Daddy's Secret Deal

by J. D. Fox

  ​Olivier cleared away anything that could show what he’d been doing and shut down his computer. Mathilde and Genevieve would be home soon, and Olivier wanted to be as present as possible for his daughter. He checked one last time to make sure that there wasn’t anything incriminating lying around and left the office. Within a year, he would have enough money to ensure that he could support himself for the rest of his life, and provide Mathilde with a good future; he would be able to quit scams for good.

  ​“Papa! Suis arrivée!” Mathilde called out from the front of the house.

  ​“Ah! Ma fille!” Olivier went into the front hall and scooped his daughter up, kissing her on each cheek twice. “Welcome home,” he said to Genevieve, settling his daughter on his hip. He leaned in and gave her an air-kiss on each cheek, just as he would any other woman, and backed away before he could truly feel the jolt of tension that always rushed through him whenever he was close to this particular woman.

  ​“We had an excellent time at the park,” Genevieve said. “I did promise Mattie that we would have ice cream tonight since she received good reports from her teachers.”

  ​“I believe we can do that,” Olivier said, giving his daughter another kiss. He set her down, and Mathilde scampered towards her room to retrieve one toy or another.

  ​“So I take it your business call went well?” Genevieve smiled slightly as she finished removing her boots before slipping her feet into a pair of slippers she kept by the door.

  ​“It went as I expected it to go,” Olivier said decisively. “I need to make a few calls tomorrow as well, but Mathilde will be in school.”

  ​“I can be out of the house for a while,” Genevieve said. “I have some shopping I wanted to do.”

  ​They went into the living room together, and Mathilde followed them, trailing her dolls. Olivier turned on his daughter’s favorite program and got down on the floor with her to play along, while Genevieve amused herself by reading her book for a bit.

  ​“What should we have for dinner, before we go get ice cream?” Olivier looked up at Genevieve, seated on the couch. “We have pasta, rice, and potatoes--and chicken and pork, vegetables. Is there anything you would want to make?” Olivier sat back from his daughter’s playing to give his nanny his full attention. He had come to enjoy Genevieve’s cooking—her American dishes and what she knew from other cultures alike.

  ​“It’s a bit warm out,” Genevieve observed. “I could make pasta salad.”

  ​“What do you think, ma fille?” Olivier reached out and tousled his daughter’s hair.

  ​“C’est quoi?” Mathilde looked from Olivier to Genevieve.

  ​“It’s pasta with vegetables and sometimes meat, and vinaigrette or another salad dressing,” Genevieve explained.

  ​“What vegetables?” Mathilde frowned in suspicion and Olivier chuckled.

  ​“Whatever vegetables one wants,” Olivier said.

  ​“I’ll make sure that I only put in the ones you like,” Genevieve promised.

  ​“Then I think I will like it,” Mathilde said.

  ​“I’ll go get the water started,” Genevieve told them. Olivier watched her as she left the living room for the kitchen, and forced himself not to look for too long at the way her hips swayed as she walked.

  ​He played with his daughter instead of following Genevieve into the kitchen as he usually did; in the back of his mind, though, Olivier couldn’t help wondering about the deals he was making and the questions Genevieve had asked him about his business. She was too smart—too smart by half—to be an au pair. She knew too much about the business world, and he kicked himself for not having asked more questions about her background before hiring her. He’d been interested only in finding an English-speaking au pair; someone with sufficient education to be a good example to his daughter. And if he was completely honest with himself, he’d been charmed by her, even just in their brief video calls.

  ​When Genevieve came back into the room, Olivier decided to do some digging into his employee’s background. As Mathilde increasingly absorbed herself in her game with the dolls and the television, Olivier pulled back a bit, retreating to the couch. “You mentioned that you were on the board of trustees for a company? A brokerage?” He wanted to get as much information as he could from Genevieve herself before resorting to other methods.

  ​“That’s right,” Genevieve said.

  ​“For what company?”

