Lucy Ellis - Caught In His Gilded World

‘Dieu sauver la France!’ He crossed himself.

Gigi tried not to let her surprise show. Given she was the one with her job at risk, it was odd how personally the Parisian in the street was taking the new ownership of L’Oiseau Bleu.

Perhaps if those same people transformed their outrage into actually coming to a show and pushing up box office receipts they’d have a chance of survival. Blaming the newcomer on the scene—even if he was a Russian oligarch with questionable intentions—didn’t seem quite fair.

But she didn’t hesitate to press her advantage—it was one of the few things she had learned from her father that she could use.

‘Quite. Now, can I have that room number?’

The concierge looked most sympathetic. ‘Non,’ he said.

Gigi didn’t push it. She turned around, her shoulders sinking, and as she wondered if she should leave a message for him, which would probably go unread, everything changed.

Khaled Kitaev had just entered the lobby.

He was looking at his phone, which gave her the moment she needed to pull herself together, although the aggression in his body language should have had her second-guessing her decision even to try this.

Be brave, Gigi , she lectured herself. You’ve had more auditions than hot meals. It’s just another audition... Only this was possibly her last chance, and it could all go so horribly wrong.

As he strode towards her she took in the unruly dark hair, the beard that framed his beautiful face and enhanced that whole macho thing he was into.

It was working. Women’s heads were turning as if they were EMF devices, picking up on his frequency, and not a few men were looking him up and down as they reconsidered the suits they’d so carefully dressed in this morning.

It took a lot of machismo and confidence to render a pair of trainers, sweat pants and a long grey T-shirt with some indecipherable Cyrillic lettering on it stylish against the luxury of the hotel’s interior and its swish inhabitants, but Khaled Kitaev pulled it off. Everyone else just looked wrong.

He was coming right for her.

There was no hiding now.

Think about what you’re going to say. Be polite. Be professional.

She took some deep calming breaths.

Have some of your material ready. But don’t shove it at him. Be friendly, but formal.

She wasn’t sure how she’d manage friendly but formal.

He looked up from his phone and at the concierge. All the nearby hotel staff had leapt to attention. He lowered the phone long enough to ask for two brand-new laptops to be sent up to his suite.

‘Landslide?’ he growled into the phone. ‘There’s one a day in that part of the world. Get a bulldozer in there and clear the damn thing.’

Gigi observed this exchange with pulse-raised interest, flinching a little as she watched his hand flatten to its full wingspan dimensions on the desk, so close to her she could have reached out and touched it. But she was glad she didn’t when he fired some aggressive Russian into the ear of whoever was on the other end of his call. Maybe now wasn’t a good time...

* * *

Khaled slammed his hand against the nearest solid surface. He couldn’t believe it. Another meeting pushed back by the village council. Another surveyor’s report held up because of a landslide.

He wouldn’t put it past the clan elders to plant a stick of dynamite into the escarpment and bring down half the mountain onto the highway below just to damn well spite him. Two years and he was no closer to putting that road in.

No road—no resort.

How many people had he sent into the gorge to explain the benefits a new infrastructure would bring? Any infrastructure in a corner of the world where the men still herded sheep on horseback. Always there was the same response: initial agreement, new contracts drawn up and then at the last minute something would interfere.

When he had spoken with the clan council they had taken him to task about his Russian investors and the lack of consultation. Khaled had stood, arms folded, at the back of the low dark room that served as a community hall in the town and refused to react or engage.

All he had seen was the memory of his stepfather’s eyes, narrow like slits, as he beat him with a piece of horse tack as if that would make him less another man’s son.

Unable to withstand the brutality of the memory, without a word Khaled had walked out into the bright daylight, jumped into his truck and driven out of the valley. His last communication with the council was when he was much further north, flying over the Pechora Sea, inspecting a Kitaev oil platform, and a message had been sent to him via his lawyers.

Where is your home? Where is your wife? Where are your children? When you have these things come to us in the proper way and we will talk.

In other words, Respect our customs and we’ll see it your way .

Customs... He was a modern man, and he had made his fortune in a modern world—he wasn’t entering into that kind of old-world game-playing...

He turned away from the desk, snapping his phone closed, catching his elbow on someone’s round, firm...

‘Ow!’

He looked down and golden-lashed blue eyes turned up to his like searchlights, complete with a little scowl that brought her fine coppery brows together and formed a knot.

‘You...’ he said, clearing his throat.

‘Yes, me!’ Her low-pitched, softly accented voice was like Irish whisky—unexpected in a girl so slight and young. She had one hand clamped over her breast and was tenderly massaging the area, her expression pained.

‘Forgive me.’ His gaze dipped to what little he could see, given her hand was stashed under her jacket.

When she’d pulled out that bit of libel yesterday she’d flashed a purple bra cup and the swell of a firm milk-pale breast marked on the gentle upper slope by a single dark brown freckle. It was a freckle he’d had on his mind ever since.

Only today she appeared to be wearing some kind of pink T-shirt, high-necked, completely unrevealing, along with jeans and a blue wool jacket.

She’d also ditched the pigtails, and her hair hung heavily over her shoulders—coppery red, long, thick and wavy...messy, if you got down to it. Sexy.

Sexy he didn’t need. For one thing, he was signing her pay cheques. Ostensibly. Although he’d seen how much those girls were paid. He’d laid down more on a tie than on her monthly wage.

All the more reason to keep moving...

Which he did.

* * *

Gigi watched him walk away from her without another word, as if their encounter had never happened. She tried not to be offended. She’d pretty much expected it would take some effort. After all, she wasn’t sexy Solange, offering who knew what? She was woman-on-a-mission Gigi, offering flyers and a presentation.

Not that he knew that. But she guessed he only needed a glance to work out the difference between them.

Nevertheless, she hurried after him, swinging her backpack forward over one shoulder and rummaging inside for the vintage-style flyers she’d brought to show him—evidence of how classy the Bluebird had once been and could be again.

He’d see that she was serious and had done her research, and he might sit down and talk to her.

She was right behind him when there was a whoosh of movement in the air beside her—and for the second time in as many days Gigi found herself on the floor, the stuffing knocked out of her.

CHAPTER FOUR

A MALE VOICE GRUNTED, ‘Do not move.’

Gigi didn’t think she’d be moving. No, not moving at all. She was too stunned to do anything other than lie there, even once the knee resting on the base of her spine was gone and her arms, which had been pinned to her sides, were once more her own.