Chapter 7 #3
He was angered by the crude words, especially as they applied to Rose, but he reined in the feeling so he wouldn’t lose control. “You’re supposed to think that nothing I do is your business anymore. I never cheated on you, and nothing I do after we’ve broken up is your concern.”
“It is my concern!” Genevieve turned her huff onto Rose then. “I can see what you’ve been up to this whole time, trying to get your hooks into him in any way you can. I’m not going to let you do it. He’s not yours. He’s mine.”
Rose was normally so mild that he would have expected her to shrink in the face of that kind of ire, but she didn’t.
Something cool and defiant seemed to take her over, and her back straightened palpably.
“He’s not anyone’s. He makes his own decisions, and neither you nor I can make him do anything he doesn’t want. ”
“Well, he doesn’t really want you. He’s just using you because he’s afraid to be with me.”
James made a choked sound of objection at this absurdity, but Rose was the one who responded.
“I don’t think that’s true, but it doesn’t really matter what either one of us thinks.
He’ll do what he wants to do. All I’m saying is that you can’t dictate to him or to me what that is.
” She was obviously getting into her response, carried away by the momentum of her resentment.
Her cheeks had deepened to a dark pink, and her eyes were shooting off sparks.
“If we want to be together, then we’ll be together, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. ”
Ridiculously James felt a swell of pleasure at the words—even if Rose didn’t mean them the way they sounded. And that automatic, irrational emotional response made it perfectly clear that what he really wanted was to be with Rose.
No matter how wrong it was in every way.
“Now get out of here,” James said firmly, turning Genevieve around and pointing her toward her car. “This is private property, and you’re not welcome. I’ll call the cops, if you don’t leave.”
“You can’t treat me like this!”
He shook his head, so fed up he couldn’t even speak anymore. He gently urged Genevieve to her car, and eventually she drove off.
He returned to Rose, and they just stared at each other.
He obviously wasn’t thinking clearly because he said the first thing that entered his mind. “We might as well just get engaged to put an end to all this mess and make it clear that Genevieve is out of the picture.”
Rose blinked, taken by surprise but then obviously recognizing his wry tone. “Yeah, at least that would give people something else to talk about.”
James thought about that for a long time and started wondering if it was true.
The next day, Jill came home from school all confused because a friend had told another friend that Jill’s daddy was going to get married to her nanny.
The girl had a picture of Rose in an old-fashioned lace wedding dress standing with James to prove it, which someone in her household had evidently printed off the Internet.
Jill wanted to know if that was true.
“I really can’t believe Grandmama did this,” Deanna said, leaning forward in one of the rocking chairs on the back porch of the old Beaufort home.
Her husband, Mitchell Graves, gave her a dry look with one arched eyebrow. “You’re really surprised?”
Before she could respond, Rose asked, “Are we sure it’s even Grandmama who spread the rumor?”
“Of course it was her,” Deanna replied. “Who else would it be? And who else would have had access to that picture. We know it wasn’t Kelly who spread it around.”
Obviously Kelly was trusted completely. She’d snapped a few pictures of Rose, James, and the girls on her phone that evening they were all playing dress-up—just because they were all having a lot of fun and they’d done such a good job with the ballroom.
But Kelly would have died before she’d spread gossip about her sister.
There was no one else but Grandmama who could have shared the picture with the news that Rose and James were engaged to be married.
Rose might have hoped for it to be different, but all the evidence made it clear.
They’d traced the story back to her, and there was no reason to doubt she was the originator.
She’d told Rose she’d take care of the situation, and this was evidently her way of doing so.
James had been quiet since he and Rose had arrived at the house that evening to meet Deanna and Mitchell and wait for Mrs. Beaufort to arrive back home from her bridge game.
“I’m really sorry,” Rose said, turning to James and searching his expression for some sign that he was angry with her.
He didn’t look angry. He looked tired and withdrawn. In some ways it was almost worse. He had enough to deal with in Genevieve. He didn’t need her grandmother’s troublemaking added to the equation.
Mitchell was a very handsome man who was nearly always the tallest man in any room. Objectively Rose knew he was more handsome than James, although his classic looks and engaging smile looked almost boring next to James’s intelligently chiseled face.
