by C. J. Duggan
‘But are you okay with that? I am more than happy to help – there are some pretty drastic changes going on, and it must be pretty overwhelming.’
Cecile smiled thoughtfully. ‘It is, but for the first time in, well, forever, I feel like there has been a fire lit inside me. That I have been shown what is possible, and I have never felt so alive.’
I saw it in Cecile’s eyes, a shimmering excitement I could never begrudge her.
‘Well, for as long as I’m here you can call on me any time, I’m always happy to help.’
‘And you are more than welcome to stay.’
I smiled; Cecile was sweet but not even I could push the friendship. ‘That is very kind of you, but I’ll be handing back the keys to the sixth floor very soon. You have been more than generous to me at a time when I needed it the most.’
‘Claire, you stay as long as you want.’
‘Well, you might want to run it by the owners before you go putting up Aussie tourists on the top floor.’
Cecile studied me as if she was waiting for me to say that I was kidding, but I was serious: no good could come of her boarding jilted, homeless tourists like me.
She broke into a broad smile. ‘Claire … I am the owner.’
‘What?’
‘Well, my parents are, but I manage it as my own – they retired long ago.’
‘Are you for real?’
‘I was so desperate to make this hotel great again.’
‘Cue Louis Delarue.’
‘Crazy, huh?’
I shook my head, the fire that I saw in Cecile’s eyes held a whole new meaning and I was seeing her in a completely new light. ‘I’d say more like genius!’
Cecile straightened with pride, a new kind of confidence lifting her. And then I remembered, sometimes people just needed to be given permission that it was okay to take a risk, to throw caution to the wind and have no regrets.
I placed my hands on Cecile’s shoulders. ‘No matter where I am, kitchen or customer, I will do everything in my power to help this be the most amazing relaunch of Hotel Trocadéro you could ever hope for.’
‘People are going to know our name.’
I smiled like the Cheshire Cat. ‘Yes. Yes, they will.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
There’s nothing more infuriating than having to chase after someone, and having to chase after someone with Louis’s long strides, well, that was damn near impossible.
‘Don’t make me run!’ I shouted, causing him to stop so suddenly I had trouble preventing myself from slamming into his back.
He sighed. ‘What do you want, Claire?’
‘I just wanted to – wait, where’s your car?’ I looked behind me, gaze trailing up the street to the front of the hotel where Louis’s black Audi was usually parked. I turned back to him. ‘You’re walking?’
‘I walk,’ he said defensively.
I blinked. ‘But where are you going?’
‘To get some peace.’
‘Oh, okay … can I come?’
Louis ran his hand through his hair in frustration.
‘You asked me once, remember? To go for a walk.’
‘Like a wise woman said, “Once is enough for everything.”’
Okay, come on, Claire, turn on that cutesy charm I know you are capable of.
I glanced down coyly for a moment, biting my lip, before looking up at him from under my lowered eyelids. ‘Everything?’ I murmured.
Louis’s eyes darkened, infused with a smouldering intent that had me feeling giddy, because it was a look I recognised. He stepped forward and lowered his head as if to whisper something in my ear. I kind of hoped that it would be something dirty and French, but he simply said, ‘Everything,’ before pulling away and walking down the street.
‘God damn it, Louis!’ I shouted, stamping my feet like a petulant child and waiting only seconds before picking up the hem of my skirt and beginning to chase him again.
Try as you might, you’re not going to get away from me that easily, Louis Delarue.
In the end I followed Louis Delarue all the way to Café Du Trocadéro, where I sat with him at an outside table. The blisters on my feet aside, I was so glad that I had. Louis and I silently gazed at the Eiffel Tower against the background of a grey sky turning to pink. Well, I was gazing at Louis’s head, which was buried in a menu. I couldn’t believe it. Forever the chef.
‘Do you still hate the view?’ he asked, not looking up from his page.
‘I never hated it! How could you, it’s just so – well, look at it.’
Louis lifted his head from the menu, but remained silent, and I wondered if he looked at his surroundings like I did; did he see Paris for the magic it was?
‘So you were saying?’ he prompted.
I faced Louis, resting my elbows on the table so I could make eye contact with him. ‘I heard about your ratings and I have an idea.’
He stared at me, not an ounce of excitement registering at my announcement. This was not going to be the easiest sell.
‘You need to get with it, Louis.’
This piqued his interest; he turned to me, folding his arms across his chest.
‘People don’t want to wait for the next six-part series to come out in order to find out what’s going on in your world. We are living in a downloadable generation – you have to give people what they want and you have to give it to them every day. Two, three, four times a day if need be.’
‘Sounds exhausting,’ Louis said.
I rolled my eyes. ‘Get your mind out of the gutter, Delarue.’
Louis laughed, and the little outburst gave me hope, so I continued.
‘Now, you’re probably not going to like any of this, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil, and I think that now, with the rejuvenation of Hotel Trocadéro, it is the best time to launch into a new phase.’
‘Okay, you’re scaring me.’
I stilled myself, linking my hands together and calmly resting them on the table. ‘Facebook.’
‘No.’
‘Instagram.’
‘Not going to happen.’
