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‘You don’t love me, Gigi. Love is just another word for fear.’
‘You think I’m afraid? You think I’m—what?—hiding behind the cabaret?’
‘You won’t try out for the Lido, Gigi, and as far as I’m aware that’s the most prestigious joint in town. Why is that?’
‘Because I’m loyal!’ she hollered. ‘Something you seem to have missed!’
‘Loyal? You’re scared.’
‘No.’
She was shaking her head vigorously but she knew he could see she was weakening. She was backing away now. He’d almost pushed her backwards entirely.
He gave her another shove.
‘And you’re lying to yourself. This has always been about what I could do for you.’
‘No.’
‘Prove it,’ he said. ‘Make the choice. Me or the job.’
* * *
Suddenly Gigi wanted him to be that billionaire bastard he’d been written about as being.
But she knew better. She knew so much more about him. She knew enough that she could feel her legs almost breaking under her with the weight of what he was doing to her.
Because if he cared for her he wouldn’t put her love to a test.
She hadn’t asked him to love her. She hadn’t asked anything of him.
She looked at him sadly and shook her head.
‘I want the job,’ she said, swallowing hard on the fierce craving pushing up her throat, and she saw the flash of hard satisfaction cross his face and knew at last that what her instincts had been warning her of was true.
‘Because there is no choice,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘You haven’t given me a choice.’
As she turned away he tried to take her bag from her. For a moment she was thrown, almost thought he was going to stop her.
She wished in that moment that he would. A terrible, terrible wish.
But then she saw that he only wanted to hand it to his bodyguard, who had been hovering there the whole time.
She’d been so upset she hadn’t even noticed.
‘Grisha is flying with you to Moscow. End of discussion.’
She didn’t argue because what was the point? He was always going to win.
And suddenly it was as if she was twelve years old again, and finally able to do that double somersault.
Carlos would be so proud of her—he’d have to love her. Or so she’d thought.
‘My daughter,’ he’d kept saying. ‘My daughter is going to be the star attraction in this show.’
But when she’d broken her collarbone and hadn’t been able to perform it hadn’t been Carlos who’d sat by her as she lay frightened and tearful in hospital.
The show has to go on.
She’d been all alone. Just as she was now.
She didn’t let herself feel again until the plane was in the air. By that time the aerial silks were cut and she was tumbling, tumbling...all her pretty tricks and turns lost to her now. All she could do was try to fall without breaking any bones.
* * *
Khaled boarded a helicopter and flew back to Moscow that same night.
He stormed into his apartment and the first thing he spotted was her shoe. Her little caramel boot, lying on its side beside his bed. He spent twenty full minutes hunting for its twin.
He never found it, but he did pull out a bottle of rot-gut vodka and proceed to get very, very drunk.
It was easier than facing what he’d done.
He’d seen what love did to people. How it failed you—when his father had died on his mother. How it twisted you—his stepfather’s cruel jealousy. And how it weakened you—his own longing for comfort as a boy which had been beaten and kicked out of him, and then enabled him to make all of the tough decisions that had brought him to where he stood today: bloody but victorious in the Russian business bear pit.
Yes, he thought he had seen what love did to people—until he’d seen what he had done last night.
To Gigi.
To the woman he loved.
Because he did love her. How the hell could he not love her?
Yet even to imagine undoing those knots he’d tied tore at the weft and weave of the life he had put together. He had no idea what his life would look like if he undid them all. He suspected it wouldn’t be pretty.
But Gigi had given him a glimpse of a different life. One which wasn’t his, or hers, but theirs, and he was still under the influence of how strange and utterly beguiling it had looked.
On that last afternoon, as Gigi had run up the slope, her long back straight and her bare legs flashing through the grass, he had tried to imagine...
