James finally turned to Genevieve and replied with impressive composure, given the circumstances. His voice was cool as he said, “Please watch your language in front of the girls. We were playing a game with Jill and Julie.”

  That was absolutely true, although it did nothing to make Rose feel less guilty. They hadn’t been doing anything genuinely inappropriate—it was the way she was feeling that was just plain wrong.

  Jill and Julie had stopped dancing at Genevieve’s entrance, and they both looked scared and upset. But Jill, evidently feeling the need to defend her daddy, stepped forward and said, “We were at a ball.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you were playing,” Genevieve said, her voice no gentler than before.

  Jill bit her lip, moving back to her sister, and little Julie started to cry.

  “Do not speak to them that way,” James said, sounding even colder than before. “I’d understand if you misinterpreted what you saw here, but you don’t get to speak to my daughters that way.”

  “I’ll speak to them any way I like,” Genevieve shrilled, her posture snapping up to her full height as she glared around at the room, even at Rose’s grandmother, who was watching from the piano with the strangest expression of satisfaction on her face. “You are supposed to be my fiancé, and here I walk in to see you in the arms of another woman. In a wedding dress!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” James stepped forward, taking Genevieve by the arm and walking toward the door of the room, taking his fiancée with him. Rose had never seen him so angry before. It wasn’t his characteristic gruffness. It was a harder, tighter feeling that seemed to transform his entire body.

  She wouldn’t want him to ever be so angry with her.

  Rose understood why he felt the need to have the conversation in private, but even dragging her to the next room didn’t actually help very much. The voices carried easily between walls, so they could hear every word that was said.

  She met Kelly’s eyes across the room, and the sisters understood each other perfectly. They shared a look of self-consciousness, awkwardness, and concern—with a kind of ironic knowledge underlying it. Rose had only told her sisters a little bit about the woman James was engaged to, but they could read beneath the surface.

  They’d all known she wasn’t a good choice for him, and this episode seemed to confirm it.

  Finally regaining her sense and composure, Rose hurried over to the little girls, kneeling down as best she could in the long dress and pulling them both into her arms. “It’s okay. Your daddy will take care of it. There’s nothing to worry about.

  Julie was still sniffling, and Jill murmured, “I don’t want him to marry her.”

  “I know. It was very upsetting, but she was just taken by surprise. Your daddy will make sure everything is all right.”

  Over her murmurs, she could hear the argument from the other room.

  James was saying, “Stop being ridiculous. Do you really think I would cheat on you in front of the girls and a bunch of other people? You’re acting like a child.”

  “Don’t you dare call me a child! I saw with my own eyes. I’m not blind, you know. All this time you’ve been distant with me, you’ve been having a little fling with your frumpy nanny—”

  “I’m not going to talk to you when you’re this irrational. Why don’t you go cool down, and we can discuss this when you’re not so out of control?”

  Rose shook her head, vaguely hoping that they wouldn’t be able to work it out later. Naturally, Genevieve’s accusations about her and James were completely wrong, but she wasn’t going to forget the way the woman had lashed out at innocent Jill. It would happen again, if James married her, and Rose couldn’t stand for the girls to get hurt.

  Or for James to get hurt, for that matter.

  There was nothing she could do about it, though. It was James’s decision. She just worked for him.

  She cuddled the girls and tried not to listen as the voices faded. They must be getting farther from the room, hopefully going to the front of the house because Genevieve was on her way out.

  Rose couldn’t help but think it would be nice if Genevieve left them all for good.

  She was trying so hard not to listen that she was surprised when James’s voice came from the doorway. “I’m so sorry about all of that.”

  She looked over and saw him approaching the girls, his face twisting in a way she wasn’t used to seeing.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, kneeling down beside them.

  Rose knew he was talking to the girls. He wasn’t likely to want to comfort her. She had no real reason to be upset, although she was. She stood up, letting the girls move into their father’s arms.

  Feeling awkward, like she wasn’t really part of this moment, she moved to the other side of the room, where Kelly and her grandmother were standing near the piano.

  She gave them a wry smile, feeling a little better now that the worst of it was over.

  “Well, that was interesting,” Kelly murmured, very softly.

  “It was just terrible timing all around,” Rose replied.

  Her grandmother shook her head, her lined face set in a thoughtful expression that Rose had always understood to be calculating. “Not bad timing at all.”

  “Of course it was,” Rose whispered. “It couldn’t be timed worse if we had planned it.”

  “We will see how it all falls out. Then we will decide.”

  Rose shook her head. Her grandmother had always muttered cryptic sayings like that. She’d learned a long time ago not to try to argue.

  More often than not, her grandmother ended up right, when everything had played itself out.

  ***

  James took the girls out for ice cream, and Rose went along, of course, since she was riding back to the house with him.

  The girls had fully recovered from their emotions, and they all had a good time, laughing and talking about innocuous things.

  Rose still felt nervous jitters, as if something had happened that hadn’t yet been worked out, but she pushed the feeling aside, since the girls needed her to be happy and engaged in the conversation.

