by Natasha Boyd
She took the toothbrush from my hand and added toothpaste.
“I’m going to count to sixty. You have to brush your teeth for that long.”
Her head tilted. “Pourquoi?”
“Because that’s how long it takes not to miss any of your teeth and get all the germs out. You need to brush them all. Otherwise one tooth might feel like you don’t like him as much.”
Her eyes sparkled in amusement and she tucked the brush in her mouth.
“One, two, three, four …” I began. By thirty, she was spitting and sighing in annoyance. I laughed. “Continue.”
She rolled her eyes, but when she was finished and rinsed and had done her business while I turned down her bed, she was humming. Running and leaping, she landed square in the middle of the bed.
“Okay, time for introductions. Who is this?” I asked, picking up a lanky brown monkey.
“Mon Chi Chi.”
“Mon Chi Chi?” I asked, looking the monkey in the eyes. Then I shook its limp arm. “Enchantée,” I said, remembering the French greeting.
Dauphine giggled. “This is Pépé, Arnaud, Céleste, and Babar.” She presented them to me one by one until we’d gone through about twenty toys from monkeys to mermaids and an entire elephant family. Finally, she got to the last one. A bear with blue peacoat, a red hat, and Wellington boots.
“I know this character,” I said. “It’s Paddington. How do you do, Paddington? Who gave you this one?” I asked her.
“Evan. Il est beau, non?”
“Very handsome,” I agreed, so grateful that my high school French had started coming back to me for these little phrases here and there.
“I love the coat,” she said. “It is very … stylish? I wish I have more clothes for him.”
“No Barbies? You can dress those.”
Her nose turned up. “No. I do not like.” Then she let out a big yawn.
I’d have loved to discuss our mutual dislike of Barbies, but it was getting late. I patted the pillow behind her, encouraging her to scoot down. She complied, grabbing Paddington, and I tucked the fluffy duvet around her. The boat rocked ever so gently, the waves tiny in the protected port. She yawned again.
“Were you laughing at me?” she asked sleepily. “Upstairs when I come back from les toilettes.”
“No,” I answered, surprised. “Why would you think that?”
She picked at the stitching on Paddington. “It happens at my school sometimes. When I leave the classroom, the girls they laugh loudly. And when I come back in, they stop.”
My breath stuttered as emotion flood me unexpectedly. I blinked and slowly exhaled. Reaching out, I brushed the silky hair off her forehead. My mind went blank at how to comfort her.
“I think it is because of my name. Dauphine. Nobody has this name.”
I cocked my head. “What does Dauphine mean?”
“I do not know the word in English.”
“It sounds like Dolphin to me. And who wouldn’t want to be named after a Dolphin.” Still, I slipped my phone out of my back pocket and translated Dauphine. There was no translation, so I typed, “what is a dauphine in France?” “Ahh,” I said as the answer loaded. “So you are the female heir to the French Royal Throne.” Actually, not really that far from the truth if the tabloids were to be believed. At least that’s how people saw Xavier Pascale.
“But I’m not. Papa said my maman wanted to call me this. And now that she is not here I do not want to change it. But it is so, so stupid.” She rolled over, snuggling into her pillow.
“I think it’s pretty. It’s like being called Princess.”
“And this is not good. The girls at school are mean about it.”
I blew out a breath, realizing most platitudes would be a lie. I was also humbled that this little girl had chosen to share her personal pain with me, and I’d only just met her. “I have known girls like that too,” I said, instead. “Boys too. It’s hurtful. But luckily there are many more people in the world who are nicer, kinder, and better friends. They can be hard to find. Like treasure. But when you find them, keep the friendship safe. It is very, very precious.”
I leaned down and kissed her forehead, surprised that this little girl had wormed her way into my heart in a matter of hours. I turned the bedside lamp off. “Sleep well, princess.”
“Bonne nuit,” she said sleepily.
Standing, I moved to the doorway.
