Screw Meredith and Tabitha right now. And Mr. Tate. And everyone who’d played a part in me being here.

Oh, Xavier Maxime Pascale was hot all right. No, not hot. He was breathtaking—beautiful in a kind of magazine-ad-that-you-can’t-turn-the-page-from kind of way. Rugged and icy in his glare. But with suntanned skin and lazy, glossy dark hair swept off his face. He couldn’t be more than thirty-five. Not an old man, then. I don’t know why I’d thought a widowed French billionaire needing a nanny for his kids might be older, but I had. I clicked through to a news story about him.

In this photo, he was standing on a sidewalk in front of a flashy looking hotel entrance, hands in his navy shorts, athletic legs disappearing into those sock-less moccasin things European men could get away with wearing. He was next to an even more flashy looking car. I squinted. A Maserati. Matte black if I was guessing. On the main Google page was image after image of him being spied on—candids taken of him through windshields, from between potted palms, and through restaurant windows. Poor guy. People seemed obsessed with him.

The article itself was taken from the French version of a tabloid site. He was basically a French Kardashian. There was an article that included another, older photo of him with a dark-haired and sleek gazelle of a woman. The epitome of French chic. I blew out a long slow breath and clicked away from the article, I wouldn’t understand the French text anyway, and went back to my email.

I scrolled past the logistics of my pick up to Tabitha’s message.