Lucy Ellis - Caught In His Gilded World

She only began to react when she was being hauled—not ungently—to her feet. She swayed as blood rushed back into her head and an arm came around her waist to support her. She staggered, and her nose and forehead banged against a hard male chest. She inhaled faint spicy aftershave and heat.

Gigi edged up her chin and her gaze locked on eyes so lustrously dark it was like being dropped into a hot, dark night.

The world shrank down to his thick, steady heartbeat and her short, rapid breaths.

He was speaking to her, but it was like being underwater. All she could make out was that no one was attacking her and the big male arms clamped around her felt like protection.

Which was when she spotted a gorilla—the same one who had knocked her down—turning out her backpack.

It was a replay of her worst memory.

Her limbs exploded and she desperately tried to free herself.

‘‘That’s mine! Give me back my things! You have no right to touch my things!’

She made a hopeless grab for it, but Khaled Kitaev had hold of her elbow.

‘Calm down, dushka .’

She wasn’t going to calm down! The last time she’d had her belongings confiscated she’d had handcuffs slapped on her wrists and spent a night in the cells, thanks to her dad.

She struggled, but his strength was all over hers. Gigi lashed out with her elbow and struck him in the chest. Unlike her own chest there was nothing soft and tender about it—instead there was considerable muscle and definition and she only jarred her shoulder.

‘That’s enough!’

She stopped flailing long enough for him to release her. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with hands that were shaking uncontrollably. So much for being professional. Both of them.

‘Mr Kitaev, do we have a problem?’

The discreet enquiry was made by the concierge she had spoken to earlier. He materialised at her side, every inch the gatekeeper for the wealthy and influential. Gigi’s insides turned to liquid.

Khaled saw the effect on Red. She looked as if he was about to throw her to the lions.

‘ Nichevo . No problem. A slight misunderstanding.’

‘Yes, sir, these things can happen. But the young lady—’

‘Mademoiselle Valente,’ said Khaled smoothly, and her name was right there, given he’d just happened to take a look at her file last night, ‘is my guest.’

‘I see, sir.’

‘My security team didn’t recognise her and were over-zealous. I apologise for the inconvenience to your other guests.’

‘Not at all, Mr Kitaev.’ But the concierge continued to regard Red with interest.

The look on her face had been comic in its alarm and indecision as she followed this exchange, but now as they both turned their attention her way she visibly pulled herself together.

‘That’s right,’ she said gamely. ‘I’m here to speak to him.’

Him being the hotel’s highest paying guest.

Khaled fully expected the staff to evaporate, but to his credit the concierge lingered. ‘Are you certain, mademoiselle ?’

The hectic look on her face was ebbing away as she appeared to realise that the hotel management was offering her real assistance and not showing her the door.

She nodded slowly, and added, ‘ Merci beaucoup,’ with an almost comically sincere look on her face, even as her eyes kept zoning in on her backpack.

Khaled gave it a light shake.

What did she have in there? The Crown Jewels? A nuclear weapon? After her little display, neither would have truly surprised him.

‘You’re not hurt?’ he asked as the hotel staff evaporated back into the luxurious fittings.

‘No,’ she huffed, looking around as if expecting another attack. ‘No thanks to your lunatic friends.’

‘Bodyguards.’

She blinked, clearly not familiar with the concept.

‘They are employed to look to my safety.’

‘Why?’

Why...? Khaled wasn’t often asked this question. Usually people were calling him sir and getting out of his way. ‘It is common in my line of business.’

‘Hmm.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘Yes, well, you need to put them on a leash.’

Struggling manfully with a desire to throw back his head and laugh, Khaled murmured, ‘I apologise unreservedly. It was an unforgivable breach of your human rights.’

She eyed him suspiciously. ‘You don’t sound particularly sincere.’

Was she going to argue with him about this too?

‘I guess you’re having some fun at my expense,’ she allowed slowly.

Unexpectedly he remembered the lack of support given to her by the other dancers yesterday, and the laughter that greeted her pronouncements.

‘My papa used to say all I needed was a curly wig and a red nose and I’d have a new job.’

He frowned. ‘Most fathers think their daughters are princesses.’

Gigi wondered if being seventeen years old and dancing onstage in a costume made of balloons she’d strategically popped with five other girls, until she was virtually down to her little yellow bikini, while her father systematically fleeced the audience had an attendant fairy tale.

‘My father raised me to live in the real world,’ she said uncomfortably, darting another glance at her backpack. Was he ever going to give it back?

Following her gaze, he proffered it. ‘I believe this belongs to you?’

She was obviously trying not to appear too eager but she still snatched at it, and clearly couldn’t help plastering it to her chest.

‘So, does this happen to you all the time? Bodyguards leaping out and knocking people over?’

‘You were coming towards me and you’d reached into your bag.’

She frowned. ‘Why is that a problem?’

He made a trigger gesture with his hand.

Her frown deepened.

‘A gun,’ he clarified.

‘A gun ?’ Her voice rose. ‘They thought I had a gun !’ This notion was clearly as foreign to her as the French language she was so deliciously butchering with her accent.

A passing couple stared at them and she shut up.

Khaled tried not to smile.

‘I really don’t see that there’s anything funny about this,’ she said tightly.

‘ Nyet —nothing funny.’

‘I didn’t come to shoot you—obviously. I came to speak to you about the cabaret.’

There was an awkward silence as he just looked at her.

She tried again.

‘I know it’s unorthodox, but I figured as we’d met...’

He folded his arms. ‘I remember you lying on the floor.’

Gigi wondered whether, if she’d been lying on the floor right now, he would have stepped over her and kept going. Probably.

She reviewed her options. She’d gone over it with Lulu last night and decided her best hope of success was to bring all the material she’d compiled on the cabaret’s star-studded history and her ideas for its future and lay it before him.

Be confident. Make an appeal to his better nature and leave any mention of Solange out of it. The last had been Lulu’s firm instruction.

‘Do not mention Solange.’

Well, she hadn’t. But maybe she hadn’t been plain enough.

‘It’s handy that you remember me,’ she said, overly bright. ‘You see, I’m spokesperson for the troupe.

‘You don’t say?’ He glanced at his watch.

She was already losing him.

For the first time Gigi noticed that he looked a bit more disreputable than she remembered him being yesterday, and it was only now she fully focussed on the T-shirt, running shoes and the pair of pricey sweats and what they represented.

‘Are you on your way to do some exercise?’ she asked, a little desperately.

‘Da,’ he said with enviable cool, his gaze flicking down her body. ‘Are you here to help me out with that?’