by Natasha Boyd
Dauphine wrinkled her brow. “Where will you have lunch?”
“In town.”
“You promised me we would go to Le Cinquante-Cinq. When?” Her voice pitched hysterically.
“Next week, okay?” He switched to French, and she responded.
Dauphine pouted and stomped her foot. Then she looked back at me, her eyes lighting as if she’d had an idea. “Can Miss Marin come? Please, Papa!”
He looked up.
I had no idea what had just been decided, so I shrugged.
“If she would like.” He looked at me a beat, but his mouth twisted like he’d swallowed a bug at having to invite me along.
I managed to find my tongue. “If Dauphine would like me to go with you all, it would be a pleasure.”
“D’accord. It’s a plan. Dauphine.” He turned to his daughter and kissed her head. “Will you leave me and Miss Marin for a moment. I must speak with her privately.”
My stomach tensed with nerves.
Dauphine pouted but pirouetted toward the door. “Paco!” I heard her calling out as she hightailed it to the bridge.
He followed her route and closed the door behind her. “Is this okay?” he asked me, indicating the closed door. The gesture of concern was surprising.
“Um. Sure.” I looked toward the long but narrow windows and inhaled. At least the boat had stopped rocking so much.
“You are …” he paused. “Claustrophobic?” he asked as if he’d had to retrieve the word from the recesses of his mind.
I nodded. “A little. It’s not crippling. But it’s there.” This room with its wider space and more windows felt less confining than my cabin downstairs.
“Sit?” he indicated toward the couch. “I have some employment paperwork for you. A contract and a non-disclosure agreement.” He picked a stack of paper off his desk and handed it to me with a pen.
I sank down on one end of the couch and skimmed through each page. It was in English, which I appreciated.
“You can look it over and give it to Andrea when it is signed.” He leaned against his built-in desk, crossed his ankles, and folded his arms across his chest. Along with his blue linen shirt that matched the color of his eyes today, he wore distressed jeans and brown boat shoes. He looked like a model in a menswear commercial—brow expertly furrowed, careless masculinity oozing from everywhere.
He’s my boss, I reminded myself. I dragged my gaze away. I’d have to pray the contracts were standard because I couldn’t focus on a damned word. I signed the employment contract and the non-disclosure agreement. “Here.”
He took the papers. “I must apologize,” he began. “I am normally more … smooth. Even.”
Inwardly, I chuckled at him calling himself smooth. “Even-tempered?” I supplied.
“Yes. I reacted from concern. Dauphine … she gets upset sometimes when she comes to see her mother’s things. I have been meaning to remove them …” He lifted his shoulders helplessly. “Her emotions. They are elevated sometimes.”
I licked my lips and cocked my head to the side, unsure what to say. I had so many questions about Dauphine’s mother, his late wife, and what happened. “If you think it would help in my relationship with Dauphine, perhaps you could explain the circumstances around … her mother’s passing. It’s just Dauphine mentioned—”
“What did she say?” His eyebrows snapped together, and he set the signed paperwork on the desk next to him.
“Just that her mother was sad. And maybe she thinks the sadness had something to do with her death,” I supplied.
Mr. Pascale’s eyes grew unfocused, and tension wound through the seemingly relaxed stance of his body. I could tell by the slight tick under the skin at his temple and the way his folded arms went from something to do with his hands to a tight bind he held against his chest. It was a subtle change, but unmistakable. Like a cage around his heart.
“If you don’t want to talk about her, it’s okay. I’m sorry I asked.” I backed off. “It’s not my place. I just thought, for Dauphine—”
“I’m sure you’ve read internet stories.”
“Actually, I haven’t.”
He snorted, and I tried not to feel offended. But when I held his gaze with sincerity, he seemed to accept it.
The boat’s engine cut off and the sound of a heavy chain clanged dully.
“That’s the anchor,” he said, and it was clear he wasn’t going to answer my question. Not today anyway. Then he let out a small sigh and the tension broke. “We have arrived. What will you two do today?” he asked, moving to sit on the end of the perfectly made bed and facing me.
