Caught in His Gilded World

One act succeeded the next—primarily tableaux vivants that involved the girls wearing as little as possible. In between there was a chanteuse, a performing dog, a barbershop quartet and some magic tricks. It was certainly different.

He folded his arms, switched off the male part of his brain that kept fixating on her breasts, and allowed himself to appreciate the very real charm of it.

Eventually she hit ‘stop’ and looked at him expectantly.

Until now he hadn’t been convinced that it was anything more than a glorified strip joint. Frankly, he wasn’t sure what it was. On the one hand there was all the charm and femininity of the over-the-top dance numbers. Even the male dancers looked as if they’d been neutered. On the other hand there were the boobs and the bottoms that gave it its risqué reputation. But that was very French. Gigi had been telling him the truth, and now he understood a little of why Paris was going slightly bonkers over the idea of him laying a hand on their precious L’Oiseau Bleu.

She was good. He hadn’t expected her to be this good.

‘What do you think?’

He thought that he was hard and aching, and it had nothing to do with what he’d just seen on this screen and everything to do with the sweet sexiness of the girl curled up beside him, who at every turn had proved herself to be not quite what he’d thought she was.

He looked into her hopeful, obviously secretly pleased expression and began to wonder exactly what was going on in that eccentric little head of hers.

* * *

Gigi congratulated herself on the professional way she was conducting herself. She’d kept her hands to herself and she was almost the whole way through her presentation. Really, nobody could find fault.

If you put aside the bodyguard incident in the lobby. The incident with the crowd on the Champs-élysées. The incident with the paparazzi. The incident in the lobby with her shoes and—she closed her eyes briefly—the incident on the bathroom vanity, ending with her flat on her back in the bedroom, about which the less she thought the better.

No, all in all, putting those things aside, she’d handled this quite well.

Somehow she’d come through it all and had him where she’d wanted him hours ago, before all this began.

On a sofa, glued to her presentation.

It was time to fire some questions at him.

But first of all she made herself look him in the eye—the first time she’d done so since he’d sat down beside her.

After all, she wasn’t ashamed of her perfectly healthy sex drive. And she guessed she would have remembered soon after he did that this was a professional relationship and called a halt.

Only lifting her gaze to those velvet-lashed dark eyes she was instantly out of her depth again, and she knew to her embarrassment that whatever hadn’t happened between them was all down to him.

She’d been the one kicking things and climbing over the poor man and forcing him to stroke her breasts.

‘So what do you think?’ she asked in a strangled voice.

‘Impressive.’

Impressive? Really? She caught herself in time. He doesn’t mean your breasts, Gigi!

Although, actually, stroking her breasts had been down to him...

Stop thinking about your breasts!

She cleared her throat. ‘I was wondering if you’d given any thought to what road you might go down,’ she ventured. ‘We’d like to stay family-friendly.’

‘Family-friendly?’

Gigi’s optimism dwindled a little. Why did he have to say it as if it was a concept he wasn’t entirely familiar with?

‘We’re sexy, but you can bring your mum. Family-friendly,’ she explained. ‘I mean obviously we’d have to keep our “Sixteen and Over” door rule...’

‘Obviously.’

She resisted looking up at his dry tone, pretending instead to be interested in sorting through a few images of the current show as she wondered exactly how far she could push this without blurting out, We don’t want to become a nasty men’s club.

‘It’s a concern, given your other...um...holdings.’

‘I own gambling venues, some nightclubs, hotels...’

She glanced up.

‘No strip joints, Gigi,’ he said with a faint smile.

She moistened her lips. ‘It’s just that when the girls took off their pasties and started writhing unimaginatively round poles burlesque died.’

Khaled tried to imagine Gigi arching against a pole in nothing much. Curiously, it wasn’t a salacious image. Instead it was one that made him feel like the morals police. In his mind he barricaded the stage and put up ‘Nothing To See Here’ signs, wrapped her in a robe and hustled her towards the exit.