The Paris Trip: A feel-good, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy

PROLOGUE

If he’d been prancing through Chateau Rémy in scarlet heels, sporting a devil’s tail and a flashy red cape, Leo could have understood why everybody he passed was turning to stare at him, apparently amazed by his long-overdue return to the family home.

As it was, he was dressed sombrely in dark clothes, as befitted the occasion, and making his way quietly and respectfully through these dimly lit corridors thronging with grieving friends and relatives.

There really was nothing remarkable about him today. He’d shaved off his trademark beard and moustache, ignoring the severe pangs this cost him, and even tied back his long hair with a black ribbon, to look less ‘wild’. Yes, that was the word his grandmother had used to describe him last time he was home. You look like a wild beast, Leo. Conscious of not wanting to upset her, he had taken steps to tame his appearance before getting on the train first thing that morning.

Yet still, at every corner, these friends, relatives and hangers-on ogled him, wide-eyed and prurient, whispering among themselves like snakes hissing in the darkness.

‘Ah, c’est Leo… Leo Rémy.’

At last, he reached the room where his brother lay in state, like a dead king.

The door stood open, waiting for him.

Leo halted and swallowed. His hand went to the knot of his unfamiliar tie, wishing he could loosen it. Tear it off it, in fact. But some things were simply impossible. They could only be faced and endured.

Like the body of his older brother.

He squared his shoulders, accepted a handshake from old Alfonse on the door, who doubtless had been standing there for hours like a guardsman, and stepped into the room.

Francis had been laid out on the dining room table, its length now draped in black velvet. Like Leo, he had been dressed in his best suit. Though Francis’s was an austere three-piece with black waistcoat and tie. No doubt he was untroubled by the knot held firm against his throat. His brother’s shoes completed this picture of urbane professionalism. Expensive black leather, highly polished, not a speck of dirt to be seen.

It didn’t look like Francis. At least, his face was the same. Noble, patrician, his hair thick and black and parted in the usual way. But the rest of him…

No, this didn’t look like Francis at all.

His brother would have hated that formal suit, which no doubt their weeping grandmother had picked out for his funeral. He had preferred jeans and tee-shirts in the summer, and jeans with hoodies in the winter. And always trainers on his feet. Even when he had worn a suit, for weddings and funerals, he’d paired it with trainers. Whomever those shoes had belonged to, he doubted it had been Francis. Perhaps they had been bought specially for the occasion.

The last shoes Francis would ever wear. And he would have hated them.

His throat choked with sudden, inappropriate laughter, and he wished he could make a joke about it.

To Francis.

‘Hey, nice shoes… You up in court, bro?’

But he couldn’t.

Francis was dead and Leo would never get to mock him again. Never argue with him again. Never have a brother again.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ a voice said at his elbow. Some distant relative from Bordeaux, a man he barely knew, put a hand on his shoulder. ‘So tragic. To be taken so young… How old was he, Leo? Thirty-three? Thirty-four?’

‘He was thirty-six,’ Leo replied thickly, dismayed by the emotion clogging up his throat.

‘Do they know how it happened?’

This was the last thing he wanted to talk about. But they expected him to crack, didn’t they? To rip off his tie and head for the nearest bar…

‘They may never know,’ he managed to say, though with difficulty. It was a miracle he could speak at all. His tongue had suddenly become several sizes too large for his mouth. At any moment, it might flop out over his lower lip, like a dog’s tongue, and he would start drooling… ‘Pilot error seems to be what they’re going with. It should have been a routine flight. He was flying solo back from Bordeaux when –’

Leo stopped, unable to go on, and bowed his head.

‘I’ll leave you alone with him.’ The relative, whose name still escaped him, discreetly slipped away.

He struggled to remember exactly what he’d said to Francis the last time they’d met, four summers ago. It would have been a few days after his half-sister’s birthday in mid-June, most likely. He liked Bernadette, despite her abrupt, slightly brittle ways, and had come to Paris to wish her a happy birthday in person…

But he’d also been hoping to borrow a little money from Francis.

Two siblings with one stone.

No doubt he’d been drunk or hungover at the time.

Possibly both.

In his defence, that had been the year his studio in St Paul de Vence had burnt down, destroying half his canvases from the previous six months, and he’d not been in a good place. He’d begged Francis for a small loan to cover rent and other expenses, since his father had appointed his first-born head of the family business and controller of the family purse-strings. Francis had smiled and refused, gloating and enjoying his power. They’d argued, and Leo had left Paris before they could come to blows, asking Bernadette to lend him the cost of a train ticket back to the south of France.

As soon as he’d managed to sell some more paintings, he’d returned the money to his half-sister. But it had rankled, having to beg his own brother for money, and he still recalled the bitterness of that refusal.

If his father wasn’t so useless…

But brothers Sébastien and Henri Rémy had inherited the estate on his grandfather’s death, according to French law. His uncle Henri had agreed to continue looking after the vineyard in Bordeaux, where he’d been based for several decades, while his father Sébastien controlled the Parisian side of things, including a few high-yield properties and a café-bar.

But Sébastien had rapidly grown bored with playing the respectable executive, and had simply vanished, leaving his eldest son to run the business and maintain the chateau in Paris.

Francis had managed the business well.

But now he was gone, and their father had apparently nominated Leo in his place to oversee their finances.

He could refuse, of course. Walk away.

But he knew his father wouldn’t bother sobering up and coming to Paris to manage things for himself. No, he would simply run the estate into the ground and eventually be forced to sell the chateau and the vineyard in Bordeaux to cover his debts.

And what would his grandmother and poor frail Nonna do then?

No, they were all relying on him to pick up the reins where Francis had dropped them on his death. Because if he didn’t, the family would be ruined within a few short years.

