Caught in His Gilded World

Gigi thrust her hands into her lap and stared straight ahead. Khaled was silent. Apparently telling a man you weren’t going to sleep with him after he’d gone out of his way to rescue you from a media scrum was a bit of a no-no.

Then it occurred to her that he might be tensing up because he had no intention of sleeping with her. In which case it made her sound desperate. Clearly she’d been on her own too long. She’d got cosy, living a charmed Girls’ Own existence with Lulu, allowing her friend’s anxieties about men to shelve her own fledgling sex life—until now, when you put her in the company of a gorgeous, testosterone-charged man and she began fantasising that he wanted her.

Gigi took another covert look at him. Most women would want him. He was built on a scale that made her think about that trip she’d taken to Florence, looking up at Michelangelo’s David. Her attention dropped to the shift of his long, powerfully muscled thigh as he accelerated.

‘I can hear you thinking,’ he said, in that low, strongly accented voice, and Gigi jumped, her gaze yanked back to his.

Oh, God, he’d caught her looking at his groin. She wasn’t doing that—honestly. She wasn’t thinking about what she’d had pressed against her yesterday. Even if it had been memorable and she had been very flattered it had been to do with her...

Was she speaking this all out loud?

He glanced at her again. ‘Don’t worry, Gigi. I’m not listening in to your thoughts.’

Her face felt hot. ‘It wouldn’t matter if you were, I’ve got nothing to hide.’

‘Da, I saw that onstage.’

Gigi straightened up. Reviewing her performance was fine by her. She could take criticism. ‘I was on fire tonight,’ she declared.

‘Is that what you call it?’

She made a face. Everyone’s a critic. ‘Pity you had to spoil the act.’

‘You were naked.’

Gigi bristled. ‘I was not! I was in costume.’

‘A piece of string.’

‘Plus gold body paint and pasties. And shoes.’ Her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t going to forget what had happened to her shoes.

‘That’s not a costume—it’s an incitement.’

‘To what?’

He made a derisive sound. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Excuse me? I was not naked.’

‘I saw everything.’

‘You did not!’

‘Maybe not everything,’ he responded, and it was his turn to drop his gaze to her lap, ‘but I saw enough.’

Flustered, Gigi crossed her legs. ‘You saw what you wanted to see,’ she snapped back, feeling ridiculously self-conscious. ‘Lulu’s right. Men have lurid and depraved imaginations.’

‘Lurid and depraved?’

She could hear the disbelief in his voice and it had her sitting up straighter. ‘You make things sexual that aren’t.’

‘You were swimming in a spotlit tank, on a stage, with two pythons wrapping themselves around your naked body,’ he growled. ‘How is that not sexual?’

She looked at him blankly. ‘You mean Jack and Edna?’

‘Who?’

‘The snakes. Edna’s an old softie. Jack’s the one you’ve got to look out for—he can slap you around with that tail. Mind you, they’re both way past retirement age, but Jacques wants to see this season out. The “Snakes in the Amazon” act is one of our most popular.’

‘This would be because it’s dangerous and because you are naked.’

Gigi smoothed her hands over the long, beautifully tailored pants he’d provided for her aboard the jet, entirely grateful that she wasn’t virtually naked now. He was making it all sound grubby.

‘Wow, you are such a prude,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

‘After your presentation, Gigi, I was under the impression that the place was a bit more classy. My mistake.’

What exactly was he implying? That she wasn’t classy?

A hot feeling at his unjustified criticism shot through her, but what was sharper was the needling sensation that she had something to be ashamed of.

She didn’t.

She did the best she could with the material she was given—act and costume. She should tell him there was nothing sexy about breath control underwater and managing two temperamental reptiles while keeping a big smile on your face for the patrons. It was hard work!

Besides, she wasn’t keen on the pythons act herself, and she was fairly sure it was her complaints that meant Jacques would be phasing it out at the end of the season, but Khaled had no right to imply that there was anything tawdry about it or her participation in it.