The Gigolo Read online

  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

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  The End

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  PROLOGUE

  For once in her well-ordered life Kara decided to follow her heart instead of her business advisor.

  William 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.

  ‘It’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, here?’ 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.

  ‘It 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 qui
te 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 and 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.

  On Thursday there was nothing, again. Kara began to wish she’d paid him a little more attention but she buried herself in her work and tried to forget him. If the limit of his courtship ritual amounted to nothing more than a phone call and a bunch of cheap flowers he wasn’t worth her time, anyway.

  On Friday he rang her mobile.

  ‘What does a guy have to do to get you to have dinner with him?’

  ‘Ask,’ Kara said, trying to deny that she’d been waiting for him to ring.

  ‘Will you have dinner with me tonight, Kara Kavanagh?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, striking through the entry that was already in her diary. Luke Granger would have to wait until Monday to get his P45.

  William Baron didn’t seem to follow any of the known rules of engagement and that intrigued her.

  ‘Great – it’s a date, then.’

  ‘Is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course, Kara. I’ll meet you at eight – is Greens ok for you?’

  ‘Greens is fine.’ She hadn’t been able to get a table at Greens for well over a year but she refused to be impressed by his connections.

  ***

  Kara was strangely nervous. He’d called it a date. She’d forgotten how to act on a date.

  She chose a, just above the knee, shift dress in scarlet with a pair of matching shoes and a fake sable rap that had cost her more than the actual animal would have. She wore her hair loose. It was naturally fair but she regularly had a few highlights put in. She thought it made her look healthier – as if she’d had time to lounge in the sun rather than spend her summer hunched over her desk.

  Kara took a cab to the restaurant. William was waiting in the foyer. He was wearing a dark grey suit with a red shirt left open at the collar. Her tummy fluttered like a nervous teenager.

  The concierge escorted them to one of the best tables in the house.

  ‘You look delightful, Miss Kavanagh,’ he smiled across the table at her as she sat down.

  ‘Please don’t call me that.’ The whole world seemed to call her Miss Kavanagh. All it did for Kara was remind her that she was thirty seven and still single.

  ‘Kara?’ he said.

  ‘William?’ she replied.

  ‘I wanted you to know that I’m not trying to get into your knickers,’ he spoke as the waiter filled her glass from the outrageously expensive bottle of Bordeaux he had just ordered.

  The waiter sniggered.

  Kara stiffened but didn’t react. She waited for the waiter to put the bottle down and leave before replying.

  ‘Are you aware how uncomplimentary that sounded?’

  ‘Only if you were disappointed that wasn’t my aim.’ William grinned.

  Kara sipped her wine – it was rich and full bodied and exquisitely smooth on her tongue – and regarded him over the rim of her glass. He was a tricky bastard but she kind of liked sparring with him.

  ‘So, you think you know my price, do you?’ She held up her glass and looked at the ruby red contents as she swirled it. All men wanted to get into her knickers. Why should he be an exception? The fact that he was able to afford to soften her up at a window table in Greens didn’t make him any different in the long run.

  ‘I think I enjoy your company, that’s all. Must you always look for the worst in people?’

  ‘I don’t normally have to look that hard,’ she hit back.

  ‘I find it slightly insulting that you judge me by the merits of some douchebag you bedded by mistake.’

  ‘That’s a bit personal for a first date…’ Kara flinched. He’d obviously done his homework. She wasn’t sure whether to feel flattered or annoyed, but hadn’t she done exactly the same thing to him, and Google hadn’t found any dirt on Mr William Baron, which was the only reason she was here right now…well, that and the fact that she actually enjoyed his company. He had wit and wisdom and she was enjoying their fast paced banter. ‘…and I don’t believe it’s any of your business.’

  The waiter arrived to take their order.

  Kara opted for salmon and a tossed green salad with crushed new potatoes. He had fillet steak in a wild mushroom sauce and they chatted easily over their meals.

  ‘What do you do for a living, William?’ she asked as they ate.

  He hesitated for a moment before answering, as if he was plucking a suitable profession out of the air.

  ‘I suppose you could call me a property developer. I have a small portfolio of properties – most left to me by my father but I’ve added to their number – nothing terribly interesting or grand, I’m afraid but I do occasionally pick up a paintbrush or a sledge hammer and work for my living.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to buy an old house and do it up – like they do on the TV programmes.’ Kara was delighted. She’d feared he was going to be a banker or a slick city lawyer.

  ‘You don’t strike me as th
e kind of girl who likes to get her hands dirty. I thought you’d have staff to do that sort of thing for you.’

  ‘I don’t believe you think very highly of me, Mr Baron,’ Kara said, somewhat sadly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kara, that was uncalled for but you give off this slightly intimidating air of proficiency. It makes me nervous.’ His hand touched hers. She moved it away.

  ‘You see. Just like that.’ He pointed at her hand.

  Kara felt suddenly awkward and ill at ease. She didn’t really know how far was acceptable behaviour for a first date, any more. She fell back into defence mode.

  ‘You seem to think you know me. Well, I say you shouldn’t rely on the tabloid press for your information in future.’

  ‘Touché,’ he said and smiled.’

  She didn’t tell him that sometimes she just wanted to be swept off her feet and told what to do rather than having to constantly be the one in control. No one expected that of her.

  The waitress wheeled the sweet trolley to their table. Kara declined but William insisted on the lover’s platter – a shared dessert of bitter chocolate, whipped cream and sugar dipped strawberries supplied with two spoons and one plate. The waitress smiled knowingly as she handed Kara her spoon.

  Kara wanted to tell her that it was on the menu and not her choice at all but she managed to hold her tongue. Even she knew that it would have sounded stupid to deny what was obvious to those watching them. They had chemistry.

  ‘Dig in,’ he said, taking a large spoonful for himself.

  Kara took a small helping – an even amount of the dark chocolate pudding and the lightly whipped cream and ate it slowly. It tasted good.

  ‘What is anything worth if you have no one meaningful to share it with?’ he said.

  Kara flinched as if his words had penetrated her skin like the sting of a wasp.

  ‘That’s very poetic for a builder,’ she laughed. It felt as if his comment had been aimed directly at her and it struck a chord in her heart. Her loneliness stemmed directly from the lofty perch her career had placed her upon. It was often hard work and stressful and she took her problems home to an empty, sterile house that had been cleaned of all signs of life in her absence.