A Perfect Paris Christmas

by Mandy Baggot

  She reached the top and Ethan turned to look at her.

  ‘I will put her into bed,’ he whispered. ‘The lounge is through there.’ He indicated a closed door just in front of her.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t need any help?’ she asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t be long. Please, sit down, relax.’ He turned then, manoeuvring into another room on what was a pretty tiny landing area.

  Keeley put her hand on the door handle and opened. With the very first crack of opening, Bo-Bo came barrelling through, barking and whining and nearly knocking Keeley sideways in his attempt to get out. The dog made for the room Ethan and Jeanne had gone into and Keeley stepped on into the living area.

  It was small but perfectly formed. Wooden floorboards again, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf against one wall containing all manner of items. There were many books, then piles of magazines, toy cars, board games, Rubik’s cube style puzzles, empty wine bottles with burned down candles poking out of them, others that looked like they contained copper strings of lights. Some people might describe it as cluttered, but to Keeley it looked like all of the places she had been with Ethan during their time together. It was acutely him.

  She moved to the window – only a few steps and she was there – and looked out over the street below. Even with the window closed against the cold she could still hear the subtle jazz and see those lights on the balconies.

  ‘Jeanne’s bedroom has a view of the courtyard garden,’ Ethan said.

  Keeley hadn’t heard him enter the room and she swung round, knocking something on the floor with her boot. ‘Oh, sorry, I think I…’

  ‘It is OK,’ Ethan said, crossing the room in two paces and bending over. ‘It is Bo-Bo’s water and food bowl. I will move them.’ He picked up the bowls she hadn’t seen and strode another two paces and through a small arch in the wall into what Keeley could see was the tiniest of kitchens.

  He came out again, standing under the arch, looking a little unsure of himself. ‘You would like hot chocolate?’

  ‘If it isn’t any trouble,’ Keeley answered. ‘The person who invited me has fallen asleep and the dog who was supposed to be pleased to see me couldn’t wait to shoot past me.’ She smiled.

  ‘The dog is trying to wake Jeanne up,’ Ethan replied. ‘Licking her face like she is an ice cream.’

  Keeley stepped towards him. ‘Let me help.’

  ‘It is OK,’ Ethan said. ‘The kitchen… it is… petite.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Keeley said. ‘I would like to see it.’

  Ethan smiled. ‘There is only about a metre to regard.’

  ‘Aren’t the very best things supposed to come in small packages?’ The second the sentence left her lips she blushed.

  His smile widened then, a look of pure sexy mischief dancing in his eyes. ‘Ah, Keeley,’ he breathed. ‘But, sometimes, also what you see is not always what you get.’

  Now her blush was turning bonfire hot and she wondered whether she could stand next to him in a confined kitchen space without wondering exactly what the true dimensions of his package was…

  Ethan laughed then. ‘Come.’ He beckoned. ‘I will show you what the French stockpile in their cupboards.’

  Fifty-Three

  Ethan wanted to impress her. It was stupid, wasn’t it? To want to impress someone he had learned put more weight on feelings and comfort than she did on the size of someone’s living space or whether they had top-of-the-range kitchen appliances. Yet still he wanted her to like the place he lived the way he liked it. There was a reason it was small. There was a reason he hadn’t moved to a different part of Paris, somewhere considered more affluent. This was who he was. This was all he needed.

  He had made hot chocolate and then he had lit the wood burner. It was the tiniest of fires against one bare brick wall, so close to the sofa that if you stuck your feet out too far you might catch your toes on the front of it. But it didn’t need to be of a size to adequately heat the living room. And it was warm now, perhaps a little too warm considering he and Keeley were sat close together on the only two-seater sofa he had found to fit in the room.

  ‘How is your hot chocolate?’ Ethan asked, plucking his mug from the coffee table and taking a sip.

  ‘It’s very good,’ Keeley admitted.

  ‘If I wanted to impress you I would tell you it is my mother’s recipe,’ Ethan said.

  ‘It’s not?’

  ‘It is out of a jar, with a touch of milk, blended together to form a paste, before you add the hot water.’

