Caught in His Gilded World

‘Bastard,’ she said.

That wasn’t the right word, but from Gigi’s soft lips it was a kiss.

‘I love you,’ he said, holding her strong yet fragile body against him. ‘I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you on that stage floor. I’ve missed you every moment of every day. I should never have let you go. And if I want to give you a cabaret as a gift I damn well will and Paris can go hang.’

They might have been the words she wanted, but she gave him a hard shove in the chest all the same. ‘You made me choose between you and the theatre.’

‘Have them both—have it all.’ He kissed her in between promises. Her temples, her eyelids, her nose, her mouth. ‘Never again, malenki. You do not leave me ever again.’

Given she was kissing him back, with damp, tear-salty lips, the ground beneath his feet began to feel more solid.

They sailed up the hill without either of them really noticing, until the driver was tapping on the window. Khaled got out and gave her his hand.

‘Where are we?’

It was a pretty narrow street at the top of the hill. There was a house with cream walls and square windows behind a high stone wall.

He drew her by the hand into the rambling garden behind the wall.

‘The ten-kilometre rule,’ he said, locking the gate behind them.

‘What...?’ she choked.

‘You once told me you had a rule about the men you dated—they couldn’t live outside a ten-kilometre radius of Montmartre. So I bought a house within your exclusion zone.’

‘A house? But you live in Moscow.’

‘Here...there. I can run everything from my phone—or so you tell me. It’s a little smaller than the cabaret, but it’s big enough. For us. For any children we have.’

A slow smile began to blossom on her lips.

Which was when he knew those were the words they both wanted.

Gigi looked up at him. Something wonderful was happening inside her. Everything was opening up and she felt love pouring through her like an elixir.

Khaled stood four-square in front of her, a wall that nothing was getting over, through or around. Her wall.

He framed her face.

‘Marry me, Gigi. Have children with me. Grow old with me.’

In response Gigi wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pulled her against him and proceeded to kiss her passionately, thoroughly, and without much respect for the garden and its bed of long, soft grasses.

Several of which Gigi was plucking out of her hair as they ambled, arms entwined, down the road at twilight back to her flat. Below the rooftops of Montmartre glittered and deep shadows sprang up to cast everything in a mysterious heady glow.