Chapter 9 #2
Rose shook her head. “I don’t know if I’m happy or not.”
Kelly must have noticed something about her expression because her face suddenly sobered. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Well, obviously something is wrong.”
Rose sighed. “I’m just kind of blah today. Nothing to worry about.”
“You didn’t do anything stupid, did you?” Kelly asked.
As far as Rose knew, Kelly had never been in love before, and the girl had absolutely no patience for the way women often acted foolishly for men. Maybe one day she would understand.
As it was, Rose was reluctant to admit it to her, but she also didn’t want to lie. “I don’t know. But I do know I’m not going to do anything even stupider.”
Kelly thought about this for a minute and then gave a little nod. “Good for you. No reason for us to be stupid if we can possibly help it.”
James worked late that evening, and he didn’t act unusual when he finally came home after seven. He talked to the girls about their day as he ate his supper—Rose and the girls had eaten earlier—and then he and his daughters went to read a book together.
Rose usually didn’t join them in the evenings since the family needed to spend time together alone, so she puttered in the kitchen and caught up on some e-mail until it was bedtime.
After they put the girls to bed, James paused in the hall.
Rose’s breath hitched, suddenly hoping he was going to say something about the night before.
“You heard about Genevieve?” he asked softly.
Rose managed not to droop in disappointment. “Yes. The news is all over.”
“I have no idea what to make of it. It seems too easy.”
“That’s what I was thinking too.”
“But I don’t know what trouble she could be up to—since she’s all the way across the country at the moment.” James looked very tired—so tired her heart went out to him despite herself. He rubbed his jaw as if it were hurting him again. “I guess we’ll just go with it and hope for the best.”
“Should we do anything else about the engagement?”
James shook his head. “I was thinking about that. If she actually gets married, then I think we can just lay low for a while—not go out in public together and not put out any more gossip. In a month or two, we can tell some folks the engagement has ended, and just not make a big deal about it. It will just go away.”
That sounded so easy and simple. Rose wondered if it could possibly be so.
She sure as hell knew that her feelings about the whole thing wouldn’t just go away so smoothly.
“Okay. We’ll wait and see then.” Her voice was light as if her emotions weren’t in a painful uproar about seeing James standing in front of her like this, looking clever and handsome and deep and sexy and everything she wanted. “Oh, I should give you back the ring then.”
She wasn’t wearing it. She wasn’t planning to ever wear it unless she had to go out in public with him again.
His forehead wrinkled. “You don’t have to.”
Her lips parted in surprise. “Of course I have to. I can’t keep a ring like that. And if we’re going to lay low, then we won’t really need it again. I’ll leave it in your room later today.”
He hesitated for a moment, his eyes searching her face. Then he gave a weird little nod and turned to walk into his room.
And that was it. Nothing that happened between them last night evidently mattered in any way.
Rose woke up that night to the sound of Julie crying. Her room was right next to the girls’ so she could always hear them when they cried.
She climbed out of bed and hurried out of her room, quietly opening the door to peek inside.
They slept with a nightlight so she could see their figures clearly in their beds.
Julie was tossing around still crying softly.
Rose strode over and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out for Julie’s restless form. “What is it, sweetie? Did you have a nightmare?”
Julie was awake, her eyes wide and pained. “My ear hurts.”
Julie had always been prone to earaches, so Rose knew what to do. She leaned down to kiss the girl’s hot face. “Okay. Give me a minute and I’ll go get some medicine.”
She went downstairs and found the pain reliever they used and then heated up a hot pad, which usually helped to ease the pain a little, at least temporarily.
She went back upstairs and gave the girl the medicine. Then she pressed the hot pad against her ear. “Can you hold it there?”
“It really hurts,” Julie whispered.
Since the girl was a bit of a drama queen, Rose always knew when things were serious because Julie got really quiet. If it wasn’t serious, she made a big deal about things. But if it was, she never did.
Rose’s heart clenched in sympathy, and she crawled into the girl’s bed, pulling her into her arms and pressing the hot pad against her ear. “I’m sorry, sweetie. It will get better soon. Just try to relax.”
Julie cried for another minute—softly, pitifully—but eventually she calmed down. She didn’t sleep though. Her ear must really be hurting.
Jill always slept like the dead and hadn’t woken up at all.
“Where’s Daddy?” Julie asked, snuggling into Rose’s arms.
“He’s in bed. Do you want me to wake him up?”
“That’s okay.”
“I can wake him up, Julie. He won’t mind at all. Do you want me to?”
Julie shook her head and sniffed. “I’m okay.”
“Okay. Just let me know if you need him. He’ll want to be here.”
Julie whimpered a little. “I’m a big girl.”
Rose made up her mind. She eased the girl out of her arms and stood up. “I know you are. But even big girls need their daddies sometimes.”
She felt a little awkward as she made her way to James’s room. She really didn’t want to wake him up. She’d never liked having to do so, but now it was even worse after what had happened in his room last night.
But Julie was more important than Rose’s awkwardness.
She tapped on the door.
When there wasn’t a response, she knocked even louder. This time she heard motion from inside the room and the sound of his steps across the hardwood floor.
He swung open the door and stared at her, looking sleepy and sexy and strangely tense. “Rosie,” he said hoarsely.
She swallowed at the sound of his saying her name like that. Maybe he thought she was here to beg for sex or something. She burst out, “It’s Julie. She’s sick.”
James’s face changed dramatically. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s just an earache, but she wanted you.”
He started immediately down the hall, wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants. Rose tried very hard not to look at the lines of his strong bare back or the curve of his butt beneath the fabric as she walked behind him.
Julie reached out for her father as he entered the room, and he got into the bed, sitting up against the headboard and pulling her into his arms.
Rose gazed down for just a minute, wishing with an intensity she’d never experienced that this family was hers.
She loved them. All of them.
But they weren’t hers. She was just the nanny.
“Just let me know if you need anything,” she said in a slightly cracked voice, turning away so James wouldn’t see her expression.
“Stay, Rosie,” Julie whimpered, her head tossing restlessly against her father’s chest. “I want you too.”
Rose sighed and hesitated. She wanted to stay, but it wasn’t going to be good for her heart.
“Will you stay?” James asked, his eyes holding hers.
She nodded, completely incapable of saying no, not when both of them needed her. Julie patted the bed beside James, and Rose crawled in. She was wearing a tank and thin pajama pants, and she wished either her or James or both of them were wearing more clothes.
It didn’t feel like anything sexy, but it felt far too intimate and vulnerable.
There wasn’t much room on Julie’s bed, so Julie ended up cuddled between Rose and James, and James had his arms around them both.
Rose stroked the little girl’s hair, trying to soothe her until she went to sleep, and she tried not to think about how safe and protected and cared for she felt like this.
James wasn’t saying anything. He basically hadn’t said anything to her all day, except the brief conversation about Genevieve. For all she knew he was embarrassed and awkward about having sex with her last night.
He obviously didn’t want her. If he did, he would have said something. If he’d been even the slightest bit polite, he would have said something.
She knew from hard experience that reading things into a man’s silence was the worst sort of stupid. If they wanted you, they would say something, do something. If they didn’t say or do anything, then they obviously didn’t want you enough.
She wasn’t a silly girl anymore. She wasn’t going to throw herself at a man who didn’t want her. But it was so hard.
Because it felt—it felt—like James wanted her. Not just for sex either.
As she snuggled against him and Julie that night, it felt like his love was extended to her, like he was loving both her and his daughter.
She wanted to be loved like that.
She wanted to be loved by him.