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Chapters (62)
  1. Cover
  2. Full Page Image
  3. Dedication
  4. Chapter One
  5. Chapter Two
  6. Chapter Three
  7. Chapter Four
  8. Chapter Five
  9. Chapter Six
  10. Chapter Seven
  11. Chapter Eight
  12. Chapter Nine
  13. Chapter Ten
  14. Chapter Eleven
  15. Chapter Twelve
  16. Chapter Thirteen
  17. Chapter Fourteen
  18. Chapter Fifteen
  19. Chapter Sixteen
  20. Chapter Seventeen
  21. Chapter Eighteen
  22. Chapter Nineteen
  23. Chapter Twenty
  24. Chapter Twenty-One
  25. Chapter Twenty-Two
  26. Chapter Twenty-Three
  27. Chapter Twenty-Four
  28. Chapter Twenty-Five
  29. Chapter Twenty-Six
  30. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  31. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  32. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  33. Chapter Thirty
  34. Chapter Thirty-One
  35. Chapter Thirty-Two
  36. Chapter Thirty-Three
  37. Chapter Thirty-Four
  38. Chapter Thirty-Five
  39. Chapter Thirty-Six
  40. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  41. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  42. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  43. Chapter Forty
  44. Chapter Forty-One
  45. Chapter Forty-Two
  46. Chapter Forty-Three
  47. Chapter Forty-Four
  48. Chapter Forty-Five
  49. Chapter Forty-Six
  50. Chapter Forty-Seven
  51. Chapter Forty-Eight
  52. Chapter Forty-Nine
  53. Chapter Fifty
  54. Chapter Fifty-One
  55. Chapter Fifty-Two
  56. Chapter Fifty-Three
  57. Chapter Fifty-Four
  58. NEXT
  59. EXCERPT STOLEN ENGLISH
  60. Acknowledgments
  61. ALSO BY TASHA BOYD
  62. About the Author

“And that’s where the air is the most clean and plentiful. Where you can breathe the easiest.”

“I guess so.”

“We will cure you, Dauphine and I.”

I chuckled. “Perhaps. She is wonderful.”

“She is.” He stood still for a long moment, then made a slight inhale sound. “Thank you for staying.”

It was probably the closest to an apology for our rocky start as I was going to get.

I nodded but wasn’t sure he saw me. “Of course,” I whispered. “And I’m sorry I reacted so strongly.”

He seemed to take my words in, and then without responding headed toward the door and vanished through the opening to his cabin.

I waited for the sound of him closing his door and instead heard his bathroom door close and the distant sound of running water. Then it opened and I listened to the sound of clothing being removed and the soft rustle of sheets. Was he going to sleep with his cabin door open too? I supposed as a concerned parent he would.

I lay awake for what felt like hours, straining to hear his breathing. It struck me how oddly intimate it was for us all to be sleeping separately, but yet all sleeping with no closed doors between us in such close quarters.

Chapter Twelve

XAVIER

I threw my pen down on the report I was trying to annotate in disgust after reading the same paragraph four times and ran my finger around my already loose collar.

I felt the itch of this Josephine Marin under the collar of my shirt like a sunburn. I was used to the au pairs from the agency being plain and no nonsense. They were sweet, mostly personality-less, and easily blended into the background. As they should.

It wasn’t as though I needed a plain nanny. I’d never been the type for that to be a problem, unlike some of the men I knew—my father being one of them, the old dog. I hadn’t picked the agency based on the nondescript looks of the childcare professionals. But Tabitha Mackenzie had always sent really fantastic professionals with endless amounts of patience, and who were much more sensible than beautiful. As long as Dauphine was safe and well-cared for, looks had nothing to do with it. Maybe some of them had been pretty, but I’d certainly never noticed.

But now … now it was a different story.