The Gigolo
Authors: Isabella King
The Gigolo
ISABELLA KING
©Isabella King 2011
Published by Isabella King
This is a work of fiction. All characters portrayed in this novel
are products of the author’s imagination.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
without the prior permission of the publisher
This book contains adult content
and sexually explicit language and is not
suitable for anyone under the age of eighteen.
PROLOGUE
F
or once in her well-ordered life Kara decided to follow her heart instead of her business advisor.
W
illiam spotted her immediately, although she would have been hard to miss – her face had been plastered over every billboard in London for the past month – and he had to admit that Miss Business Woman of the Year looked far less snooty in the flesh than she did staring down at him from a thirty foot high bill board. In fact, he’d go as far as to say that she was an unqualified beauty.
William
crossed the room to introduce himself.
***
Kara noticed him at once. He stood out from the crowd and exuded that kind of confidence bordering on arrogance that Kara found so attractive. Her eyes inadvertently dropped to his crotch as he made his way across the room towards her and she blushed. But for once in her well-ordered life Kara decided to follow her heart instead of her business advisor.
‘Hello,’ he said
and his smile was instant and warm.
‘Hello back,’ Kara purred, hiding her unexpected nervousness behind an off handed, mildly disinterested reply
and she returned her attention to the grotesque painting hanging on the gallery wall in front of her.
‘It’s a nice piece,’ he said, turning to look at the painting
and mirroring her stance.
‘I
t’s a bit too childlike for my liking. I always get the feeling that I’m being ripped off when I see a hugely inflated price slapped on something my five year old niece could have knocked out in half an hour whilst eating a Jaffa cake.’
He snorted, covering a need to laugh out loud with one tanned and perfectly manicured hand.
She noted that he wasn’t wearing a wedding band – not that this was proof positive that he didn’t have a wife at home – and he had scuffed knuckles on his right hand. She hoped he wasn’t a bouncer – or worse still, a fighter! She searched for signs of a hidden recorder in the pocket of his grey silk shirt then chided herself for being so suspicious.
Kara looked away, aware that she’d been staring. He didn’t say anything but the side of his mouth twitched upwards.
‘I bow to your superior knowledge.’ He took a theatrical bow.
‘You’re making fun of me?’
‘Not at all. You’re a very astute lady, Miss Kavanagh,’ he whispered the words so close to her ear that his breath moved her hair. She shivered and took a step away from him.
She wasn’t surprised that he knew her name – it had been plastered over every billboard in town
for the past month and she was beginning to get used to the constant attention. It fed her somewhat hungry ego and made her single minded, yet sadly celibate lifestyle almost worth the effort. But even she was beginning to tire of the lonely nights she spent in front of the TV with a frozen meal for one on her knee.
She
’d never planned to miss out on life in favour of her career. It had just happened that way and now that it had she no longer seemed to know how to have a life outside of the office.
‘Are you an artist?’ She asked, knowing
full well that he wasn’t. He was far too well put together and lacked the ever present smell of turps that hung in the air around most of the artists she’d met tonight, but it was a good way to discover who he really was without making it look as if she was that interested.
‘No,’ he laughed without offering any other information.
Kara bristled. He wasn’t playing the game – or perhaps it was her who was out of touch. The last date she’d been on had ended in disaster when the photograph that appeared in the next morning’s paper described him as ‘the married PR executive and cosy dinner date of ruthless business woman and home wrecker, Kara Kavanagh’.
‘What are you interested in, h
ere?’ She tried again, pushing the dreadful memory to the back of her mind. She couldn’t shy away from human contact altogether. Nor could she tar every man with the same brush, and that was partly why she’d accepted the invitation tonight. She had no interest in art but at least it got her out of the house and mixing with people other than the morons she had to work with.
‘I’m interested in making a date with you.’ He smiled, revealing a set of perfect, white teeth behind his
cupid bow lips.
‘I don’t date,’ Kara snapped back. It was her stock answer to
the dating question these days and it had slipped out before she could stop herself. ‘I meant what piece of art are you interested in.’
‘
Oh!’ he said and he looked a little taken back, as if he’d expected something different from her. He probably wasn’t used to being turned down, Kara thought. She wondered if she’d been a bit too sharp but he made no effort to move on.
He
lent in to whisper against her ear again.
‘
Perhaps you would prefer it if I dragged you out to the back alley for a quick fuck?’
