Substitute Bride (Beaufort Brides Book 2) (7 page)

“I wish you’d let me know that you’d
be coming to get them early,” James said, rubbing water off his face with a towel.
He’d been in the pool when Marta Vincent arrived, so his hair was soaking wet
and water kept streaming down his face.

Marta was the mother of his wife who had died almost three
years ago. She was his daughters’ grandmother, and he was always careful about
making sure she and her husband remained a fixture in the girls’ lives. But
more and more, he found himself chaffing at the pressure she placed on him.

At that moment, it was by arriving more than an hour earlier
than they’d planned to pick up the girls, who were going to a movie and to have
dinner with their grandparents.

“I just got done with my shopping early,” Marta explained,
with a smile he knew was supposed to be ingratiating. “So I thought I’d stopped
by since I was in the area. I’m so sorry if it’s a problem.”

“It’s not a problem. It will just be a little while before
the girls are out of the pool and dried and dressed.”

“There’s no hurry. I’m happy to wait for them.” Without
waiting for an invitation, the attractive, expensively dressed woman made her
way past him and down the hall to the back of the house.

James shook his head, taking a deep breath and telling
himself to be patient.

Marta and William had been crushed by their only daughter’s
death—as crushed as James himself had been—and Jill and Julie were the only
grandchildren they would ever have. He could hardly blame them for wanting to
spend as much time with the girls as possible.

He just wished they’d respect his time and privacy a little
more. The weekends were the main times he had to spend with his daughters too,
so even losing an hour of the afternoon with them mattered to him.

If they kept it up, he’d have to speak to them—as kindly as
possible—but he was hoping to put that off as long as possible. He didn’t want
to hurt them, and saying no to them felt like a betrayal of Melissa. He really
didn’t want to do that.

He followed Marta through the house and out the French doors
that led to the patio and then the pool deck in the backyard. The girls were in
the pool, playing Marco Polo with Rose. James had been playing too before Marta
had arrived. He’d been having a good time, although he’d had a couple of close
calls when he ended up groping blindly at someone who ended up being Rose.

He was pretty sure his hand had landed once where it really
shouldn’t have been.

“Marco,” Julie screamed from the pool, her eyes tightly
shut.

Both Jill and Rose called out, “Polo,” and Julie ran in the
shallow end toward Rose, who was closest to her. Rose started to move away—not
very quickly, since she was obviously letting the little girl catch her—and
Julie suddenly made a great leap and launched herself at Rose.

They went down in the water in a tumble, both of them
laughing and Julie crying victory.

Rose straightened up, hugging the girl, a look of obvious affection
clear on her face.

James stared at her, his chest tightening as he watched Rose
hug his daughter.

She loved Julie. She loved both of the girls. He could see
it so clearly, standing on the deck in the distance and watching them in the
pool.

She loved them, and James wanted them to be loved like
that—he wanted them to be loved by Rose. Genevieve would never have loved them
like that. He must have been crazy to ever think that she would.

“James,” Marta said, breaking him out of the reverie.

He blinked. “Yes?”

She was looking at him with narrowed eyes, and James
suddenly wondered what she’d seen on his face. “I’d asked if you could get them
out of the pool.”

James would have rather let them play for a little while
longer, since they weren’t supposed to go with their grandmother for another
hour, but if he said something, it would turn into an argument or a tense
conversation, and it would be a bad idea to let that happen. So he walked over
to the edge of the pool.

“Daddy!” Jill called. “Come back in with us!”

“Look who’s here early,” he said, pitching his voice to
sound excited, in an attempt to get the girls excited too.

“Grandma!” Julie exclaimed, scrabbling out of the pool. She
ran over to give her grandmother a wet hug.

Jill got out too, a little more slowly. She was looking
between Rose and her father, as if checking to see if their fun for the
afternoon was really over.

“We can play again tomorrow afternoon,” James told her. It
was mid-September already, but it was plenty warm in Savannah to use the pool
well into October.

