Chapter 10
James was pretty sure he’d made a big mistake.
He’d had a pretty good thing going before—with Rose as his nanny. It hadn’t fulfilled all his needs, but at least he’d had her in his life, and his girls had had her too.
Now—because he’d wanted too much, because he’d let her slip out of the designated slot she was supposed to fill—he was afraid he was about to lose her completely.
If Rose had shown any inclination toward wanting more with him—if she’d acted at all like the sex they’d had had meant even half as much as it had meant to him—he would have thrown caution to the wind and forced himself to tell her his feelings.
But if she didn’t reciprocate, then he wouldn’t just lose the chance of being with her the way he wanted. He would also lose the chance of being with her at all—even as her boss.
It was too much to lose. He’d lost too much already in his life and had faced the chaos that followed. He wasn’t prepared to risk losing Rose.
So he wasn’t saying anything. He was waiting and watching and hoping to see some sign of what he should do.
When Rose had knocked on his door last night, he’d had a few moments of blazing hope, believing she was there because she wanted to be with him. He’d been about to babble out something very foolish when she told him Julie was sick.
It had been like a kick to the heart.
This morning he was stiff and groggy, and he felt like everything was going wrong. If he knew what to do, he would have fixed it, but every choice seemed like it would just make things worse.
At the moment, Julie was still in bed, and he and Rose were in the kitchen as Jill had breakfast and got ready for school.
“Is she really okay?” Jill asked, looking with worried eyes up at Rose. She’d always been a sensitive little soul, and she loved her sister a lot.
Rose was wearing pink pajama pants and a cream-colored belted sweater. She looked beautiful and rumpled, like she’d just rolled out of bed, and his chest ached as he watched her.
She was usually so expressive. He would have expected to read her feelings better these last few days. But she seemed to have withdrawn since they’d had sex, so he had to assume she was silently telling him she wanted things to go back to normal.
He’d rather have things normal with her than not at all, so he was going to play along.
“She’s okay,” Rose said in response to Jill’s concern. “It’s just an ear infection. You know how she gets those a lot. I’m going to take her to the doctor later today to get her some new medicine, and she’ll be feeling better in no time.”
“Maybe I should stay home with her too.”
Rose smiled and leaned over to kiss Jill’s forehead. “That’s sweet, but I think you better go to school.”
James had been leaning against a counter drinking his coffee, but something froze inside him as he watched. He could see so clearly on Rose’s face that she loved his little girl. It looked like more than just as a nanny. It looked like she loved her for real—like she was hers.
And James wanted her anew. Not just for himself, but for his girls too. He’d been on a futile quest for more than a year for a substitute for his wife, and he saw now he’d been wanting the wrong thing.
Melissa could never be replaced. Rose was completely different.
But he could love her just as much.
It was such a deep and strong revelation that it almost leveled him. He had to put down his coffee because his hand started to shake.
Rose was rinsing out Jill’s cereal bowl and checking her backpack to make sure she had all her stuff. She glanced over at James and must have seen something on his face.
“Everything all right?” she mouthed over Jill’s head.
He gave a little nod, although it was a lie. There was nothing he could say right now. He wasn’t sure he could even speak.
He gave Jill a quick kiss and escaped to his home office, where he sat in his chair and stared at his computer and tried to figure out what all this meant.
Rose didn’t have a good day.
She was at the doctor’s office with Julie for hours in the morning, mostly because the doctor was squeezing Julie in and was always running late anyway.
When she got home, Julie was still feeling really bad, so Rose was busy taking care of her. When Jill got home, the girl was restless and cranky, so none of them had a good afternoon.
James was supposed to be home on time that evening, but he ended up calling in and saying he had an unexpected dinner meeting that would run late. Then he said Marta and William offered to pick the girls up and have them sleep over with them tonight since he wouldn’t be around.
Maybe it was irrational, but it felt to Rose like he was avoiding her, like he was even taking the girls out of her care—which couldn’t be a good sign.
Maybe she should just resign. Obviously having sex had affected both of them, and their relationship wasn’t what it used to be. She wasn’t sure it could ever go back to the way it had been before—at least as far as she was concerned.