‘Tumblr.’
‘Whatever it is, no.’
‘Twitter.’
‘No fucking way.’
‘Oh my god, you are such a dinosaur!’
‘I like my privacy.’
‘Oh, don’t give me that shit; how many cooking shows, guest judging spots and reality TV shows do you do? You probably have your face on lunchboxes.’
‘And I don’t have time for anything else.’
‘Make time. It’s not just about you, it’s for the good of the hotel too.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll help you.’
Louis scoffed.
‘You are such a child,’ I said. ‘I am not, times infinity, no returns.’
I stood up, scooping up my bag and pushing my chair aside.
Louis sighed. ‘Where are you going?’
I made it barely three steps before spinning around and marching back to glare down at him.
‘You are so incredibly selfish.’
‘Selfish?’
‘Oui, selfish. Cecile is the most caring, hardworking, good-hearted person I have ever met in my life. She has trusted you to tear apart her world and put it back together again, which is all fine and good but sometimes it takes more than money and an ego to give it your all, and most of the time I don’t think you even give a shit about anyone or anything except yourself.’
I could tell I’d hit a nerve as soon as the words left my mouth, but I didn’t regret it. He was running away, doing the exact same thing he had accused me of, except there was a very clear difference: I wasn’t running, not any more. I was fighting for my place in this strange world, among a group of misfits where I still didn’t belong, but I would see it through for as long as it took. In the span of a few minutes I had gone from being in awe of Louis, to realising he wasn’t the man I thought he was at all.
He threw his n
apkin on the table and stood, glowering at me so hard I really wanted to step back, but I held my ground.
‘I know more about this hotel than you could ever imagine. I have studied this hotel, dreamt about this hotel, poured money, my passion and my soul into this hotel, and what have you done? Besides nearly me against a door—’
Louis’s words cut off as I slapped him across the face, so hard and so fast I shocked myself. I stood with my hand throbbing and my mouth agape. I wanted to be strong, but the tears of fury welled and threatened to flow the instant Louis’s anguished eyes locked with mine.
I broke away from them, suddenly aware of the staring audience around us. I’d been so lost in the throes of anger it had never even occurred to me we were in public. I was mortified. I had to get out of there, and before I could even bring myself to look at Louis again, I did the very thing I had accused Louis of.
I ran away.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I pressed my knee on the top of my suitcase, trying to edge the zipper closed, giving it one last violent yank, only to hear the zip split.
‘Oh no, no, no, no!’ I started to cry, slumping to the floor and looking at the hopeless sight before me. There had been something strangely comforting about packing my bag, like I was shoving my world into it and setting it by the door, knowing that I could just roll away. Unless the fucking zip broke.
So much for an easy escape.
There was a solid knock on the door and a new hope rose inside me. Gaston was here to collect my bags and he would know of a solution. I really just had to calm down, I thought, taking in a deep breath and wiping my eyes. I would be out of here soon enough.
But after unlocking the door, I opened it to someone who was very much not Gaston.
‘You’re leaving,’ Cecile said, more as an accusation than a question.
I sighed, leaving the door open and walking back into the room, waiting for her to follow. ‘I have to go home,’ I said, hoping she would just leave it at that.
‘Why, has something happened?’
It was then I realised I didn’t really have an answer for her, nothing that would be acceptable. What was I to say? ‘I had a fight with Louis’? Even inside my head it seemed lame. So I tried with the truth, of sorts.
‘I just think it’s time to move on.’
‘But what about the reveal, you have to stay for that, surely?’
My chest tightened at the thought of not being here for that, of not being able to see the look on everyone’s faces as the black curtain was dropped, or not tasting the culinary delights made by a bunch of once-upon-a-time misfits in a formerly cramped, manky kitchen. It broke my heart to miss it, but I was tired, and being here wasn’t healing me as I’d hoped it would. If I stayed, there was the chance that I would succumb to the likes of Louis, even though I had pretty much cemented the chances of him not wanting anything to do with me. And I knew that if I stayed he’d probably never speak to me again and that was too big a rejection to bear.
I was doing the rejecting first.
Cecile stepped forward. ‘Can you at least wait until morning – sleep on it? And if you still feel the same way tomorrow, then go.’
I knew what she said was reasonable, but as I stood in my spacious apartment, I felt as if the walls were closing in on me.
‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘everyone would be so upset if they weren’t able to say goodbye to you properly.’
Yeah, well, almost everyone.
And just like I had conjured him up out of my imagination, Louis appeared in the doorway behind Cecile, looking serious and brooding. He never failed to make my stomach flip whenever his eyes connected with mine.
If I felt unnerved, then Cecile seemed damn right awkward. The tension between Louis and I was so thick, and she was standing right in the middle of it. She may have had no idea about the specifics but I think she was quickly catching on to the reasoning behind my decision.
‘I just saw Gaston in the lift, he said he was coming to get your bags, but I said that he must be mistaken, Claire Shorten doesn’t run away from a challenge,’ he said, sauntering through the door and sitting on the edge of my bed.
He was the very reason I was running away. He was the biggest challenge of all.