“But that’s Rosie’s day off.”

Rose was climbing out of the pool too, and James tried not
to focus on how her body looked in the one-piece swimsuit, streaming with
water. “I can come over in the afternoon, if you want me to play in the pool
with you. I don’t mind,” she said with a smile.

She looked like she meant it, and James felt another clench
in his chest.

Julie had released her grandmother and had heard the end of
their conversation. “Rosie can play Marco Polo with us tomorrow afternoon too?”
she asked, staring up at them with big hazel eyes.

“Sure,” Rose said. “As long as the weather is good.”

This seemed to cheer both of the girls up, and they happily
dried themselves off, chatting with Marta about the fun they’d had today and
how they were looking forward to the movie.

“You don’t have to come back over on your day off,” James
murmured to Rose, who was pulling a towel around her shoulders, which
thankfully hid most of her luscious body.

“I said I don’t mind,” she said, looking surprised. “I don’t
have any plans for tomorrow afternoon, and I enjoy hanging out with you.” She
gave a little twitch and amended, “The girls, I mean.”

She was self-conscious, James realized. More self-conscious
than she used to be with him. It was almost certainly his fault. He hadn’t been
acting normally or appropriately with her. He really needed to get it together.

It was harder than it should be, though. Every day, Rose
looked more delectable. Every day he wanted to kiss her even more. Every day,
he wanted to pour out his problems to her and be comforted by her. Every day,
he wanted to find out more deeply what was going on in her mind.

All of that was well beyond the slot she was supposed to
fill in his life, so he had to work harder to contain it.

When Rose took the girls into the house to change out of
their suits, James stayed outside with Marta. Her hair was smooth and her
blouse was neatly tucked into her jeans, and he felt wet and sloppy in his swim
suit and the now-damp T-shirt he’d pulled on so he wouldn’t have to greet her
with a bare chest.

Melissa had always been put together in the same way—the
same way Genevieve was too. She’d liked her clothes and the house and the suits
he wore to always be exactly right.

Sometimes, it had irritated him. Sometimes, he’d just wanted
to be sloppy and relaxed, and she’d never been able to accept that.

He suddenly realized what he was thinking and experienced a
wave of guilt. He shouldn’t be thinking like that. He’d loved Melissa and she
was dead. It was wrong to dwell on quibbles that might have irritated him in
the past.

He’d never done so before, not since she’d died, so he had
no idea why he was thinking about it now.

“Is something wrong?” Marta asked, in a slightly brittle
tone.

James shook his head. “Of course not.”

“I’ve been thinking about the wedding plans,” Marta began,
evidently deciding that whatever he’d been brooding about wasn’t really that
important. “William and I, of course, will watch the girls during your
honeymoon. And we were thinking that, if you want some private time afterwards,
we can keep them an additional week.”

Several thoughts flashed through James’s mind at the same
time. The first was that Marta was trying to be generous. It must be hard for
her to see him remarry—even someone they’d basically picked out for him—so she
was making a real gesture here. The second thing was that there was no way in
hell he would go that long without seeing his girls. The third thing was that
Marta clearly had no idea that he and Genevieve had split up.

Obviously, that last thing was the most important. He’d
suspected that Marta and William would hear about the broken engagement through
the grapevine, even before he’d had a chance to tell them himself. He’d meant
to do it today, but he’d been thrown out of whack by her early appearance.

Now he felt guilty, since he obviously should have told them
earlier.

“Oh,” he said, his voice gruff. “Oh, about that.”

“About what?”

“The wedding. Genevieve and I have decided to call it off.”

Marta arched her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we’re calling it off. The relationship wasn’t
working, so we’re no longer engaged.”

“But you were perfect for each other.”

“We really weren’t. We’re really different, and it just
wasn’t working out. I’m sorry if it disappoints you—”

“Disappoints me!” Marta repeated, her tone slightly shrill.
“Disappoints me! The girls need a mother. You can’t possible think—”

“I can take care of what the girls need,” he interrupted,
feeling another wave of frustration. “And what they definitely don’t need is
for me to be stuck in a marriage that I don’t want. That would be the worst
possible thing for them.”

