Broken French: A widowed, billionaire, single dad romance, Natasha Boyd [e reader books .TXT] 📗

I also hadn’t really been alone with him. Dauphine was always around. Now that it was just us in the dead of night, it was painfully obvious what a good buffer she’d provided.

He raised his glass and took a long sip. There was no clinking of ice. He was drinking neat. “And so … you have a French name. A French name that would also imply you like the ocean. Yet, you are not French. And you hate boats.”

“Actually, I am descended from the French Huguenots,” I whispered, my voice seeming to have failed me. “My father spoke of our history all the time when I was a girl.”

He offered nothing but a cocked head.

“Trouble sleeping?” I asked, trying to change the subject, then inwardly cursed myself. I shouldn’t be trying to talk to him. Leave, Josie. Go back to bed. He was clearly in a mood.

“Trouble sleeping?” He echoed my question and gave a soft laugh. “Toujours,” he said. Always.

When I looked closer, he was far from predatory. He looked … beaten. Weighed down by sadness. He hid it well during the day. But here, now, I had an inkling I was seeing him in a way most people normally didn’t. His alone time. His solitude that he chose to spend looking at the stars and numbing himself with whiskey.

I stepped back toward the railing again and rested my elbows, leaning my weight back. My heart beat erratically in a way I hoped my relaxed posture hid. “Does the whiskey help?”

Waves lapped softly against the hull, the sound of the water soothing in the quiet night. I had no idea what time it was. Well after midnight, I was sure.

He didn’t seem inclined to answer.

I inhaled deeply. “After my father died, my mother … she would do this. I’d find her some nights when I was sneaking in the back door at three a.m., sitting alone at the window in the dark sunroom. Staring blindly, sipping neat.”

“Whiskey?”

I nodded.

“A woman who knows how to get the job done.” There was a long silence, then, “So you know what it’s like.”

“I do.” My throat suddenly felt crushed tight with remembered grief. When I could breathe again, I added, “It was a sudden heart attack. One day here. The next gone forever.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

I looked him in the eyes. “I’m sorry for yours.”

“How long will Dauphine remember?” he asked.

“Forever.”

He winced at my honest answer, so I hurried on. “But the pain gets less. She’s a bit younger than I was, so maybe it’s better. Less memories. I don’t know.” I turned my head so I couldn’t see the pain in his face and blinked. The black water glittered.

Xavier took a long and deep sip of his drink. The dull thud of his swallow seemed loud in our silence. “But you have many memories. I can’t tell if that’s good or bad.”

“It’s good, I suppose. Now that time has passed. We would go for walks every Sunday afternoon. The French Huguenot Church was Gothic revival, but then we would walk around and he’d point out the Greek, the West Indian influences, and the colonial British.”

I closed my eyes and enjoyed the air moving along my skin and the lap of water. It helped calm the deep buzz low in my belly where the muscles refused to relax. Where they seemed to feel the pull of Xavier the most. Something I couldn’t control. And was trying to ignore with my babbling. “I learned to pay attention to the details of a building that speak to the observer without being loud. Like a whisper in their minds. It’s what drew me to architecture. It felt like I’d be closer to my father.” I trailed off. I’d probably put him to sleep with my boring building talk.

“What were you doing sneaking in at three in the morning?” he asked, breaking the silence.

I frowned. “What?”

“You said you saw your mother when you snuck in at three in the morning.”

“Did you never do the same?” I volleyed back. “I liked dancing. Were you a very good boy growing up?” I teased.

His eyes narrowed and became hyperfocused on me.

My throat closed in response.

“I was bad.” He took a deep inhale through his nose. “Very, very bad.” His accompanying chuckle lessened the coiling tension. “My parents fought.” He paused then and took a drink of his scotch, almost biting it through his teeth. “My father strayed. My mother was bitter. I stayed out of the way as much as I could. That resulted in lots of unsupervised time and poor decisions. The kind only an angry, horny teenage boy with money to burn can make.” He took another sip.

The moment felt like a gift. I doubted he really wanted to share this history with me, and perhaps tomorrow he’d regret it. But for now, I accepted the offering with gratitude.

“I met Arriette then,” he said, and I held my breath. “We were the wild ones. After university we got back together. Then, I grew up. It took me a long time to realize she never would. Her demons were too deep. I thought marriage would help tame her. It did not. I thought having a child would help her. Help us. But it seemed … it seemed to make it worse. Or perhaps it was me who made her worse. I don’t know. The more I tried to save her, the deeper she went—”

His words stopped abruptly. And I felt inexplicably guilty as he seemed to realize how much he was sharing. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth to say something. I didn’t know what. Reassurance?

“You must go.” Monsieur Pascale’s sudden rough bark made me jump, and my eyes snapped open.

His eyes were dark and his glass empty. Deliberately he set it down on the deck to his side.

I gave a small frown. “Why? I’m not—”

“Parce que je veux te baiser. Parce que je veux que tu me fasses oublier.”

“What does that mean?”

His face hardened. “It