“You know about all this family stuff. You’re compassionate. You’re a woman.”

If Grace had been on her feet, she’d probably have fainted at the admission. “That has to be a first,” she commented.

“What?” Michael asked.

“You admitting you’re at a loss.”

He regarded her evenly. “I’m not blind to my faults, Grace.”

“Just not interested in correcting them?” she surmised.

His gaze narrowed. “Do you really want to take that particular walk down memory lane?”

Her cheeks burned. She swallowed hard and shook her head, reminding herself that his calling her wasn’t personal. He hadn’t dragged her over here because he’d been pining away for her for the past few years. It was about those two scared boys upstairs. Nothing else. Period. She had to keep that in mind. It would be way too easy to get caught up in all of this, to imagine that they were partners, a team, a family….

Marrying a Delacourt
Sherryl Woods

www.millsandboon.co.uk

SHERRYL WOODS

Whether she’s living in California, Florida or Virginia, Sherryl Woods always makes her home by the sea. A walk on the beach, the sound of waves, the smell of the salt air all provide inspiration for this writer of more than sixty romance and mystery novels. Sherryl hopes you’re enjoying these latest entries in the AND BABY MAKES THREE series for Silhouette Special Edition. You can write to Sherryl or—from April through December—stop by and meet her at her bookstore, Potomac Sunrise, 308 Washington Avenue, Colonial Beach, VA 22443.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

If Michael Delacourt had had any idea that this latest harangue about his health was going to bring the bane of his existence, Grace Foster, back into his life, he would have tuned Tyler out. Instead, he let his brother drone on and on, then fell right straight into the trap.

“You’re a heart attack waiting to happen,” Tyler Delacourt began as he had at least once a week like clockwork. He made the claim with brotherly concern, usually from the comfortable vantage point of the sofa in Michael’s office on the executive floor at Delacourt Oil. He was slugging down black coffee and doughnuts as he spoke, unaware of the irony in his comments. “You have to learn how to slow down—before it’s too late.”

Too late? Hogwash! Michael was getting sick of hearing it, especially from a man who shunned exercise unless it was related to bringing in a new gusher. Worse, Tyler’s consumption of cholesterol showed a total disregard for its potential effects on his heart.

Besides, Michael thought irritably, he wasn’t even in his thirties yet. Okay, he was close, weeks away, in fact. Still, by all accounts this was the prime of his life. Just as he was doing this morning, he did thirty grueling minutes every day on the treadmill he kept in his office. Hell, he was in better shape now than he’d been in when he’d played college sports. Could Tyler say the same?

“I’d like to see you set the pace I do on this treadmill,” he countered as sweat poured down his chest and his muscles burned from the exertion.

But even as he dismissed his brother’s concern, Michael was forced to admit that he exercised the way he did everything else—as if driven. His bewildered mother used to say he’d come out of the womb three weeks early, and he’d been in a hurry ever since. It was a trait that definitely set him apart from his laid-back brothers—Dylan, Jeb and, especially, Tyler. Michael was not prone to a lot of introspection, but he could hardly deny that his type-A personality affected all aspects of his life, personal as well as professional.

To top it off, he had no social life to speak of, unless his command attendance at various benefits and dinner parties counted. He was as wary of females as a man could get. The minute a woman started making possessive little remarks, he beat a hasty retreat. Maybe someday, when he had some spare time, he’d sit down and try to figure out why. In the meantime, he simply accepted the fact that there was no room in his life for a woman who’d have to take second place to his career at Delacourt Oil.

Of the four Delacourt brothers, he was the only one who really gave a damn about the family business. He had his father’s instincts for it. He had the drive and ambition to take the company to new heights, but Bryce Delacourt was fiercely determined that the company he’d launched would be divided equally among his offspring. He grumbled unrelentingly about how ungrateful they were for not seeing that, never noticing that Michael was grateful enough for all of them.

Still, Delacourt Oil was his father’s baby, which he could split up any way he wanted to. It wasn’t that Michael was unwilling to share with his siblings. It was just that he wanted to be the one on top, the one in charge, and he would run himself into the ground if necessary trying to prove that he was worthy of the position. None of the others understood that kind of single-minded determination. Even now, Tyler was shaking his head, disapproval written all over his face.

“That’s just it. You exercise all out, as if you’re trying to conquer Mount Everest, the same way you do everything,” Tyler chided, refusing to let the subject drop. “You keep that blasted phone in your hand the whole time, too, so you’re not wasting time.”

“It’s efficient,” Michael said, defending himself for perhaps the thousandth time. He tossed his portable phone on the sofa next to Tyler to prove he could give it up any time he wanted to.

“It’s crazy,” Tyler contradicted. “Face it, you’re a compulsive overachiever. Always have been. When was the last time you took a day off? When was the last time you took an actual vacation?”

“To do what?” Michael asked, perplexed.

“Go to the beach house with the rest of us, for instance. We haven’t had a decent bachelor weekend in a couple of years now.”

“Dylan and Jeb are married. I doubt their wives would approve of the sort of weekends we used to have over there,” Michael said wryly.

Tyler grinned. “Probably not. Okay, so the wild bachelor days are over for poor Dylan and poor Jeb. That doesn’t mean you and I can’t spend a few days catching rays and chasing women. How about it? A week of sun and fun.”