“But we’d discussed it. You’d agreed that—”

“This is my decision,” he interrupted, afraid that if he let
her start to go on about that, he could never get her to stop, and then the
girls would come back and hear it. He did his best to keep his voice level and
patient. “It’s not yours. I know you were hoping for it to work, but it’s not.
So you’re just going to have to accept it.”

“But I know Genevieve didn’t want it to end. Just last night
she was going on about how excited she was about it. She was worried that maybe
you felt guilty about—” Marta stopped with a gasp, her face clearing. “Oh, I
see.”

James’s blood was buzzing at the implications of her words.
“What do you mean she was talking to you about the wedding last night?”

“I mean exactly what I said. She was so looking forward to
being married to you.” Marta shook her head, as if she’d come to some sort of
internal conclusion and it had resolved the issue for herself. “I know it’s
going to be hard for you, but you can’t let survivor’s guilt stop you from
living your life.”

James could barely breathe, so many conflicted thoughts were
whirling through his mind.  He’d broken up with Genevieve four days ago. There
was no way she could still think that they were engaged. There was no way she
could be confused by that. He’d told her very clearly, in two different
conversations.

Which meant she must be doing this on purpose—pretending to
other people they were still engaged in order to…

He had no idea what her purpose might be behind it, except
to somehow manipulate him.

“It’s not survivor’s guilt,” he said curtly. “It’s that the
whole relationship was wrong.”

“It wasn’t wrong,” Marta said, reaching out to pat him on
the arm, as if she understood and sympathized. “You’ll realize that soon
enough.”

He made a throaty sound of protest, but it was too late for
him to argue. The girls were coming down, dressed in cotton knit dresses,
followed by Rose, who was still just wearing a towel and her swimsuit.

“There they are,” Marta said with a smile. “Are you girls
ready to go to the movie?”

They both said they were, and then they hugged James
goodbye, and the three of them disappeared out the backyard gate, where a path
led around to the driveway.

James still felt frozen and dumbfounded by what he’d just
heard from Marta. He had no idea what to do about it. Genevieve had plotted
well. Any objection he made would just be read as his backing out because he
felt guilty.

He wanted to curse and shake something, but instead he
turned his eyes to Rose.

She was gazing up at him, her brows drawn together. “Is
something wrong?”

“What do you mean?” His voice still sounded too gravelly,
almost rough.

She blinked. “I mean, is something wrong? You look all tense
and bristly about something.”

He wondered when she’d gotten to know him so well. He
wondered when he’d got to know her. Sometime during the last two years, they’d
learn to know and understand each other very deeply.

“It’s just…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“Did something happen with Marta?”

“Nothing important,” he said, finally concluding that it
just wouldn’t be appropriate to confide his worries to her. That wasn’t what
their relationship was about.

“Well, obviously something happened,” she said, a little
tartly. She took off her towel and went to sit down on one of the chaise
lounges. The sun was still warm, and her suit was now almost dry. She reached
down to pick up her phone from the deck, and then she must have realized that
her tone wasn’t entirely respectful, because she added, “But you don’t have to
tell me, of course.”

He sat down on the chaise next to her. Neither one of them
were stretched out. They were sitting facing each other. He felt rather muddled
and prickly, since so much seemed to be happening, and he wasn’t at all in
control of any of it.  All the tidy, organized slots in his life were coming
hopelessly unraveled. “I’m glad we’re agreed about that.”

“You don’t have to be rude about it.” Rose gave him a cool
glare.

“I wasn’t rude.”

Her back straightened up, which unfortunately served to
thrust out her breasts, which were already far too tempting in the clinging
swimsuit. “You certainly were rude. I’ve worked with you for a long time. You
think I don’t know how to recognize when you’re being rude?”