sure how they’d got on to this topic, but she did have a list if he wanted to hear it.
‘Gay?’
Gigi almost choked. She put her hands on her hips. ‘You sound like the stereotype of a homophobic Russian he-man.’
He smiled. ‘I’m not homophobic,’ he said comfortably, ‘and I’m fast revising my opinion of you, Red.
‘Oh, and what opinion is that?’
‘You’re not here to have sex with me—you’re going to pester me into giving you whatever it is you want.’
Gigi turned pink and told herself she’d rather be a pest than have him think she was trading sexual favours for...well, favours. Only she wasn’t making a nuisance of herself, was she?
‘You asked me what my type was,’ she defended herself. ‘And I’m sorry if I’m being a nuisance, but you asked me to run with you!’
‘You need a new type.’
He was smiling openly at her now, but instead of feeling irritated she felt her heart pounding in her chest. She wished it would stop—it was most distracting. He should stop smiling too.
He was right. She did need a new type.
But it wasn’t going to be him.
Not that he was offering. Apparently she was a pest. Gigi tried not to mind that too much. Besides, gorgeous Russian gazillionaires didn’t date jobbing dancers.
Lead dancers at the Lido, maybe. Not chorus girls at L’Oiseau Bleu.
She worried at her lower lip. Was she being a pest? There was something so certain and old-fashioned about his masculinity that everything he said had weight to it.
She hadn’t had much male certainty in her life. The men she knew were for the most part equivocal and slippery. Witness her dad—and more latterly the Danton brothers, who had effectively stuffed up the only home she’d truly ever had since her mother’s death.
Gigi took a breath. Now was not the time to think about what made her want to howl. It was the time to do something about it.
‘Look,’ she said, instinctively reaching out to touch his arm. ‘Let’s just forget you said what you said, and you forget I said what I said, and we’ll start again.’
Even to her own ears it sounded lame, but right now it was all she had.
He was looking at her hand and she moved to snatch it back, but he caught her fingers between his.
Her eyes jerked up to his, but before she could ask him what he thought he was doing a shower of gravel spattered at their feet, sending Gigi’s confused thoughts flying as she followed its source to two boys who were old enough to know better.
A woman who was obviously their mother was on one of the culprits in an instant, clipping him behind the ear as she took hold of the smallest boy’s arm none too gently.
‘Quittez notre cabaret tout seul!’ she said in a tense, tight voice with a sideward glare at Kitaev. ‘Barbare!’ she spat.
Leave our cabaret alone! Barbarian!
A young couple had stopped, and the girl pulled out her phone to take a picture.
An older man said, ‘Why don’t you go back to London, where you belong?’
Gigi would have seen more, but Kitaev had stepped in front of her, effectively blocking her view.
For a moment Gigi was confused. Was he shielding her? She stared up at his broad back and felt quite odd, because no man had ever looked to her welfare before, and that it should be this man was, well...confusing.
He didn’t even like her.
But she never could stand bullies.
If you can’t take the criticism, Gigi, you shouldn’t be on the stage.
Fair enough, but her two-faced bully of a father’s critiques stayed with her to this day: too freckly, too red, too skinny, too stupid, too much trouble.
She’d learned to blank her expression and keep going. She hadn’t had much choice.
Kitaev appeared to be doing the same.
Taking it.
Well, she didn’t have to.
She scooted around him. ‘Hey! Who do you think you are—talking to people you don’t even know like that?’
In disbelief Khaled watched Gigi walk up to the woman clutching at the necks of her boys’ T-shirts.
‘No wonder your children have no manners if this is how you behave—and you, sir—’ she gestured to the older gentleman ‘—you should get your facts right. He doesn’t even live in London! None of you have seen what he’s going to do with the cabaret. You’re just condemning him out of hand. All of you!’
Given Red’s opinion of him, this was interesting.
‘Why don’t you wait and see before passing judgement? He might just surprise you.’
On the contrary—he would be doing pretty much what they expected. Offloading it to the next buyer, charity or scrapheap. Because he wasn’t invested in this heritage crap and this much aggravation wasn’t worth the trouble.
‘Besides, if people like you would buy a ticket to the show once in a while we wouldn’t be in so much trouble in the first place!’ Gigi put her hands on her hips, staring them all down.
She should have been funny to watch, and she was, but he also wanted to give her a shake. Why was she bothering? Why was she paying any attention to them? These people’s opinions meant nothing. They could and would change with tomorrow’s new headlines. Given what he’d said to her, he wasn’t even worth her spirited defence.
‘Who do you think you are?’ demanded the woman accusingly.
It was the moment Gigi didn’t know she had been waiting for. She drew herself up to her full five feet eleven inches and opened her mouth...
Khaled said something roughly in Russian.
‘That’s it,’ he said in English. He grabbed her hand. ‘Show’s over.’
To Gigi’s astonishment he began to drag her away.
‘Gigi Valente,’ she called a little desperately over her shoulder. ‘I’m a showgirl at L’Oiseau Bleu. Best cabaret revue in town!’
He jerked her roughly to his side.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ she snapped at him.
‘I could ask you the same thing.’
‘I’m trying to promote the cabaret.’
Khaled
