Page 27 of Substitute Bride

“I wish you’d let me know that you’d be coming to get them early,” James said, rubbing water off his face with a towel. He’d been in the pool when Marta Vincent arrived, so his hair was soaking wet and water kept streaming down his face.

Marta was the mother of his late wife, who had died almost three years ago. She was his daughters’ grandmother, and he was always careful about making sure she and her husband remained a fixture in the girls’ lives. But more and more, he found himself chafing at the pressure she placed on him.

At that moment, it was by arriving more than an hour earlier than they’d planned to pick up the girls, who were going to a movie and then dinner with their grandparents.

“I just got done with my shopping early,” Marta explained, with a smile he knew was supposed to be ingratiating. “So I thought I’d stopped by since I was in the area. I’m so sorry if it’s a problem.”

“It’s not a problem. It will just be a little while before the girls are out of the pool and dried and dressed.”

“There’s no hurry. I’m happy to wait for them.” Without waiting for an invitation, the attractive, expensively dressed woman made her way past him and down the hall to the back of the house.

James shook his head, taking a deep breath and telling himself to be patient.

Marta and William had been crushed by their only daughter’s death—as crushed as James himself had been—and Jill and Julie were the only grandchildren they would ever have. He could hardly blame them for wanting to spend as much time with the girls as possible.

He just wished they’d respect his time and privacy a little more. The weekends were the main times he had to spend with his daughters too, so even losing an hour of the afternoon with them mattered to him.

If they kept it up, he’d have to speak to them—as kindly as possible—but he was hoping to put that off as long as he could. He didn’t want to hurt them, and saying no to them felt like a betrayal of Melissa. He really didn’t want to do that.

He followed Marta through the house and out the French doors that led to the patio and then the pool deck in the backyard. The girls were in the pool playing Marco Polo with Rose. James had been playing too before Marta had arrived. He’d been having a good time, although he’d had a couple of close calls when he ended up groping blindly at someone who ended up being Rose.

He was pretty sure his hand had landed once where it really shouldn’t have.

“Marco,” Julie screamed from the pool, her eyes tightly shut.

Both Jill and Rose called out, “Polo,” and Julie ran in the shallow end toward Rose, who was closest to her. Rose started to move away—not very quickly since she was obviously letting the little girl catch her—and Julie suddenly made a great leap and launched herself at Rose.

They went down in the water in a tumble, both of them laughing and Julie crying victory.

Rose straightened up, hugging the girl, a look of obvious affection clear on her face.

James stared at her, his chest tightening as he watched Rose hug his daughter.

She loved Julie. She loved both of the girls. He could see it so clearly, standing on the deck in the distance and watching them in the pool.

She loved them, and James wanted them to be loved like that—he wanted them to be loved by Rose. Genevieve would never have loved them like that. He must have been crazy to ever think that she would.

“James,” Marta said, breaking him out of the reverie.

He blinked. “Yes?”

She was looking at him with narrowed eyes, and James suddenly wondered what she’d seen on his face. “I’d asked if you could get them out of the pool.”

James would have rather let them play for a little while longer since they weren’t supposed to go with their grandmother for another hour, but if he said something, it would turn into an argument or a tense conversation, and it would be a bad idea to let that happen. So he walked over to the edge of the pool.

“Daddy!” Jill called. “Come back in with us!”

“Look who’s here early,” he said, pitching his voice to sound excited in an attempt to get the girls excited too.

“Grandma!” Julie exclaimed, scrabbling out of the pool. She ran over to give her grandmother a wet hug.

Jill got out too, a little more slowly. She was looking between Rose and her father as if checking to see if their fun for the afternoon was really over.

“We can play again tomorrow afternoon,” James told her. It was mid-September already, but it was plenty warm in Savannah to use the pool well into October.

“But that’s Rosie’s day off.”

Rose was climbing out of the pool too, and James tried not to focus on how her body looked in the one-piece swimsuit, streaming with water. “I can come over in the afternoon if you want me to play in the pool with you. I don’t mind,” she said with a smile.