Mitchell was naturally charming and had always been a clear-minded businessman. He’d been sympathetic when he and Deanna first arrived, but now he was looking almost thoughtful. “You know, not to make light of it, but it might not be a bad idea.”
“What?” Rose asked, not following his line of thought but starting to get a little nervous about it.
“Letting everyone think you two are engaged.”
“What?” Rose exclaimed.
At exactly the same time, Deanna elbowed her husband and hissed, “Mitchell!”
“I know it sounds off the wall, but your grandmother isn’t a stupid woman, and she knows this city better than anyone. I think she had a reason for doing this.”
“Of course she had a reason,” Deanna said, frowning indignantly. “She’s doing her normal harebrained thing of engineering rich marriages for us. She did the same thing with me.”
“I know she did,” Mitchell said with a little smile that was teasing and affectionate and clear evidence of how much he loved his wife. “And look how well it turned out for us.”
“But that was just lucky,” Deanna insisted. “It doesn’t excuse her manipulations. She loves us, but she’s stuck in the past, and that’s not always going to end up being the best for us.”
“I’m sorry,” Rose said. “But there’s no way we’re going to be pressured into some sort of fake marriage just to get the gossip about Genevieve and all the rest of the mess off our backs.”
“I don’t mean a marriage,” Mitchell said.
“Just an engagement. A temporary engagement so that Genevieve won’t have a leg to stand on with whatever crazy-ass scheme she’s going with.
You’d have control of the story then, and her manipulations wouldn’t have the power they do right now. How bad could that be?”
“How bad?” Rose choked. “It’s insane!”
“You can’t expect Rose and James to do something like that. They have a working relationship that would be affected by this—not to mention confusing those poor little girls.”
Rose shot a look over to James, but his expression was unreadable. He didn’t look shocked or angry at least. She had no idea what he was thinking. “I’m not going to do anything to hurt or confuse the girls,” she said.
“Of course not,” Mitchell said. He paused for a moment, clearly thinking.
“You could always just tell them the truth.” When both Rose and Deanna started to object, he continued, “I don’t mean the entire truth.
Just as much of it as they’d understand.
Genevieve is having a hard time with the breakup, so Dad and Rose are going to be spending time together until everything calms down—but then things will go back to how they were, so they don’t need to listen to what anyone says to them about it.
They’re the only ones who know the whole story. They’d understand that, wouldn’t they?”
Rose was jittery and a little dizzy, and she was more and more nervous about James, who still wasn’t reacting at all. “Maybe. I don’t know. But it seems silly to do that to them when it’s not a good idea to begin with. Why can’t we just tell everyone the truth?”
“You’ve been trying, haven’t you?” Deanna asked, looking torn between Mitchell’s idea and what Rose was saying.
“Yeah. It doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe some sort of public statement…”
“No one will believe it,” James said, speaking for the first time in a long time and surprising all of them.
Rose turned to him breathlessly. “What do you mean?”
“No one will believe it. Genevieve has laid the groundwork exactly right. Anything I say or do is going to be taken wrong—as some sort of survivor’s guilt that’s being channeled the wrong way.
She isn’t going to stop, so this is just going to go on indefinitely—until the girls end up getting really hurt by it.
We need to nip it in the bud and take her advantage away. ”
“How?” Rose asked, swallowing hard and suddenly knowing what he would say.
“Mitchell’s right. This could do it. We could tell the girls most of the truth and then just play the ruse out until the gossip is over and Genevieve has given up.
If I’m publically engaged to someone else, then she can hardly go around saying I’m still engaged to her.
I think she’d be humiliated enough to just back off. ”
“Do you think so?” Rose wasn’t sure. Genevieve seemed on the edge enough to not be trusted to act rationally in any situation.
“Yeah. So if you’re willing, maybe we can do it. We could get engaged for a few weeks and then go back to normal after it’s all over.”
“Could I still be your nanny afterward?” Rose asked, almost trembling as she realized what was happening. “I wouldn’t want to do something that would make it impossible for me to keep my job.”
“Of course,” James said, looking surprised. “There’s no way in the world I’d want to lose you.”