Title: One Exquisite Night in Paris
Author: Andre Phillip-Hautecoeur
Publisher: Hautecoeur Press
Pages: 198
Language: English
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Format: Paperback & eBook

Purchase at AMAZON

What’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever done?

Take a moment, close both eyes, summon your most exaggerated fantasy, and multiply by 1000.

Feel the extraordinary moment for a minute…then multiply it all by 1000 again.

That’s this story. It’s your story too.

If you were ever a little girl, or even a little boy with a romantic soul, you would have known very early on, that someday love would require you to do wonderfully ridiculous things.

And so, I’m going to explain to you, why the most intriguing thing you will ever want to do, is get on a plane and fly to an exotic dinner, at some elegant trois-étoiles across the ocean in Paris.

First Chapter

Love Is Magic

I want to be in love one day,

A perfect love such that my prince would whisk me off for one enchanted night to Paris!

One reckless night, that we might steal a blissful kiss upon some bridge at dawn,

A kiss we will remember all our lives.

And when we’re back home and all alone, I’d buy him socks; ‘cause he’s my man,

Mine and mine alone!

                                      —A. Phillip-Hautecoeur

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What’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever done?

Take a moment, close both eyes, summon your most exaggerated fantasy, and multiply by 1000.

Feel the extraordinary moment for a minute…then multiply it all by 1000 again.

That’s this story. It’s your story too.

If you were ever a little girl, or even a little boy with a romantic soul, you would have known very early on, that someday love would require you to do wonderfully ridiculous things.

And so, I’m going to explain to you, why the most intriguing thing you will ever want to do, is get on a plane and fly to an exotic dinner, at some elegant trois-étoiles across the ocean in Paris.

But in the meantime, I must relate a fascinating story about an enchanting French woman named Eff.

Don’t be anxious; she’s not enchanting in any Hollywood sort of way; she’s just extraordinarily normal, bordering on blasé. Like you, Eff hasn’t uncovered a remedy for some troublesome affliction; neither, for that matter, invoked an imperative on Pandora to rid the world of all its difficulties. However, just as the moth flutters its wings in Blankpen Forest provoking a tempest ten thousand miles away in Indo-Chine, Eff might double over in a gut-aching laugh, causing a torrential shower to end a drought in far away Eretria. Quite often we’re influenced by events we’re not at all aware of.

I’m convinced that every endeavor has an ultimate. Love has its own ultimate bucket list, with just one item on it.

We all daydream, imagining our one extreme voluptuous fantasy. We all wish to one day say, “I had the most amazing day of my entire life,” about a totally consuming, outrageously enchanting, completely romantic day where we’re transported on a cloud tomorrow going home. We all secretly dream of one exquisite night in Paris.

Imagine the Cinderella story—prince, carriage, and horses with white mice for footmen—finessed into its more modern version, the Pretty Woman movie, especially the part where he takes her out for the night all dressed up to dinner in the shiny jet. You quietly hope that at some point it will be your turn, sailing through a deep dark night, a thousand glittering stars above, smoldering city lights below, an overwhelming promise of romance and enchantment crowned with an elegant dinner, champagne, and a princely dream. And perhaps, innocently unaware, you find yourself humming the opening bars to, “Someday My Prince Will Come,” knowing that the enchanting promise of romance will happen for you—someday.

The most amazing day of your entire life—part fantasy, part luxury, all enchanting, all true. I’ve always wanted to nonchalantly say, “Forget the moon; let’s go to Paris for dinner,” as if it were something that anyone would do on a whim. Afterward we’d stroll to the open plaza to watch the twinkling of the Eiffel Tower with a chilled bottle of champagne wrapped in a stolen hotel towel with two borrowed glasses—a passionate and sleepless night at the Ritz, dark coffee, some fragrant, warm, flakey croissants, and then back on a flight towards home.

