Paris Lights

by C. J. Duggan

  ‘So beautiful.’ Coming back had been the right thing to do, I knew that now.

  ‘Well, if you like that, Claire, wait till you see this.’

  Gaston seemed almost giddy as he led me to the restaurant. It had been nothing more than a black tarp to me the last time I saw it, and now, as Gaston led me through, I instantly felt my skin prickle into gooseflesh. And that was even before my eyes rested on the new, elegantly scripted signage.

  Clare De Lune Restaurant.

  Gaston stood next to me. ‘We named it that because it reminded us of you. I mean, it’s spelt differently but sounds the same, you know? It means “light of the moon”.’

  Taking in the crisp white linen, the fresh flowers and crystal flutes, my eyes filled with tears. The space was no bigger than before, but the warm blues and mood lighting made it unrecognisable.

  ‘It’s incredible.’

  For the past few weeks I had thought that I’d been turned away from here, shamed and forgotten; now, my heart wanted to burst.

  ‘I just wish I could have been here for the reveal.’

  Gaston was confused. ‘Reveal?’

  My heart stopped. ‘Oh God, that’s right, the reveal was cancelled. Please tell me that it was rescheduled?’

  Gaston laughed. ‘Claire, we didn’t need a reveal to let people know about Clare De Lune opening.’

  ‘Really?’

  He looked around, wary of others as he lowered his voice. ‘You slapping Louis was the best thing that could have ever have happened to us.’

  ‘Um, how do you figure that? It was awful.’

  Gaston shook his head. ‘People loved it: the post went viral and then everyone wanted to know the story behind it.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘When you left we had a meeting. At the time we didn’t know what to do with the restaurant reveal. Jean-Pierre thought about taking Louis’s name off the project out of fear that it might harm the business, but after a couple of days the hype was escalating and people wanted to know about you, the mystery girl. Louis decided to weather the storm and get on social media; he rode the wave of interest, promoted the hotel, and now we are booked out for the summer. It’s insane.’

  ‘Louis, on social media … I still can’t fathom that – he was so against it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s changed in a lot of ways.’

  My curiosity was piqued and I desperately wanted to know what he meant. But there was someone at reception.

  ‘Pardon, Claire,’ he said, making his way back behind the desk.

  ‘Is Cecile around?’ I called after him.

  ‘Oui, I think she is in the office.’

  I went to the office, expecting to see it exactly as it always was, small and cluttered. I knocked and pushed the door open, breathing out a laugh. ‘I guess some things never change.’

  But since Cecile wasn’t in the office, I stepped back from the door, shutting it behind me, conscious of the time and needing to get back to catch my return train. I had been naive in my day-trip plans to think I could fit it all in. Really I needed a full day just to reacquaint myself with the hotel, and now it was too late. This time next week I would be home, and the possibility of coming back to Paris any time soon was – well, that was not going to happen.

  As happy as I had been with what I’d found, and what I had learned, I felt like there was something missing. I really needed to see Cecile, and by some kind of magic she appeared, her heels clicking in the marbled foyer, her dark hair elegantly twisted into a French knot; her knee-length, figure-hugging, jet-black skirt the perfect base for the navy-blue tailored jacket that accentuated her petite waist. The white blouse with silken strips tied into a bow around her neck was elegant and feminine. She had never looked more radiant – or more surprised as she came to a standstill, mouth agape.

  I shifted nervously; I couldn’t tell if she was happy to see me, or if she was going to tell me to leave. For the first time I actually thought that coming here was a mistake, and all I wanted was for the ground to open up and devour me. Then the unexpected happened: Cecile walked forward and wrapped her arms tightly around me, instantly healing the ache inside my chest. This was what I had come back for; this was what I had needed.

  I pulled back, crying despite my happiness. ‘You mean you’re not mad at me any more?’

  Cecile laughed through her own tears. ‘I could never be mad at you.’

  I wanted to stay. I wanted to walk into the kitchen and see Gaspard at the helm, Francois by his side and Cathy owning the floor, but there was no time.

