Caught in His Gilded World

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 closed, 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.