  ​Genevieve shrugged. “Just a brokerage in Manhattan,” she said.

  ​Olivier frowned to himself. “I suppose I shouldn’t press too hard,” he said. Genevieve grinned.

  ​“If you are allowed to be private about your business, I can be private about mine,” she told him. Olivier smiled back.

  ​“Ah, mais moi...I can find things out,” he said. “Really, you should just tell me and get it over with, so you don’t risk me finding something you don’t want.” Genevieve briefly looked concerned, but recovered quickly—so quickly, in fact, that Olivier wondered if he’d imagined it.

  ​“I can find things out too,” Genevieve countered, giving him another enigmatic smile.

  ​“Anything you might discover would be in French, however,” Olivier pointed out.

  ​“They make translation software,” Genevieve said lightly. “I can figure out the rest.” Olivier chuckled. There was nothing she could figure out about him through official channels that would let her know anything dangerous.

  ​“Bonne chance,” Olivier told her, rising to his feet. “I just need to check something.” Genevieve gestured that she would continue watching Mathilde, and Olivier retreated to his office once more, intent on finding out everything there was to know about his au pair. He sat down at his desk and considered what it could be that might make Genevieve worry about him delving into her background. It would, he thought, take something extreme to make a successful woman leave a high-powered career for something as humble as nannying.

  ​It only took him one search to discover what Genevieve must have been concerned about. As Olivier read the article about the Coltranes’ sentencing, he thought to himself that if his parents had been put in jail for financial crimes, he probably would have wanted to leave the industry too. That, then, made him think of his daughter; if he got caught and thrown in jail for what he was preparing to do, it would ruin her life. But, Olivier reassured himself, he wouldn’t get caught. He would never put Mathilde in the position that Genevieve had found herself in.

  Chapter Eleven

  ​Gen sank into the hot water in her deep bathtub and sighed happily. She had spent most of the day with Mathilde, who was on break from school, and while Gen had had more fun with the little girl then she could have ever expected, she was definitely ready to relax for a bit. If the girls from work could see you now, they wouldn’t even recognize you, Gen thought with amusement.

  ​Olivier had had a half-dozen meetings with various business associates to attend to, so Gen and Mathilde had had to stay out of the house for several hours while he conducted his affairs. Gen had arranged a playdate of sorts with Claire and the two kids she nannied for, Daniel and Camille. The two women had chatted about America for a while as the three kids played until Daniel and Camille had had to go home. That had left Gen with Mathilde and three and a half hours to kill, so they had walked around the town together, with Gen teaching Mathilde the English words for different flowers and plants and other things they saw. They had gone to the local pool after that, and on the way home, Gen had bought Mathilde a pain au chocolat.

  ​Gen tilted her head back against the rim of the tub, closing her eyes. It had been a week since Olivier had suggested that he was going to dig into her background, but so far there hadn’t been any confrontations about her parents or anything like that; if he had found something out about her history, he was keeping it to himself. That almost worried Gen more than if he had asked her about her parents’ trial and subsequent conviction, but she told herself that as
long as he was quiet about it, she would let sleeping dogs lie.

  ​As she let the heat of the water sink into her, Gen’s thoughts began to wander. She sank down deeper into the tub until the water came up to her shoulders, just below her neck, and trailed her hands over her body lightly under the water. It was coming up on the time she would need to renew her birth control implant, and Gen wasn’t looking forward to the process of finding a doctor and trying to explain what she wanted. And anyway, it isn’t like you're planning on having sex, Gen thought wryly to herself. Even before she had come to France, it had been months since she had been with her fiancé. Clint had made excuses for not wanting to come see her or go out with her, but Gen knew the truth: that like so many of her other friends, he didn’t want to be seen in public with the daughter of two disgraced felons.

  ​Gen’s wandering thoughts settled on a dream she’d had a few nights prior: she had been at the pool, alone. For some reason, no one else had been at the community pool, but Gen hadn’t questioned it. As she’d emerged from the water, she’d seen Olivier, approaching. “Where’s Mathilde?”

