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

my mother’s, and my father was simply always a “try-hard” with a chip on his shoulder. And his time away from home had rarely been for work.

I’d spent my youth trying and failing to impress him. I’d thought he’d spend more time with me if he could see how smart I was. Consequently, I became the top student. Though that hadn’t been much effort as I was naturally analytically minded. I adored science and mathematics. My father called me a nerd.

Then I thought if I played more sports, I’d garner his praise, so I joined the football team. That had come harder. When other boys had perfected fancy footwork in the streets and parks after school, I had been headfirst in a book or being chauffeured to music and chess. But I persevered, and finally made it, becoming center forward and then captain of our local club team. My father never came to a game.

Then when I was an older teen I thought I could garner his praise if I became a ladies’ man. A wild child. After all, he seemed to respect men with a roving eye, who weren’t chained to their wives and families. And so, I drank. I fucked. I broke hearts. But all it got me was a reputation as a fuck up, tears from my mother, and contempt from my father who came to see me as a wastrel. As did the French press who so closely monitored our family.

It was only after I realized the family money was just something my father had married into and spent frivolously, and that he’d only respect me if he needed something from me, that I finally got my head out of my ass. The scales had fallen from my eyes, and my father had become … just a man.

A weak man.

A man who made questionable deals, trusted the wrong people, and slept with the help.

Someone I had no intention of emulating.

When we arrived at the beach club, my father was in true form. His eyes missed nothing, not the tension in my shoulders and not the expanse of leg on display by my daughter’s minder. Women at the beach club wore less than her, but Josie still tugged on the hem of her cover-up, and she still drew eyes to her like a magnet. My own included.

“Papa,” I said, forcing a joviality I didn’t feel into my tone as he clapped me on the back more heavily than he needed to.

I could tell he was feeling on top of the world. Bold and optimistic that he could get me to invest in his latest venture. “Great to see you,” he greeted me. “Just great. And my sweet little Dauphine!” he crowed as she leapt into his arms. “Who is your new friend?”

“Papie,” Dauphine babbled. “This is Josie. She only speaks English. She’s American. And she draws amazing buildings. And she’s teaching me how. And she’s really nice. She swims with me any time I want. And I think Papa doesn’t like her. But I like her. Please tell him she has to stay.”

“Dauphine,” I snapped, my voice coming out like a strangled bark. How had my daughter picked up on my discomfort? “Hush.”

My father’s eyes homed in on Josie as he took her offered hand. “Enchanté,” he greeted and brought her hand to his mouth, pressing his lips to the back of it. “I’m Etienne Pascale.”

Josie darted a glance at me before smiling wanly at my father and extricating her hand.

“Ahh,” another voice boomed. We turned to the large and swarthy Italian heading our way. I recognized the sleazebag friend of my father’s. Alfredo Morosto. He’d been involved in so many shady deals, I was sure my company share price would drop ten percent on Monday simply because we were in the same restaurant. Now it seemed he was having lunch with us.

Great.

Chapter Twenty-One

JOSIE

The white sand beach and cool, clear, aquamarine water made the bay perfect for a beach club. Evan took Mister P, Dauphine, and me from the boat to a jetty where we made our way onto the beach. My first few steps on solid land made me feel like dancing.

“You okay?” Evan asked.

Xavier whipped around to look in my direction.

I couldn’t see his eyes through his sunglasses. “Forgot what firm ground feels like,” I said, probably reminding him how I felt about boats in general. “I’m fine.”

His mouth tightened and I raised my eyebrows in question, then lowered my sunglasses over my own eyes.

Dauphine took my hand, and I smiled down at her, and we all continued our walk. Attendants in white linen shorts and turquoise shirts ran between groups of loungers, setting up umbrellas and bringing ice buckets of champagne and rosé and bowls of cut fruit on ice. There was a little beach bar made of driftwood and a boardwalk we followed through some low, thick vegetation until it opened up into a large outdoor restaurant hidden behind the dunes, shaded under driftwood and canvas awnings. White painted chairs and tables with blue tablecloths were packed into any available inch with their legs in the sand. Waiters hurried to and fro, squeezing in and around the occupied tables.

The sound of clinking glass, laughter, and popping corks made it seem like one big party. So, this was how the one percent did the beach? I chuckled to myself, remembering the way Tabs, Mer, and I always had to take turns lugging the cooler and our plastic chairs from where we could find parking, sweat dripping into our eyes, all the way to the boardwalk beach access on Sullivan’s Island or Folly Beach. Which reminded me, I needed to call them soon.

Dauphine and I followed her father as he made his way to the front of the restaurant and greeted a tall maitre d’ who kissed Mr. Pascale on both cheeks and ruffled his hair. I gathered he’d known him for a long time, and it made me smile to see my boss