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CHAPTER ONE
‘GIGI, GET DOWN fro to break your neck!’
Suspended two e curtain between the tensed toes of her feet and using her slender nored the coside the four-h fish tank It was the saand 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 shie 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,’ pandeirls had reached for their lipstick and yanked up their bra straps, Gigi had eyed the tank and, re its superb view once you were up there, hadn’t hesitated
Susie had been right on thethe empty tables and chairs, deep in conversation with theatre ement, 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 thee 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 , not cabarets
‘Gigi, Gigi, tell us what you can see? What does he look like?’
Big, lean and built to break furniture
And that hen 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 fro 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 lower portion of his face, but even at this distance the strong bone structure, high cheekbones, long straight nose and intense deep-set eyes lossy and wavy inky hair was so long he’d hooked some of it back behind his ears
He looked lean and hungry and in need of civilising—and why that should translate into a shivery awareness of her own body wasn’t soripping the side of the tank