Kara
’s heart beat quickened. She sucked in a lungful of the cloying, perfume scented air. She felt hot. He was too close. She had an urge to slap his beautiful, arrogant face but didn’t want to draw that sort of attention to herself in a room full of journalists all hoping for a scoop that would bump their boring culture story onto the front page, and neither did she want to give him the satisfaction of reacting to his rather childish shock tactic. She’d been hoping for more from someone so well packaged.
‘
That would be preferable to wasting a couple of hours of my life seated across the dinner table from you whilst you try and calculate how much you have to spend on cheap wine before you can get into my knickers.’
‘Ouch,’ he
laughed. ‘They weren’t lying when they said you were a hard bitch.’
‘Who?’ Kara tried to hide the hurt in her eyes. She was neither hard nor a bitch
. She had merely learnt to be less trusting these days.
‘I
t was delightful to meet you, Miss Kavanagh,’ he said, reaching out for her hand and shaking it firmly in his own. He left without telling her who had described her as a hard bitch or what he did for a living. He had been in the right, of course. It would have been crass of him to name names and it was even crasser of her to have asked him.
Damn! Why do I always have to shoot from the hip?
Kara kept one eye on his progress
around the room as she pretended to have an interest in the expensive artwork. Women seemed drawn to him whilst their men folk eyed him with suspicion. She watched with a touch of envy as he bestowed his warm smile on other women, touching
their
hands,
their
shoulders and the small of
their
backs, and the spark his bright, playful eyes had ignited in her belly, fizzled out. He’s a player, she decided – nothing more than an opportunist in expensive clothes – and she was forced to let go of the fanciful notion that he had been any more interested in her than any other beautiful woman in the room. The spark she’d felt when he touched her had been nothing more than a fantasy conjured up by her own sexually frustrated imagination.
But, try as she might,
Kara couldn’t quite wipe the image from her mind of him so consumed with desire for her that he would catch hold of her arm and pull her out into the dirty little courtyard lined with rubbish bins and cigarette butts and forcibly take her up against the wall. His hand roughly parting her legs – his lips smashed against her own to silence her weak protests as he rips off her panties. It made her heart beat faster and left an ache between her legs that she longed to have quenched so badly that it was in danger of blurring her judgement.
It didn’t happen
and he became lost in the crowd. Kara didn’t want to be seen searching for him, but at the end of the evening he sought her out again.
‘Call me sometime,’ he whispered a
nd slipped his card into her jacket pocket. She noted that he left alone.
Kara waited until he
’d disappeared before looking at it. It was matt black and with only his name and number printed across the middle in gold italics as if it had been scrawled by his own hand. He was so polished, so charming; a man of mystery – and no doubt danger – Kara thought. She would never call William Baron.
‘
Rumour has it that he’s the descendant of a Russian Tsar,’ George Tarmy, the owner of the gallery commented as he left.
‘We were just discussing the painting
.’ Kara toyed with the card in her pocket.
‘
He bought it.’
‘Which one?’
‘The Paul Blake.’
‘Don’t you think he’s a little bit odd? Kara wanted George to say no, he’s not odd he’s an eligible bachelor
and you shouldn’t let him get away.
‘I’d pay him to spend the night with me,’ George swooned
dramatically.
‘I wouldn’t,
’ Kara bit back.
‘For such a shrewd business woman you’re a fucking awful liar, Kara
Kavanagh.’
‘Bye, George.
’ Kara laughed. ‘Thank you for a wonderful evening.’
CHAPTER
ONE
William Baron
rang her office on Monday morning.
‘Do you have an appointment? Who are you? What do you want with her? Her secretary grilled him.
‘It’s private and she’s expecting my call,’ William answered.
She finally agreed to put him through.
‘Kara Kavanagh,’ Kara said. Her tone was clipped and impersonal.
‘
Did your secretary used to work for The Gestapo? I only wanted to say hello,’ he joked.
‘
Well, you’ve said it, now. Please don’t ring my office again.’ Kara was busy and a little off hand with him. She regretted it the minute she put the phone down and her hand hovered over it for a brief second as she considered ringing him back to apologise, but she didn’t.
Flowers arrived on Tuesday – a bunch of hand-picked pansies
wrapped in tissue paper. He was a cheap skate. She gave them to her secretary but kept the card and read it before opening her post.
I picked these pansies from my
own garden especially for you,
the note said. Kara felt slightly guilty. She wanted to retrieve them from Julie – just in case he showed up, but she didn’t and neither did he.
On Wednesday there was no word from him and Kara found herself double checking the post to see if she’d missed something.