Every princess deserves a perfectly romantic prince. They deserve to live the promise of one truly amazing day and night together—an incredible fantasy, a doable fairytale where, for a moment, passions cause kisses to conjure frogs into royals.

Because life is love and fairies wings, and somehow a bit short, we all should at least once:

Share an outrageously perfect dinner just for two at a lavish 3-Star table in Paris.

Sip a sublimely effervescent bottle of French champagne (or three).

Be enchanted by the Tower’s sparkle at midnight as reflected light from diamonds twinkle through our lover’s eyes.

Spend one perfect night secreted in a little room for two at the Plaza, Crillon, or Ritz.

Have one flawlessly orchestrated day and night in a place where luxury, history, glittering lights, and fantasy describe the perfect fairytale.

Have room service lay a simple breakfast just for two.

Just once, if only once.…

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More than just love, I adore my wife. Seriously. I say that with resolute certainty and fascination. Not like one degenerate drunk to another, avoiding getting off a precariously tilting barstool to delay going home. Falling in love is a matter of immaculate magical hope. And we all hope, deep in our hearts, that we’ll be in love one day and that it will last and last forever.

The trick with magic is that even though it’s improbable, it sometimes happens anyway, usually when you don’t expect it. I certainly never do. Still, to awkwardly stumble upon the woman of your dreams who’s come to New York on vacation from five thousand miles away in Paris…well, that’s a fairly decent trick.

I once read a book by a British author attempting to explain the relative dichotomy concerning randomness and luck. He suggested that there are ways in which to make yourself lucky. Basically his recommendation was; keep a positive attitude, be inquisitively sociable, and remain open and expectant of the wonderful benefaction that life might present. It all seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

Being on time has always been a matter of high principal for me. That’s the only reason I happened to be where I was at the time.

Madison Bistro is an old-ish French restaurant on Madison Avenue and Thirty-Seventh Street in New York City. Business people and familiar friends frequent the drowsy little crevice. Unlike other ultratrendy New York fusion eateries, they keep the lights turned up, and there’s no blaring music, so conversing patrons can hear each other without yelling and constantly repeating themselves. I used to visit quite regularly, meeting clients and friends, but hadn’t stopped by for about a year since I’d started working out of Brooklyn.

Today I was in Manhattan, forty minutes early for a meeting with six guys who planned to take America by storm with a big real-estate investment idea. They knew nothing about financing, and since I’m supposedly a banker, my contribution was to listen and then offer suggestions as to how the money aspect would work.

There are no bookstores or other shops on that stretch of Madison Avenue, so to suck up the extra minutes I thought to have a coffee at the bistro. The restaurant door had been left open as it was a relatively balmy November evening—November 7, to be exact.

There’s the rare instance in everyone’s life when you have the experience that the world, without necessarily stopping, slows so dramatically that you’re absolutely certain you’re on a movie set being directed by an invisible intuition. Approaching the entrance at Madison Bistro was my only such experience ever.

The building isn’t very wide, only about eighteen feet. The entrance is a small, brown, old-fashioned door to the right. Immediately inside, there is a bar to the left that runs for maybe fifteen feet and takes up the entire width of the room, except perhaps a three-foot-wide walkway, leading at its end, to the seating area a few quick steps down.

I’m at the door. The director must have yelled, “Quiet!” since I’m not conscious of hearing anything anymore; and then… “Action!”  

Trailer

About the Author

Andre Phillip-Hautecoeur defines himself as, “…not a writer really.” He simply had an urge to write something about Paris.

It’s the city exactly at the intersection of romance, history, fantasy and enchantment; everyone faces Paris in some form of a dream. He came to know and love Paris hanging onto the hem of his wife’s skirt. She’s Parisian, she’s everything French without constraint; she makes understanding all of Parisness a pleasure. An understanding which made him want to write.

Together they make home between New York and Paris. Shuttling back and forth continues to be the ultimate dream.

His latest book is the contemporary romance, One Exquisite Paris Night.

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