Caught in His Gilded World

He sat up and looked around.

* * *

Gigi watched him with slightly glazed eyes. Waking up alone had not been the best of feelings, but she’d tried to be pragmatic about it, given their conversation in the bathroom. This pragmatism was going to be a little hard to hold on to if Khaled insisted on doing this to her every time the mood struck him.

To her astonishment he vaulted over her and began rummaging in the bedside drawer.

More condoms? Again?

Gigi was a little amazed to discover that her blissfully aching body was on board with that.

But after a few moments he wrenched the drawer loose and emptied it onto the bed.

She sat up. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘I’m looking for your passport.’

Gigi went cold.

She didn’t think—she acted. She grabbed a pillow and whacked him hard across the back with it.

It was like using a feather to swat a water buffalo. ‘Hey,’ he said, giving her an almost boyishly baffled grin, ‘what’s that for?’

‘Timing!’ she hurled at him, and leapt off the bed and marched into the bathroom, slamming shut the door. Then throwing the lock for good measure.

He thumped on the door.

‘Not. Coming. Out.’

‘Gigi...’

He didn’t sound angry. He didn’t even try the lock. She waited a few minutes. Nothing.

Cautiously she opened the door and found him throwing clothes into an overnight bag.

She picked up her new grey trousers, which he’d left in a puddle on the floor last night, and threw them at him. Hard. ‘Check the pockets.’

He retrieved her passport and tossed it to her. ‘There’ll be a border check—you’ll need this.’

Gigi just stood there, her heart pounding. He wasn’t sending her home?

‘You’ll need to pack a bag, Gigi.’

She folded her arms. ‘I didn’t agree to go anywhere further than this with you. Khaled, I have to go home—my job’s at stake.’

‘Your job’s fine. I’m the boss, remember?’

‘For how long?’ She hadn’t meant to ask, but now they were having this conversation she intended to find out.

‘Long enough for you to pack a bag and come with me now. Listen, I’ll look after it for you—you don’t need to worry about your job, malenki. Come with me now, and when we get back we’ll work something out.’

‘Don’t do that,’ she blurted out. ‘Don’t make out that I’m with you because of what you can do for me. I’ve not asked you for one thing to do with the cabaret since we left Paris. That’s not what this is about. I won’t let you make it into something it’s not.’

Khaled stilled. ‘What is it, then, Gigi?’

‘Great sex,’ she whispered, her chest hurting. ‘I thought that was what we’d agreed—you can’t change the rules now.’

She waited for him to say that he hadn’t, that he wasn’t looking any further ahead, that he didn’t want to try for something a little more committed. Then she would say, well, she didn’t want that, she was quite happy with what they had. Only maybe one night was enough—because she wasn’t sure her heart could survive any more nights and days knowing there was no future between them.

But she wouldn’t say the last part, because it made her sound like an unsophisticated ninny.

‘So I am no longer great sex?’ His tone was surprisingly gentle.

Her heart lurched, because he was trying to make her smile, trying to wind this back a notch. And that was a relief—because they were entering territory it was probably best they didn’t.

‘Well, you are...’

He didn’t mean for you to answer, eejit, he meant it rhetorically.

‘But I guess you know you are.’ She frowned. She was stuffing this up. ‘What I mean to say is that I didn’t mean to reduce you to something physical. I mean, it’s not like I’m out there every night with men drinking champagne from my shoes or something.’

Way to go—impress him with your showgirl lifestyle, Gisele. Tell him about your knitting project—that’ll put an end to this.

‘You surprise me,’ he said, in that dangerously quiet way of his that made her think he might be laughing at her again. Only when she took a peek he looked a million miles away from laughing.

It suddenly occurred to her.

‘You don’t want me to go? Home, I mean?’

He said something soft and exasperated in Russian and she stayed where she was as he walked up to her, took her face between his hands and looked at her.