A Perfect Paris Christmas - Mandy Baggot Page 0,143

bits of 1970s gossamer fairy wings in my sherry trifle last night! Luckily I spotted it before Juliet Honeydale dipped a spoon in. Those bloody awful outdated things!’

Keeley smiled. It sounded like things were exactly as they should be in England. ‘Mum, I have to go now. I’ll call you again soon. Bye.’

Sixty-Five

L’Hotel Perfect Paris, Opera District, Paris

‘Good afternoon. Merry Christmas.’

Ethan was speaking and responding to guests and staff in the hotel, but it was as if his functions were being controlled by someone else. It was robotic. It was going through the motions. It was getting by. And that was what he had been doing for the past five days already. A replication of how he had been after Ferne’s death.

He pushed the door to the boardroom and stepped inside. Today’s mission, before he fled back into the anonymity of the city, was to ensure Noel was completely across the festive party bookings. Office workers, groups from construction, schoolteachers, they were all excited for the end of their working year and wanting to celebrate in style with dinner and dancing late into the night. It was a good money-maker as long as everything ran smoothly.

He entered, eyes to the floor, fingers clamped around a coffee he hadn’t yet touched. ‘Noel, can we make this quick so I can get back to other things?’

‘Hello, Ethan,’ Silvie’s voice greeted.

He looked up then, the coffee cup falling out of his grasp. Around the boardroom table was Noel, Louis, Jeanne, Silvie and Bo-Bo was even sitting on his own chair looking like he might be about to start a presentation. ‘What… is this?’ Ethan gasped, hurriedly plucking the cup from the wood floor.

‘This is a family meeting,’ Silvie told him coolly. ‘Please, sit down.’

‘Family,’ Ethan said shaking his head.

‘Yes, Ethan,’ Silvie said. ‘Family. We are all here because we want the very same thing here. The best for our family. The Durand Family. And the best for Perfect Paris.’

Ethan’s eyes went to Jeanne. How was she here? How was she sitting next to Silvie like she might be about to have lunch with a much-loved grandmother? Had he been so completely blinkered these past few days that he had missed significant developments. He was suddenly flooded with a worry that he hadn’t left any food for Jeanne last night…

He put a hand on a chair and debated whether to drop into it or go running back out the door. What made him stay was the feeling of deep exhaustion he was carrying. He was so so tired.

‘Ethan,’ Louis said, appearing beside him and resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on, please, sit down.’

Ethan nodded, too tired to put up any sort of fight. If he didn’t like what was about to be said he could always bury his head back in the snow later. He pulled out the seat and sat down, eyes dropping to the table. Bo-Bo let out a low whine.

‘How are you feeling?’ Silvie asked him.

‘Like I am the subject of a social experiment right now,’ he answered.

‘I will… order some more coffees.’

Ethan raised his head at the sound of his assistant’s voice and Noel offered him the smallest of smiles that very much said this meeting was not so much about business as it was about an intervention.

‘Shall we start by talking about the hotels?’ Silvie suggested.

Really? This was about the hotels? Then perhaps he could engage a little although… ‘My assistant has left the room to make coffee. Perhaps we should…’

‘I like the new concept for the hotels.’

Ethan turned a little in his seat at the sentence coming from Louis. The man was looking at him, a softness to his expression, the kind he had worn on the doorstep of Ethan’s apartment before he dropped the bombshell that had altered the course of everything.

‘I do not like the new concept,’ Silvie said.

This was more like it. But Ethan had no fight left in him to counter.

‘I love the new concept,’ Silvie exclaimed in sheer excitement. ‘Welcome Paris. Your home from home.’

His body responded before his brain could close it off. He was sitting more upright and he couldn’t seem to settle his shoulders down again. It appeared his movement was no longer under his control.

‘I think you have come up with an idea that will absolutely move the brand forward and it embraces everything a traveller needs as we look to a new year.’ Silvie inhaled. ‘The things we have missed most have been hugs. And I