Twenty-One Nights in Paris: Escape to Paris with a BRAND NEW feel-good romance

Ren was shocked at how unfamiliar Charlie’s face appeared. It wasn’t that he’d changed. His blue eyes were bright and affable, as always. She recognised his fine wool coat as one that had hung in their closet last winter.

But he felt like a stranger.

‘Oh, hello, Charlotte,’ she said, mustering a smile for the woman she usually only saw wearing Lycra in exercise videos on social media. Who the fuck actually got together with someone called Charlotte when their name was Charlie? ‘Are you enjoying the marché?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Charlotte managed in a halting tone, just as forced as Ren’s. Charlie was inspecting Sacha pointedly. His narrowed gaze settled on Sacha’s hand, still clutched in her coat.

‘Charlie Routledge,’ he said all of a sudden, extending his hand. The false politeness in his tone made her itch.

‘Sacha Mourad.’

‘Mourad, is that… Egyptian?’

‘Lebanese.’

‘Ah,’ was Charlie’s only response. He was peering at the line of cursive tattooed on Sacha’s neck. A quick glance reassured Ren that Nadia and Raphaël were sensibly keeping their distance. ‘Oil, then? Or shipping?’

‘What?’

‘Your background.’

Sacha gave a little cough. ‘No, euh… books.’

‘Ah,’ Charlie replied with a satisfied smile. Even if he assumed Sacha owned a publishing company, it still settled the question of who had more money – the tactless question Charlie had been asking while dressing it up as interest. He eyed Sacha’s outfit, the scuffed boots and ragged jeans that he’d thrown back on in the toilets of the Opéra Garnier. ‘I must say I’m surprised,’ he said, addressing Ren.

‘Me, too. I thought you were in the Alps, taking advantage of the standing invitation to Grandmama’s chalet.’

‘Does she know you’re here… with him?’

‘Don’t worry about Grandmama. She’s not the one in a relationship with Sacha.’

Charlie choked, which hadn’t quite been the reaction she’d expected when she made the joke. He leaned closer to speak more privately, but she couldn’t stand the proximity and shifted away. ‘You’ll forgive me for being slightly sceptical,’ he continued after he’d recovered. ‘I know you took it hard six months ago and it’s not as though I didn’t care about you. I do care about you, which is why… I’m worried you’re compensating. This…’ his gaze grew disdainful, ‘is all very sudden. Are you seriously going to turn up to meet the investors at the chalet with a guy like this who makes his money in “books”? If that’s even true.’

Ren recoiled. Charlie had become a stranger in more than just his appearance – or had he always been like this and she’d been too afraid to acknowledge it? The shock didn’t make her angry with him, she was upset with herself. Had she truly been so wary of the outside world that she’d convinced herself she was happy with him?

‘You’re acting out. But I know you. You’ll regret it if you go too far,’ Charlie continued.

‘You have no right to talk to her like that,’ Sacha spoke up, his tone dark.

‘And you think you need to defend her from her own people?’ Charlie huffed.

Something inside Ren cracked and broke. It felt like her old life. She couldn’t go back to the way she’d been before. Charlie wasn’t her people. ‘Don’t make this about you, Charlie.’

‘What?’

‘Listen to yourself. I’ve had six months to move on from you and to realise how wrong I was about our relationship. This isn’t self-destructive behaviour with the wrong guy. It’s finally finding the right one.’

‘All right, Ren. I’m sorry.’ His bearing changed, suddenly, as though either his previous concern or current acquiescence was faked. Neither possibility put Ren’s mind at ease. ‘I’m happy to hear that. I really am. In fact, it’s great that we ran into each other. We’ll see each other at the chalet on Friday and everything will be simpler. We could have dinner together through the week, shall we? Friends again?’

Her throat closed. ‘Y-you’ll be there this weekend?’

‘Yes. After everything that happened with the merger, Ziggy thought it would be a good idea. My parents are flying out, too.’

She felt walls closing in around her again and panic rising. What did Ziggy hope to achieve by inviting Charlie? She felt like a pawn in a game she didn’t want to play, and the feeling of powerlessness was concerningly familiar. If she didn’t take Sacha to the chalet weekend, she’d have to face Charlie’s false concern. But if she did take him, her grandmother would burst a vein – to say nothing of the thinly veiled abuse he would suffer for her sake.

A light switched off behind her, obscuring Charlie’s face. She gripped Sacha’s coat as the sudden darkness shot panic through her. Her eyes pricked with tears that she willed away in desperation.

‘Look, they’re shutting down for the evening,’ Charlie said, still infuriatingly affable. ‘Where is your car? Shall we walk out together?’

‘No, we’ll call a taxi,’ she said firmly.

‘A taxi? My driver can take you. It’s no trouble at all. What would I say to Livia if she heard I left you alone here to take a public taxi? What happened to your driver?’

‘I gave him a holiday,’ she said tightly. Charlie was only growing more suspicious and she didn’t know what was the best course of action. The mention of her grandmother made her uneasy. Grandmama had already used him to get in touch with her last weekend.

‘We can take a taxi,’ Sacha maintained.

‘Oh, I insist.’

Ren suddenly remembered that Ziggy thought she was staying with Sacha. Perhaps if Charlie took them home, at least that information could be corroborated. She could take the métro from there back to Malou’s apartment. Her head was starting to ache from the threads of truth and lies.

‘Thank you, Charlie. It might be a little out of your way. Sacha lives in the twentieth arrondissement.’

Charlie’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.

