Caught in His Gilded World

They’d kill her.

No, Susie would tell her to go for it—get that squeak fixed. Solange would scoff, because Gigi hadn’t got a promise of anything out of him and she was just offering up the goods without a contract. Lulu would be horrified.

Forty-eight hours?

Gigi strained against him as he stroked a searching hand up under her sweater, under the completely unsexy thermal vest, and found a very happy to see him breast.

Oh, yes, her nipples remembered him.

Bad, bad nipples.

He circled one with the broad pad of his thumb and she whimpered, because she felt it directly between her legs.

He did it again and her knees buckled.

‘This isn’t fair...’ she whimpered.

‘Life isn’t fair,’ he responded against her mouth, as if he were telling her something she didn’t already know.

The phone he’d gifted her began to vibrate in her hip pocket. At first it was difficult to tell, given that she was doing some serious vibrating herself in that area—but, no, it was a lozenge-shaped vibration, coming from the general vicinity of where she’d shoved the phone.

She broke the kiss and reached down between them. Khaled watched her actions as if riveted, and for a moment she wondered if he thought she was going in another direction.

No—she could have told him she wasn’t that bold. She left that kind of forthright sexual move to girls with a lot more know-how than her. She was more of a wait-and-see-what-he-wants-to-do-with-it kind of girl.

She held up the phone like a red flag.

‘What are you doing?’ he growled.

‘Answering my phone,’ she breathed, because he still had one hand cradling her breast. ‘Excuse me.’

She pushed ‘talk’.

‘Hello, Lulu?’

Khaled stared at her as if she’d developed a second head, and as Lulu’s voice complained at being hung up on she supposed she had. Khaled looked at the phone, and for a breathless moment Gigi wondered if he was going to smash it on the floor.

The part of her that had been anticipating that was to be severely disappointed.

He said something in Russian, his hand slid away from her, and she found herself on her own, slumped against the doorframe. Lulu was wanting to know if she was safe and telling her she didn’t sound like herself.

‘We’ve just arrived—barely got in the door,’ she breathed, watching him stride away from her down the hall.

‘You sound like you’ve been running a race,’ Lulu countered suspiciously.

Gigi swallowed hard. ‘No, no...just a flight of stairs.’ It was only a little lie, and there was no way she was going into what had just happened. She wasn’t even sure what had just happened. ‘Look, Lu, I’m beat. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. What time is it there?’

‘Dawn,’ said Lulu. ‘I’m in bed with Coco, watching all the repeat coverage of what happened last night. They’re saying Kitaev bought the cabaret so he could have you.’

‘Have me?’ Gigi knew she was red as a beetroot. ‘I’m not a prop. And besides, he won the cabaret in a card game!’

‘Maman says you have a pretty good case for slander.’

A court case? No, thanks.

Gigi began to make her way down the hall. Where had he gone?

Lulu was recounting several cases in which people had been defamed in the press and won huge payouts, but Gigi wasn’t able to concentrate on a word. She needed to go in search of Khaled. Because right about now she was feeling she’d behaved like a rabbit, and she owed him an explanation—besides which, she didn’t even have a bed to sleep in.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SHE PEERED AROUND the corner into one dark room, and then another. Honestly, it was a bit rude, leaving her on her own.

Which was when he appeared unexpectedly at the end of the hall, shirt unbuttoned.

‘I’m not driving you back to the airport tonight.’

His deep, dark voice startled her, given she still had Lulu’s high, melodious French accent in her other ear.

Gigi made her choice. She pushed ‘end’.

‘I think we should clear something up,’ she said, trying to firm her voice.

‘I agree. I know what you’re going to say: I shouldn’t have touched you.’ He headed off around the corner.

Gigi almost broke into a sprint. No, no—that wasn’t what she was going to say at all. ‘Listen,’ she said, following him down a flight of stairs, ‘what I wanted to say was I know you’re probably going to sell L’Oiseau Bleu.’