Substitute Bride (Beaufort Brides Book 2) (13 page)

The unexpected friction felt so good that Rose choked out a
breathless sound, her head tossing against the pillow and her eyes closing.

Then James jerked to a sudden halt, still buried inside her.
He breathed in ragged gasps through his nose, and his body was so hot it burned
her wherever they touched.

They were touching everywhere.

Rose understood he was having trouble keeping control, but
she was quickly approaching climax and she couldn’t be patient.

She pumped her pelvis, causing lush friction. She squeezed
as hard as she could around the tight penetration, trying to silently urge him
to move.

He rasped out an inarticulate noise—so desperate and primal
she thought she might come just from the sound of it. Then he started to thrust
again, no longer steady and controlled. His thrusts were hard, fast and uneven,
and his face lowered to the crook of her neck until he was panting against her
throat.

More of his weight was resting on her now and it felt so
good she wanted to melt. Her nipples were chafing against his chest and she
could feel his hair against her chin, his knotted muscles beneath her hands,
the hair on his thighs against the smooth skin on hers.

Despite his own urgency, James must have sensed her need. He
angled his hips so she got some hard pressure on her throbbing clit.

She could feel him try to slow down, try to sustain his
control. His whole body was so tight it was shaking, and he was now sucking
down large gulps of air. She could both hear and feel his panting against the
pulse in her neck.

She didn’t want him to control himself. She wanted him to
let go.

She rode him from below until he made a guttural sound of
desperation and then released the control he’d been struggling for.

He drove into her fast and hard. She could feel his ass move
beneath her hands. He was huffing now in time with his rhythm, and she knew it
wouldn’t be long before he came.

With that knowledge, her orgasm came hard and unexpected.

One minute she was rocking, pumping, trying to match his
motion.

And the next minute she was slammed with waves of intense
pleasure, the sensations spirally out to overwhelm her whole body.

She bit her lip hard to keep from crying out, and her body
convulsed beneath James’s weight, pulling him into climax himself.

He made one more rasping sound—one that sounded like he was
baring his teeth against her neck. Then he froze, his body tightened like a
coil.

His release was hard and visceral. He reared up on
straightened arms, his pelvis jerking clumsily against hers.

Her eyes were adjusted to the dark enough now that she saw
his face change as she came, the tension transforming into a wash of pleasure
and relief.

Her thighs were tight around him as she felt him come.

She loved how he collapsed over her afterwards, all of his
weight suddenly pushing her into the mattress.

She clung to him, as tightly as he was clinging to her. His
body was still scorching but it was relaxed now.

She loved him so much. There was no way she could possible
deny it. And it felt like he was feeling something for her too.

Maybe he wasn’t regretting what they’d done. Maybe he wanted
things to change between them just like she did.

She was just starting to get uncomfortable under his hot,
sweaty heaviness when he raised his head from her neck. Her skin was wet from
the moisture of his mouth.

He looked down on her, and she was sure he was about to tell
her something important.

She waited for it, her heart as full as it had ever been.

Instead of speaking he kissed her.

She responded. She couldn’t help it, but then his phone rang
from his nightstand.

It was very late for a call, and he pulled away from her
slightly and fumbled to get it.

“What the—” He muttered when he looked at the screen.

He was rolling off her now and sitting up. “Genevieve? What
the hell do you want?”

Rose gasped when she realized who was calling. Her heart
dropped strangely, even without even knowing why.

She’d known very well things were ending too easily with
Genevieve. She wasn’t the kind of woman to give up on something she wanted as
much as she’d wanted James.

“Calm down,” James was saying. “I can’t understand what
you’re saying.”

The buzz of the voice on the other end of the line was high pitched
and incoherent as Rose tried to listen.

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as you—” Again, James must have
been cut off.

“Okay. Okay. Calm down. Isn’t there someone there you can—”

Rose had no idea what was happening, but it was clear
Genevieve was lodging some sort of emergency and expecting James to help.

Maybe the emergency was real, but Rose wouldn’t put it past
the other woman to make something up as part of a plan.

Genevieve wanted James back. Rose was almost breathless,
waiting to hear what James would do.

