Broken French: A widowed, billionaire, single dad romance

by Natasha Boyd

  “What is this, bobs?” Madame asked.

  “In this context it just means ‘of course.’ Bien sur,” Evan added the translation for her.

  God, the trap could have happened to any one of us. “But what about Dauphine?” And how did Xavier get from malware to accusing me?

  Xavier paced over to the other armchair and sank into it, weariness oozing out of every molecule. “Dauphine has an uncle, I mentioned him?”

  I nodded.

  “Michello,” Madame spat. “C’est une racaille.” I could surmise what that meant. ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬Something distasteful.

  Xavier went on. “We’ve been watching him, and he’s been down at the port keeping an eye on us. We think he even had someone at Les Caves the night you and Andrea were there. Were you approached?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Oh. Wait. There were these two guys. Young. Gorgeous. They were all over Andrea and me. Quite insistent, actually.”

  Xavier tensed. “Insistent how?”

  My irritation simmered. What, was he jealous now? “Persuasive. Handsy.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “It was nothing over the line,” I added, relenting.

  Evan’s eyes flicked between us. “Ahem. I think we get the point. I’d just found the discrepancy in the data feed and shut it down. That’s when I told Xavier I thought we had some malware.”

  “I remember not being able to get online or send an email that day,” I said.

  “We think they were trying to get another link in by approaching you and Andrea. Anyway, it took a few days to go through what was compromised. But Xavier’s calendar and our itinerary definitely were. We assumed corporate espionage. Especially when the day before yesterday, while you were sailing to Corsica, I had Xavier’s assistant at the office in Sofia Antipolis reach out to the older Monsieur Pascale and tell him not to invite another person to meetings with his son before clearing it with us first. That’s when he said he hadn’t known Morosto was coming, that the reservation had been changed to add Morosto at the last minute. He thought Xavier had done it. So Morosto had known where we were going and when. It was a hunch that Morosto had been using Michello to get to Xavier. Michello would be a natural choice given the massive chip on his shoulder. And I knew where to look for him. We think access to where Dauphine might be was his part of the bargain. That he might use her to extort money from Xavier was always a probability.”

  “God. Where is Michello now?” I asked, wondering about the details of how Dauphine had been found and whether Michello had put up a fight. She could have been hurt.

  “In jail, arrested on kidnapping and extortion charges,” Evan said.

  “Mais, what do you possess, Xavier, that would make this evil man Morosto risk certain jail time for a chance at it?” Madame asked. “And put my granddaughter in danger?”

  Xavier shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s everything,” Evan said, rolling his eyes at Xavier. “Madame, your son has invented something that almost every government and every company will need in order to secure their place in a dystopian future. Which is looking more likely every day, but that’s a different story. Let’s put it this way. Even Bill Gates will want to use it.” He chuckled. “Especially Bill Gates.”

  Xavier glared. “Tais-toi,” he muttered to Evan.

  “To be honest,” Evan blithely went on, “that plebian, Morosto wouldn’t know what to do with the information even if he’d found it.”

  Madame nodded approvingly. “Xavier. You know I’m always so proud of you.”

  “Merci,” he said uncomfortably and shot an annoyed glance at Evan before rolling his eyes.

  “Mais maintenant,” Madame went on with a short and decisive clap. “It is very late. Tomorrow everything will be clearer.”

  I wasn’t sure I was ready to deal with everything between Xavier and me, not after such a frightening day. Of course, I’d be ready for his apology any time, the sooner the better, but he and I needed to talk about a whole lot more than that. And I was shattered.

  Madame stood, and I followed suit.

  Evan nodded at me. “I’ll arrange to have your belongings delivered here tomorrow,” he said as he headed toward the door. “Good night, Josie.”

  I wanted to follow Evan out and ask him about my flight home. Looking toward Xavier, I was about to tell him goodnight too.

  “Josephine, please stay a moment?” He nodded at both his mother and Evan, and they left us alone.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Xavier and I stared at each other in the dim light of the library sitting room. He seemed so far away, and so exhausted, harrowing lines of the panic he’d faced earlier today etched around his eyes and bracketing his mouth. In any other situation where someone so dear to me had been through what Xavier had been through, I’d have been up and in his arms to hold him and comfort him.

  Screw it.

  I seemed to fly across the room, giving in to a decision I hadn’t even known I’d made, and wrapped my arms around his torso.

  He stumbled as he caught me.

  Maybe if I held him tight enough, all those cracks and fissures in his heart would heal back up. I sniffed his shirt. The scent of him, tired, warm skin, only a hint left of his woodsy aroma swam through my limbs like a drug.

  Beneath my arms, his muscles were tense and hard and I longed to slip my hands under his shirt.

  It took a moment to realize how stiff his body was, and then he was setting me away from him.

  The loss of him was like a chill wind.

  He opened his mouth, then closed it and swallowed heavily, his eyes flicking away for a moment.