He braced his elbows on his denim-wrapped thighs and looked at me earnestly. A lock of hair fell forward again.
Blinking, I tried to ignore the image of Xavier Pascale and a bed being in the same frame, impressed with his ability to change the subject so easily. “Actually, I was hoping for some direction. How does Dauphine usually spend the day on the boat?”
“She has some school reading to do and some simple exercises to keep her brain—comment dit-on—?” He circled his hand in the air as he clearly tried to think of the word.
“Active?” I supplied.
“Oui, to keep her brain active before school starts again.”
I gave a nod. I remembered going brain dead during long summers between school years in the Charleston heat. “Wow, sounds fun,” I said, trying to convey a tone of irony.
“But also, I have asked Paco to take the boat over to the little bay at Cap d’Antibes and come back for me later,” he went on. “You two can go swimming. I will have Rod put the slide out.”
“A slide?” I asked.
Monsieur Pascale broke into a lazy grin. “The best boats have toys.”
I rolled my eyes. “The best boats, huh? Trying to impress me?”
“Simply trying to change your mind about boats,” he corrected with a chuckle.
Damn, his laugh was sexy. Husky and warm.
“Is it working?” he pressed.
You have no idea, I wanted to say. But it has nothing to do with the boat. “Not yet,” I deadpanned. “What other toys do you have up your sleeve? I distinctly remember seeing a helipad on one of the other boats. Are you not rich enough?”
He cracked out a loud laugh, his eyes crinkling almost closed with mirth. He was stunning when he laughed. I’d noticed last night, and it caused even more of a giddy jolt inside my chest today. Shaking his head, he pinned me with his gaze. “I cannot believe you just said that to me.”
I swallowed and tried to rein in my smiling lips. “Yeah, me neither.”
“No helipad, I’m afraid.”
“Then I’m afraid I’m not impressed,” I joked. This was flirting, I was sure of it. No. No. No. My lower belly was flooding with fizzing warmth, but alarm bells clanged on my brain. Distance, distance, distance.
There was a sharp, sudden knock at the door.
“Ex?” Evan’s voice sounded. Ex? X, for Xavier?
“Here,” Monsieur Pascale responded.
The door opened and Evan poked his head around the opening.
“Ready to go when you are, Mister Pascale,” Evan said, his eyes switching from me to his boss, then back to me.
A strange sense of being caught with my hand in the cookie jar dowsed all the tightly wound energy inside me. I smiled uncomfortably.
“I’ll be right there,” my boss said, making no move to get up.
I stood. “I was just leaving.”
Evan paused a moment, then retreated and closed the door behind him.
Tension bloomed as my boss stood too. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, seeming embarrassed. Suddenly his face closed down to all business, and he drew a deep breath. “Dauphine has had a difficult time the last two years,” he said, his hands slipping into his pockets. “She needs someone she can trust. I need someone she can trust. Unfortunately, I haven’t always done the right things and reacted the right ways. I have kept her from her grandmothe
r more than I should, a mistake I hope to rectify this summer. Her grandmother would have her most weekends. Or more if she could. But it’s difficult with my schedule, and hers.” He stepped around to the other side of his desk then and sat down, steepling his fingers. “Dauphine needs a friend. She needs privacy and space to just be a little girl and not to be scrutinized by the media. I know you are her nanny, but it’s clear already from the way she interacts with you that you could be a friend too. It seems the chance I took on hiring you without proper background checks coming through quickly was the right one … for Dauphine,” he tacked on after a pause. “Please don’t disappoint us.”
It was a grave and earnest plea. I swallowed, my throat thick.
It didn’t escape my notice how he parsed out himself from Dauphine. I was good for her. By default that meant not good for him. The distinction caught me off-balance.
“Are you okay?” He stared at me.
“No. Yes,” I corrected with a slight voice break. “I, yes. I’m very fond of Dauphine already. I can tell she’s had a rough time from the little she has shared. She can trust me. You both can,” I added.
