesitated.
‘What is it, Gigi?’
He wasn’t slow on the uptake. Any minute now he’d work it out.
She could feel his concern and it focussed her. ‘I missed a bit on your upper lip,’ she said huskily.
Trying to steady her hand, because she really didn’t want to end the life of the only man she could see herself spending the rest of her life with, Gigi scraped carefully along his lip-line.
Then she was done. He was clean-shaven, and she was suddenly aware that he was looking at her as if he knew what he was about to say was going to hurt her.
Gigi wanted to stopper up his mouth, but she couldn’t.
She couldn’t do anything but look at him as he said, ‘Gigi, there’s something you need to know.’
* * *
It had been her confession earlier this afternoon that had landed a hammer-blow to his decision to keep the facts from her.
If he didn’t tell her, and she found out from someone else, she might just start to hate him—and he didn’t want that to happen with Gigi. Not with Gigi.