  She thought that James was hiding a similar tension, although nothing in his manner conveyed it.

  Rose’s suspicions were confirmed when the girls ran into the house as soon as they parked back at home and James lingered by the car, as if he wanted to say something to her.

  She paused, gazing up at his face, wishing she didn’t find it so attractive.

  “Are you okay?” he murmured, his hazel eyes scanning her expression in a way that made her feel like he could see into her soul.

  She hoped he couldn’t. There were thoughts and feelings there that no one should ever know. “Of course,” she said with a casual smile. “I was mostly worried about the girls, but they seem to be fine.”

  “You looked like you were upset too.”

  Rose cursed her too expressive face. “I was just taken by surprise, and then I always get a little upset when someone is angry. I don’t do well with conflict. But it doesn’t really have anything to do with me.”

  “It does. She was angry and jealous about you.”

  “She just misinterpreted what was happening.” Rose used every ounce of her composure to put on a bland, unconcerned expression. “We were just playing with the girls. Hopefully, she’ll understand that once she cools down.”

  “Maybe,” he muttered, his eyes lowering, as if he were thinking deeply.

  Rose couldn’t help but ask, “Maybe what? Don’t you want her to understand?”

  “I didn’t like how she spoke to the girls.”

  “Oh. Yes.” She tried—and tried and tried—not to feel a stirring of hope. Maybe he was finally seeing Genevieve as she really was.

  “Had she spoken that way to them before?”

  Rose wanted to exaggerate, to encourage his feeling of concern, but she had never been able to lie. “N—no. Not that I’ve heard. She’s never really gotten to know them, but she’s never been rude to them like that before.”

  James sighed. “What a mess. What do you think I should do?”

  Dump her. Break the engagement and never see the selfish woman again. Get a brain in your head and find a woman who would actually be a good wife to you and mother to the girls.

  Rose didn’t say any of the things she was really thinking. She was just the nanny, and it wasn’t her place. Even if he was asking right now, tomorrow he might not appreciate her being so blunt.

  So, instead, she said softly, “I think you should talk to her. You’re engaged to her so I think you need to do at least that. Find out if the person she was tonight is the person she really is.”

  That was as close as she could get to her real feelings, and James seemed to understand the implications. He nodded with another long exhale. “Yeah. That’s what I’ll do.”

  ***

  James didn’t get much sleep that night. He was troubled by scattered, intense worries and images. Genevieve storming in like the wicked stepmother of a fairy-tale, making his babies cry. Rose, telling him in her quiet way that Genevieve was his fiancée and he needed to talk about the problem openly. Rose, in his arms, looking as beautiful and desirable as any woman he’d ever known.

  That last image was the hardest to deal with. Even if he ended things with Genevieve, Rose would still be his employee, and he would never cross that line.

  He worked out in his mind a conversation he would have with Genevieve tomorrow over and over again. Everyone made mistakes. She’d never acted that way before. He could hardly end an entire engagement over one little fight.

  But he kept worrying that it wasn’t just a fight—it was a sign of how she’d always been, if he’d been able to look beyond the surface.

  Rose had said he should find out if that was the person she really was. Maybe he was really that stupid. Maybe he’d just talked himself into believing she was the wife who was best for him, because his in-laws liked her and she was similar to his dead wife.

  But maybe she wasn’t so similar to Melissa after all.

  Maybe he was nothing but clueless.

  He sat up most of the night, brooding, and he was exhausted and headachy that morning when he came downstairs, dressed for work.

  Rose and the girls were already in the kitchen, having their breakfast. The girls looked normal, and Rose’s face revealed nothing. Her hair was loose, hanging down around her shoulders in thick waves, and she had a cardigan sweater over her thin T-shirt. He couldn’t help but notice she didn’t appear to be wearing a bra. He could see her nipples under the fabric, so he forced himself to look away.

  What the hell had gotten into him? He had bigger things to worry about, and he didn’t need to get distracted by these stray, lustful thoughts for his girls’ nanny.

  The girls were discussing the shape of the strawberries in their cereal bowls, and they demanded that their daddy add his two-cents to the discussion. James felt better after debating the merits of thin or thickly sliced strawberries.

  The girls were happy. They were normal. Nothing that had happened last night had damaged them in any way.

  They were finishing up, when Jill cleared her throat. “Daddy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart.”

  “Are you going to marry Miss Genevieve?”

  James heart did a weird jump and then drop. He wasn’t sure he was ready for this conversation. “That was the plan. We’re engaged, you know.”

  “I know. But she wasn’t nice last night.”

  He had absolutely no idea what to say.

  “We talked about this, remember?” Rose put in quietly, from where she was leaning against the counter. “Sometimes people say things when they’re angry that they don’t mean. Remember when you told Julie that you wished she wasn’t your sister? You didn’t mean that, did you?”

  “No,” Jill muttered.

  “What matters is that they say they’re sorry and then treat you nice again.”

