Substitute Bride (Beaufort Brides Book 2) (9 page)

“Yeah.” James’s expression changed and he cupped her face
briefly with his warm hand. “As if anyone could believe you’d do something like
that.”

She melted at the almost tender look in his eyes. She knew
he’d just been at his wits’ end in the conversation earlier, but she couldn’t
help but hear again him saying that he would marry her if he wanted.

It would never really be what he wanted, but she couldn’t
help but like the sound of it.

She wasn’t going to be silly, though. Not again. Not like
she’d been with Richard.

That was the low point of her life, and she was never going
to go back.

“It’s probably really easy for people to believe it,” she said,
trying to sound casual. “There are always stories about men hooking up with
their nannies, and people always assume the worst about the nannies.”

James made a face. “Yeah. I guess so. But anyone who knows
you would know it’s not true.”

She liked the fact that he seemed to believe it. “I hope so.
But a lot of people don’t know me at all and will believe anything they here
about me. Neither one of us is going to come out looking good from the story
Genevieve is telling.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to be dragged into
this whole thing. You probably hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.” She was feeling particularly close to
him and was afraid it might have been evident in her expression.

His eyes softened. “You don’t?”

“No. I really don’t.” She might have gone on to say
something really stupid had there not been a well-timed interruption.

“Rosie! Daddy!” Julie exclaimed, bursting into the kitchen.
“The fort is ready! Where are our sandwiches?”

James and Rose jerked apart, and the moment between them was
gone, as if it had never existed.

***

A couple of hours later, supper was
over and the girls were heading up to play with their dolls upstairs. Rose
wanted to get back to her grandmother’s house so she could spend the evening
with her family, and James walked her out to the driveway so his driver could
take her over.

She’d come over this afternoon as a way of being nice to the
girls, so it was only fair that his driver take her there and back.

James would have been happy to let his driver take her
anywhere she wanted, but she had always been scrupulous about not taking
advantage on her day off.

He felt at loose ends and out of sorts after a crazy week,
and he just wished things would settle down again, all of the various parts of
his life return to their proper slots.

They didn’t seem likely to, though. Not while Genevieve was
causing trouble the way she was.

He must have been a fool for ever liking her, for ever
thinking she’d be a good match for him.

He was actually embarrassed by how stupid he’d been, and he
hated feeling stupid around Rose.

She’d been quiet that afternoon, except for the few minutes
in the kitchen, and he wished he could know more about what she was thinking.
He could tell she was awkward about the whole situation—who wouldn’t be?—but he
couldn’t read her expression any deeper.

It worried him, since he’d always been able to tell what she
was feeling.

“Thanks for coming over,” he said, opening the car door for
her.

“Of course. I had a good time.” She smiled at him, looking
pretty and a little rumpled since her hair had air-dried after being in the
pool.

He hoped she was telling the truth. “Good.” He thought about
how happy his girls had been, playing with him and Rose in the pool. “It’s good
for them.”

“What is?”

He looked down as he realized he probably shouldn’t have
spoken his thoughts out loud at the moment. “Having you in their life.”

He glanced up in time to see a fleeting emotion cross Rose’s
face, but it was gone too quickly for him to identify. “They must miss their
mom.”

James felt a tug of deep feeling in his chest. “Yeah. I
mean, they’re too young to remember much about her, but I know they must miss
having a mom. They need someone to…to fill that space in their lives.”

“I guess that’s what you were hoping with Genevieve.” Her voice
was soft, and it seemed natural for them to be talking about this subject,
rather than strange or intrusive.

“Yeah. It was. It sounds absolutely absurd, given how things
turned out, but she was different when I first got to know her. She reminded
me…” He trailed off, afraid Rose would think poorly of him if she knew what
he’d been going to say.

“I never knew Melissa, but she couldn’t have really been
like Genevieve.”

