Page 19 of The Stranger

“Only if you let him.” Something about the woman’s voice seems familiar. “Where is that… ah, got it!” She pivots, a wide smile on her pretty face.

I think I must be seeing things.

“Now, let’s pop this adorbs little swimming cap on your adorbs little head. Even if it is a bit like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted,” she almost mutters under her breath.

“We don’t have horses in Paris,” my daughter scoffs. “Primrose, what is adorbs?”

“Adorbs is short for adorable. Tu es trop adorable,” she adds, attempting to wrestle my daughter into her swimming cap. “There must be a learning curve to this, right?” Her eyes suddenly lift, and her words halt.

My heart follows both those actions. And in the same sequence.

I’m not seeing things as her face, heart-shaped and angelic, blanches, and her rosebud lips fall softly open for the second time in our very short acquaintance. The first being right before she tipped on her toes to kiss me last night.

My hands clench by my sides as I recall the vivid feel of her. The full softness of her breasts and the soft brush of her breath as I’d kissed her neck. She’d looked so out of place, like Little Red Riding Hood lost in the forest full of wolves. Though she wore no red cloak, just red lipstick on lush lips. The minute I’d set eyes on her, I’d wanted to kiss her. But I’d sensed she wasn’t for me. That she wasn’t in the right place.

“How are you… here?” She gives her head a tiny shake, and my heart suddenly jerks to life, shock and attraction giving way to something much hotter.

Red-hot seething anger.

She’s looks young. Far too young. To be so calculating.

“Papa, you’re here!” Sylvie begins to run toward me across the wet tile.

“Sylvie, wait!” the temptress calls as my daughter comes careening toward me.

“Attends!” Wait I call out as her little body slams against mine, her wet arms flung around the backs of my legs.

“Come and swim, Papa. Please. Please?”

“What is going on here?” I demand, though it’s difficult to be dignified as Sylvie begins to climb up my legs.

“Papa, we’re swimming, And Felix cheated in the cannonball competition. You should come and show him who the real winner is.”

“I did not cheat!” my son calls from the middle of the pool. “You’re just a bad loser and a bad swimmer.”

“Tais-toi!” she yells back. Shut up.

“You are!” The pair transition to insults in French.

Meanwhile, the woman standing at the other side of the pool appears to come back to herself with a jolt. “You’re… you. You must be.” She plasters her hand to her mouth for a beat, eyes wide above it. Eyes of gray-blue as I recall.

She looks like she’s swallowed a brick. A hot brick, judging by the color in her cheeks. She’s a good actress, I’ll give her that much. But she would need to be to have gotten this far.

Last night, though. There was nothing fake in the noises she made. The way her fingers tightened in my hair as she came on my face.

Fuck. Fuck!

“Engeleesh only.” Sylvie sticks out her tongue, and my children’s squabbling brings me back to the moment and this nightmarish situation. “Papa, this Emmy’s friend, Primrose. She is here to help look after us, but she does not want us to call her nounou.”

Nounou. The nanny. Jesus, no.

“She only speaks English,” my daughter continues. Her brow pulls down so far it leaves a shelf over her eyes as she turns to her brother again. “So speaking in French makes you a rude idiot!”

“I can speak a little bit of…” Her words trail off as I glower.

The knot in my guts deepens. She speaks French? Fuck.

“Schoolgirl stuff mostly,” she adds with an uncomfortable-looking shrug.