“D’accord. You can go,” he said, his voice stiff. His expression had become troubled.
“Of course.” I headed for the door but paused with my hand on the latch. “You know,” I said, my voice soft. “I’ve lost a father, so I have some idea of what families go through—what it’s like to lose a parent. I’ll be here for Dauphine, and I’ll keep her safe.” I hesitated. On the tip of my tongue was to tell him I could be there for him too, but I bit my lips closed instead. It wasn’t wise to get any closer to this man. He was damaged, and I didn’t think it was solely to do with the loss of his wife.
I walked out and closed the door behind me, heading into the living area.
“What was that about?” Evan asked, making me jump. He was leaning against the wall just as I emerged from the hall.
I placed a hand on my chest. “What?”
He tilted his head, an odd, contemplative expression on his face.
“He wanted to talk to me about Dauphine,” I found myself explaining. “And paperwork. I signed—”
“Relax. I was just curious. I’m glad you signed the paperwork. Good to have you aboard.” He smiled and headed out through the main living room onto the back deck, leaving me confused.
Hearing Dauphine’s chatter, I followed the sound to the galley.
Only later when Dauphine and I stood on the stern of the boat and watched the small tender with her father and Evan motoring to shore, did I remember I’d meant to have a talk with Evan about him saying I hadn’t been allowed to leave the boat when that had clearly been made up on the spot.
I breathed in the sea air, the breeze caressing my skin, the waves below so blue it looked as though a giant had spilled a pot of indigo ink.
I looked down at my young charge, her tangled curls blowing in the breeze and her eyes, just like her father’s, matching the swirling blue depths of the sea below us. In just a day, she and her father had wormed their way under my skin and I knew, even when I went home, they might never leave me.
Chapter Fifteen
After Evan and Mr. Pascale had left, Paco anchored the boat in a little bay nearby he said literally translated to False Silver. Dauphine was sure that meant treasure. We lathered ourselves with sunscreen, and I decided to wear one of my bikinis since it was just she and I. Paco and Rod had disappeared down to the engine room to tinker at whatever had been giving them trouble, and Andrea was last seen with a pile of linens, napkins, and silver polishing cream. Chef was chopping and prepping things for whatever menus he was preparing for lunch and dinner.
I followed Dauphine out onto the back deck and did a double take when I saw a large inflatable slide had been fastened from the deck past the lower platform to the water. “Wow,” I said, stopping.
The sun sparkled across the water. The boat rocked gently, and Dauphine clapped her hands in delight when she saw that Rod had unfurled and inflated the long slide off the side of the boat.
I leaned over the railing. “Well, that looks a little daunting.”
“We need to be wet first.” Dauphine raced down toward the back deck in order to jump in.
“Wait,” I called and hurried after her to the edge of the lower platform.
Below us the water was like a jewel. I could tell it was deep, but it was so clear and translucent it was almost like looking through a kaleidoscope made up of turquoise, vibrant greens, and dark blues. “This is amazing,” I said.
“We count, yes?”
I laughed. “Sure,” I said. “One, two, three!”
We both leapt.
The water exploded upwards, cool and sharp against my skin as we plunged in. It sucked the breath from my chest and loosened my worn bikini top, which I quickly held on to with my free hand.
Dauphine’s small hand left mine as the weight of my body drew me deeper, and my feet caressed eddies of even colder water. With my eyes closed, I reveled in the feeling of the quiet. Already I could sense the saline on my lips and teasing at the seam of my eyelids. For a moment I fought the urge to kick straight back up, eking out a few more precious seconds of the novel feeling. Had I ever plunged into an ocean without fear of the unknown, the unseen? I felt a swell of water and knew Dauphine was treading water nearby. With a kick I rose easily and burst through the surface with my face turned to the sky. Salt hit my tongue as I opened my mouth to drag in a breath. I wiped excess water from my eyes and opened them to meet Dauphine’s rapturous smile.
“Fantastique, non?”