Obviously, if someone was really in trouble, Rose didn’t
want James to completely ignore her, but there were ways of dealing with
something like this without running to her rescue.

She prayed James wasn’t going to run to Genevieve’s rescue.
That would be a clear sign that Rose wasn’t—and would never be—a priority.

“Okay,” James said, sounding tired, drained. “Just calm
down. Give me a minute. Of course, I’m going to take care of it. I just need to
get to my computer.”

And that was it.

This was the sign she needed.

The obvious reason for him to need a computer was for him to
book a flight. Genevieve was in Vegas, after all, and he was jumping at her
call.

What Rose wanted was never going to happen, and it would be
stupid to keep hoping that it would.

This was over.

She would have to leave.

She couldn’t be his nanny anymore—not when she wanted him to
be so much more.

The call from Genevieve felt like a
barrel of cold water had been dumped on James’s head.

He’d been on the verge of pouring out his heart when the
call came in—caught up in some hazy romantic trance—but the sound of
Genevieve’s brought him back to earth with a hard thump.

Rose had rolled away from him, and she was quiet as he
disconnected the phone.

He glanced over at her, his heart aching as he saw her messy
hair and mild face. He didn’t want to leave the bed, if she was in it.

Surely she wouldn’t want to try to go back to their
professional relationship this time. Surely after they’d made love the way they
had, she wouldn’t think it was better to just pretend it never happened.

He just needed to take care of Genevieve’s emergency, and
then maybe they could figure things out.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, forcing himself to stand up.
“She’s evidently in trouble.”

“It’s fine,” Rose said, her brown eyes wide and unreadable.
“You better not waste any time, if she needs you.”

He opened his mouth, since something about the way she’d
said the words seemed wrong, as if she was misreading the reality or assuming
what wasn’t true. But she was right.

There was a decent chance that Genevieve was exaggerating or
making something up to trick him into coming back to her. But, on the off
chance that she was sincere, he wasn’t going to be responsible for ignoring
her.

“I won’t be long,” he said, reaching over to find his pants and
then grabbing a T-shirt to pull on.

“Okay.”

Rose wasn’t getting out of bed, which was encouraging. If
she’d just stay there for a little while, he’d be back—and then he could crawl
into bed with her again and maybe, maybe they could work things out.

But he had to deal with this first.

He wanted to say something to her as he left, but he had no
idea what to say. He couldn’t say what he felt—which was “I love you so much my
head might explode with it”—since he was still her boss and there were lines
there that remained too complicated to cross. And nothing else he might have
said came remotely close to embodying his feelings.

So he ended up just giving her a half-assed wave as he
walked out.

He shook off the coiled emotional tension as he walked
downstairs to his office.

Genevieve wanted him to fly to Vegas. She said that Morris
Alfred Theobald III had been angry when she’d backed out of their spontaneous
elopement—which she claimed she’d only done out of a broken heart—and Morris
had “hurt” her. She’d been too inarticulate to explain what she meant by this,
but she’d implied it was physical somehow. She said she couldn’t trust anyone
to help, and she needed him there to help her through this.

James could hardly picture the short, pudgy wuss of a man
hurting anyone physically, but he wasn’t prepared to just blow it off
completely. If there was any truth at all in her claim, then an honorable man
would at least check it out.

He wasn’t going to fly all the way to Vegas, though. The
possibility of it being a calculated strategy was just too high, after
Genevieve’s past behavior, and there was too much James needed to do here.

He had to pick up his girls from their grandparents’ that
morning, and he had to try to feel things out with Rose.

So he needed to manage the situation in a different way.

The first thing he did was call the hotel to ascertain that
Genevieve was where she said she was.

She evidently was, although Morris Alfred Theobald III had
checked out the previous day, which wasn’t exactly the timeline that Genevieve
had explained to him. She’d said the man had done something to her that night
and had just left right before she called him.

More and more convinced that this wasn’t real, James asked
to talk to the manager of the hotel, and he explained his problem. The manager
on duty was an intelligent, helpful woman, and she said she would go up to
Genevieve’s room herself to make sure the woman was okay.

