Page 46 of Substitute Bride

Jill was still scowling but she obediently started swallowing down the water.

In the silence that followed—broken only by Jill’s gulping sounds and the scraping of Julie’s spoon against her cereal bowel—Rose was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that she’d had sex with James last night.

She peeked a look over at him and saw that his eyes were resting on her. He looked mostly normal, just a little thoughtful.

She had no idea what he was thinking.

Surely he would say something, the way he had about the kissing. Even if he wanted to forget the night had ever happened, he would at least address the fact that it was a one-time drunken fling in order to get the issue off the table.

Surely he wouldn’t have made love to her the way he had last night and then completely ignore the fact that it had ever happened.

What kind of a man would do that?

Once the girls went off to school, he would say something. And if he didn’t, then she could always say something herself.

But then he would think she was asking for something, that she was hinting around for it to continue. Her stomach churned at the thought of his believing that she would beg to be his girlfriend, his fiancée for real, his wife.

She was never going to do that. Not again. If he didn’t say anything, then the issue would go unspoken for perpetuity.

And that was just the way it was.

James didn’t say anything when the girls went off to school. He went into his office to work for an hour like normal. Not a word—not even an expression—hinted that anything had happened between them last night.

Rose stared down the hall at the closed door of his office and felt for a moment like crying.

She wasn’t helpless in this. She had choices. She could always walk down the hall, knock on the door, and ask him what he was thinking about last night.

That wasn’t going to happen though. She resolved herself on this decision yet again silently as she stood in the hall.

If he wanted to be a coward and pretend it had never happened, then he was more than welcome to do so. She didn’t want that kind of man anyway.

She did want James. That much was obvious. But she couldn’t have him and she wasn’t going to dwell on that fact. So she went upstairs to shower again and get dressed for the day and pretended everything was normal.

She did some errands and picked up all the old Beaufort clothes they’d gotten cleaned and then went over to her grandmother’s house to start getting them organized.

This was who she was. It was who she’d always been. And spending one night with the man of her dreams wasn’t going to change that.

She was trying to button the ball gown up on the dress form when Kelly came bursting into the room. She’d been at class this morning, so she must have just gotten home.

“You’ll never believe it!” Kelly’s face displayed obvious excitement as if she were bursting with news.

“I’ll never believe what?”

“Genevieve has eloped!”

For just a moment Rose’s heart sank like a rock all the way to her toes. Had she eloped with James? Had Rose lost him for good?

Then she came to her senses and realized he’d never do anything like that without arranging care for his girls. So Rose could breathe again as she asked, “Eloped with who?”

Kelly was trying to keep a straight face, but her eyes were dancing with hilarity. “With Morris Alfred Theobald III!”

Rose gasped. Morris Alfred Theobald III was a plain, slightly annoying man who used to have a thing for Deanna. For a while their grandmother was trying to make a match there—or maybe she was just playing some sort of a game.

Rose had no idea that Genevieve even knew the man, and she couldn’t ever picture them together.

“They eloped? How do you know?”

“Mrs. Loomis down the block told me as I was walking home. They took off for Vegas this morning. I guess it’s the best gossip to come out in ages. It’s completely overtaken the story of your fake engagement with James.”