  ‘And now I have your secret to making it so well,’ Keeley said.

  He smiled. There was a question he had been wanting to ask her almost since they had met, but he had battered it away as unimportant. If he asked it now he knew it would change things from living in the moment to making plans for something else. But his need to know the answer was now creeping up as December started to accelerate in numbers…

  ‘Keeley,’ Ethan began.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long are you staying in Paris?’ It was out there now, but it felt altogether too blunt. He followed it up. ‘I do not know if you are… here on holiday or… with your work or… something else.’

  ‘A holiday,’ Keeley answered. She cleared her throat and leaned forward to put her mug of hot chocolate down on the coffee table. ‘Rach and I… well, we had some time off that needed to be used up before the end of the year and… we had never been to Paris before so…’

  ‘And you are returning when?’ He swallowed. He was now feeling anxious about her answer. What if she said she was leaving soon? Before Christmas. Sooner…

  ‘We haven’t actually fixed a date yet,’ Keeley said. ‘But my parents are expecting me back for Christmas Day. And if I don’t get back for Christmas Day it’s likely my mum will phone the British Embassy.’

  Ethan smiled. ‘OK.’ Soon. But not so soon they couldn’t spend more time together. This was good. Or at least, better than bad.

  ‘What about your mother?’ Keeley asked then, sitting a little sideways so she was facing him. ‘Would she phone the gendarmes if you were overseas and didn’t come back when you said you would?’

  ‘Ah,’ Ethan said with a sigh. His mother. His parentage. The thing he never talked about. Immediately he got ready to change the subject or trot out the usual tired lines he gave to girls in bars who wanted more than a physical connection during a one-night encounter. But the words weren’t coming as easily as usual and one look at Keeley’s expression – soft, inquisitive, ready to be fully invested in his answer – told him this was not the time for brushing this off. ‘I… do not know my mother.’

  He turned a little side-on too and watched the confusion appear on her face. ‘I… do not know my father either.’ He shrugged, as if this was the most normal thing in the world.

  ‘You don’t know them very well?’ Keeley asked. ‘Or you…’ She stopped, as if trying to get her mind to catch up. He filled in the gaps for her.

  ‘I do not know them at all. I have… never known them,’ he stated. ‘The story is that I was left at the orphanage as a baby. No note. No information at all. Just me.’ Saying the words was still uncomfortable even though time had marched on. He didn’t give himself permission to dwell very often because what was the point? It achieved nothing. ‘I am… very much… like Jeanne.’ He shrugged again. ‘Perhaps that is why she is here with her very annoying dog.’ He smiled, cradling his mug in his hands.

  ‘I can’t imagine not knowing who I came from,’ Keeley said. ‘Sorry… that was really unfeeling. I didn’t mean—’

  ‘It is OK,’ Ethan told her. ‘But I have never known any different.’ He placed his mug back on the table. ‘Everyone around me at the orphanage was in the same position. Later, everyone I came into contact with on the street was either in the same position or hiding from the family they did have.’

  ‘So how did you build up a business? Where did you begin? What about school?’
<
br />   ‘So many questions,’ Ethan breathed, a hint of a smile on his lips.

  ‘Sorry,’ Keeley said. ‘Am I asking too much? Is it—’

  ‘Non,’ Ethan said. ‘It is OK.’

  It was OK, wasn’t it? To share the truth of his past with Keeley? Usually there was hesitation and a small voice telling him not to tell his story, but this time the little whisper from his subconscious seemed to be cheering him on. ‘The reason I am here and not still living on the street. The reason I have a reason to get up in the mornings is because… I met a girl.’

  *

  Keeley felt her heart plummet and she was back in that bedroom picking up a photograph from the carpet. Was this the moment she was going to find out what she was undoubtedly the most terrified of? She tried to calm her inner turmoil and not let it show on the outside. How did you do that when everything itched and pulsed?

  ‘That girl, she made me realise that the world is a complicated place, but that at the heart of everything is the simple knowledge that no matter what our background, or our beliefs, or our status… we are all the same,’ Ethan said with true conviction. ‘We are all in this world together and she showed me that I counted exactly as much as the next person. And she taught me never to apologise for being who I am.’

