Caught In His Gilded World. Lucy Ellis

      ‘Can you hear me, mademoiselle?’

      ‘Her name is Gigi.’ The curly-haired brunette 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 home cities 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.

      She sat up on her elbows and fixed him with those blue eyes.

      ‘Qui êtes-vous? Who are you?’

      His question exactly.

      He straightened up to assert a little dominance over her and settled his hands lightly on his lean muscled hips.

      ‘Khaled Kitaev,’ he said simply.

      There was a ripple of reaction. But he didn’t take his eyes off Gigi as he calmly offered her his hand, and when she hesitated he leaned in and took what he wanted.

      LUCY ELLIS creates over-the-top couples who spar and canoodle in glamorous places. If it doesn’t read like a cross between a dozen old fairytales you half know and a 1930s romantic comedy, it’s not a Lucy Ellis story. Come and read a rambling exposition on her books at lucy-ellis.com and drop her a line.

      Caught in His

      Gilded World

      Lucy Ellis

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Gigi is for you, Mum.

      Contents

       Cover

       Introduction

       About the Author

       Title Page

       Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

       Extract

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘GIGI, GET DOWN from there. You’re going to break your neck!’

      Suspended two metres in the air, gripping the stage curtain between the tensed toes of her feet and using her slender muscled arms to propel herself upwards, Gigi ignored the commentary and made quick work of scaling the curtains alongside the four-metre-high fish tank. It was the same tank in which she would be swimming tonight, in nothing more than a G-string and a smile, with two soporific pythons: Jack and Edna. That was if she didn’t get fired first.

      The ladder, which would have made this easier, had been folded away, but she was used to shimmying up ropes. She’d been doing it from the age of nine in her father’s circus. The velvet stage curtains were a doddle in comparison.

      Now for the hard part. She grabbed hold of the side of the tank with one hand and swung a leg over, straddling the ledge and locking herself in place.

      There was an audible sigh from below.

      When Susie had yelled, ‘Kitaev’s in the building—front of house, stage left,’ pandemonium had broken loose. While the other girls had reached for their lipstick and yanked up their bra straps, Gigi had eyed the tank and, remembering its superb view once you were up there, hadn’t hesitated.

      Susie had been right on the money, too. Down below, among the empty tables and chairs, deep in conversation with theatre management, was the man who held their future in his powerful hands, surrounded by an entourage of thugs.

      Gigi’s eyes narrowed on those thugs. She guessed when you were the most hated man in Paris it helped to have minders.

      Not that he appeared to need them. His back was to the stage but she could tell his arms were folded because his dark blue shirt was plastered across a pair of wide, powerful shoulders and a long, equally sculpted torso.

      The man looked as if he broke bricks with a mallet for a living, not cabarets.

      ‘Gigi, Gigi, tell us what you can see? What does he look like?’

       Big, lean and built to break furniture.

      And that was when he turned around.

      Gigi stilled. She’d seen pictures of him on the internet, but he hadn’t looked like that. No, the photographs had left that part out... The I’ve just stepped off a boat from a nineteenth-century polar expedition, during which I hauled boats and broke ice floes apart with my bare hands part.

      A beard as dark and wild as his hair partially obscured the