In my cabin, I brushed my teeth and washed my face in the small bathroom and changed into my favorite soft t-shirt and sleep shorts. It seemed like a lifetime away that I was flinging clothes into a bag and rummaging around for swimsuits. Turning off the light, I slipped between the crisp, soft sheet and the cozy duvet. Lights, chatter, and music filtered through my open window. The hall was dark outside my cabin door, which was open because there was no way I could sleep with it closed.

As tired as I was, mentally and physically, the time change was already playing tricks on me. I looked at my watch, making out the dim glow-in-the-dark hands. It was five in the afternoon at home.

For the first time in two days, I dragged in a deep breath and felt my chest loosen. Even stuffed into a cabin just above the waterline on a boat, I felt a sense of freedom I’d never experienced. I turned the feeling over in my mind, trying to understand it. How long had I felt tense, stressed, and boxed into a package? Great school, serious degree, lucrative job prospects. Always making sure I was doing something my father would have been proud of. Something my mother could brag about. As much as I could get upset with my mother at her decision to marry Nicolas, which had turned into a disaster, she had raised me to be able to take care of myself. I’d been doing just that before I’d fallen off track, in her words, by quitting.

But there was beauty in the fall. I didn’t have to be a certain way to please anyone but myself here. No one knew me. No one had any expectations of Josie, the woman. I was not the daughter of a disgraced Charleston socialite, nor the stepdaughter of a dishonest con man. God love Charleston, but the city had a memory like an elephant and a weight of judgment just as heavy. But here, for just a few weeks, I was not an architect desperately trying to carve out my own space in the male-dominated field. And there was a certain freedom in being someone new. Albeit temporarily. A girl with a blemish-free name and no history.

Standing up to Xavier Pascale today, and being true to myself, had been a gamble. But the result was maybe I’d earned a tiny modicum of his respect, and that felt good. I could make the best of the situation here, be the best damned nanny anyone had ever had, and fully embrace the chance I’d been given. That included shutting down my ridiculous attraction to my boss.