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Only then she noticed the subtle movement of his hard gaze over her body. He wasn’t being obvious but she felt it all the same—and, dammit, her nipples stiffened.
So instead of being reasonable she lost her temper and went for broke. ‘We want to know if you’ve any plans to turn our cabaret into a full-on high-octane version of Le Crazy Horse?’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_026ff9ea-2627-525c-bb4c-00b7264b006e)
MARTIN DANTON MADE a groaning sound.
His brother looked poised to take the little redhead out.
Red stood her ground.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ responded Khaled, not taking his eyes off her, ‘never having been inside the Crazy Horse.’
He caught the slight eye-roll and the tightening of her lips. His hand tightened around the crumpled ball of spurious invective this young woman had clearly swallowed whole.
‘Gigi, ça suffit,’ interrupted Jacques Danton. That’s enough.
But she didn’t back down. ‘I think we have a right to know,’ she protested. ‘It’s our jobs.’
He would have been more impressed if he hadn’t suspected her boss had put her up to it.
‘Your jobs are safe for the moment.’ He threw it in because it was accurate—today. Tomorrow, possibly not.
‘Splendide!’ Jacques Danton beamed.
‘That’s not what I asked,’ Red interrupted, and she lifted those lively blue eyes to his.
Not in appeal, he registered, but setting herself against him. Clearly not fooled one bit—unlike her boss.
For a moment he considered the alternative: that this wasn’t some set-up and that the girl—a lot sharper than the Dantons and, unlike them, willing to take him on—was acting alone.
‘We’re not a strip club, Mr Kitaev, and it would ruin—’
She took a breath and something like anguish crumpled up her striking features. In the time it took her to compose herself Khaled became interested in what exactly she thought he was ruining for her.
But she shook her head and changed direction. ‘Ruin the character of the theatre!’
‘I wasn’t told the theatre had a character.’
More laughter.
She looked around, as if thrown by the lack of support, and unexpectedly his conscience stirred.
‘Nobody is going to be asked to take off their clothes,’ he said, exasperated. Hell, he didn’t know what would happen here. Go on as before, bleeding funds, because after the dose he’d had of French spleen over the place only a fool would touch it? He’d be lucky to give it away.
Red, however, seemed to be under the mistaken belief that there was something here worth saving.
‘Voulez-vous, filles?’
Jacques Danton began clapping his hands at the other dancers and their audience began to break up.
‘Maintenant, Gigi,’ he snapped.
She was clearly torn between doing as she was told and continuing to question him about their jobs, but Khaled could already see she wouldn’t stand up to her boss.
Just him.
Which was a first, given that men with a lot more wherewithal than this girl—industrialists, Duma members, Moscow gangsters—stepped carefully around him. Then again, those men didn’t have her lavender eyes or, frankly, her sexual pull.
She was by no means the most beautiful girl backstage, but she was the only one he couldn’t take his eyes off.
Something to do with her bold features and lively eyes, and an innate sensuality she appeared to be entirely unaware of.
Pity she danced here...
Shame he was flying out tomorrow...
Another dancer—the frowning little brunette—had edged up to her. She took Red’s hand with a furtive look of disapproval in his direction and tugged her away. Smart girl.
Red...Gigi...kept glancing over her shoulder at him before the rest of the dancers swallowed her up.
It was a slender shoulder, as finely designed as the rest of her, and it put him in mind of the Spanish painter Luis Ricardo Falero’s amusing, graceful mythological girls. He knew he was done here, and yet he found his eyes following the red pigtails, bouncing amidst the crowd of other girls as the famous Bluebirds vanished into the rabbit warren of corridors.
* * *
That evening the dressing room was noisier and more lively than usual before the first performance.
Khaled Kitaev was the sole subject of discussion.
‘The rumour is that the Russian supermodel Alexandra Dashkova had herself wrapped in a rug, Cleopatra-style, taken up to his hotel suite in Dubai last month and unrolled before him like war booty.’
This was greeted with various oohs and aahs and had Gigi hesitating in the act of applying three-ounce lashes to her eyelids.
‘No one’s got a chance with him, then,’ groaned Adele at Susie’s announcement, and the cramped dressing room was filled with sighs and grumbles and more speculation.
‘C’est vrai.’ Solange regarded her breasts with satisfaction, adjusting her diamante-studded costume. ‘He’s asked for me by name. I’m having a drink with him after the show tomorrow.’
Gigi’s hand slipped and the fake lashes ended up part-way down her cheek.
‘Great,’ grumbled Lulu under her breath, leaning forward to pluck the feathered blob from Gigi’s cheek and pass it to her. ‘Ten to one she’ll sleep with him and make the rest of us look easy.’ Only being Lulu she didn’t actually say easy—she mouthed it.
There was a neat little division down the centre of the Bluebirds. The dancers who accepted invitations from the visiting Hollywood A-listers and rock stars who came to the shows, and those who lined up each night after the last show for the courtesy bus.
