Chapter 11
The call from Genevieve felt like a barrel of cold water had been dumped on James’s head.
He’d been on the verge of pouring out his heart when the call came in—caught up in some hazy romantic trance—but the sound of Genevieve’s voice brought him back to earth with a hard thump.
Rose had rolled away from him, and she was quiet as he disconnected the phone.
He glanced over at her, his heart aching as he saw her messy hair and mild face. He didn’t want to leave the bed if she was in it.
Surely she wouldn’t want to try to go back to their professional relationship this time. Surely after they’d made love the way they had, she wouldn’t think it was better to just pretend it never happened.
He just needed to take care of Genevieve’s emergency, and then maybe they could figure things out.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, forcing himself to stand up. “She’s evidently in trouble.”
“It’s fine,” Rose said, her brown eyes wide and unreadable. “You better not waste any time if she needs you.”
He opened his mouth since something about the way she’d said the words seemed wrong as if she was misreading the reality or assuming what wasn’t true. But she was right.
There was a decent chance that Genevieve was exaggerating or making something up to trick him into coming back to her. But, on the off chance that she was sincere, he wasn’t going to be responsible for ignoring her.
“I won’t be long,” he said, reaching over to find his pants and then grabbing a T-shirt to pull on.
“Okay.”
Rose wasn’t getting out of bed, which was encouraging. If she’d just stay there for a little while, he’d be back—and then he could crawl into bed with her again and maybe, maybe they could work things out.
But he had to deal with this first.
He wanted to say something to her as he left, but he had no idea what to say.
He couldn’t say what he felt—which was “I love you so much my head might explode with it”—since he was still her boss and there were lines there that remained too complicated to cross.
And nothing else he might have said came remotely close to embodying his feelings.
So he ended up just giving her a half-assed wave as he walked out.
He shook off the coiled emotional tension as he walked downstairs to his office.
Genevieve wanted him to fly to Vegas. She said that Morris Alfred Theobald III had been angry when she’d backed out of their spontaneous elopement—which she claimed she’d only done out of a broken heart—and Morris had “hurt” her.
She’d been too inarticulate to explain what she meant by that, but she’d implied it was physical somehow.
She said she couldn’t trust anyone to help, and she needed him there to help her through this.
James could hardly picture the short, pudgy wuss of a man hurting anyone physically, but he wasn’t prepared to just blow it off completely. If there was any truth at all in her claim, then an honorable man would at least check it out.
He wasn’t going to fly all the way to Vegas though. The possibility of it being a calculated strategy was just too high after Genevieve’s past behavior, and there was too much James needed to do here.
He had to pick up his girls from their grandparents’ that morning, and he had to try to feel things out with Rose.
So he needed to manage the situation in a different way.
The first thing he did was call the hotel to ascertain that Genevieve was where she said she was.
She evidently was, although Morris Alfred Theobald III had checked out the previous day, which wasn’t exactly the timeline that Genevieve had explained to him. She’d said the man had done something to her that night and had left right before she called him.
More and more convinced that this wasn’t real, James asked to talk to the manager of the hotel, and he explained his problem. The manager on duty was an intelligent, helpful woman, and she said she would go up to Genevieve’s room herself to make sure the woman was okay.
James thanked her and sat by his phone to wait. As he did, he thought through various possibilities of declaring himself to Rose.
If he just burst out with it as he was tempted to, and she didn’t return his feelings, then he would have lost her for good. There was no way she would keep working for him, knowing he felt that way—and then both he and his girls would suffer.
If he just did what he’d been doing and played things by ear, waiting for a sign that she was feeling the same way, he would drive himself into insanity, going through a roller coaster of hope and despair, living in an emotional limbo.
He couldn’t seem to think of a middle ground. There just wasn’t any simple, gentle way of opening a door to move Rose from nanny to girlfriend.
He needed a female relative to get advice from, but he was an only child and his own mother had died five years ago.
And he supposed that it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to turn to Jill or Julie for advice.
He was completely clueless.
He was still mulling it over when his phone rang. The manager of the hotel had some very interesting news.