‘Let’s go and say goodbye to Nadia and Raph,’ she said, hoping Sacha picked up the apology in her expression.

All the breath drained from him as the black Mercedes rumbled away over the cobblestones. The car was so similar to the one he’d crashed into just over a week ago, but its occupants vastly different. Ren slumped in slow motion, clutching the collar of his coat in her fist for balance.

He tugged lightly, encouragement to come closer if she wanted to, and her forehead fell to his chest. He wrapped an arm around her and smoothed her hair with the other hand. ‘C’est bien, tout est fini,’ he whispered. ‘It’s over.’

‘I’m so sorry. And to Nadia and Raph. You guys didn’t deserve that. Charlie was rude and I can’t believe I…’ She shivered violently.

‘We’d better get you inside.’

‘I don’t want to intrude. I can get the métro back to Malou’s flat – even though I’m in her bad books, now, too.’

‘You can’t take the métro tonight. I can take you in a taxi?’ She looked ready to resist, but the adrenaline was leaching from her almost visibly and he suspected a crash was imminent. ‘You’re welcome to stay here. It’s not a problem. It might make up for my free night at the Ritz.’

She peered up at him. ‘I am a problem.’

‘Alors, you can be my problem for the night.’

‘Thank you,’ she said softly, her tone too raw to allow him to dismiss her thanks.

She peered at the tall double doors of scratched and pockmarked wood and up at the stone apartment building with its assortment of graffiti tags at ground level and swirls of wrought iron on the floors above. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she could feel how important this building was to him, how hard he’d worked to reach a place his father had dreamed of – Paris, the étage nobile, the second floor of a building from the Haussmann transformation, in Belleville, which wasn’t quite Montmartre, but it had its own history.

‘I wondered what your home would be like,’ she said. ‘It’s real. I wonder sometimes if I’m imagining you. I’ve never known anyone like you. You’re kind to the people who hurt you. You’re a son to a man who saw you at your lowest point. You’re a father to your nephew and a rock for your sister.’

He paused at the sudden pressure on his lungs. She should be drowning in her own emotions, but she picked up on his, instead. He pulled his key out of his pocket, but she didn’t move away. She stayed tucked against his side, making him do everything one-handed.

‘And you keep picking me up off the ground as though you still believe I can walk on my own.’

‘You can,’ he said. ‘You’ve learned to take the métro. You can find your way through the labyrinth of the Marché aux Puces. You just faced the man who hurt you. You can do anything.’

‘Because I’m leaning on you, my darling fake boyfriend.’

‘There’s a song in there somewhere,’ he muttered before continuing. ‘You might need someone to lean on at the moment, but you’re still the one walking through it.’

Her palm brushed his cheek, followed a moment later by her lips. A smile formed on his mouth of its own accord. Her hand closed in his coat and she urged them forward, arms still wrapped around each other. He switched on the light in the stairwell, which made her blink and hide her face in his neck.

‘My eyes adjusted,’ she murmured, as though that fact surprised her. With a sigh, she lifted her head, but paused again before she’d drawn more than a couple of inches away. She was staring at his tattoo, cocking her head to study the words. ‘I told myself that I was allowed to ask when I’d been close enough to read it myself.’ With hesitant fingers, she traced the line of cursive on his neck.

He held still with some difficulty as her fingertip moved on his skin, over the words that sometimes felt like a benediction and sometimes a curse. He could probably have explained glibly if she’d asked a week ago, but it was difficult to bear, that she’d known she needed to wait if she were to truly understand.

‘It’s hard to read,’ she said. ‘The script is… very particular.’

Another arrow through the heart. How did she know? How did she see him so clearly when few people did? She was supposed to be wrapped up in her own chaos, but instead of shutting down in fear, she’d opened and blossomed and made herself – and him – vulnerable. Did she realise how powerful she was?

‘The handwriting is my father’s,’ he said, swallowing.

Her gaze flew to his and, as though it had been planned, the timer for the stairwell light ran out and it blinked off. His hands closed in her coat. ‘What does it say?’ she asked in a whisper.

The words came more easily, in the darkness. ‘It says, “La lumière va et vient.” The light goes and comes. It’s a line from a poem he left me in a notebook.’

‘What did he mean?’

‘The next line is…’ He paused to translate from French to English, feeling the echoes of his father, switching fluidly between Arabic and French. Each time the words were uttered, the meaning was new. His father had understood that. Sacha had never spoken the words in English. ‘I learn to breathe in darkness.’

She was perfectly still in his arms, except for the quiver of her breaths. A sniff and a hasty wipe of her cheeks gave her away.

‘I didn’t want to make you cry,’ he said, his hands clutching her coat more tightly.

‘You didn’t,’ she insisted with a cough. ‘Your father did. It’s beautiful. It’s like he knew me. Like I feel about you.’ Her fingers found his cheek. ‘I’m such a mess.’

‘No,’ he contradicted her gently. ‘It’s just a… time.’

‘The light will come again,’ she said softly. ‘Sacha.’ Hearing his name spoken in her soft, aching tone made everything seem possible. He curled his hand around the back of her neck, his thumb in her hair. Without thought, he dipped his head, close enough to feel the warmth of her on his skin. But even the darkness wasn’t enough to erase the memory of Charlie’s superior smile, her grandmother’s dire warnings. What good were these feelings if they only complicated everything for her?

‘Let’s get inside,’ he murmured, drawing back, hoping she was oblivious to how close he’d come to kissing her for real.