  ‘Cecile, I have to go.’ I winced.

  ‘What? No, stay.’

  ‘I really can’t. I have to get back. I have to catch my train. Can you please tell everyone I said goodbye, and just thank them for everything?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I embraced her again. ‘I am so proud of you, Cecile. Hotel Trocadéro is amazing, especially Clare De Lune.’ I grinned.

  ‘You can thank Louis for that.’ She looked at me pointedly.

  Hearing his name was like a physical blow. As much as I tried to convince myself that he was not a part of the ache inside me, I knew it was the biggest lie I had ever told myself. But I couldn’t think about that, I had to go.

  ‘Can you please call me a taxi for the station?’

  ‘Oui, go sit, I will get one for you.’

  ‘Merci.’

  I paced along the reception, restless with the fear of being stranded in Paris. I really didn’t want that to happen; my heart was closing off, getting itself ready to leave this place behind. And with every second that ticked by, my anxiety grew. Fifteen minutes passed, enough to duck into the kitchen and say my goodbyes to Gaspard, Francois and Cathy, which was the silver lining in a thickening dark cloud.

  ‘Cecile, can you call another? It’s been twenty minutes and I really have to—’

  Gaston put down the phone. He nodded at me and Cecile. ‘It’s here.’

  I blew out a deep breath, thanking the gods that I still might make my train.

  Hugging them both goodbye, I ran through the foyer, pushing through the door myself because I was in too much of a hurry for the doorman’s graces. The sun had gone down now, and the air was cool against my cheeks. I stood under the illuminated sign of the hotel, glancing down the street, panicked that Gaston had got it wrong, I couldn’t see any ta—

  I froze. Right before me, so blatantly shiny, sat a black Audi. My heart started to race. Was this some kind of cruel joke? But just as I began to edge forward, the window opened, just like it had the first time I met the pair of eyes that were looking at me now. Except this time they weren’t mad, or questioning, they belonged to the Louis I had come to know on the sixth floor.

  Just as I told myself to hold it together, I began to tremble; the ache in my heart was so intense I felt like I couldn’t breathe. And then the car door opened, and there he was, towering over me. He looked past my shoulder, saluting through to the foyer.

  I frowned, turning to see Cecile and Gaston smiling and giving Louis the thumbs up. They had ordered me a ride all right. Traitors.

  Louis smirked. ‘My people,’ he quipped.

  ‘I feel so betrayed right now.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be too hard on them. They’ve done well.’

  ‘You asked them to look out for me?’

  Louis’s hands were in his pockets as he leant against his car. ‘Every. Day.’

  ‘You could have messaged me.’

  Louis frowned. ‘I poked you.’

  ‘Sometimes, a poke is not enough.’

  ‘I tagged you!’

  I laughed. ‘It’s not enough.’

  Louis sighed. ‘Well, I guess I have a lot to learn.’

  ‘Oui, chef, you do.’

  Louis smiled. ‘So you’re headed back to London now?’

  ‘If I make it.’

  ‘Can I keep you if you don’t?’

  I laughed. ‘I’m going home next week, back to Austral
ia.’

  Louis nodded thoughtfully, pushing himself off the car and walking in a circle around me. ‘Well, I have a restaurant in London, but I don’t have one in Australia.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, cocking my brow.

  ‘And you know me … I do love a challenge,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’

  Louis turned to me and examined my face. ‘Am I a big enough challenge for you?’

  Having him so close made it hard to focus and I inhaled a deep breath. ‘You are the most challenging man I know.’

  I enjoyed the way Louis winced at my words, waiting for me to say whether that was a deal breaker or not. My mouth twitched and I stepped closer to him.

  ‘Which means I might just have to slap you around every now and then.’

  Louis burst out laughing, shaking his head and wrapping his arms around me, engulfing me in his warmth.

