‘Was it as amazing as it looks?’ Jeanne wanted to know, her grubby fingers inching over the photographs of horse, ringmaster and tightrope walker. ‘Sometimes, in photographs, things look better than they are.’ She sniffed. ‘Like all the photographs of Big Macs.’
‘It was amazing,’ Ethan breathed, being transported right back to that night. He could smell the sawdust, the spent gunpowder from the cannonball man, Ferne’s bubble-gum…
‘Can we go?’ Jeanne asked. ‘See the circus?’
Ethan passed the flyer back to her quickly. ‘No. Don’t be crazy.’
‘Why is it crazy?’ Jeanne wanted to know.
‘Because… I am… not… someone who should be taking you to the circus.’
‘Do you have to be a certain type of person to be allowed to go to a circus?’ Jeanne asked him. ‘A president? Like Macron?’ She turned up her nose. ‘Here. See. There are only prices for “adults” and “children”. No price for “presidents”.’ She raised her eyes to meet his. ‘You are an “adult” and I am a “child”. So we can go.’ Ethan watched Jeanne turn her attention to Keeley then. ‘You want to go to the circus, do you not?’
‘I should see what Rach wants,’ Keeley said, getting up from her seat. Ethan saw then that Rach was waving at Keeley from the doorway of the restaurant, her phone still placed against her ear.
As soon as she was gone, Jeanne jabbed him in the side with her elbow. ‘What are you doing? I am providing you with the perfect date night solution and you are not leaping on the opportunity.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Ethan asked her.
‘The circus! Take us to the circus!’ Jeanne ordered. ‘I want to see it and I will sit quietly, eating hot dogs and candy floss and sweets and we can get the grumpy guy at the hotel to look after Bo-Bo for the night and you can sit next to Keeley and keep staring at her like you have been doing the whole time since she arrived here.’
Ethan sighed. It seemed Jeanne was as astute as they came. ‘It is not a good idea.’
‘What part of it is not a good idea?’
‘All the parts.’
‘You do not like her?’
Bo-Bo let out a bark as if he was questioning too.
‘This is not a conversation for you and me to have,’ Ethan said, pushing his coffee cup away from him. ‘We need to talk about one thing only and that is finding you a permanent place to live.’
‘No,’ Jeanne answered, lifting a defiant chin. ‘We need to talk about why you do not want to tell Keeley that you own the very hotel she is staying in.’
Ethan let out a sigh. Why had he not been upfront with Keeley about owning part of Perfect Paris? And trust Jeanne to pick up on it. He well remembered the skill of expertly learning to be alert to anything that might come in useful to gain traction in any given situation.
‘Of course,’ Jeanne began, ‘I could go along with the pretence that you own an inferior establishment with only two stars if you were to say… let me stay in a room at the place with the five stars and take me to the circus.’
He watched Jeanne tilt her head and hit him with what could only be described as the look of someone in prison, their mind set and determined for a last chance at parole. He knew he was caught.
‘You will need to make me some assurances,’ Ethan told her firmly.
‘What assurances?’
‘You must promise me that you are not a missing person.’
‘I am not.’
‘That you are not being actively sought by the police.’
‘Not today.’ She grinned. ‘Sorry, that was a little street joke I was certain you would appreciate.’
‘Jeanne, I am being serious. I do not need trouble.’
‘No one is looking for me,’ Jeanne said in as serious a tone as Ethan had ever heard from her. ‘No one is missing me. No one even cares if I exist or not.’
As those words settled on Ethan, Bo-Bo let out a whine and got up onto his hind legs to lick Jeanne’s face. Somehow, even though it sounded every kind of crazy, it seemed he had become a temporary guardian to a girl and her death-defying dog. It almost sounded like a circus act itself.
Thirty-Nine
Tour Eiffel, Paris
It had started to snow again and Jeanne and Bo-Bo were currently running around, both trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues, while Keeley walked next to Ethan on the way back to L’Hotel Paris Parfait. Rach had caught a cab back to the hotel a little earlier after the phone call with, what turned out to be, Roland. From what Keeley had gathered from the garbled telephone conversation she could only hear one side of, there had been another ‘incident’ at Mr Peterson’s place. Rach had rushed out something about ‘squirrels’ and ‘rabies’ and ‘are you OK to get back without me’ and after Keeley had affirmed she was OK to do that, Rach had left.
‘I apologise if I was picking your professional brains a little earlier,’ Ethan said as they continued to stroll along under the darkening skies. ‘It is only because you make the dressing of places sound such an uncomplicated thing, yet I do not find this to be the case.’
‘Oh,’ Keeley said, smiling. ‘I didn’t realise you were exactly picking my brain. If I had known I would have set out a quote for my services.’
‘You absolutely should do that,’ Ethan answered. He bent down and picked up a used takeaway coffee cup, popping it into the bin.
‘I was kidding,’ Keeley said.
‘Why kidding?’ Ethan asked. ‘I am serious. The things you say, about how people behave and what they look for in a place… the things that make them feel comfortable. These are insights and expertise that should be highly paid for.’
‘Maybe,’ Keeley said, shrugging.
‘Completely,’ Ethan answered. ‘Most definitely.’
He sounded so sincere. He was walking extremely close alongside her now and she was enjoying it so much. She looked up and observed the snow settling on his thick, wavy dark hair. Every flake was speckling the colour with white that then quickly melted into silver. He was so outwardly handsome yet also inwardly so in tune with his own spirit. That easy self-confidence simply oozed from him. But there was also an air of reticence too that Keeley found sexy as well as curiously endearing.
‘My hotels,’ he began again, ‘they need change.’
He took a long, slow breath and Keeley couldn’t help wondering what was running through his mind now. She almost yearned to see inside.
‘For quite some time now everything has been at the mercy of familiarity.’ He sighed. ‘I know how that sounds but, bear with my thoughts for a moment. In this case, familiarity that was once “comfortable” was bred out of being too scared to implement alterations. It is not the kind of “comfortable” you speak of. It is the type of familiarity that ferments and sets firm a certain way because of a lack of ingenuity, or, maybe, because of fear.’ He looked directly at her then, his gaze seeming to draw them both to a halt at the iron base of the Eiffel Tower. ‘But I do not want to be afraid of change anymore. And, if I want the business to continue, then change, it must happen.’