  A rock dropped in my stomach. “Um,” I began, “I’m so very relieved Dauphine is home. Glad you are both home. I know you’re tired.” Not knowing what to do with my arms, I folded them across my chest. “We can talk tomorrow. You need to sleep.”

  And I wish I could curl around you in your bed, I mentally added, or you would curl around me and take whatever comfort you need.

  He nodded, mute.

  The loud sound of ticking filled the silence, and my eyes sought out the antique clock sitting on a bookcase filled with hardback books. He didn’t make a move to leave so I sat back down stiffly, my hands pressed between my knees.

  He turned, the low light playing with the planes of his face highlighting his exhaustion.

  I didn’t want to be another problem he had to solve before he slept tonight.

  “Xavier.”

  He scrubbed his hand down his face, and then his looming form skirted the coffee table and came toward me.

  Sitting back, I leaned away to look up at his face.

  “I know you need my apology,” he said, lowering on to the coffee table in front of me, legs spread.

  I nodded. “I do.”

  “And you are angry.”

  “I was. And I was hurt.” I licked my lips to find moisture, and my eyes stung with the remembered ache of his distrust.

  “I’m sorry, Josephine. You will never know how much. I am normally better at controlling myself, but of course I have never faced a nightmare like someone taking my daughter.”

  “Of course, I know that,” I said. I wasn’t a parent, but even I had felt the horror of learning Dauphine was missing. With that as the touchstone emotion of the day, it now had me feeling silly for being hurt. But then the accusing words he’d hurled at me echoed in my memory, making me annoyed for letting him off the hook. “Even though I understand.” I paused, trying to find the right words. “You found it so easy to blame me. Even knowing how much I love Dauphine. Even after what you and I shared. Why?”

  He drew his bottom lip between his teeth. “Evan had told me about Morosto … then when I saw the card … I, took a jump, what is the expression?”

  “Jumped to conclusions?”

  “Oui. C’est ça. Jumped to conclusions.”

  “That doesn’t tell me why you thought I was capable of something so horrifi
c.”

  His eyes stared into mine, weary. Conflicted. Fighting, and tired of fighting. He reached his hand up and pinched a strand of my hair that had fallen out of its braid, rubbing it between his fingers.

  “I want to hold you,” I admitted, and I thought my chin might be wobbling. “Comfort you. I wish you’d looked to me for help instead of pushing me away. It’s all right to need someone, Xavier.”

  He blinked slowly, looking into my eyes and searching my face but didn’t respond.

  And my words now felt silly and far too vulnerable bouncing off his silence. “It’s late,” I said, swallowing his silent rejection. “You should go and be with your daughter in case she wakes up.”

  He let go of my hair and rubbed the back of his neck as if to ease an ache. He took a shallow breath, then stopped. Words seemed on the tip of his tongue.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This thing between us … je sais pas … it was … I am not … I do not want you to go, but I cannot ask you to stay.”

  My hopeful heart leapt at his words. Though I hated how weak that made me, especially after his lackluster apology.

  “I do not want to use Dauphine to try to ask you to stay,” he went on. “She will miss you very much. The first question she had for me was where you were. And I hoped you would be here.” His head bowed. “But I would have understood if you left after the reaction I had. After what I said. I’ll understand if you leave.”

  I stared at the top of his head, at his glossy brown, warm and soft hair, and tried to read between the lines of his words. Was he using Dauphine as an excuse because he wanted me to stay? Or was the idea of me leaving really just that minor to him. No, I was sure it was the former. The night and day we’d spent together had been so incredible, but it had been the natural course of so many feelings building up over weeks. We’d connected in a way I’d never felt in my whole life. I knew it was the same for him. It had to be. I’d felt it. Before everything went sideways. “Xavier. You know you deserve to feel good things too.” My conversation in the car with Madame came back to me. “I think you believe you do not.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I’m certain,” I insisted.

  “Josephine, I am half a man, but with a whole heart devoted to my daughter.” He looked up, his eyes pleading with me. “That is all I am capable of right now.”

  Oh.

  Oh.

  I looked down to my chest. My hand was already pressed against it as if trying to hold everything together, to stop the pain. I should say something, I thought. I should put on a strong face so he didn’t know the extent of the damage. I blinked and attempted to swallow the ball of grit that had formed in my throat without success. My pulse pounded in my throat and ears. Count to ten, Josie. Breathe. My voice, when it came out, was a scratchy whisper. “So you want me to stay, but only for Dauphine’s sake?”

  He grabbed my hand, making me wince at the contact, relief evident on his features. “Oui. You are very good with her. She needs you. After the shock, she needs stability. You will stay with us for a little while longer?”

  I snatched my hand away, the backs of my eyes burning. My skin flashed hot, then cold, and a chasm of aching emptiness began to yawn open inside my chest. The chasm was going to swallow whole pieces of my heart. And it was going to fucking hurt.

  “Josephine …” His head tilted sideways.

  I held up a palm and pulled it down when I felt my hands shaking.

  “You warned me,” I said. “You warned me to protect my heart. I’m afraid it was probably too late already.”

