Caught in His Gilded World

‘It makes things—what was your word?—murky. It smacks a bit of nepotism, and I know you’re touchy about that.’ He drummed his left hand on the window frame, looking out across the gorge below. ‘But sometimes, Gigi, great things grow out of the most unlikely seeds.’

Gigi was busily sorting through everything he was throwing at her. It was a bit like being tied to a circular board—as she had been as a fourteen-year-old—and being spun while someone threw knives at her. Only some of the knives had turned into bouquets of flowers.

‘But what if I fail?’

‘I’ll replace you.’ His dark eyes settled on her now and his expression was serious. ‘This is a genuine business decision, Gigi. It has nothing to do with how beautiful you are, or how incredible you are in bed.’

Was she? Beautiful? Incredible in bed?

‘This is all about what you showed me on that first day. Best job interview I’ve taken.’

‘What usually happens in your job interviews?’ she asked unnecessarily.

‘I grill people.’

‘You didn’t grill me.’

‘What do you think that run down the Champs-élysées was about?’

‘Now you’re funning me.’

‘The bathroom vanity was all about the fringe benefits, and back at your place I was checking out the facilities.’

Gigi wanted to laugh, but she also felt sick—because he didn’t know the one thing about her that made all of this impossible.

He’d find out soon enough—someone would object to her elevation and then all the old stories would emerge. It wouldn’t take much digging at all.

Carlos Valente, small-time con artist and his dancing daughter.

She didn’t know what was on the internet—she’d never wanted to look. But she could guess that there would be some record from past English newspapers.

She’d been lucky it hadn’t come up in the current coverage of ‘The Showgirl and the Oligarch’. She guessed the main thing exercising people’s minds was her showgirl feathers tickling Khaled’s chin...and other parts. The story of a teenage girl travelling round England’s provincial theatres several years ago with her sleight-of-hand father was less sensational than a sex scandal with a rich man.

It would, however, be of interest to Khaled when he discovered the truth.

He would look at her differently.

He would know of her less than savoury background and he would judge her.

And she couldn’t blame him.

You couldn’t let someone like her undertake this kind of job.

It was a position of trust. The first thing that went wrong and the finger of blame would be pointed at her.

Gigi panicked. Her heart went into overdrive.

She wanted out of this car.

Only even as she looked at the door handle she knew she wasn’t going to run from this.

‘Khaled, there’s something you need to know.’

She clutched her hands together in her lap and began in a low voice to tell him about her father, his petty thefts up and down the country, and how it had all caught up with him one night in a Soho nightclub.

Khaled said nothing and allowed her to spill it all out.

She told him how she’d been arrested, put in a cell, interviewed, bailed. She told him about being acquitted nine months later, and that her father had been given a suspended sentence.

She told him how one of the reasons she’d gone to Paris was because no English club or theatre owner would employ her.

‘I like the other story better—about my mum being a showgirl.’ She bit her lip. ‘But it didn’t really start out that way. I don’t know if I ever would have had the guts to try out for the Bluebirds if it hadn’t been impossible for me to get a job in London. Not even Lulu knows the real story. I’m not really as brave as you seem to think I am.’

Khaled was looking out across the gorge, his profile unreadable.

‘I won’t make a fuss if you’ve changed your mind now,’ she said huskily, her tongue sticking to the top of her mouth.

In response Khaled started the engine.

‘I won’t be changing my mind,’ he said.

Gigi released a huge, shaky breath.

* * *

‘Do you trust me?’

‘A woman who has a blade poised at my carotid artery? Why not live a little dangerously?’

Gigi gave a nervous laugh, but she was sincerely worried about this first stroke of the blade. Trust Khaled to insist that an electric version wouldn’t do the job and produce this cutthroat razor. After they’d returned from the mountain he’d stropped it for her and spent half an hour taking her through the procedure.