The girls’ grandparents came to pick them up just after dinner, and Rose spent the evening in her bedroom.
She was so upset about the whole thing she couldn’t go to sleep, even though she had a rare quiet evening all to herself.
She tried to read until ten o’clock and then lay awake in bed for three hours, staring at the dark ceiling, trying to figure out what she should do.
Maybe she should just tell James the truth. She’d vowed not to since the last time she’d attempted to be open about her feelings with a man she had completely humiliated herself.
But maybe humiliation was better than this emotional limbo. Maybe she should just get up tomorrow morning, go to his room, and say that sex had changed things for her and that she wasn’t sure she could go on like they’d been.
He would have to say something then. It was possible things had changed for him—in which case he could just say so. If not, then her heart would be broken.
It had happened to her before. She could live through it.
She brooded over it for so long that she felt dazed and fuzzy. She told herself to think about something else, so she thought about last night, which wasn’t at all a good idea.
She suddenly realized that she’d left her bra in James’s room last night. He’d taken it off and tossed it, and she remembered now that it had ended up on the side of the dresser. She hadn’t picked it up when she gathered up the rest of her clothes that morning.
She was suddenly embarrassed about James finding her bra in his room, and she got up to go get it. She hadn’t heard him return, so this was the right time to retrieve it.
Maybe he hadn’t really looked around this morning. It was probably still there.
She walked down the hall and opened his bedroom door, which was always kept closed during the day. The room was dark, which was to be expected, but a little light came in from the hall.
She walked over to the dresser and picked up her bra, and she was about to turn around to leave when she heard a mumble from the bed.
She froze.
James was home after all, and she’d just barged into his room at one o’clock in the morning.
She heard him moving in the bed, the covers rustling as he did so. She had to do something. She had to move. She had to get out of this room before he woke up and thought she was there on purpose.
He might think she was trying to make a move on him.
He might think she was as desperate as Genevieve.
She took one step and knocked her shin against the corner of the dresser, and she took a few steps away from the dresser automatically.
“Shit,” she hissed, holding up her left leg as the pain reached her brain.
James rolled over, and she realized he was awake now and she was right next to the bed. She could bend her knees and sit down on it if she wanted.
She was standing stupidly, balanced on one leg when James made a wordless, throaty sound.
Before she knew what was happening, he had reached out and pulled her into bed with him.
She didn’t resist. She didn’t want to resist. Instead she felt a wave of joy and excitement at the way he’d pulled her into his arms.
James rolled them both over so she was lying on her back. His weight on top of her was solid and heavy, and his face was so close she could feel his breath.
He gazed at her with silent intensity, his expression hot and needy. Her eyes were starting to adjust to the dark from the light coming in from the hallway.
He combed his fingers into her hair, lifting her head up as he lowered his mouth into an urgent kiss.
Rose’s arms wound around him, squeezing him in exactly the way she’d always wanted to. She opened her lips to the advance of his tongue, moaning deep in her throat as she squirmed to generate friction between their bodies wherever she could.
She was flushed all over and panting when he finally tore his mouth away. But then she gasped in pleasure as his mouth descended to her neck, his lips sucking hard against her racing pulse.
Her hands grasped eagerly at his bare back, clawing her nails down his skin. Realizing what she was doing, she instead stroked the lean muscles and smooth plans of his shoulders and back, loving how he felt beneath her fingers.
Her hands slipped lower to the waistband of his pajama pants. She edged her fingers under the fabric, pushing them down as she tried to reach the tight muscles of his butt.
James moved lower on her body before she could reach, his mouth closing around one of her breasts. He sucked on one nipple, teasing it with his tongue through the thin cotton of her top.
Rose gasped again as she felt a sharp tug between her legs. Her arousal was aching now—so intensely it actually hurt.
She raised her hands until she was pulling on his shoulders, trying to bring him higher and into a better position to ease the ache at her center.
He resisted, suckling and breathing loudly around her breast. Every flick of his tongue sent new sensations shooting down to her arousal, and she writhed and arched up as her hands flew above her head to clutch the headboard.