“Peaux-tu laisser la porte ouverte?” she asked, nodding at the door.
I complied, leaving the door open. My brain had obviously tucked away more French than I’d thought. I didn’t think I could speak it, but I was happy with how much I seemed to be understanding. I’d go ahead and use the language app on my phone every morning and try to get up to speed.
In my cabin, I brushed my teeth and washed my face in the small bathroom and changed into my favorite soft t-shirt and sleep shorts. It seemed like a lifetime away that I was flinging clothes into a bag and rummaging around for swimsuits. Turning off the light, I slipped between the crisp, soft sheet and the cozy duvet. Lights, chatter, and music filtered through my open window. The hall was dark outside my cabin door, which was open because there was no way I could sleep with it closed.
As tired as I was, mentally and physically, the time change was already playing tricks on me. I looked at my watch, making out the dim glow-in-the-dark hands. It was five in the afternoon at home.
For the first time in two days, I dragged in a deep breath and felt my chest loosen. Even stuffed into a cabin just above the waterline on a boat, I felt a sense of freedom I’d never experienced. I turned the feeling over in my mind, trying to understand it. How long had I felt tense, stressed, and boxed into a package? Great school, serious degree, lucrative job prospects. Always making sure I was doing something my father would have been proud of. Something my mother could brag about. As much as I could get upset with my mother at her decision to marry Nicolas, which had turned into a disaster, she had raised me to be able to take care of myself. I’d been doing just that before I’d fallen off track, in her words, by quitting.
But there was beauty in the fall. I didn’t have to be a certain way to please anyone but myself here. No one knew me. No one had any expectations of Josie, the woman. I was not the daughter of a disgraced Charleston socialite, nor the stepdaughter of a dishonest con man. God love Charleston, but the city had a memory like an elephant and a weight of judgment just as heavy. But here, for just a few weeks, I was not an architect desperately trying to carve out my own space in the male-dominated field. And there was a certain freedom in being someone new. Albeit temporarily. A girl with a blemish-free name and no history.
Standing up to Xavier Pascale today, and being true to myself, had been a gamble. But the result was maybe I’d earned a tiny modicum of his respect, and that felt good. I could make the best of the situation here, be the best damned nanny anyone had ever had, and fully embrace the chance I’d been given. That included shutting down my ridiculous attraction to my boss.
I closed my eyes and replayed our evening. Unfortunately, the attraction I’d felt for him was hard to beat back. But he’d made clear in no uncertain terms that it was my problem to deal with. And he seemed like he was the type to respect a power imbalance and never act inappropriately toward someone who worked for him. And I knew there was no way I’d compromise my job of taking care of sweet Dauphine or cast a stain on Tabitha’s agency she’d worked so hard to build.
The boat rocked gently, and before long I was dozing. The deep bass of a disco beat in the port thrummed faintly almost in time with my heart. I wondered what the nightlife was like in France and if I’d get a taste of it. Thinking of that made me miss Tabitha and Meredith.
I awoke sometime later, fully alert. The sounds of the port had subsided. Pale waving lines danced like ghosts along the cabin ceiling from the reflection of the water. I strained my ears, hearing a footfall on the steps and then outside my bedroom. I turned my head, seeing a figu
re in the hall. Mr. Pascale. He fumbled with the latch holding my door open, and it began to close.
“No, please,” I said quietly.
He started.
“Sorry.” I stifled a chuckle at giving him a fright. “Please leave it open. I can’t breathe with it closed.”
He was quiet as he processed this. “We leave the port early in the morning. You must close your window.”
I sat up.
“Je le ferai.” He waved me off and came fully into the room, his silhouette heading to the porthole. He slid it closed and latched it.
I could smell him. His cologne mixed with the sweet scent of scotch. He’d been up late drinking. I wondered if this was a common occurrence. I swallowed, breathed in deeply, the air now filled with him, and rubbed my chest.
“You are okay?” he asked.
“I—I think so.”