Leo looked down into his dead brother’s face and wished he could apologise for having behaved so badly in his younger days. He’d changed so much since then. Perhaps not as much as his grandmother would have liked. But for years he had resented his father’s choice of Francis as the golden son, the one Sébastien Rémy could apparently rely on to manage the estate while he lived off the proceeds, far from home…

Indeed, Leo had tried to emulate his father for a time. To live as wildly as Sébastien did and never bother going home. But he was no longer an idiot where money was concerned, nor did he drink as heavily as he’d done in his late teens and early twenties, his life a sickening blur…

The undertakers had done a good job.

Francis wasn’t deathly pale, by any means. Almost in perfect health, one might think, if it wasn’t for his utter stillness. His injuries had been well-hidden too, though a few tell-tale bumps and indentations on his face, not quite concealed by heavy make-up, told their own story. He dreaded to think what horrors lay beneath the formal suit. Though at least the plane had not exploded on crash landing. And his body had been recovered whole. His doting grandmother had been spared that, at least.

‘I… I’m sorry, Francis,’ he muttered, feeling the hollowness of those words but unable to do anything about it. ‘I know we didn’t see eye-to-eye, but… I’m going to miss you, big brother.’

Guilt suffused him. Even now, speaking his last words to his older brother, he was unable to stop thinking about himself. About what his brother’s death would mean for the family. For himself, to be precise.

When he turned to leave, Liselle was waiting for him on the threshold, her large dark eyes shimmering with tears.

After more than five hours on the train from Nice, she looked wild and untamed, and yet still classically beautiful, with her long, flaming Titian hair that had caught his eye from the first moment he’d seen her in a night club in the South of France. She had sat for a portrait the next day, and they had become lovers soon after.

It had not lasted, not least because she was so much trouble. But Liselle was tenacious, he had to give her that, and was now his manager, though she still sat for him occasionally. He had no idea why she’d insisted on accompanying him to Paris for his brother’s funeral though, unless she was hoping their relationship could be revived now that he was vulnerable and grieving.

‘Oh, my poor darling,’ she cried, casting a quick, horrified look at Francis over his shoulder before shuddering dramatically. ‘I’m so, so sorry. You should have waited for me. I would have come with you to see him. But your grandmother kept asking me questions… I couldn’t get away.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I’m here for you now. Whatever you want, just tell me. My poor Leo.’ Her hands cupped his face and she kissed him on the lips.

Automatically, his hands went to her waist and pulled her close. But he said nothing.

Did he love Liselle? He didn’t know. He didn’t think so. They had not been to bed together in over a year and he hadn’t missed that element of their relationship, too absorbed in his painting to care about much else.

Besides, he had never loved anyone, so how could he tell?

Right now though, she loved him, and perhaps that was enough. He would need all the allies he could gather around him in the difficult time to come. As she looked up into his face, her eyes adoring, he wished he had the strength to tell her to go home, to remind her that they were not lovers and she should move on, free herself to be with someone else.

But he knew she wouldn’t listen.

And he was hurting.

‘Will your father come to the funeral?’ Liselle asked.

‘No, he’s not coming. My grandmother managed to track him down and let him know his eldest son was dead. But he still refused to pay his respects.’

‘What a horrible man.’

Leo shrugged. ‘All he said was that I must take over where Francis left off. That I would have to come home permanently to run the family business.’

‘What will you do?’ she whispered, wide-eyed.

‘My duty to the family,’ Leo said grimly, and loosened the knot on his tie before it could strangle him.

‘Give up painting?’ She sounded horrified.

‘I don’t have any other choice.’

Liselle stared. ‘But of course you do.’ She tugged urgently on his sleeve. ‘Darling, let’s leave. Straight after the funeral. We’ll take the train back to Vence and your father can go to hell.’

‘With my blessing,’ he snarled. ‘But if I simply ran away again, what would happen to the rest of my family?’ His teeth ground together at the trap closing about him. ‘No, I have to accept my father’s offer to run the business in Francis’s place.’ He saw her begin to protest and shook his head. ‘Oh, not to please him. You’re right, I’d happily see him in hell. But to save my grandmother and Nonna and Bernadette from losing everything… If my useless father was ever forced to come back here and started running the business for himself, the bank accounts would soon be wiped out and their lives not worth living.’

She seemed perplexed. ‘Your father can’t be that bad.’

Leo turned away from his brother’s body. ‘Trust me, he’s worse. A total narcissist. All he cares about is himself. My grandfather tried everything he could to bypass him in the Will. But under French law, you can never disinherit your child, however appalling – ’ Abruptly, he stopped and ran a hand over his forehead, closing his eyes. ‘Look, I have to do this, even if it means never painting again. I owe my family everything, I can’t abandon them now.’

‘Okay, but what about Bernadette? Why can’t she run things?’

‘She could, absolutely. Though whether she’d want to,’ he added, baring his teeth, ‘is another matter entirely. Besides, it would never be suggested. My father barely tolerates her living at the chateau. He’d never give her the family business to run.’

Liselle looked shocked. ‘Why not? Bernadette’s your sister.’

‘My mother’s child, yes. But he didn’t father her.’

‘Oh.’ She blinked in surprise at that revelation, then said robustly, ‘Well, if you’re staying, then I’ll stay too.’

Leo glanced at her briefly, not sure if that was a good idea. Their relationship was on the wane; he knew it even if she didn’t. But that hardly seemed worth arguing about right now. Not with everything else falling to pieces around him.

‘We can talk about it after I’ve buried my brother,’ was all he replied, tight-lipped. ‘First though, I need a stiff drink. Come on…’