Page 13 of Substitute Bride

“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.”