Caught in His Gilded World

‘It’s not me or Lulu—it’s the other girls,’ she defended herself.

‘Who won’t be receiving any bulletins from you, Gisele.’

‘You can’t possibly think I want people to be speculating about us—’ She broke off awkwardly, not wanting him to think she thought there was an ‘us’. ‘I mean me.’

‘Why wouldn’t I think that? This is what you wanted, wasn’t it? To revive interest in the cabaret? As I remember it you put together an entire presentation with that in mind.’

‘For you,’ she said, thrown by what he was intimating. ‘I showed that to you—not the rest of Paris!’

She felt stupidly hurt, because she had been holding on to that interlude as one of the nicer interactions between them—something genuine, when she’d been allowed to show him what she could do. Weirdly, it had felt more personal than when he’d been expertly gliding her under him on the bed.

‘You invited the rest of Paris in with that neat little speech on the Champs-élysées.’ He drummed the wheel with his fingers. ‘Then there was your performance in the lobby of the Plaza.’

‘I did not want to go up to your hotel room. You were the one who was so all-fire keen.’

For the first time it looked as if she’d scored a hit, because he didn’t appear to have anything superior to say.

‘You had an injury,’ he said finally.

She’d had an...

Gigi pressed her lips together, aware that if she kept this up she was going to say something unwise.

Something that might see her standing at a bus stop at one in the morning on the side of a Moscow road.

Did they even have bus stops?

Light was smearing the windscreen and her gaze was drawn to neon advertisements, the glowing fa?ades of skyscrapers. The tension in her body increased.

This was the way she’d used to feel with her dad—that airless, suffocating feeling when she couldn’t say the wrong word, do the wrong thing, because then she’d be out. On her own. Carlos’s way or the highway. The only problem was she’d never quite been sure what the wrong thing was.

A feeling a little like panic began to spiral through her. It was bringing back her dependent teenage years with a thump. No say in where she went, what she did. You’re not powerless any more, she reminded herself. Those days are gone—you have options.

She had her passport. She could take a taxi back to the airport. She could book a flight and have Lulu pay for it, using her credit card, and pay her back when she got home. She didn’t have to stay with this man.

By the time they pulled up she had several speeches ready for him. But when she climbed out and looked up, took in the imposing building with caryatids on the stone columns either side of the entrance, and the doorman in uniform, she discovered her overriding feeling was one of nerves.

She wouldn’t be intimidated. She wouldn’t.

‘Come.’

He took hold of her elbow none too gently and something inside Gigi tugged and tore.

She yanked her elbow out of his grasp. ‘Stop being so horrible to me!’

‘Horrible?’ He stood over her, keeping the wind out of her face with those broad shoulders of his.

Gigi stepped a little closer, because it was cold, and he was big and warm, and even if he was being a horrible she trusted him.

‘I want you to be nicer to me.’

‘Nicer to you?’

He made it sound like a word in a foreign language, and maybe it was. Maybe she’d got this all wrong and she was just a nuisance in his world.

‘I just think you could make an effort to be nicer to me,’ she grumbled. ‘After all, I’ve had a rough day too.’

He didn’t respond, but he was looking down at her as if she had said something weird.

‘Don’t worry—forget about it.’ She shrugged her shoulders and looked up at the building. ‘Is this where I’m staying?’

He said something in Russian, but this time he didn’t touch her or hurry her inside.

She tried not to feel self-conscious as she stood beside him in the lift taking them from the ground to the sixth floor.

She’d worked out that he wasn’t very happy with her. She guessed she couldn’t blame him. It wouldn’t matter so much, but all the running about with him yesterday, the confidential talks, the amazing way he’d been with her insecurities over her feet, not to mention what had happened afterwards, had...well, had aroused feelings in her.