Substitute Bride (Beaufort Brides Book 2) (4 page)

The dance did end, but not as he’d expected. A voice came
from the doorway behind him. A familiar female voice he’d never expected to
hear here.

Genevieve’s voice, sounding outraged and angry. “James? What
the hell is going on in here?”

Rose had no idea what strange sort
of trance had come over her.

She was never particularly impulsive or thoughtless, and she
had always been careful to maintain a professional demeanor and reserve with
her employer. So she couldn’t understand why she’d gotten so wrapped up in dancing
with James.

It had been like a dream or a story—like she was a
fairy-tale princess and he was sweeping her off her feet in a fantasy castle.
Her heart had thrilled and her skin had flushed and her body had reacted in a
way that was startling and terrifying.

She shouldn’t be feeling this way. Not about James, who was
engaged to another woman and who would always be her boss.

So Genevieve’s shrill voice, coming from behind her, was
doubling shocking—both because of the surprise of it and because it dragged her
back down to earth with a hard thud.

Rose jerked several steps backward, pulling out of James’s
arms in a surge of guilty awareness. What the hell had she been thinking,
giving into irrational feeling that way with him, in the presence of his daughters,
her grandmother, and her sister?

She must have lost her mind for a few minutes.

James appeared equally rattled, and he stood frozen as he
stared at her, his expression slightly dazed.

Genevieve was a beautiful blonde with long, slim bones and
breasts of such size and perkiness that Rose secretly suspected they were fake.
Her features were attractive in a sharp, narrow way, and her blue eyes were icy
at the moment. “What the hell are you doing?” she snapped again, resentment
palpable in her tone.

James finally turned to Genevieve and replied with
impressive composure, given the circumstances. His voice was cool as he said,
“Please watch your language in front of the girls. We were playing a game with
Jill and Julie.”

That was absolutely true, although it did nothing to make
Rose feel less guilty. They hadn’t been doing anything genuinely
inappropriate—it was the way she was feeling that was just plain wrong.

Jill and Julie had stopped dancing at Genevieve’s entrance,
and they both looked scared and upset. But Jill, evidently feeling the need to
defend her daddy, stepped forward and said, “We were at a ball.”

“I don’t give a damn what you were playing,” Genevieve said,
her voice no gentler than before.

Jill bit her lip, moving back to her sister, and little
Julie started to cry.

“Do not speak to them that way,” James said, sounding even
colder than before. “I’d understand if you misinterpreted what you saw here,
but you don’t get to speak to my daughters that way.”

“I’ll speak to them any way I like,” Genevieve shrilled, her
posture snapping up to her full height as she glared around at the room, even
at Rose’s grandmother, who was watching from the piano with the strangest
expression of satisfaction on her face. “You are supposed to be my fiancé, and
here I walk in to see you in the arms of another woman. In a wedding dress!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” James stepped forward, taking
Genevieve by the arm and walking toward the door of the room, taking his
fiancée with him. Rose had never seen him so angry before. It wasn’t his
characteristic gruffness. It was a harder, tighter feeling that seemed to
transform his entire body.

She wouldn’t want him to ever be so angry with her.

Rose understood why he felt the need to have the
conversation in private, but even dragging her to the next room didn’t actually
help very much. The voices carried easily between walls, so they could hear
every word that was said.

She met Kelly’s eyes across the room, and the sisters
understood each other perfectly. They shared a look of self-consciousness,
awkwardness, and concern—with a kind of ironic knowledge underlying it. Rose
had only told her sisters a little bit about the woman James was engaged to,
but they could read beneath the surface.

They’d all known she wasn’t a good choice for him, and this
episode seemed to confirm it.

Finally regaining her sense and composure, Rose hurried over
to the little girls, kneeling down as best she could in the long dress and
pulling them both into her arms. “It’s okay. Your daddy will take care of it.
There’s nothing to worry about.

Julie was still sniffling, and Jill murmured, “I don’t want
him to marry her.”

“I know. It was very upsetting, but she was just taken by
surprise. Your daddy will make sure everything is all right.”

