Page 12 of Substitute Bride

He needed the dance to end. Now.

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?”

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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 doubly 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 in to 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 Genevieve 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.”