“Is this why you do not like boats?” his voice rumbled in the darkness.
“Part of it.”
“And the other part?”
I only vaguely made out his features in the dark. “The ocean has always scared me a little. It’s so dark. Fathomless. Full of things humans don’t understand.”
“Mystery and miracles too. It all depends on how you choose to see it. And the Mediterranean … well, you will see so many parts that are clear and sparkling and seductive. You will forget your fear. You will want to dive down deep to discover her.”
“You sound certain.”
“I am. Oh. Merde!” he cursed. “Can you swim?”
“Of course.” I huffed out a laugh. “And I love beaches. It’s just the idea of being in the middle of wide open expanses of water that makes me forget how to breathe.”
“And that’s where the air is the most clean and plentiful. Where you can breathe the easiest.”
“I guess so.”
“We will cure you, Dauphine and I.”
I chuckled. “Perhaps. She is wonderful.”
“She is.” He stood still for a long moment, then made a slight inhale sound. “Thank you for staying.”
It was probably the closest to an apology for our rocky start as I was going to get.
I nodded but wasn’t sure he saw me. “Of course,” I whispered. “And I’m sorry I reacted so strongly.”
He seemed to take my words in, and then without responding headed toward the door and vanished through the opening to his cabin.
I waited for the sound of him closing his door and instead heard his bathroom door close and the distant sound of running water. Then it opened and I listened to the sound of clothing being removed and the soft rustle of sheets. Was he going to sleep with his cabin door open too? I supposed as a concerned parent he would.
I lay awake for what felt like hours, straining to hear his breathing. It struck me how oddly intimate it was for us all to be sleeping separately, but yet all sleeping with no closed doors between us in such close quarters.
Chapter Twelve
XAVIER
I threw my pen down on the report I was trying to annotate in disgust after reading the same paragraph four times and ran my finger around my already loose collar.
I felt the itch of this Josephine Marin under the collar of my shirt like a sunburn. I was used to the au pairs from the agency being plain and no nonsense. They were sweet, mostly personality-less, and easily blended into the background. As they should.
It wasn’t as though I needed a plain nanny. I’d never been the type for that to be a problem, unlike some of the men I knew—my father being one of them, the old dog. I hadn’t picked the agency based on the nondescript looks of the childcare professionals. But Tabitha Mackenzie had always sent really fantastic professionals with endless amounts of patience, and who were much more sensible than beautiful. As long as Dauphine was safe and well-cared for, looks had nothing to do with it. Maybe some of them had been pretty, but I’d certainly never noticed.
But now … now it was a different story.
My first meeting with Josephine Marin yesterday had me second-guessing the decision from the instant I saw her. I knew immediately that she’d been the woman who’d stumbled into my video call with Tabitha. Who I was ashamed to admit to myself I may have also thought about again, in graphic detail, that night in the shower. I’d almost put her back on the train right then. I couldn’t even remember how to speak English properly. Me. A man who’d gotten his degree from the London School of Economics. My English was usually flawless. Evan was going to have a field day with me, since he’d witnessed the whole thing. As it was, he’d given me massive side-eye the whole drive to the boat. It was like he knew she’d knocked me for six. Her green-gray eyes seemed to shoot straight into my soul.
Something about Josephine Marin messed with the carefully ordered equilibrium I’d honed over the last few years, like a faint earth tremor along a catastrophic fault-line. The kind that made my hair stand on end. And last night when she’d tried to quit … well, I wasn’t going to even admit to myself that her tirade and the way she’d stuck up for herself had been like a blunt force awakening of my libido, so there was no point thinking about it. If it had been anyone else reacting like that I’d have been glad they quit. But for some reason I’d found that unacceptable.
As much as I’d sort of encouraged her to stay, I realized now after a long night of barely any sleep that she was far too dangerous. I should send her home. I had to send her home.
I pressed the intercom button in the master stateroom where I was using the desk while on board. “Evan? See me in my office please?”
