Chapter 3
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.”
“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.”
“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.”