  Maybe I was mad, but when it came to Louis Delarue, I wanted all the challenges. I wanted him, and he wanted me. I may have come to Paris and got completely lost, but somewhere in the dark I had found the light. As I stood in front of this beautiful, challenging man, I might not have known exactly where we were going, but I knew he would take me there, and I had never been so sure I wanted something in my existence.

  Louis looked at me, brushing his knuckles against my cheek, a glimmer of worry flashing in his eyes as he read the thought process rolling through my mind. ‘So is that oui?’

  I leant into his touch; he felt my smile before it appeared as I turned my head to kiss the palm of his hand, then place it against the warmth of my heart, a heart that didn’t ache any more. Looking up into his clear blue eyes, thinking how different they had been the first time we met on the kerbside what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  ‘I say …’ I paused, drawing out my answer and watching the emotion in his eyes as he waited intently for it.

  I slowly stepped in to him, never once looking away as my mouth hovered close to his and I whispered, ‘Challenge accepted.’

  If you enjoyed Paris Lights, you’ll lose yourself completely in New York Nights and London Bound, the second and third books in C.J. Duggan’s Heart of the City series.

  Read on for a sneak peek of New York Nights …

  Chapter One

  Since finishing school, all I’d wanted to do was travel and work with children, so au pairing was the perfect solution.

  Or so I had thought.

  Being an au pair is nothing like in The Sound of Music, though. To start with, I certainly wasn’t a nun, I had zero musical abilities and I had failed sewing in high school. Plus, there was no handsome Captain von Trapp and no choreographed frolicking.

  All that aside, it had sounded appealing. Sacrifice X amount of hours for childcare, then stroll through a foreign city in my downtime, immerse myself in the culture, learn another language, study maybe, truly find myself. All before falling in love with a wealthy, independent fisherman called Pascal who crafts small objects out of wood with his bare hands. Come nightfall, we’d make an incredible paella with the freshest of seafood while we sipped wine, arms linked, toasting to us. I mean, we all have to have goals, right?

  The reality was somewhat different. The prospect of experiencing anything close to a handsome fisherman called Pascal was a world away when your days consisted of shampooing a toddler’s hair or wiping the bottom of a five-year-old, while defrosting meat for an early dinner you would be eating with the children. It was very hard to feel like an adult when sitting at a tiny table with your knees up to your ears, trying to convince the children how delicious each mouthful was. ‘Look, they’re little trees, eat up your little trees,’ I’d say, coaxing them to eat broccoli.

  And as much as your employers made you a part of their family, there was never that feeling of freedom, the kind that let you wander into the lounge to flake out on the sofa and idly channel surf, or to fling open the fridge for an impromptu snack. There was no inviting friends over for dinner and definitely no bringing guys back.

  I make it sound like it was all bad, but if the truth be known, for the past three years it had been my whole life. Now I sat, shoulders squared, on a plush white sofa, surrounded by white walls and fresh white flowers. Everything was white, save the glass-and-gold coffee table dividing me from them. ‘Them’ being Penny Worthington and her equally cold daughter, Emily Mayfair. Like her mother, Emily’s smile didn’t reach her eyes; there was no warmth there.

  Emily swept her blonde bob from the side of her face in one elegant movement so she could look down at the papers she was holding, no doubt a background check on me they’d organised through a private detective. I wouldn’t have put it past them.

  ‘Won’t be long now, we’re just waiting on one other,’ said Emily. Even her name sounded like she had married into money: her husband must be Lord Mayfair or something equally distinguished.

  Their driver – yes, they had a driver – had picked me up from the Park Central Hotel and driven me to a beautiful brownstone in Turtle Bay Gardens, an enclave of row houses, gardens arranged to form a common space, with a four-metre-wide stone path down the centre and a fountain modelled after the Villa Medici in Tuscany, or so Dave the driver informed me; I was too busy looking up at the four-storey building with my mouth open. I’m not sure what I had expected; I had always thought of New York as cramped apartments with fire escapes, air-conditioner boxes hanging out of the windows.

  ‘Oh, Emily, I think we’ll just begin, you know what Dominique is like.’