Over her murmurs, she could hear the argument from the other
room.

James was saying, “Stop being ridiculous. Do you really
think I would cheat on you in front of the girls and a bunch of other people?
You’re acting like a child.”

“Don’t you dare call me a child! I saw with my own eyes. I’m
not blind, you know. All this time you’ve been distant with me, you’ve been
having a little fling with your frumpy nanny—”

“I’m not going to talk to you when you’re this irrational.
Why don’t you go cool down, and we can discuss this when you’re not so out of
control?”

Rose shook her head, vaguely hoping that they wouldn’t be
able to work it out later. Naturally, Genevieve’s accusations about her and
James were completely wrong, but she wasn’t going to forget the way the woman
had lashed out at innocent Jill. It would happen again, if James married her,
and Rose couldn’t stand for the girls to get hurt.

Or for James to get hurt, for that matter.

There was nothing she could do about it, though. It was
James’s decision. She just worked for him.

She cuddled the girls and tried not to listen as the voices
faded. They must be getting farther from the room, hopefully going to the front
of the house because Genevieve was on her way out.

Rose couldn’t help but think it would be nice if Genevieve
left them all for good.

She was trying so hard not to listen that she was surprised
when James’s voice came from the doorway. “I’m so sorry about all of that.”

She looked over and saw him approaching the girls, his face
twisting in a way she wasn’t used to seeing.

“Are you all right?” he asked, kneeling down beside them.

Rose knew he was talking to the girls. He wasn’t likely to
want to comfort her. She had no real reason to be upset, although she was. She
stood up, letting the girls move into their father’s arms.

Feeling awkward, like she wasn’t really part of this moment,
she moved to the other side of the room, where Kelly and her grandmother were
standing near the piano.

She gave them a wry smile, feeling a little better now that
the worst of it was over.

“Well, that was interesting,” Kelly murmured, very softly.

“It was just terrible timing all around,” Rose replied.

Her grandmother shook her head, her lined face set in a
thoughtful expression that Rose had always understood to be calculating. “Not
bad timing at all.”

“Of course it was,” Rose whispered. “It couldn’t be timed
worse if we had planned it.”

“We will see how it all falls out. Then we will decide.”

Rose shook her head. Her grandmother had always muttered
cryptic sayings like that. She’d learned a long time ago not to try to argue.

More often than not, her grandmother ended up right, when
everything had played itself out.

***

James took the girls out for ice
cream, and Rose went along, of course, since she was riding back to the house
with him.

The girls had fully recovered from their emotions, and they
all had a good time, laughing and talking about innocuous things.

Rose still felt nervous jitters, as if something had
happened that hadn’t yet been worked out, but she pushed the feeling aside,
since the girls needed her to be happy and engaged in the conversation.

She thought that James was hiding a similar tension,
although nothing in his manner conveyed it.

Rose’s suspicions were confirmed when the girls ran into the
house as soon as they parked back at home and James lingered by the car, as if
he wanted to say something to her.

She paused, gazing up at his face, wishing she didn’t find
it so attractive.

“Are you okay?” he murmured, his hazel eyes scanning her
expression in a way that made her feel like he could see into her soul.

She hoped he couldn’t. There were thoughts and feelings
there that no one should ever know. “Of course,” she said with a casual smile.
“I was mostly worried about the girls, but they seem to be fine.”

“You looked like you were upset too.”

Rose cursed her too expressive face. “I was just taken by
surprise, and then I always get a little upset when someone is angry. I don’t
do well with conflict. But it doesn’t really have anything to do with me.”

“It does. She was angry and jealous about you.”

“She just misinterpreted what was happening.” Rose used
every ounce of her composure to put on a bland, unconcerned expression. “We
were just playing with the girls. Hopefully, she’ll understand that once she
cools down.”

“Maybe,” he muttered, his eyes lowering, as if he were
thinking deeply.

Rose couldn’t help but ask, “Maybe what? Don’t you want her
to understand?”

