Broken French: A widowed, billionaire, single dad romance by Natasha Boyd (books like beach read txt) 📕

and desperate, took mine. His lips opened, his tongue sweeping into my mouth, taking and tasting and begging. “Je suis complètement amoureux de toi,” he whispered as his mouth left mine and skated to my ear. His tongue dragged over my skin, setting me on fire. He groaned. “I love you.”

I was drowning. His words and his touch overwhelmed every one of my senses. Vaguely aware we were standing in the street in full view of curious passersby and probably Sylvie, I struggled to find my common sense, or any of the bitterness or anger I’d felt moments before. But all I wanted to do was sink into his touch. My heart was on fire.

His body, held a respectable distance from mine, told me he was aware of our surroundings too. “Please. Josephine.” He pulled back, his blue eyes dark eclipses. “See me later? Tell me where. Tell me when.” His fingers ran over my face.

I nodded, breathless, my veins singing with his words. His confession. He loved me. But … he’d told me himself he didn’t trust his feelings. Could he really have changed?

His shoulders sank with relief at my nod.

“Um. Can I call you?” I asked. “I have … I have work. And plans.” Cancel everything, my heart shouted. “And I need … I need to think. I need to think about whether I … believe you, and what that means.”

“Of course,” he said, swallowing heavily and stepping back. A grimness was already creeping into his countenance, like a man who knew the blow was coming and was marshalling all his armor to withstand the force of it. His hand moved to rub the center of his chest. “Of course, I understand.”

“H—how long are you here?” I asked.

He let out a humorless laugh and scrubbed a hand down his face.

“What’s funny?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing is funny. Ironic, maybe. I have made plans to stay for a while. An endless while. I hoped to show you I meant everything I said about how I feel. But I can see it might be too late.”

“Oh.” Confusion and joy and wariness all competed for my attention. His eyes grew sad, letting me see his emotions in a way I never had. I could tell him it wasn’t too late. But I didn’t know.

We gazed at each other, new wariness and vulnerability clashing with the realities of our situation and growing into a chasm between us. And God, not forgetting that no matter what he’d just said, words that I wanted to wallow in and savor and study and cradle, I lived here. He lived there. It was hopeless. I blinked back a fresh burn of tears.

“I will be here for as long as it takes,” he said.

“But what about your business?”

He shrugged. “I own it. I feel like doing business from here now.”

“Oh,” I said weakly. “And what about Dauphine?” God, Dauphine, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of her until this second.

“She’s here.”

My head whipped around in both directions. “Wait. Where?”

“Right now? She is with a nanny at the hotel we are staying at. The Planter’s Inn. You know it?”

It was my favorite local luxury hotel because they’d worked so hard to blend in to the architectural history of the city. Low profile, high elegance, with a courtyard, just like the old Charleston houses. I nodded. “I know it.”

He felt in his inner breast pocket and pulled out a card and a silver fountain pen. He scribbled a number on the back. “It’s our suite number. Please come. Dauphine would like to say hello. She is desperate to see you.”

“She hasn’t called in a few days, I assumed it was because she was getting better at falling asleep.”

“She is. Thank you for that,” he added sincerely. “Your generosity with her,” he licked his lips, “well, thank you.”

“I did it for her. Not you.”

He gave a nod. “I know that. I am thankful all the same.”

“And I did it for me. I love her.”

“I know that too. And I’ll never forgive myself for accusing you of hurting her. I was panicked. Scared. And what I realized recently was I was not just reacting with fear for my daughter. The time we spent together, you and I … it was like an earthquake. I felt exposed. In danger. Because I was falling in love with you. I grabbed on to a reason to push you away, to not trust you. It was wrong. So very wrong. I know I’ve apologized before. But, Josephine, the pain I must have caused you …” He dragged in a deep breath through his nose and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as if to contain his emotion.

Shit, I was going to cry again.

“I feel that pain as if it was my own now. I cannot believe I inflicted it when all you did was love and heal us.”

“You’re not making it easy for me to be strong.”

He stepped toward me, his hand settling on my neck. Warm and rough. “Don’t be strong then. Be weak like me. Then we can be strong together.”

“I need to think.”

“I know. But je suis … I am afraid if you think too hard you won’t pick us. And I have so much more to say to you.” His eyes left mine to swing left and right, then narrowing briefly on the window of the yacht showroom. “Things I cannot say right now.”

“Sylvie is watching us, isn’t she?”

“Mais oui.” His gaze swung back to mine.

“She’s wondering how a god like you is begging a sweaty, dirty, heap of a girl like me to take a chance on him.”

“I love this sweaty girl.” He leaned in and ran his tongue up my neck under my ear, causing goosebumps to erupt across my skin and liquid heat to settle in my belly.

“Xavier!”

“She tastes good. Her skin is flushed and damp and salty like it is after we make love. And whether she’s dirty or not …” he inhaled a