Page 50 of Substitute Bride

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 But she seemed to have withdrawn since they’d had sex, so he had to assume she was silently telling him she wanted things to go back to normal.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.