“I didn’t like how she spoke to the girls.”

“Oh. Yes.” She tried—and tried and tried—not to feel a
stirring of hope. Maybe he was finally seeing Genevieve as she really was.

“Had she spoken that way to them before?”

Rose wanted to exaggerate, to encourage his feeling of
concern, but she had never been able to lie. “N—no. Not that I’ve heard. She’s
never really gotten to know them, but she’s never been rude to them like that
before.”

James sighed. “What a mess. What do you think I should do?”

Dump her. Break the engagement and never see the selfish
woman again. Get a brain in your head and find a woman who would actually be a
good wife to you and mother to the girls.

Rose didn’t say any of the things she was really thinking.
She was just the nanny, and it wasn’t her place. Even if he was asking right
now, tomorrow he might not appreciate her being so blunt.

So, instead, she said softly, “I think you should talk to
her. You’re engaged to her so I think you need to do at least that. Find out if
the person she was tonight is the person she really is.”

That was as close as she could get to her real feelings, and
James seemed to understand the implications. He nodded with another long
exhale. “Yeah. That’s what I’ll do.”

***

James didn’t get much sleep that
night. He was troubled by scattered, intense worries and images. Genevieve
storming in like the wicked stepmother of a fairy-tale, making his babies cry.
Rose, telling him in her quiet way that Genevieve was his fiancée and he needed
to talk about the problem openly. Rose, in his arms, looking as beautiful and
desirable as any woman he’d ever known.

That last image was the hardest to deal with. Even if he
ended things with Genevieve, Rose would still be his employee, and he would
never cross that line.

He worked out in his mind a conversation he would have with
Genevieve tomorrow over and over again. Everyone made mistakes. She’d never
acted that way before. He could hardly end an entire engagement over one little
fight.

But he kept worrying that it wasn’t just a fight—it was a
sign of how she’d always been, if he’d been able to look beyond the surface.

Rose had said he should find out if that was the person she
really was. Maybe he was really that stupid. Maybe he’d just talked himself
into believing she was the wife who was best for him, because his in-laws liked
her and she was similar to his dead wife.

But maybe she wasn’t so similar to Melissa after all.

Maybe he was nothing but clueless.

He sat up most of the night, brooding, and he was exhausted
and headachy that morning when he came downstairs, dressed for work.

Rose and the girls were already in the kitchen, having their
breakfast. The girls looked normal, and Rose’s face revealed nothing. Her hair
was loose, hanging down around her shoulders in thick waves, and she had a
cardigan sweater over her thin T-shirt. He couldn’t help but notice she didn’t
appear to be wearing a bra. He could see her nipples under the fabric, so he
forced himself to look away.

What the hell had gotten into him? He had bigger things to
worry about, and he didn’t need to get distracted by these stray, lustful
thoughts for his girls’ nanny.

The girls were discussing the shape of the strawberries in
their cereal bowls, and they demanded that their daddy add his two-cents to the
discussion. James felt better after debating the merits of thin or thickly
sliced strawberries.

The girls were happy. They were normal. Nothing that had
happened last night had damaged them in any way.

They were finishing up, when Jill cleared her throat.
“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Are you going to marry Miss Genevieve?”

James heart did a weird jump and then drop. He wasn’t sure
he was ready for this conversation. “That was the plan. We’re engaged, you
know.”

“I know. But she wasn’t nice last night.”

He had absolutely no idea what to say.

“We talked about this, remember?” Rose put in quietly, from
where she was leaning against the counter. “Sometimes people say things when
they’re angry that they don’t mean. Remember when you told Julie that you
wished she wasn’t your sister? You didn’t mean that, did you?”

“No,” Jill muttered.

“What matters is that they say they’re sorry and then treat
you nice again.”

“Okay.”

James was ridiculously relieved by Rose’s intervention. He
should have been smart enough to say something similar. He never seemed to be
able to find the words when something was most important. “Rosie’s right,” he
said. “I’m going to talk to Miss Genevieve today, and then we’ll see what will
happen.”