It was something Gigi had organised when a couple of the girls had complained about not feeling safe leaving the venue at night, given that the theatre was bumped up against the red light district, and now the bus was a regular thing.
Gigi and Lulu never missed the bus. Solange took every invitation that came her way. Apparently she’d taken this one too.
Not that there was anything wrong with that, Gigi told herself. She only cared because it confirmed her worst suspicions about Kitaev’s plans for them.
She slapped down the lid on her make-up case.
‘Sorry G,’ said Leah, obviously alerted by the bang of Gigi’s case and not sounding sorry at all. ‘You went to all that trouble for nothing.’
‘Not for nothing,’ Lulu rallied back loyally in her defence. ‘We all got a good look.’
Too good, thought Gigi fiercely. Any hope that Khaled Kitaev was going to take ownership of the cabaret seriously was out of the window. As of now the Bluebird was in serious jeopardy.
And what was it with everyone thinking she’d done it on purpose? Sheesh.
No, she knew all about this man. She had scrolled through lists of his public holdings on the internet, chased them to various websites, and was still struggling to make sense of how he’d made his money.
Initially, it appeared, as an oil trader—but he seemed to have a finger in a lot of pies. Shady, she decided. She had learned from watching her dad at work that big money was probably amassed in the same way as her father’s smaller cheats: through the exploitation of someone else.
‘So what do you think he’s going to do to us?’ asked Trixie, one of the youngest dancers.
Given he’d already honed in on Solange, Gigi had a pretty good idea.
‘Do you think he’ll try to change things? Maybe fix things up?’ Trixie sounded optimistic. ‘It might not all be bad, Gigi.’
No, it was probably worse. Gigi hated to disillusion her, but facts had to be faced.
She stood up to face the room.
‘Could I have everyone’s attention?’
A couple of the girls glanced her way, but the noise level didn’t drop.
She raised her voice. ‘Can we just try to look at the big picture here—instead of getting into a lather about his sex life?’
The word ‘sex’ had a few more heads turning and the volume dropping.
‘Kitaev owns a string of gambling venues around the world.’ Gigi paused to let that sink in. ‘Have you thought about what that might mean for us?’
‘Oui,’ said Ingrid, ‘a pay-rise.’
There was a ripple of laughter.
‘Loosen up, G,’ advised another girl, giving her a friendly push.
‘She can’t—she hasn’t been laid in so long I’m surprised she didn’t squeak when she fell off that aquarium,’ cackled Susie.
‘Gigi’s just smarting because her little stunt didn’t make him single her out,’ sang out Mia from across the room.
‘Give it up, G,’ said Adele. ‘Oh, that’s right—you never do!’
There was a howl of good-natured laughter.
Gigi knew she needed to get the discussion back on track, because now Susie was wanting to know what the point was of being a showgirl if you didn’t take advantage of the perks: rich men.
‘The point is no one should date Kitaev,’ Gigi interrupted. ‘He shouldn’t be encouraged!’
The laughter only became more raucous. Even Lulu gave her a rueful look.
He’s going to win, thought Gigi a little desperately.
The dressing room door banged open.
‘Guess who’s just arrived, ladies?’ announced Daniela, sparkling in full costume.
There was a twitter of excitement.
‘Not Kitaev.’
The twittering died down.
‘Girls, its wall-to-wall security and every rich Russian in the city is here—and everyone from Fashion Week seems to have followed them. The media are ten-thick outside. I think I’m going to faint!’
Amidst the shrieks, Lulu adjusted her headdress and said brightly, ‘There you go, Gigi. Maybe he’s not so bad for business after all.’
‘So he’s sent his friends?’ she grumbled. ‘One night does not a week make. We’re just a novelty act for a bored, spoilt-for-choice, testosterone-injected, arrogant—’
But now even her best friend had jumped ship and was on her way out, giggling with the other girls, trailing the six-foot feather tail they all had attached to their waists for the first number.
Troubled, Gigi finished attaching her own.
That many customers wasn’t to be sneezed at, given they regularly performed to a half-empty theatre, and this had been their worst year yet.
Maybe the other girls saw something she didn’t.
Yes, she thought cynically, they saw something, all right. They saw Solange draping her skinny arms around Khaled Kitaev’s broad neck and a line of ambitious showgirls asking when was it their turn.
Solange was apparently going to have hers, and it firmed Gigi’s chin.
The lowest common denominator was not going to save this theatre or their jobs.
Khaled Kitaev didn’t care about the cabaret. He had no stake in it. He’d won the thing in a card game. All he cared about was the bottom line. Specifically at the moment that bottom being Solange’s, but Gigi could well imagine him cutting a swathe through the other bottoms of the troupe. There were some very shapely bottoms.
Gigi swished her plumage-heavy tail like a haughty lyrebird and took off after the other girls.
She would see about that.
* * *
‘Mademoiselle...?’
‘Valente.’
‘Mademoiselle, I’m afraid I cannot give you the information you seek. At the Plaza Athénée we value our guests’ right to privacy.’