  ​“I need time to be with other adults,” Olivier had answered. “Do not worry about her.” Gen had watched as he stripped out of his jeans and shirt, revealing tight trunks that were not quite a speedo. Gen’s heart had begun beating faster at the sight of his lean, muscular legs, his broad chest, and the bulge at the front of his bathing suit.

  ​She had watched, almost in a trance, as Olivier made his way over to the showers to rinse off before he entered the pool; the sight of him, water sluicing down his body, had sent a jolt of heat through her, straight down between her hips. The intensity of the sudden, tingling sensation coursing along her nerves was almost startling, and Gen had almost awakened from the dream right then, but she’d been too interested to see what would happen next. She’d felt the slick, spreading heat underneath her bathing suit as Olivier finished showering off and shook the excess water out of his hair before approaching the pool.

  ​“It’s very warm today, don’t you think?” Gen could have kicked herself for the trite observation, but Olivier answered it with a grin.

  ​“That is exactly why I came here,” he had said. “Of course, the fact that I knew you would be here as well made it an easy decision.” His words had spurred her heart to beat faster; they were so much more direct than his usual flirtation.

  ​Gen’s hands began to move over her body with more purpose as she remembered the dream in more detail. She had no idea why she’d had such a vivid dream about her boss—why she’d dreamed of him kissing her, his hands wandering over her body, reaching around to her back to untie her bikini top. Gen shuddered in the hot water, biting back a moan as she remembered how dream-Olivier’s stubble-roughened cheek had brushed against her jaw as he moved down from her lips, to kiss and nip along the column of her throat. No! You are not laying in a bathtub thinking about your boss and feeling yourself up. Stop it. But it was as if her hands had minds of their own.

  ​Gen cupped her breasts, remembering the point in the dream when Olivier had done that, his thumbs rubbing against her nipples slowly, teasing them. She tried to talk herself out of indulging the little fantasy, but her mind was already full of it, buzzing with remembered details. Heat trickled through her veins, seeming to pool between her hips, and Gen could feel the slickness between her legs and along the folds of her labia, as she began touching herself more aggressively. One of her hands strayed downward, sliding along her abdomen, past her hips, and Gen moaned softly as her fingertips came into contact with her slippery folds.

  ​She closed her eyes and remembered the way Olivier had been in the dream she’d had; the way his hands had moved over her, smooth and yet demanding. The way his teeth had grazed her neck, nipped at her lips and nibbled along her collarbones. As Gen let the fantasy carry her away, she felt the tension mount between her hips like a knot pulling tighter with every touch, every imagined kiss. Gen pressed her fingers more firmly along her slick labia, stroking herself more deeply, spreading her legs a bit wider as she became more and more turned on by the moment.

  ​She stopped just short of penetrating herself, pulling her hand away with a shudder. It’s just wrong to think about him that way, she told herself, sitting up in the tub. “God I’m a mess,” Gen murmured out loud, shaking her head. Her whole body still buzzed with arousal, heat humming along her nerves, but Gen forced herself to ignore it. She reached for the loofah she kept hanging on a hook on the wall above the tub and poured some shower gel on it, lathering it up meditatively.

  ​The real question was: why was she thinking of her boss that way? Of course, Olivier was attractive, and he flirted with the kind of clever subtlety that Gen had gathered from her experience with his countrymen was a quintessentially French thing. But that didn’t explain why all of a sudden she found herself really going for it. She scrubbed her body slowly, from her shoulders downward, standing carefully in the tub to get to her hips and downward, almost to her knees, before sinking into the water again.

  ​She didn’t linger in the bath for much longer, knowing that she would almost certainly get distracted again if she did. Gen pulled the plug to the tub and picked up the handheld showerhead to wash her hair and give her face a quick wash, before she finally stepped out into the bathroom proper, grabbing for her bath-sheet. It was Egyptian cotton, luxuriously soft and long enough to cover almost her entire body; just one of the perks of living and working where she did. She had to say for Olivier that he had given her the best possible living conditions, which she had since learned was not always the case for an au pair.