  ‘She sounds like a wonderful person.’ Keeley knew her lips were trembling. She should ask the question now. She should ask Ethan the name of the girl, and pray she was wrong. But the raging fear that she wasn’t wrong, that she already knew the answer, was overpowering everything. She wanted so much to be wrong. She didn’t want confirmation. Because if she had confirmation it would open up a whole different avenue of discussion that once travelled down could not be retraced.

  ‘She is,’ he answered softly.

  ‘Were you in love?’ Keeley asked. Say no. Please say no. Say the grey eyes in that photo weren’t yours. She was holding her fingertips together, crushing the pads against each other.

  ‘No,’ Ethan breathed, his lips forming a smile. ‘No, never in love. Not like that. The best of friends. She… has a piece of my heart, and everything she has given to me is something I can never repay.’

  He looked so sad now, so lost. All Keeley ached to do was reach out to him, to let him know how special she thought he was. But if she did that, if she made that deepest of statements now, here by the cosiest of fires in the most comfortable of places, full of Ethan’s eclectic personality and sizzling masculinity, there might be no going back.

  ‘I do not think I have ever been in love the way it is described in books or in TV shows,’ Ethan admitted. ‘Have you… ever been in love?’

  Keeley was finding it increasingly difficult not to show everything she was feeling in her body language now. She knew she had never felt with anyone else the way she felt here next to him. Could she admit that out loud? Erica invaded her thoughts then and the promise she had made her friend. All in. Every time.

  And then there was Bea. Forthright and pragmatic even in love. You liked someone, you told them. You got on with it. Bea had never been afraid to live her truth. It felt like Bea and Erica were both staring hard at her now, pleading with her to say what she felt.

  ‘I think love might be what’s happening to me now,’ Keeley breathed. She looked into Ethan’s eyes, breath catching in her throat. ‘I think it’s frightening… and uncontrollable and it… doesn’t discriminate between people who are ready for it and people who had no idea it was going to happen.’ She took a harried breath. ‘I think it might be meeting someone unexpectedly and… chasing a penguin… and finding hidden Paris and raising a dog from the dead…or maybe even… riding extinct animals on a carousel…’

  ‘Could it be… showing someone your very favourite café without worrying they will not see it the same way as you do?’ Ethan asked. ‘Or, maybe, feeling more in tune with someone than you have ever felt your whole life as you look through trunks and shelves and baskets at a flea market.’

  He had edged closer to her. Keeley could feel his knees pressing so lightly against hers, the sofa no bigger than a not-very-generous loveseat. ‘Is it thinking about making postcards?’ she asked him. ‘Of places that don’t usually have postcards?’

  ‘I think perhaps it could be all of those things,’ Ethan whispered. ‘And maybe so much more.’

  Nothing else mattered, did it? Nothing except the delicious sugar-coated sensations that were caramelising her heart. Keeley reached for him, wanting to feel if the beat of his heart was echoing hers. With a trembling hand she touched his chest and, as her fingertips connected with the fabric of his shirt, he tipped forward, placing his hand on top of hers. Now she was breathless, motionless, simply still and able to recognise the thrum of his core exactly as urgent as her own.

  Keeley gazed at him. It was like somehow she had known him her whole life. She took in the way his slightly wild crop of hair never quite looked the same, the tiny crinkles at the corner of his beautiful eyes that increased when he laughed or concentrated hard, his firm jaw and those oh-so-smooth lips. Looking at him, being with him was like coming home to a familiarity no one had let her know existed out there, ready only for her.

  ‘Keeley,’ Ethan said, a hitch in his voice.

  She didn’t want to speak anymore. She wanted to be a little selfish. She wanted to believe this was somehow meant to be.

  She leaned into him, in no doubt of what she wanted, connecting their lips in a kiss that sent crackles of heat right the way through her. And Ethan’s response only sent her temperature soaring higher. He returned the kiss she had started and it was like before on the street – strong, sensual, passionate – yet this time the intensity seemed to have increased ten-fold. This wasn’t a kiss you broke away from. This was a kiss you leaned in to and made last.

