Page 14 of Substitute Bride

“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’s heart did a weird jump and then a 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.”