‘Claire is leaving in the morning,’ Cecile blurted. My eyes bugged out at her as I tried to telepathically tell her to shut up.
Louis’s mood darkened, his attention shifting to me, silently daring me to say it was true.
‘Well, I better go tell Gaston what’s going on,’ said Cecile, eager to leave us to ourselves.
I really wished she wouldn’t, but all too soon Cecile had made her way out the door, closing it behind her. The delicate click of it shutting sounded painfully loud.
The silence was broken by the sound of Louis rubbing the stubble on his jaw thoughtfully. ‘I must say, you have one hell of a right hook,’ he quipped. The acknowledgement almost made me feel better … almost.
‘Well, even though you deserved it, I shouldn’t have hit you, that was wrong.’
‘Apology accepted.’
‘Oh, I’m not sorry.’
Louis crossed his arms and looked up at me with a devious glint in his eyes. It was hard to believe that this was the man I had been screaming at only an hour before. It felt like this was always how we interacted: fight, fuck and flirt – usually minus the middle part – and then repeat. I swallowed, thinking about what came after fight, and the fact he was sitting on the edge of my bed.
‘Well, I have to get up early in the morning so …’
‘Oh, that’s right, to head back to London,’ he said, but there was nothing sincere in his words; if anything, he was mocking the shit out of me. Maybe a matching slap to the other side of his face might do him some good. ‘You look at me like you want to do bad things to me,’ he said.
‘Well, don’t get too excited, they’re not the bad things you’re thinking of.’
Louis laughed, then stood and approached me. I stepped back, only for my backside to hit the desk, leaving me no escape. He stopped before me, looking down on me, all traces of humour gone.
‘And what am I thinking?’
‘You’re thinking of torturing me for a little longer, when I really need to go to bed.’
‘Yeah, well, what’s the saying? Fight or flight?’
I gripped the edge of the desk to stop my hands from trembling. ‘If you tell me I am running away, I swear to—’
‘I know you’re not running away, well, not running away from here, anyway.’ He looked up to the ceiling as if to indicate that he meant the hotel. ‘But you are running away from something,’ he said, stepping closer, his legs brushing against my knees. ‘You’re running away from me.’
He examined my face as if he was trying to unlock the mysteries of the universe. And the worst thing was, he wasn’t that far from cracking the code – when he had voiced exactly what I was running from, my eyes had snapped up, giving myself away.
‘Are you afraid of what I might take?’ he asked, his thumb brushing my bottom lip.
Shaking my head ever so slightly, I swallowed my tears, cursing my weakness. ‘I’m afraid of what you might give.’
Louis smiled. ‘Don’t be afraid of that.’
I could feel the rawness inside me, my emotions barely contained. This man caused a definite weakness in me. I could feel it in the way my body betrayed me, reacted to him, as his hands skimmed my thighs.
I swallowed, trying to keep my voice even. ‘I’m leaving in the morning.’
Louis put his mouth to my shoulder, gently pressing one kiss, then another on my neck before straightening, his lips so close to mine.
‘Well, we better make sure it’s a goodbye you will never forget then,’ he whispered.
I put my hand against his chest, and my eyes flicked to the hall, then back to his, a war raging inside me; this was my last night in Paris.
No regrets, remember, Claire.
And even
though I’m pretty sure Louis was about to become my greatest regret of all, my resolve crumbled the moment he moved away.
I grabbed his arm. ‘Wait …’
Louis stopped.
I breathed in. Oh, God help me.
‘Lock the door.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Within a matter of seconds, Louis had locked the door and was lifting me up, pulling my top over my head and clearing the desk behind me. He pushed me down, the glossy wood cold on my back, a shock against the heat of my skin. It was short-lived as a new shock hit me, watching him hook my legs over his shoulders. He slid his hands along my thighs as he stared at me. My chest rose and fell rapidly, thrilled by the way he was looking at me like he wanted to devour me. Without breaking his heated stare, I slowly peeled my bra straps from my shoulders, one then the other, my breasts spilling free as I pulled my bra down to my navel, feeling a new confidence build as I bared myself to him.
‘Better?’
Louise smiled. ‘Beaucoup mieux.’ He leaned over me, kissing me softly on the lips before moving slowly down, inch by maddening inch, placing his hot mouth over the peak of my breast, then moving to the other. I arched my back, fighting the moan that wanted to escape. Looking down at Louis’s mouth tasting, nipping, sucking at my breast was the most erotic thing I had ever seen. And then he moved lower, kissing a trail down to my navel, so leisurely I thought I would go crazy.
He tilted his head to the side as he reached the loops of the bow at the front of my skirt, then glanced up at me, eyes shining with wicked intent.
‘For me?’ He laughed, slipping his fingers into the loops and unravelling the bow.
I giggled; his fingers skimming along my stomach were both pleasure and pain as he took his time unwrapping me.
A cheeky grin formed on his face as he straightened and stood before me like a god. Splayed out half naked before him, I felt so vulnerable, and yet so utterly sexy. No man had ever touched me the way he did, or even looked at me the way Louis was looking at me. His eyes raked over my body like I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and whether or not that was true, little did it matter, because he made me believe it.