“Not in the ways that matter. She was loving and…and
generous. But in some superficial ways Genevieve was like her. I know that’s
what Marta and William saw in her, why they thought she was a good choice for
me. It just seemed…” He took a breath, glancing to the side, away from Rose.
“It just seemed…easy. A natural replacement. I was wrong though. She could
never fill that hole in any way.”

He felt a response from Rose rather than saw it, and he
turned back quickly to see what she had reacted to.

She’d dropped her eyes, her expression hidden behind her
eyelids and hair. It was frustrating. He wanted to know what she was thinking,
what she thought about him, whether she thought he was really as foolish as he
felt.

He wanted her to admire him, not think he was an idiot.

After a moment, Rose looked up again and opened her mouth to
say something when a red car pulled into the driveway, blocking his driver from
getting out.

James felt his stomach tighten and his heartbeat accelerate
when he saw who it was. What the hell was Genevieve doing here?

She got out of her car, clearly in an angry huff.

“What do you want?” he demanded. He wasn’t going to be taken
off-guard or let himself be at a disadvantage today.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said, looking icily from him
to Rose. “What do you think?”

“What I think is that you better stop spreading lies around.
You know very well that I never cheated on you and—”

“Why am I supposed to know that? As soon as I’m out of the
way, you start screwing your slut of a nanny. What am I supposed to think about
that?”

He was angered by the crude words, especially as they
applied to Rose, but he reined in the feeling so he wouldn’t lose control.
“You’re supposed to think that nothing I do is your business anymore. I never
cheated on you, and nothing I do after we’ve broken up is your concern.”

“It
is
my concern!” Genevieve turned her huff onto
Rose then. “I can see what you’ve been up to this whole time, trying to get
your hooks into him in any way you can. I’m not going to let you do it. He’s
not yours. He’s mine.”

Rose was normally so mild that he would have expected her to
shrink in the face of that kind of ire, but she didn’t. Something cool and
defiant seemed to take her over, and her back straightened palpably. “He’s not
anyone’s. He makes his own decisions, and neither you nor I can make him do
anything he doesn’t want.”

“Well, he doesn’t really want you. He’s just using you
because he’s afraid to be with me.”

James made a choked sound of objection at this absurdity,
but Rose was the one who responded. “I don’t think that’s true, but it doesn’t
really matter what either one of us thinks. He’ll do what he wants to do. All
I’m saying is that you can’t dictate to him or to me what that is.” She was
obviously getting into her response, carried away by the momentum of her
resentment. Her cheeks had deepened to a dark pink, and her eyes were shooting
off sparks. “If we want to be together, then we’ll be together, and there’s
nothing you can do to stop us.”

Ridiculously, James felt a swell of pleasure at the
words—even if Rose didn’t mean them the way they sounded. And that automatic,
irrational emotional response made it perfectly clear that what he really
wanted was to be with Rose.

No matter how wrong it was in every way.

“Now get out of here,” James said firmly, turning Genevieve
around and pointing her toward her car. “This is private property, and you’re
not welcome. I’ll call the cops, if you don’t leave.”

“You can’t treat me like this!”

He shook his head, so fed up he couldn’t even speak anymore.
He gently urged Genevieve to her car, and eventually she drove off.

He returned to Rose, and they just stared at each other.

He obviously wasn’t thinking clearly because he said the
first thing that entered his mind. “We might as well just get engaged to put an
end to all this mess and make it clear that Genevieve is out of the picture.”

Rose blinked, taken by surprise but then obviously
recognizing his wry tone. “Yeah, at least that would give people something else
to talk about.”

James thought about that for a long time and started
wondering if it was true.

                                                                           ***

The next day, Jill came home from
school all confused because a friend had told another friend that Jill’s daddy
was going to get married to her nanny. The girl had a picture of Rose in an
old-fashioned lace wedding dress standing with James to prove it, which someone
in her household had evidently printed off the internet.

Jill wanted to know if that was true.

***

“I really can’t believe Grandmama
did this,” Deanna said, leaning forward in one of the rocking chairs on the
back porch of the old Beaufort home.

