“She has some school reading to do and some simple exercises to keep her brain—comment dit-on—?” He circled his hand in the air as he clearly tried to think of the word.

“Active?” I supplied.

“Oui, to keep her brain active before school starts again.”

I gave a nod. I remembered going brain dead during long summers between school years in the Charleston heat. “Wow, sounds fun,” I said, trying to convey a tone of irony.

“But also, I have asked Paco to take the boat over to the little bay at Cap d’Antibes and come back for me later,” he went on. “You two can go swimming. I will have Rod put the slide out.”

“A slide?” I asked.

Monsieur Pascale broke into a lazy grin. “The best boats have toys.”

I rolled my eyes. “The best boats, huh? Trying to impress me?”

“Simply trying to change your mind about boats,” he corrected with a chuckle.

Damn, his laugh was sexy. Husky and warm.

“Is it working?” he pressed.

You have no idea, I wanted to say. But it has nothing to do with the boat. “Not yet,” I deadpanned. “What other toys do you have up your sleeve? I distinctly remember seeing a helipad on one of the other boats. Are you not rich enough?”

He cracked out a loud laugh, his eyes crinkling almost closed with mirth. He was stunning when he laughed. I’d noticed last night, and it caused even more of a giddy jolt inside my chest today. Shaking his head, he pinned me with his gaze. “I cannot believe you just said that to me.”

I swallowed and tried to rein in my smiling lips. “Yeah, me neither.”

“No helipad, I’m afraid.”

“Then I’m afraid I’m not impressed,” I joked. This was flirting, I was sure of it. No. No. No. My lower belly was flooding with fizzing warmth, but alarm bells clanged on my brain. Distance, distance, distance.

There was a sharp, sudden knock at the door.

“Ex?” Evan’s voice sounded. Ex? X, for Xavier?

“Here,” Monsieur Pascale responded.

The door opened and Evan poked his head around the opening.

“Ready to go when you are, Mister Pascale,” Evan said, his eyes switching from me to his boss, then back to me.

A strange sense of being caught with my hand in the cookie jar dowsed all the tightly wound energy inside me. I smiled uncomfortably.

“I’ll be right there,” my boss said, making no move to get up.

I stood. “I was just leaving.”

Evan paused a moment, then retreated and closed the door behind him.