  He winced, his face paling, and closed his eyes.

  “It’s true. You’re sitting here talking as if you don’t know that I’m in love with you.”

  “Do not say this.”

  “I’m in love with a man who thinks love is looking for ways to hurt him. To destroy him. But that’s not love.” My voice shook. “Maybe you have never truly known it.”

  Xavier had pulled down the iron curtain of nothingness over his expression. “Perhaps not.”

  Silence ensued, my ears filled with the throb of my heartbeat and the damn fucking clock ticking louder than ever.

  Awkward vulnerability made my skin crawl as seconds ticked by with no response. Not that I was expecting one. I cleared my throat before the humiliation of being so raw and exposed choked me. Wasn’t love supposed to make one feel invincible? I had never felt so weak. “It wasn’t one-sided,” I said. “I know it wasn’t. I know it in my bones. But you’re pretending it was. When you found yourself attracted to me, instead of looking inside yourself and rejoicing, you blamed me.”

  “Non.”

  “Yes. You have had a problem with me from the start. You said it yourself, I terrified you. And I thought you weren’t a coward.”

  His lips curled in a hiss. “You have no idea what I’ve been through!”

  “I know I don’t.”

  He stood and came toward me. Then he seemed to think better of it and stopped, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He then pulled a hand out and raked it through his hair. “I barely know you, and yet I let myself get distracted by you for one day and look what happened to Dauphine.”

  What the fuck?

  Pain took my breath away, my gasp loud in the silence.

  He snapped his head to look at me, remorse filling his eyes. “Non. I didn’t mean that.” He walked toward me and I held a hand up, shaking my head.

  “You did,” I choked out. “I’ve discovered you rarely say anything you don’t mean, and this is no exception.”

  “Merde. I don’t know how to say the right thing. I do not want to hurt you. But yes, I did mean that. In a way.” His hand grasped mine, and I let him, trying to pretend touching him didn’t matter. “I am a father before everything, Josephine. I let myself forget that for a moment. I am sorry for the way I have been, for what I might have led you to believe. You are correct, my head has been a mess since you arrived. And I cannot afford it. Today showed me that more than anything. There is no space for … us. For some mad, meaningless sex, when it could mean I lose my daughter.”

  My breath choked. “Meaningless.”

  He dropped his gaze, his eyes filled with regret.

  I took a step back. “That’s all I am. I tell you I’m in love with you, and you call me someone to have sex with? Someone you barely know?” My words hardly made it out, my voice was gone. “Call a fucking hooker then. It would have been cheaper. For both of us.”

  He flinched like I’d slapped him. He stepped toward me, his eyes screaming things I’d never hear him say, his mouth twisted in anger and … shame. “But even so, please stay.” His hand, rough and warm, slipped around the back of my neck. His gaze flicked to my mouth and then back to my eyes. “For her.”

  My breathing grew shallow, betraying the effect he had on me. He was so close. His eyes so tortured. His mixed-messages were breaking me. It hadn’t been meaningless, but he wouldn’t admit it. He wanted me, but he wouldn’t allow himself to.

  My fingers closed around his wrist and pulled his hand from my skin because, God knew, I couldn’t think clearly with him touching me, with his eyes conveying wants and needs he’d never allow himself to indulge while he ignored what it had cost me to admit my feelings.

  The faint crease between his eyebrows deepened.

  I took a shaking breath and lifted my shoulders as if I could ease the splintering inside me. “As I said, I love Dauphine.” Dread at the idea of being around Xavier after what we’d shared was like cement in my stomach. “For her, I’ll stay. For a few days at most,” I added. “To make sure she is okay. But more than that, I cannot do. Please try to stay out of my way, and I will try to stay out of yours.”

  Somehow, I made it to the door. “Please have Evan bring my passport and my belongings as soon as possible.” I turned the handle and stopped. Turning my head, I looked him dead in the eyes. The words, “You coward,” danced on my tongue. “I hope one day you realize you are w
orth loving,” I said instead. Then I slipped through and closed the door behind me.

  I raced silently up the stairs to my bedroom and flung myself onto the bed.

  Down the hall, I heard Dauphine murmuring in her sleep, and I waited, tense, until I heard Xavier pad quietly up the stairs. He would be with her if she woke. Only then, did I let the full weight of everything hit me.

  And when the crying was done, I asked myself how I’d gotten here. Not just emotionally, but physically. So, I’d had a hiccup in my career, I should have stayed in Charleston, in my own life, and fought for what I wanted. I wasn’t mad at Tabitha and Meredith, but I wondered at myself that I’d so easily gone along with this harebrained idea. My mother had been right, I’d run away.

  I didn’t know who I was anymore. It was as if the Josie I’d grown up with—the strong, resilient, ambitious, probably-never-going-to-fall-in-love-because-men-couldn’t-be-trusted-Josie—was standing over the bed, arms folded and her foot tapping the carpet, wondering who this weak, lost, version of herself was. “You see,” she said to me, “I was right. Now pull yourself together, we’re going home.”