Caught in His Gilded World

‘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 door 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?’