James thanked her and sat by his phone to wait. As he did,
he thought through various possibilities of declaring himself to Rose.

If he just burst out with it, as he was tempted to, and she
didn’t return his feelings, then he would have lost her for good. There was no
way she would keep working for him, knowing he felt that way—and then both he
and his girls would suffer.

If he just did what he’d been doing and play things by ear,
waiting for a sign that she was feeling the same way, he would drive himself
into insanity, going through a roller coaster of hope and despair, living in an
emotional limbo.

He couldn’t seem to think of a mid-ground. There just wasn’t
any simple, gentle way of opening a door to move Rose from nanny to girlfriend.

He needed a female relative to get advice from, but he was
an only child and his own mother had died five years ago.

And he supposed that it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to
turn to Jill or Julie for advice.

He was completely clueless.

He was still mulling it over when his phone rang. The
manager of the hotel had some very interesting news.

She’d gone up to Genevieve’s room to check on her,
explaining that a gentleman had called, very concerned about her condition.

Genevieve had evidently been ensconced in the room alone,
having just ordered lobster and champagne from room service. She’d been furious
when she heard that she was being checked on, cursing both the manager and
James for failing to do what she wanted him to do.

The manager was quite sure that Genevieve wasn’t in any
trouble, but she would be happy to summon the police or a doctor, if James
wished her to do so.

James thanked the woman and said that it wouldn’t be
necessary.

Just as James was saying goodbye, another call came in on
his phone. He wasn’t the slightest bit surprised to discover it was Genevieve.

He answered it, holding the phone away from his ear so he
wouldn’t be bombarded by the stream of loud profanity she was spewing at him.

The gist of it was that he was a bastard for not believing
her and rushing to her rescue.

When she’d run out of steam, James said calmly, “What did
you expect me to do? If you were really hurt, then you’d need a doctor and the
police right away—much sooner than I would be able to get to you.”

“But you obviously didn’t believe me—” Genevieve began.

“I wanted to verify—as any man with half a brain would have
done in my situation, given how you’ve acted before. I can’t understand what
you thought you’d accomplish with this scheme. I’m not going to take you back,
no matter what.”

There was more profanity, ending with the fact that she
never wanted to see or hear from him again.

“Excellent,” he said crisply. “Then we’re finally agreed. We
won’t see or talk to each other again.”

He hung up, since there was nothing left for him to do.

He glanced at the clock, realizing this whole farce had
taken up nearly an hour of his time—time he could have spent with Rose.

He hurried back up to his room, his heart suddenly racing.
He still hadn’t figured out the best, smartest thing for him to do, and he was
half-convinced that he’d just fall to his knees when he got to the room and
declare his love for her.

He didn’t.

He would have, but she wasn’t actually in his room.

Frowning, he hurried down the hall to Rose’s room. The door
was closed so he knocked on it. There was no answer, so he knocked again.

When he was pounding on it and getting no response, he
finally tried the doorknob. It opened.

Her room was always tidy, but it was strangely neat and
empty as he looked around. He realized that all of her personal stuff seemed to
be gone.

Frowning even more, he stepped inside. She obviously wasn’t
here. Neither were the books she kept on the side table, the pictures of her
family on the desk, the toiletries on the vanity of the bathroom.

He opened the closet door. It was empty.

Rose was gone, every trace of her cleared out like she’d
never been here.

His heart was still hammering, but for an entirely different
reason now. It felt like his pulse was throbbing in his feet, like the rest of
him had entirely emptied out.

He walked over to the neatly made bed and saw a folded piece
of paper on the pale blue coverlet.

Picking it up, he stared blindly down at Rose’s loopy
handwriting.

It took him a full minute before he could read the words.

Mr. Harwood,

I’m so sorry, but I have to quit. What’s happened between
us has made it impossible for me to do my job the way I need to. I can’t
apologize enough for walking out like this without notice. Please keep my last
paycheck. Give my love to the girls. If it’s okay, maybe I can come by for a
few minutes tomorrow to say goodbye to them. I wish you all more than the best.