  It was Keeley’s fingers that moved to buttons first and hastily, keeping their mouths together, she began to unfasten Ethan’s shirt. Her heart might have been jumping a jive, but her mind was clear. There was nothing she wanted more than to move this on a level. Except she still didn’t know. And maybe she did need to know before this went further. She drew her mouth away from his, breathless, knowing her pupils had to be as large as giant chocolate buttons as she regarded him, shirt half on-half off, his hair even wilder now her fingers had raked their way through it. ‘Ethan,’ she said.

  ‘Oui.’

  She could see the deep concern in his face, almost as if he felt he had done something wrong. Perhaps this was the kind of complex that someone who had obviously brought himself up had hanging over him all the time. But this vulnerability and exposure of his inner self to her only fuelled her feelings for him.

  Keeley reached for his hand, interlinking it with hers. ‘What was the name of the girl? The one who has a piece of your heart?’

  He squeezed her hand and kept his eyes on hers. ‘Crevette,’ he answered. ‘Ma crevette.’

  Not Ferne. Definitely not Ferne. The absolute relief quickly mixed together with total joy at his reply and Keeley kissed him again, hurrying to relieve him of his clothes. She discarded his shirt and looked in appreciation at his trim torso before resting her lips on his shoulder blade, then kissing a pathway down his chest.

  ‘Keeley,’ he said, raising her head with one hand and looking deep into her eyes. ‘You are sure?’

  It was a gentleman’s question and Ethan was every inch the gentleman even if he did not realise it. She smiled and kissed his mouth again. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She palmed his face again. ‘Show me your bedroom.’

  Needing no further reassurance, Ethan scooped her up in his arms, holding her tight as she kissed him again, and he carried her out of the room.

  Fifty-Four

  Place de la Bastille, Paris

  ‘Today, nothing remains of the prison,’ Noel began the next morning. ‘In my opinion this is a good thing. I feel if the ruins did remain, then Paris would be inundated with tourists wanting there to also be cardboard cut outs of Russell Crowe or
Ann Hathaway for them to have selfie photographs with.’

  Rach drew in a breath, looking like she was also inhaling snowflakes that were dropping at pace from heavy grey clouds above them. ‘Why did we agree to this particular sightseeing expedition at stupid o’clock?’

  Keeley stifled another yawn. ‘Because Silvie arranged it for us and she’s meeting us for lunch. And she paid for our whole trip here and—’

  ‘Alright! Alright! I get it,’ Rach said with a sigh. ‘Although I’d be slightly more grateful if I had a large strong coffee in my hands right about now.’

  Noel cleared his throat in a manner that gave off irritation. ‘Are you interested in the history?’ he asked. ‘Or would you rather we skip to the boutiques again? There are at least a hundred other places I could be, although I am too polite and too in need of my job to tell Madame Durand that.’

  ‘I’d like some of the history please,’ Keeley told him. Despite being London-Marathon-in-a-heatwave-wearing-a-bear-costume-kind-of-exhausted she was also feeling energised. Perhaps it was the soul-searing sex with Ethan or maybe the early-morning wake-up when Bo-Bo decided to leave the comfort of Jeanne’s bed for the master bedroom. Or maybe it was the knowledge that something had changed in her. Keeley Andrews, penned into a pre-ordained life model where everything is triple-checked and planned with the fine detail of crisis management, was breaking out of her fragile mould.

  ‘Keels!’ Rach moaned.

  ‘Come on,’ Keeley said, putting her arm around her friend and walking closer to the July Column that was ahead of them. ‘It’s good to learn about what happened in the past. It makes you appreciate what we have now.’

  ‘Did you actually have sex last night or did you just spend the small hours reading books?’

  Noel cleared his throat again. ‘The prison that was here was stormed in 1789 at the very beginning of the French revolution. Now the only thing that remains of it is the outline traced in stones that differs from the rest of the pavement. I will show you.’ He strode on.