She’d gone up to Genevieve’s room to check on her, explaining that a gentleman had called very concerned about her condition.
Genevieve had evidently been ensconced in the room alone, having just ordered lobster and champagne from room service. She’d been furious when she heard that she was being checked on, cursing both the manager and James for failing to do what she wanted him to do.
The manager was quite sure that Genevieve wasn’t in any trouble, but she would be happy to summon the police or a doctor if James wished her to do so.
James thanked the woman and said that it wouldn’t be necessary.
Just as James was saying good-bye, another call came in on his phone. He wasn’t the slightest bit surprised to discover it was Genevieve.
He answered it, holding the phone away from his ear so he wouldn’t be bombarded by the stream of loud profanity she was spewing at him.
The gist of it was that he was a bastard for not believing her and rushing to her rescue.
When she’d run out of steam, James said calmly, “What did you expect me to do? If you were really hurt, then you’d need a doctor and the police right away—much sooner than I would be able to get to you.”
“But you obviously didn’t believe me—” Genevieve began.
“I wanted to verify—as any man with half a brain would have done in my situation given how you’ve acted before. I can’t understand what you thought you’d accomplish with this scheme. I’m not going to take you back, no matter what.”
There was more profanity, ending with the fact that she never wanted to see or hear from him again.
“Excellent,” he said crisply. “Then we’re finally agreed. We won’t see or talk to each other again.”
He hung up since there was nothing left for him to do.
He glanced at the clock, realizing this whole farce had taken up nearly an hour of his time—time he could have spent with Rose.
He hurried back up to his room, his heart suddenly racing. He still hadn’t figured out the best, smartest thing for him to do, and he was half-convinced that he’d just fall to his knees when he got to the room and declare his love for her.
He didn’t.
He would have, but she wasn’t actually in his room.
Frowning, he hurried down the hall to Rose’s room. The door was closed, so he knocked on it. There was no answer, so he knocked again.
When he was pounding on it and getting no response, he finally tried the doorknob. It opened.
Her room was always tidy, but it was strangely neat and empty as he looked around. He realized that all her personal stuff seemed to be gone.
Frowning even more, he stepped inside. She obviously wasn’t here. Neither were the books she kept on the side table, the pictures of her family on the desk, the toiletries on the vanity of the bathroom.
He opened the closet door. It was empty.
Rose was gone, every trace of her cleared out like she’d never been here.
His heart was still hammering, but for an entirely different reason now. It felt like his pulse was throbbing in his feet, like the rest of him had entirely emptied out.
He walked over to the neatly made bed and saw a folded piece of paper on the pale blue coverlet.
Picking it up, he stared blindly down at Rose’s loopy handwriting.
It took him a full minute before he could read the words.
Mr. Harwood,
I’m so sorry, but I have to quit. What’s happened between us has made it impossible for me to do my job the way I need to.
I can’t apologize enough for walking out like this without notice.
Please keep my last paycheck. Give my love to the girls.
If it’s okay, maybe I can come by for a few minutes tomorrow to say good-bye to them. I wish you all more than the best.
Rosie
James slumped down to sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the words on the page for a long time.
He’d been right all along. There was no way to cross these kinds of lines and still maintain a working relationship. Once the slots of your life started to get mixed up, the whole world turned into chaos.
The first time he’d kissed Rose, he’d lost her for good.
Every bone and muscle in Rose’s body ached as she knocked on the door of her family home.
It was over. All of it was over. She hated herself for leaving as she did without saying good-bye to the girls, but she wouldn’t have been able to do it when they got back this morning. She would have broken down completely.
James could explain. Then if he was okay with it, she could say good-bye to them later, when she was more in control.
They’d cry. They’d miss her. But they were young, and they’d recover. They’d forget her soon enough and find another nanny or a stepmother.
They would be fine.
Rose wasn’t sure she would be fine, but it was too late to do anything about that.
Kelly opened the door, and her face transformed with concern when she saw her sister. “What’s the matter?”
Rose tried to say something, but her face just twisted with emotion, a surge of despair overtaking her without warning.