  ​Claire had been an au pair for three years, though she’d only been working with her current family for one. She’d told Gen about her experiences with her first family, which weren’t bad, exactly, but certainly more humble. Then too, Claire had told her about some other au pairs in the group she belonged to, who had some real horror stories: uninsulated rooms that had been cellars or closets in other days, low pay, sexual harassment from parents. Gen had to count herself lucky that Olivier had turned out to be a generous, polite boss.

  ​“But can you trust that?” Genevieve murmured to herself as she massaged lotion into her skin from her arms down to her feet before pulling on a pair of pajama pants and a light top, tousling her hair in the towel for a few moments longer. Sadie had continued to hint at Olivier’s murky past, but Gen hadn’t been able to find anything substantive—no matter how much she searched. As she combed through her hair carefully, Gen sighed at the knowledge that she knew just enough to worry and not enough to ease her mind as to what her boss’ situation was. And the worst part of it was that she had come to really, truly like Mathilde. The little girl was clever, bright, and positive, almost never whining unless she was over-tired or hungry. Of course, Gen had laid down the ground rules early on, but it seemed like Olivier had done the lion’s share of the work before she’d ever arrived, teaching his daughter that whining and tantrums wouldn’t get her what she wanted.

  ​A knock at her door interrupted Gen’s thoughts, and she went to answer it. There were really only two people it could be: Olivier or Mathilde. Gen smiled to herself at her whimsy, thinking it might be Mathilde. The little girl had gone peacefully to bed twenty minutes before Gen had gone to get a bath, so really it could only be Olivier. Gen checked herself to make sure that she was at least mostly appropriate before she answered the door.

  ​“Am I interrupting anything?” Gen shook her head to Olivier’s question, though her heart had begun beating faster in her chest at the sight of him. He wasn’t in swim trunks, of course, but instead in light pajama pants and a tee-shirt with a dark blue robe that hung open over it all.

  ​“No, I just finished up a bath and getting dressed for bed and all that,” Gen explained. “I was going to watch a little Netflix, or maybe read for a bit before I went to bed.” Even though she had checked to make sure she was appropriately dressed, she almost felt as if she we
re naked in front of him; her cheeks began to warm up.

  ​“I don’t want to interrupt your plans, but I wanted to speak with you,” Olivier said. Gen’s heart began to beat faster, and she felt her face warm even more. Had her boss heard something—such as her moaning as she played with herself?

  ​“Sure,” Gen said, taking a quick, deep breath as unobtrusively as possible. “What do you want to discuss?”

  ​“You look like you’re expecting me to scold you for something,” Olivier observed with a slight smile.

  ​“When your boss comes to your room in the middle of the night and says he needs to talk to you, you tend to assume the worst,” Gen pointed out, willing her cheeks to stop blushing.

  ​“It’s nothing bad,” Olivier said. “Just something I wanted to talk with you about business.” Gen took another quick, deep breath and nodded.

  ​“Have a seat then,” Gen suggested, gesturing to the small couch on the other side of her room.

  ​“Why don’t we have this discussion in the living room?” Olivier glanced around, and Gen saw something flicker through his eyes, but it was gone before she could figure out what it might be. “It feels too personal here.”

  ​“Okay,” Gen said, nodding and grabbing a hoodie from where she’d left it, next to her bed. “Lead the way, boss.”

  Chapter Twelve

  ​Olivier tried not to notice the effect that the cooler air had on Genevieve’s body as they went into the living room together. She pulled her hooded sweatshirt around her and sat down on the couch, looking at him expectantly. “So, what did you want to discuss?”

  ​Olivier considered what he had brought Genevieve out of her room to talk about. “Why don’t we have a glass of wine? Mathilde is asleep, and it won’t hurt anything--besides,” Olivier smiled. “You still look nervous.”