Minutes later Evan appeared at the door.
I waved him in from the desk where I’d been trying to concentrate for the last two hours to no avail.
“I have the tender ready to take you ashore as soon as you’re ready,” he informed me.
“Bon.” I raked my hand through my hair.
“Are you ready for the meeting?” he asked.
Meeting?
Oh, yes. Meeting. I absently looked at all the final chemistry reports, the results of which would win our company a billion dollar contract if we could secure the final round of funding for production. I could pay for it myself, but it was always a good idea to spread risk. My company had been working for years on a special film-like paper that could record the technological knowledge and code languages of the world without deteriorating. We’d gotten it to where it could survive extremes of heat and cold for, we believed, two thousand years in the event of cataclysm. Which, let’s face it, with the way we were treating the planet, was bound to happen sooner rather than later. Every government needed it. So did every corporation, to protect their knowledge and survive. But the reports on my desk weren’t my primary concern right now. “This situation with the new girl is not going to work. She can’t stay,” I said instead, leaning forward on my desk.
“I’m sorry. Excuse me?”
“The au pair,” I explained, picking up my pen and waving it dismissively. “Nanny, or whatever.”
Evan smirked.
“What is that?” I made a motion at his face.
“That’s me smiling at seeing you so ruffled.”
“Ruffled.” I stabbed the table with my pen and slid my fingers down to the point before flipping it on its end and doing the same again. Slide, flip, stick, slide, flip, stick.
“Wound up,” he elaborated.
I blinked at him. Slide. Flip. Stick.
He rolled his eyes. “You finally realized your male equipment might not be dead?”
The pen flew through the air, smacking him in the forehead. “I could fire you for that. Don’t think because I’ve known you practically my whole life that I wouldn’t.”
“Ow,” he grumbled, rubbing his forehead. “Wow. Pulling out the old firing you card, X? Things must really be hard.” He raised an eyebrow. “Pun intended.”
“Fuck you.” And he was the only one I let call me X, instead of Xavier or Monsieur Pascale. And only when it was the two of us.
“Sorry, that was crass.” He didn’t look sorry at all. “Anyway, here’s her contract and non-disclosure if you want to look at it before she signs. It just came through from the lawyer.”
I took the paperwork but stayed quiet since I was incriminating myself. I knew it was unfair to send the girl home just because I couldn’t stop the thrum that slid through my deepest core with one look at her. And now I’d admitted my weakness to Evan and confirmed all his assumptions.
Also, beyond the fact that I had no time nor willingness for distractions, it was also reminiscent of my father lusting after my nannies growing up. Except my father acted on those impulses. I blew out an annoyed breath to cover my cringe, trying to get my head away from her and back into business. It would be fine. She was just an attractive woman. I’d spent time with plenty of those. No big deal. I’d give it a couple of weeks. I focused in front of me. “The reports for the meeting look good. I’m ready.” I shuffled the pages needlessly. I knew the results were solid. I didn’t need to re-read the reports this morning to know.
“Good. I’d like my goose to keep fattening. I’m not ready for the foie gras just yet.”
“Such a strange expression.” Every year, instead of a bonus, I gifted Evan a small amount of stock in my company. It had been his idea, and he was building up a nice retirement. It was a symbiotic relationship—his skin in the game if you will. He protected me since I was, literally, his investment.
“Sometimes, I like to fantasize you protect me because I’m your friend and not because I’m making you rich,” I said.
“That’s cute,” he deadpanned. “Okay, also on your agenda. Your father sent another request to meet for this bridge project he wants you to look at.”
My stomach tightened. “Invest in, you mean. I was hoping he wasn’t pushing that.”
“Pas du tout. He’s anxious to share some numbers with you.”
“He’s convinced that now we have our hand in some boutique hotel projects I’d like to get into infrastructure too.” Newsflash, I didn’t. Save the government building contracts for the unscrupulous. There was practically no way to avoid the systemic corruption, and I wanted no part in it.