wasn’t what he was looking at.
Granted, he’d been living in tents, yurts and huts for the past six weeks, bathing in rivers, eating out of cans and off the carcasses of what they could kill. A hallucination involving a woman might well be the result—although he doubted this was what his mind would come up with. Because he’d swear he’d just got a glimpse of a knobby-kneed Tinker Bell in an animal print leotard, perched on top of the tank in which he’d been told a beautiful semi-naked showgirl would be swimming tonight—with pythons.
Almost before he could account for what he was seeing, the curious apparition vanished as suddenly as she’d appeared, followed by a thump and vague female shrieks.
‘Do you want to check that out?’ he asked of the two Danton brothers, both of whom were clearly sweating bullets over his unannounced appearance.
Neither man moved.
‘The girls are in rehearsal,’ said Martin Danton nervously, as if that explained everything.
His security detail looked around, clearly expecting all twenty-four luscious Bluebirds to come can-canning across the empty stage.
‘Would you like to see a rehearsal?’ Jacques Danton volunteered, catching hold of the shift in male attention eagerly. A little too eagerly.
The two Frenchmen who managed the place were nervous as cats on a hot tin roof—as well they might be. Although Khaled suspected their nerves were nothing more than a natural response to having their shaky business practices put under the microscope.
‘My lawyers will be in touch today,’ he informed them calmly. ‘I want to take a look at how the place is doing.’
‘We’re a Parisian institution, Mr Kitaev!’ they chorused.
‘So the French media have hammered home all week,’ he replied, with the same measured calm. ‘But it’s a business, and I like to know how all my businesses are doing.’
Frankly, he wouldn’t be here now if the press hadn’t exploded last week with spurious accusations that he was the equivalent of the Russian Army—marching on Paris, ripping up its pretty boulevards and despoiling French culture. Turning their city into Moscow-by-the-Seine.
All because he’d won a cabaret in a card game.
Now, having pretty much run his eye over what was making it difficult for him to move around the city without security, he was ready to organise its disposal.
He had meetings lined up this afternoon, so L’Oiseau Bleu’s time was almost up.
There was an interruption as a winsome girl with a mop of dark curls stuck her head through the curtain.
‘Jacques...’ she whispered.
The older man frowned. ‘What is it, Lulu?’
‘There’s been an accident.’
‘What sort of accident?’
‘One of the girls has hit her head.’
With a Gallic gesture of acceptance, Jacques Danton muttered something that sounded like, ‘Zhee-zhee,’ and excused himself, pounding up onto the stage and into the wings.
Khaled’s gaze flickered to the empty tank, towering over the stage. He still wasn’t sure what it was he’d seen but he was interested in finding out.
He moved and his security team swarmed up onto the stage with him.
‘I don’t really think this is a good idea,’ protested Martin Danton as he mobilised himself behind them, exhibiting the first bit of backbone Khaled had seen in either man.
He and his brother had been managing the cabaret for some fourteen years, according to the records. Managing it into the ground, Khaled suspected.
He made his way behind the curtains and through a jungle of stage props, stepping over various crates and boxes, and ducking overhanging cords and wires that probably constituted health and safety risks that would close the place down.
When he saw her she was lying sprawled on the stage floor.
Jacques Danton was ignoring her in favour of remonstrating with the little brunette. It had the effect on Khaled that all the mismanagement and blundering about hadn’t yet delivered. He shouldered the Frenchman out of the way and went to her aid.
Hunkering down, he discovered that on closer inspection, despite her eyes remaining closed, he could see her delicate eyelids twitching.
His mouth firmed.
Little faker.
Looking up, he judged the height and recognised that although she’d fallen she couldn’t have done much damage.
On cue, a clutch of other Lycra-clad, giggling, whispering twenty-something female dancers closed in around him. Khaled had had a similar experience only days ago, in the highlands of the Caucasus with a herd of jeyran gazelles. One minute he’d been naked, waist-deep in a clear stream, the next he’d been surrounded by knobby-kneed deer intent on drinking their fill.
He looked around to note that his security team appeared as bemused as he was feeling.
What were they going to do? Tackle them?
Obviously he’d been set up, and this was a stunt to get him backstage. But the girls appeared as harmless as the deer. He looked down at the one gazelle who’d separated herself from the herd. She lay there, unnaturally still, but those eyelids gave her away, twitching at high speed as if she’d attached a jump lead to them.
He pressed back one of the delicate folds. ‘Can you hear me, mademoiselle?’
‘Her name is Gigi.’ The curly-haired brunette had crouched down opposite him and supplied the name helpfully.
He was in Montmartre, in a shabby, past-its-use-by-date cabaret, with a cast of showgirls whose cities of origin ranged from Sydney to Helsinki to London—hardly any of them were actually French. Of course her name was Gigi.
He didn’t believe it for a second.
As if sensing his scepticism, she swept up her thick golden lashes with astonishing effect. A pair of blue eyes full of lively intelligence above angular cheekbones met his. Grew round, startled, and bluer than blue.
The colour of the water in the Pechora Sea.
He should know—he’d just flown in from it.
He watched as the points in her face—a gorgeous Mediterranean nose, a wide pink mouth and a pointed chin, all framed by wild red hair—seemed to coalesce around those same eyes.
His chest felt tight, as if he’d been kicked under the ribs.
She sat up on her elbows and fixed him with those blue eyes.
‘Who are you? Qui êtes-vous?’ Her accent happily butchered the French with the sing-song cadence of Ireland blurred with something
