Chapter 9
Rose woke up at three thirty the next morning, sore and overly warm.
She soon discovered why since she was squeezed between James’s body and the mattress, and his body seemed to be generating an unnatural amount of heat.
She raised her head and breathed deeply, and then she eased herself out from under him. He was still sound asleep and he rolled over with a mumble, so she sat up on the side of the bed and breathed some more.
Last night had been… incredible. But the night was basically over now, and she had to come to terms with the consequences.
One of them was the fact that her head was pounding from drinking too much last night.
Another was a soreness she could still feel between her legs.
And the most serious was sleeping on the other side of the bed. She glanced back, her heart clenching at the sight of his bare shoulder and messy hair.
With a weird little gasp, she stood up, gathered her clothes, and hurried silently out of the room and down the hall to hers.
She got a glass of water from the faucet in her bathroom and drank it all down in one go. Then she got right into the shower, trying her best not to cry.
Last night had offered her everything she wanted, but there was no guarantee of it continuing.
Neither one of them had been in their normal state, and James had always been clear in saying that nothing about their professional relationship was going to change, no matter what happened between them during this interlude.
He wanted his wife back. He wanted the woman who had first worn that beautiful ring. And since he couldn’t have her, he wanted the closest approximation he could find.
That would never be her.
She’d known it all along, so she didn’t let herself fall apart. She got out of the shower, dried off, put on sleeping shorts and a tank, braided her hair, and crawled into bed.
She had a few more hours before she needed to get up for the day, and she wanted to postpone the morning for as long as possible.
Unless James had miraculously changed his mind, then she would have to act like normal, like nothing had happened between them.
She wasn’t going to humiliate herself with a man again by begging for something she couldn’t have.
The girls were crabby when Rose got them up later that morning. They’d evidently stayed up too late last night, so they were tired and didn’t want to get up. When she finally got them out of bed and dressed, Julie complained about everything while Jill sat there with an unhappy frown.
Rose talked to them lightly and ignored the bad temper, but she couldn’t improve their moods the way she normally could. She was having a discussion about the quality of the orange juice when James walked in fully dressed in a business suit as normal.
Rose could feel his presence intensely, but she didn’t turn around to look at him. “It’s the same juice as usual,” she said to Julie, hoping her voice sounded natural.
“It has those lumps in it.”
Rose showed the girl the bottle. “There isn’t any pulp. I poured it right from here. That’s our normal bottle, isn’t it?”
Julie nodded glumly. “Why are there lumps?”
Rose reached over and took a swig of the girl’s juice, then made an exaggerated sound of satisfaction. “No lumps. I’ll drink it if you don’t want it.”
Julie peered at her glass suspiciously and deigned to take a little sip.
James had been getting his coffee, and Rose had no choice but smile and tell him good morning since he came to stand beside her on the kitchen side of the granite island.
It felt like he was watching her, so she made sure to keep her face relaxed.
If he wanted last night to be forgotten—the way he’d wanted the kissing to be—then Rose could deal with it.
She’d never let him see that it crushed her.
She wasn’t going to strip herself emotionally naked with a man again, not like she had with Richard, not when he’d offered her no reason to expect differently.
She would only do that once in her life. She might not always be smart, but at least she could learn from her mistakes.
“Are you not talking this morning?” James asked Jill, who was glowering down at her cereal bowl.
“My head hurts.”
Rose prayed the girl wasn’t getting sick. When one of them got sick, both of them got sick. The worst was when they threw up. She always dealt with it without complaining, but cleaning up vomit was Rose’s least favorite part of being a nanny.
“Where does it hurt?” she asked, walking around the island to where Jill was sitting.
“I don’t know.”
Rose put a gentle finger on her forehead. “Here?”
Jill shook her head.
Rose moved her fingers to her cheekbones. “Here?”
“That’s my cheek, not my head.”
“Sometimes people have headaches there if they have sinus issues. Does it hurt there?”
“No.”
Rose moved her hands to the sides of the girl’s head, making a light circle of her scalp. “Here?”
“No.”
“Then where does it hurt.”
Jill raised one hand and pointed to the very top of her skull. “Right here.”
Rose glanced over and met James’s eyes, and they clearly understood each other. While it was possible that Jill hurt right there, it wasn’t a normal spot for a headache, so it was more likely that the girl was faking.
Rose went and poured out a glass of cold water. “Here you go. Water is good for headaches. Drink all of this, and then we’ll see how you feel later. Be sure to let us know if it gets worse.”
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.”
“By why would Genevieve want to marry him?”
“Well, he’s rich. Richer than James. Richer than Mitchell even.”
“I know that. But still. He’s so… so…”
Kelly obviously understood what Rose was reluctant to say. “I know. But sometimes money trumps all. I guess she finally resigned herself to never having James. It must have been the fake engagement that did it.”
Rose wasn’t so sure. Genevieve wasn’t the type to give up so easily. While she certainly hoped that the woman was out of James’s life for good, something made her very nervous about this story. “Maybe.”
“You should be happy, shouldn’t you? I mean, Morris Alfred Theobald III! What a perfect match!” Kelly studied her sister’s face with obvious confusion.