  “Okay.”

  James was ridiculously relieved by Rose’s intervention. He should have been smart enough to say something similar. He never seemed to be able to find the words when something was most important. “Rosie’s right,” he said. “I’m going to talk to Miss Genevieve today, and then we’ll see what will happen.”

  Jill and Julie looked at each other soberly, and James had no idea what was going on between them. They must have had a previous conversation that his words made them think about.

  He had to do what was best for them. He had thought that having a mother would be the best thing for them, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe they were better off the way they were.

  They had Rose, after all. Maybe they didn’t need a stepmother.

  ***

  James couldn’t talk to Genevieve until after the girls went to bed that night.

  He’d called her up in the morning, hoping to have lunch with her to get the conversation over with early. But she’d still been in a snit and had eventually hung up on him.

  He called back later in the day, and she’d finally consented to meet with him. But she’d claimed to be busy all day until after nine o’clock.

  James tried not to feel annoyed, telling himself she was still really upset about what she thought she had seen between him and Rose. Given how he’d been feeling as he danced with Rose last night, James had to admit that she had some reason for resentment—although it wasn’t at all what she was assuming. So he’d agreed to her timetable, and they arranged to meet at a coffee shop halfway between his home and hers at nine-thirty that evening.

  He was dreading the conversation. He’d felt sick about it all day. Part of him was convinced that the only good decision would be to end their engagement, but he also didn’t want to treat Genevieve unfairly and not even give her a chance.

  They ordered their drinks and sat down at a table in a private alcove. When she didn’t say anything—just stared at him with a protruding lower lip—James sighed and said, “Well, I think we need to talk.”

  She sniffed. “You need to explain yourself.”

  “I explained myself last night. We were playing dress-up with the girls and pretending we were at a ball.”

  “I saw how you were looking at her.”

  James wondered whether something of his crazy, intense feelings had been visible on his face. He sure hoped not. He managed to say calmly, “I don’t know what you thought you saw, but I have done nothing inappropriate. The idea that I’ve been cheating on you with Rosie is absurd.”

  “I don’t think it’s absurd. You’ve been getting more and more distant lately, and now I understand why.”

  James rubbed his face with his hand and suddenly realized that he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to work it out. He had been getting distant from Genevieve lately, and the truth was it was because he didn’t really want this relationship anymore.

  She wasn’t the right woman for him. She never had been. She might perfectly fill the slot that was open in his life, but he didn’t really want that slot filled anymore.

  The only thing left for him to do right now is end it.

  “Okay,” he said. “You clearly don’t trust me, which doesn’t bode well for our relationship. And you’re probably right about me getting distant. I don’t think this is working.”

  Something changed on Genevieve’s face. “It was working,” she snapped, “until your slutty nanny started making her move.”

  He stiffened with a surge of resentment. “She is not a slut. You have no right to speak about her that way.”

  “See,” Genevieve whined. “You even take her side over me.”

  “I’m not taking her side. I’m trying to be fair to both of you. I understand if you were angry about what you thought you saw. If everything else was working between us, then we could work that out. But everything obviously isn’t working between us. I’m not sure either of us is happy.”

  “I’m happy!” Genevieve exclaimed, an urgent expression covering the sulky one of before. “You can’t just end it over one fight.”

  “I’m not ending it over one fight. I’ve just been putting off the inevitable, and I’m sorry if it hurts you. But I really think we need to break up. This isn’t working anymore.”

  “You can’t dump me!” Her voice was growing shrill, and a couple of people drinking coffee nearby turned to look in their direction.

  James hated the way she always made a scene. Not even being in public would stop her. “I’m really sorry, but that’s my decision.” He felt tired and frustrated and discouraged and awkward.

  And relieved. Incredibly relieved—like he was finally freed of a weight that had been dragging him down.

  Even his jaw was starting to relax now that this conversation had been had.

  “I’m not going to let you dump me.” Genevieve stood up, every muscle in her body tight with outrage.

  “This isn’t something you have a choice about. The engagement is off.”

  “You can’t do this to me,” she snarled, her face filled with more icy anger than he’d ever witnessed in anyone before. “I’m not going to let you do this.”

  He just shook his head. There was nothing else for him to say. She would have to get over it, eventually.

  She made a weird throaty sound and stormed off, and James sat by himself at the table for a few minutes, processing how he was feeling.

  He wished it had been a more agreeable conversation, but Genevieve had always been a little childish, so he shouldn’t have expected anything else.

  He stared at the door she’d disappeared through and wondered if she was planning to give him back his ring.

  She could hock it for all he cared. He didn’t want it back.

  ***

  It was late when he got back home, and he expected everyone to be in bed. But a light was on in the living room as he entered, and he saw that Rose was sitting on the couch with a book.

  She lowered it as he came in, and he realized she’d been waiting for him.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  He nodded and slouched down on the couch beside her. “I ended it.”

  “Oh.” An expression he couldn’t read twisted on her face for a few seconds. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

 

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