A Perfect Paris Christmas - Mandy Baggot Page 0,133

hotel with a dog between his knees. Bo-Bo let out a yelp as Ethan tried to sit himself up.

‘What time is it?’ he asked Jeanne, moving his arm to check his watch.

‘It’s time you got up,’ Jeanne ordered, bouncing up and down at the end of the bed and rocking his hangover. Just how many bottles from the minibar had he consumed? And why was there an animatronic snowman in the corner? It was stood, by the desk, next to the window, moving very slowly from left to right, glowing on and off and bringing a stick-like arm to its head and eventually managing to tip his hat.

‘What is a snowman doing here?’ he asked, muzzing his hair with his hands then rubbing at his eyes.

‘Ah, well,’ Jeanne began. ‘You brought that upstairs last night. After the fourth glass of Pernod. You said that it was not going to go with the new décor and it was scaring the rabbits.’ She smiled then. ‘I love the rabbits by the way. Can we get one for home?’

So much of that sentence pitter-pattered over his brain. Pernod. Rabbits. But it was the use of the word ‘home’ in relation to his apartment that impacted the most. Suddenly Jeanne’s cheeks reddened and she stopped bouncing, as if realising what she had said.

‘The apartment I mean,’ she corrected herself. ‘Your apartment.’

He smiled at her. ‘You think Bo-Bo would be able not to eat it?’

Jeanne looked at Bo-Bo as if giving the question the deepest of consideration. She patted his head. ‘No,’ she concluded. ‘He would definitely try to eat it.’

Ethan grabbed for his phone on the nightstand then. Keeley. He had to speak to Keeley. Before he could reach it, Jeanne snatched it up and held it to her chest.

‘Jeanne! Come on!’ Ethan ordered, holding out his hand.

‘Calm,’ Jeanne reminded him. ‘Remember what we talked about before the third Pernod?’

Ethan didn’t actually remember drinking any Pernod although his sore throat and taste buds definitely told him otherwise. ‘Jeanne, please give me the phone.’

‘She has replied to your messages,’ Jeanne announced.

Ethan made a grab then, lunging over the mattress and missing the object by mere millimetres as Jeanne leapt off and away from him, Bo-Bo flying off too.

‘Jeanne!’

‘No!’ Jeanne said, shielding the phone as Ethan got off the bed and strode towards her. ‘Calm.’

Ethan shook his head and groaned. ‘You were never talking about “calm” when I met you. You were quite happy for the shouting and rudeness then. Now you sound like an inspirational app.’

Jeanne held the phone up in the air as if that was going to stop Ethan from getting it. She was a little over five feet tall and although she still had long, skinny arms, he was quite able to reach the phone if he so desired. But he held off and instead folded his arms across his chest and waited for her to carry on. Bo-Bo looked very much like he would start nibbling at Ethan’s ankles if he took another step towards his mistress.

‘She has sent you one message,’ Jeanne informed. ‘It is very short.’

‘Let me see it!’

‘In a moment,’ Jeanne said. ‘When you are calm.’

Ethan knew she was right, despite all the dramatics. He took a long slow breath inwards and tried to stop looking at the snowman. He was going to destroy the snowman. And make sure Noel was never in charge of decorating the hotels for Christmas ever again.

‘Better?’ Jeanne wanted to know.

‘Better,’ he answered. He wasn’t better. He wasn’t even sure what better looked like at the moment. The only thing he did know was Jeanne had talked him out of making contact with Keeley last night, even confiscating the key card he had demanded from Antoine so he couldn’t take the elevator up to her room. That perhaps had been the right course of action. Everyone knew a new day brought new perspective and there was absolutely nothing he couldn’t put right as soon as he found out what had gone so wrong.

Jeanne handed out his phone and he took it, eager to see what Keeley had said in response to his pleas from last night. It was actually those pleas he saw first. A whole stream of them going down his phone in blue.

Are you OK?

What is wrong?

I am worried about you x

Did I do something wrong? Say something wrong? Please call me x

He sounded deranged. He didn’t sound like a person who even deserved the attentions of a woman like Keeley.