Kaden looked down at me. "Yeah, I know someone else like that, too." It took me a couple of seconds to realize he was even talking about me. "She's very much like her mother, actually. Used to be really stubborn, always doubting."
"Oh yeah?" I asked, playing along. "And how is she now?"
"Much better," Kaden replied, making a show of stroking his chin like he was thinking hard. "I married her, and I blew her mind with my dick twice already today, not to mention the fact that I'd do anything she asked of me. So yeah, I think she knows I love her now."
I laughed and dipped my two into the waves where they were gently lapping at the sand, kicking the water into the air. There was a strange, sparkling flash of light when I did it, so I did it again.
"Hey - look at that," I said to Kaden, kicking the water again. "It's glowing. Do you see that?"
"Phosphorescence."
"Phospho-what?" I asked.
"Phosphorescence," he said again. "It's little creatures or algae or something that glow when you disturb them."
"How do you know that?!"
He wrapped his arms around me. "Because I'm a genius, Tasha. Star quarterback, big dick, and a genius. You've done well for yourself, haven't you?"
I giggled. "So have you, Mr. Egotist."
We rounded a small headland on the beach so the villa and its lights were out of view and Kaden stopped suddenly.
"What?" I asked, looking back at him.
"Look," he told me, pointing up to the sky. "Look up there."
I followed his finger and looked up and there it suddenly was, the scene I'd always wanted to witness: all the big, bright stars of the southern hemisphere painted across the dark night sky.
Kaden bent down and nuzzled into my neck. "I remembered," he whispered. "I remembered when you told me you always wanted to see the night sky in the South Pacific. That's why I chose this place."
The constellations blurred as tears stung my eyes and a wave of love washed over my heart. "Did you?" I asked. "I mean, you picked this place because of that? I don't even remember telling you about it, I just know it's just something I always wanted to see."
"Of course I remembered," he told me, kissing my neck softly. "I remember everything you ever said to me, Tasha.
The only sound was the soft wind in the palm trees and the little waves breaking on the beach. The breeze was warm and scented with tropical flowers. And the only man I was ever going to love had his arms around me. I finally managed to tear my eyes away from that glorious sky and look at him.
"Are you happy?" He whispered, holding my gaze and wiping a tear off my cheek when it spilled over.
"Yes," I said. "Yes. And I've never been more certain of anything in my life."
Kaden took my hand again and we continued down the beach, looking up at the sky, guessing the names of the constellations and laughing, completely wrapped up in each other.
'A Highland Summer: The Billionaire's Nanny'
Chapter 1
I only picked up the newspaper that would change my life because I was bored. It was sitting on the subway seat next to mine, left there by another commuter. I only read the smudged classified ad on the last page because the word 'Scotland' jumped out at me and made me think of the TV series I'd just finished watching, full as it was of wide, zooming shots of misty, heather-colored mountains and desolate lochs. Not to mention tall, square-jawed Scotsmen who spoke in sexy, barely penetrable accents and treated their women with the kind of tender regard I secretly, under my ambitious-young-student-in-the-big-city surface, longed for.
"Nanny required immediately. 4 year old girl. Scotland, sole carer, live-in. Must have good English. Position to run until September, long-term situation unlikely but possible."
My entire life I've tried to dampen my tendency to fantasizing but honestly, it's never really worked. It didn't work that time, either, especially after I did a Skype interview with a stern, gray-haired Scottish woman who spent a good five minutes trying to figure out how to get the webcam to work. When she told me she thought I might be a good fit for the job and promised to get back to me within a week, I spent every day until that call came with visions of castles and kilts dancing in my head. My friends were baffled.
"Scotland? Why?" - that was my best friend Amy's response when I told her about the possible job I had lined up for the summer before our senior year at college.
When asked, I just shrugged and smiled and said something about being twenty-two and eager for adventure. Of course, that was mostly a lie. The truth was that the last couple of years had been the hardest of my life and I was just barely holding it together. My grandmother, who raised me and was the only consistent presence in my life, had been diagnosed with a terminal illness a couple of years earlier. The following year had been occupied with two things: caring for her and trying desperately to keep up with my classes. Me and my grandmother were the only family each of us had. To this day I take comfort in knowing that I was there for her when she needed me, just as she had been there for me every single day when I was a child, packing lunches and checking homework deep into her seventies - when she should by rights have been relaxing on some tropical beach with a drink in her hand.