I laughed, unable to contain my joy at this simple pleasure. “Yes. Amazing. It’s chilly at first.”
“Yes. It is wonderful. Papa says in one more month it will be too warm. Now it is parfait!”
“Perfect,” I said.
“Perfect,” she mimicked. “Now we do the slide. Me first. You will wait for me here?”
“Sure. Go on ahead.”
She turned and moved toward the swimming deck and ladder, and I kicked my legs as I tightened the bikini strap around my neck. The navy hull and bright white of the yacht decks made a sleek and majestic picture against the cloudless blue sky and perfectly unmarred horizon. It took up almost all my view. To think, this time last week I’d been sitting at my little cubicle desk at the back of a building in downtown Charleston, my eyes straining over numbers, angles, sketches, and budget spreadsheets in the harsh fluorescent light. For the first time since my world had turned upside down, I felt a sudden rush of relief and escape. I didn’t know what that meant practically because I loved architecture and buildings. But I hung on to the lightness in my chest. Somehow in the arduous trek toward trying to get promoted, I’d gotten a little burned out.
I turned, treading water, and looked toward the gray rocky edges of the bay and up at the few mansions from modern to old-worldly stone that clung to its edges. Here and there steep steps were carved in stone among rugged green brush. I imagined the feats of engineering architects of old had to devise in order for these palatial cliff-side dwellings to stand the tests of hundreds of years. I wondered if the more modern ones would have such longevity. If we were still anchored here later, I’d love to sketch the houses. I hadn’t quite broken the habit of carrying a sketchbook with me everywhere I went that had been drilled into me by one of my first drafting professors.
I heard Dauphine call out to me.
I turned in time to watch her settle herself at the top of the slide, and then push off. She screeched the whole way down, her small body dumping into the water in a splash of gangly limbs. She came up gasping, making us both laugh.
“Not so graceful,” I said. “But it looks fun.”
“Your turn.”
“Will you wait for me here?”
She shook her head, feigning fear at being left alone in the water.
“I didn’t used to like being in the water by myself when I was younger either. Not even in a pool. Come o
n, I’ll race you.”
Dauphine giggled and squealed as she half doggy-paddled and half swam breaststroke furiously to the swim deck.
I pretended to try to keep up with slow strokes through the water but let her win.
Paco was watching us from an upper deck, chuckling. He’d finally lit his small cheroot, the smoke a faint apparition circling his head.
For the next couple of hours, we jumped, swam, and raced each other. Dauphine tried to convince me that it was okay to stop messing with my bikini top, as apparently many French women simply went topless. For a hot second, I imagined walking around the boat topless with her father’s eyes staring at my breasts. “I’m not French,” I explained in a choked voice, trying to shake the image.
“Yet!” She grinned. “I will make you more French, and you will make me American.”
I gave her a weak laugh.
We tried the snorkel gear, but Paco asked us not to go too far from the boat since Evan had taken the tender, and if we got into trouble by the rocks, he wouldn’t be able to get to us as the main boat was so large. Still, being able to float along the surface of the crystal-clear water at a depth of what I assumed to be about thirty to forty feet was mesmerizing. It was incredible to see the sandy and rocky bottom and the small silver fish with yellow tails that darted about here and there. Sadly, we also saw several pieces of half-buried glass, aluminum, and plastic trash. Dauphine saw it first, and motioned to me, before pointing and then making a crying action at her mask with balled up fists. I loved that this bothered her. It bothered me. I made a heart symbol with my thumbs and forefingers and pointed at her.
Eventually our hungry bellies called us back to the boat, and we lay on the swim deck to dry off in the bright sun.
I hadn’t had such carefree fun in quite some time. My skin was dusty and tight with salt, I was thirsty, and my eyes stung slightly, but I felt so at peace. I let out a long sigh and turned my face to Dauphine. “Thank you,” I said sincerely.
“Pourquoi?”
How to explain in a way she’d understand. “It’s been a long time since I enjoyed swimming so much,” I told her, but it didn’t come close to expressing the joy and relief in my chest.