Her husband, Mitchell Graves, gave her a dry look with one
arched eyebrow. “You’re really surprised?”

Before she could respond, Rose asked, “Are we sure it’s even
Grandmama who spread the rumor?”

“Of course it was her,” Deanna replied. “Who else would it
be? And who else would have had access to that picture. We know it wasn’t Kelly
who spread it around.”

Obviously, Kelly was trusted completely. She’d snapped a few
pictures of Rose, James, and the girls on her phone that evening they were all
playing dress-up—just because they were all having a lot of fun and they’d done
such a good job with the ballroom. But Kelly would have died before she’d
spread gossip about her sister.

There was no one else but Grandmama who could have shared
the picture, with the news that Rose and James were engaged to be married. Rose
might have hoped for it to be different, but all the evidence made it clear.
They’d traced the story back to her, and there was no reason to doubt she was
the originator.

She’d told Rose she’d take care of the situation, and this
was evidently her way of doing so.

James had been quiet since he and Rose had arrived at the
house that evening to meet Deanna and Mitchell and wait for Mrs. Beaufort to
arrive back home from her bridge game.

“I’m really sorry,” Rose said, turning to James and
searching his expression for some sign that he was angry with her.

He didn’t look angry. He looked tired and withdrawn. In some
ways, it was almost worse. He had enough to deal with in Genevieve. He didn’t
need her grandmother’s troublemaking added to the equation.

Mitchell was a very handsome man who was nearly always the
tallest man in any room. Objectively, Rose knew he was more handsome than
James, although his classic looks and engaging smile looked almost boring next
to James’s intelligently chiseled face.

Mitchell was naturally charming and had always been a
clear-minded businessman. He’d been sympathetic when he and Deanna first
arrived, but now he was looking almost thoughtful. “You know, not to make light
of it, but it might not be a bad idea.”

“What?” Rose asked, not following his line of thought but
starting to get a little nervous about it.

“Letting everyone think you two are engaged.”

“What?” Rose exclaimed.

At exactly the same time, Deanna elbowed her husband and hissed,
“Mitchell!”

“I know it sounds off the wall, but your grandmother isn’t a
stupid woman and she knows this city better than anyone. I think she had a
reason for doing this.”

“Of course she had a reason,” Deanna said, frowning
indignantly. “She’s doing her normal hair-brained thing of engineering rich
marriages for us. She did the same thing with me.”

“I know she did,” Mitchell said, with a little smile that
was teasing and affectionate and clear evidence of how much he loved his wife.
“And look how well it turned out for us.”

“But that was just lucky,” Deanna insisted. “It doesn’t
excuse her manipulations. She loves us, but she’s stuck in the past, and that’s
not always going to end up being the best for us.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said, “But there’s no way we’re going to
be pressured into some sort of fake marriage just to get the gossip about
Genevieve and all the rest of the mess off our backs.”

“I don’t mean a marriage,” Mitchell said. “Just an
engagement. A temporary engagement so that Genevieve won’t have a leg to stand
on with whatever crazy-ass scheme she’s going with. You’d have control of the
story then, and so her manipulations wouldn’t have the power they do right now.
How bad could that be?”

“How bad?” Rose choked. “It’s insane!”

“You can’t expect Rose and James to do something like that.
They have a working relationship that would be affected by this—not to mention
confusing those poor little girls.”

Rose shot a look over to James, but his expression was
unreadable. He didn’t look shocked or angry, at least. She had no idea what he
was thinking. “I’m not going to do anything to hurt or confuse the girls,” she
said.

“Of course not,” Mitchell said. He paused for a moment,
clearly thinking. “You could always just tell them the truth.” When both Rose and
Deanna started to object, he continued, “I don’t mean the entire truth. Just as
much of it as they’d understand. Genevieve is having a hard time with the
break-up so Dad and Rose are going to be spending time together until
everything calms down—but then things will go back to how they were, so they
don’t need to listen to what anyone says to them about it. They’re the only
ones who know the whole story. They’d understand that, wouldn’t they?”