Rosie

James slumped down to sit on the edge of the bed, staring at
the words on the page for a really long time.

He’d been right all along. There was no way to cross these
kinds of lines and still maintain a working relationship. Once the slots of
your life started to get mixed up, the whole world turned into chaos.

The first time he’d kissed Rose, he’d lost her for good.

***

Every bone and muscle in Rose’s body
ached as she knocked on the door of her family home.

It was over. All of it was over. She hated herself for
leaving as she did without saying goodbye to the girls, but she wouldn’t have
been able to do it when they got back this morning. She would have broken down
completely.

James could explain. Then, if he was okay with it, she could
say goodbye to them later, when she was more in control.

They’d cry. They’d miss her. But they were young, and they’d
recover. They’d forget her soon enough and find another nanny or a stepmother.

They would be fine.

Rose wasn’t sure she would be fine, but it was too late to
do anything about that.

Kelly opened the door, and her face transformed with concern
when she saw her sister. “What’s the matter?”

Rose tried to say something, but her face just twisted with
emotion, a surge of despair overtaking her without warning.

“Shit,” Kelly said, pulling Rose into a hug. “You’ve been
stupid, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Rose admitted. “I’ve been really, really stupid.”

They hugged for a minute, and then Rose pulled away and
walked into the main entrance of the house. Kelly was closing the door behind
her when their grandmother stepped out from the parlour, her face stern and
thoughtful.

Kelly was shaking her head, although her expression was
sympathetic. “You fell in love with him, didn’t you?”

Rose nodded, unable to speak.

“And he doesn’t love you back?”

Rose shook her head, the bleak reality of it breaking her
heart again.

Her grandmother tsked her tongue, nothing soft about her
expression at all. “You are foolish, young woman. You must believe me. You will
wear Georgina Beaufort’s wedding dress soon.”

That beautiful lace wedding gown she’d only worn once, when
she’d danced in James’s arms

It would be nice. It would be a dream come true. But her
grandmother’s wanting something to happen didn’t mean it actually would.

Despite this reality, Rose couldn’t help but feel a little
flicker of hope and awed wonder at the certainty of the words.

Because what her grandmother wanted always seemed to have eventually
come to fruition before.

***

James stayed home from work, calling
in to saying he was ill. It wasn’t far from the truth, since he was feeling
physically sick as he went to pick up Jill and Julie from school that day and
told the girls that Rose wasn’t going to be their nanny anymore.

They didn’t believe him.

They thought at first it was a game, and then they told him
he was just wrong. He kept trying to convince them, and he showed them her
empty room when they got home, but they still didn’t think it was real.

They kept talking about how she was going to come back.

It was a nightmare. He’d thought they would be crushed and
heartbroken, crying their poor little eyes out. But they didn’t cry at all,
since they didn’t believe it was really happening.

The entire afternoon was agony for him. He couldn’t take
comfort in his girls the way he’d expected, as all of them missed Rose.
Instead, he kept having to tell them the truth over and over again.

Maybe tomorrow morning they would believe it, when Rose
still wasn’t back.

He’d tried to call Rose a few times—once immediately after
getting the letter and a couple of times with the girls, so she could tell them
it was really happening—but Rose wouldn’t answer her phone.

She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to see him
again.

He knew as well as he’d ever known anything that it was
over—before it had ever really begun.

The worst thing was not being able to drown himself in his
heartache. He couldn’t drink himself into a stupor or go to bed and stew in the
dark. He had to go through the normal aspects of life—making the girl’s dinner
and taking them out to play and then getting them ready for bed.

All of it was brutally painful without Rose.

He finally got them into bed and they read several chapters
of a book together, all of them in Jill’s bed together. Then he put the book
down and gave them both a hug.

“Rosie will be back tomorrow, I think,” Jill said with a
sigh, as she pulled away.

“Tomorrow,” Julie echoed.

James had to smother a groan. “I’ve told you over and over
again that she won’t. She said she was gone for good.”

“She didn’t mean it,” Jill said, a strange sort of
confidence in her voice. “It was like when I said I would never go to the beach
again after I got stung by a jelly fish. But the next day I did.”