  Dominique? I was suddenly wondering who was interested in putting me on the stand. Was Emily the mother of the children I was meant to be caring for, or was the less-punctual Dominique the one? And more importantly, why was I about to be interviewed by three women? I took a sip of the water I was holding, which had been kindly provided by the maid. A driver and a maid: they made my previous employers, the rather self-sufficient Liebenbergs, look middle class. I chose to hold onto my glass of water for fear of leaving a condensation ring on the coffee table. I was certain that act alone would mean instant dismissal.

  ‘So, Sarah Williams, tell us a bit about yourself,’ Emily said, leafing through the pages before looking at me expectantly.

  Oh God, how had I not prepared for perhaps the most obvious question of all? Somehow I’d thought there was actually no preparing for this kind of situation; I would simply wing it, turn on a bright and cheerful – not ditsy – façade and completely fake my confidence. I started by throwing caution to the wind and making eye contact with the maid, who promptly came forward and took away my empty glass. I was now free to place my hands in my lap and begin the Sarah Williams story. Until I was interrupted by a distant commotion: doors slamming and a loud voice out near the entrance.

  Penny Worthington closed her eyes, apparently summoning the strength to remain calm. Emily sighed deeply as if the approaching footsteps grated to the bone. The maid prepared to throw herself into the path of the encroaching cyclone.

  ‘Hello, Frieda, my love, how’s that gorgeous man of yours?’

  A loud and heavily pregnant blonde woman shimmied out of her jacket and handed it and her purse to a mortified-looking Frieda.

  ‘He is well, thank you, Miss Dominique.’

  ‘Frieda, how many times do I have to tell you? Call me Nikki. Every time you say Dominique it’s like running your fingers down a blackboard.’ Dominique, or rather Nikki, brushed wisps of hair out of her face. She had nothing like the elegance and poise of Penny and Emily, and for a moment I thought surely, surely, they couldn’t be related, but as soon as Nikki turned I saw the same perfect nose and blue-grey eyes. There was no mistaking that she was Penny’s daughter.

  ‘Hello, Mother.’ She pecked Penny on the top of the head. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ She waddled around the couch and sat beside Emily.

  ‘You’re always late,’ said Emily through pursed lips.

  ‘Well, you’re always in a bad mood, so neither one of us can win. Ugh, Frieda, my love, can
you please get me a water. I am so fat.’ She sighed, turning to look at me with a big, genuine smile. ‘And you must be Sarah?’

  I knew within an instant of her turning that smile on me that I loved her. Warmth and authenticity just radiated from her.

  I stood, leaning over to shake her hand so she didn’t have to bend over her belly. ‘And you must be Nikki?’ I said.

  Her smile broadened as she looked at her sister and then back at me. ‘Oh, I like you, you don’t miss a beat.’

  I was flooded with relief, inwardly saying a prayer that it was Nikki’s children I would be caring for and not Emily’s. My eyes flicked to her belly, thinking maybe this was the reason I had been called here so quickly; maybe Nikki, clearly the black sheep of the family, needed help with her soon-to-arrive baby.

  ‘We haven’t begun as yet, Dominique, we had just asked Sarah to tell us about herself.’

  Something told me there would be no way in hell Penny would resort to calling Dominique ‘Nikki’.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Nikki said, rolling her eyes, ‘don’t you know enough about the poor girl? How many more hurdles must she jump before you give her the job?’

  Penny and Emily had matching glares, and it wasn’t just because they had the same eyes, although that probably helped.

  ‘Let me ask a question,’ Nikki said, propping herself up with a cushion that definitely looked like it was more for show than actual use. ‘What brought you here, Sarah?’

  It was a question that was not easy to answer. Leaving the Liebenbergs’ employment had not exactly been part of the plan, but neither was following them to Slovenia where they were opening a remote medical practice. Admitting as much, however, might make me seem unreliable, and an au pair is nothing if she isn’t reliable; I would have to think of something better.

  Nikki looked at me as if trying to tell me telepathically that she desperately wanted my answer to be perfect, so I answered honestly.