Michael was tempted. Then he thought of his jam-packed schedule. “I don’t think so. Not any time soon, anyway. My calendar’s booked solid.”

“You are turning into a pitiful stick in the mud,” his brother declared sorrowfully. “If you won’t do that, how about going over to Los Piños for a few days to visit Trish and Dylan and their families? Spend a little quality time with our niece and nephew. Trish was saying just the other day that a visit is long overdue.”

Guilt nagged at Michael for about ten seconds. “Yeah, well, I’ve been meaning to get over there, but you know how it is,” he hedged.

“I know exactly how it is. Your niece is going on three years old and you haven’t seen her since she was baptized when she was a month old. When Dylan and Kelsey got married, you barely stuck your head in the church over there long enough to hear their I do’s before you took off for some can’t-miss conference.”

“I was speaking at an OPEC meeting. Are you saying I should have turned down that chance?”

Tyler waved off the defense. “I’ll give you that one. But if it hadn’t been OPEC, it would have been something else. What exactly are you afraid will happen if you take some time off? Do you think the rest of us are going to steal the company out from under you?”

He peered at Michael intently. “You do realize what a joke that is, don’t you? Trish wants no part of the business. She’s happy as a clam running her bookstore and devoting her spare time to her husband and daughter. Dylan is perfectly content playing Dick Tracy across the state. Jeb is doing in-house security and wallowing in family life.”

“That still leaves you,” Michael pointed out, aware that he was grasping at straws.

Tyler laughed. “You know perfectly well that I’m trying my best to convince Dad to let me stay out in the field, exploring for oil. I’m heading back out onto one of our rigs in the Gulf of Mexico in another couple of weeks. I miss it. I miss Baton Rouge.”

Michael studied him. “Who’s in Baton Rouge, little brother?”

“I didn’t say anything about a person. I mentioned an oil rig and a city.”

“But I know you. There has to be a woman involved.”

Tyler scowled. “We were talking about me competing for your job. It’s not going to happen, Michael. Not only do I love what I do, it keeps me out from under Dad’s thumb. Face it, none of your siblings wants a desk job here, thank you very much. It’s all yours, big brother. There is no competition. This office in the executive suite is yours for life—if you want it.”

Michael inwardly admitted that everything Tyler had just said was true. But that knowledge didn’t keep him from working compulsively. “I love what I do, so shoot me,” he muttered.

“You need a life,” Tyler retorted. “You might think it’s enough to be at the top of the list of Houston’s most eligible bachelors, but you’re going to look mighty funny if you’re still there when you hit ninety.”

“Why worry about my social life? A minute ago you claimed I’m destined to die of a heart attack before I turn forty. If that’s the case, there’s no point in leaving behind a wealthy widow.”

Tyler waved off the attempt to divert him. “You’re missing my point.”

“Which is?”

“You need some balance in your life, Michael. Believe it or not, I actually recall a time when you were fun to be around, when you talked about something besides mergers and the price of crude oil.”

Michael uttered a resigned sigh. Clearly, his brother was on a mission. Tyler was usually a live-and-let-live kind of a guy, but periodically he turned into a nag. This kind of persistence could only mean that he’d been put up to it by the rest of the family. The one way to shut him up was to make a few well-intentioned promises.

“Okay, okay, I’ll try to get a break in my schedule,” Michael promised.

Tyler looked skeptical. “Not good enough. When?”

“Soon.”

He shook his head, obviously not pacified by such a vague response. “Trish says her guest room is ready now,” he said. “You can see your niece. You can see Dylan and his family. I’ll even ride over with you on the company jet. We’ll have ourselves an old-fashioned reunion.”

Michael wasn’t fooled for a minute. Tyler wasn’t going on this proposed jaunt out of any great desire to hold a family barbecue. He’d been assigned to deliver his big brother into the protective arms of their baby sister.

Michael shuddered at the memory of the last time they’d all ganged up on him like this. He’d wound up in a deserted cabin in the woods for a solid week with no car and no phone. Instead of relaxing him, the forced solitude had almost driven him up a wall. He hadn’t been able to convince his siblings that they hadn’t done him any favors. A two-day visit with Trish’s family would be heaven by comparison. He was smart enough to accept it while he still had a choice in the matter. His family wasn’t above kidnapping him, and he doubted a court in the land would convict them for it once they made a convincing case that they’d done it for his own good.

“Set it up,” he said, resigned to the inevitable. “Just let me know the details.”

“We’re leaving in fifteen minutes,” Tyler announced, his expression instantly triumphant.

“But I can’t—”

“Of course, you can,” Tyler said, cutting off the protest. “Hop in the shower, get into your clothes and let’s go. I have your suitcase at the airport and the pilot’s on standby. Your secretary’s canceled all your appointments for the next week.”

“A week?” Michael protested. “I agreed to a couple of days.”

“Your secretary must have misunderstood me,” Tyler said with no evidence of remorse. “You know how she is.”

“She’s incredibly efficient, and I thought she was loyal to me.”

“She is. That’s why she wiped the slate clean for the next week. So you’ll be able to take a long overdue break. You’re free and clear, bro.”

Michael frowned at Tyler. “Awfully damned sure of yourself, weren’t you?”

“What can I say? I’m a born negotiator. It runs in the family. Now, hop to it.”

Not until twenty-four hours later did Michael realize the full extent of his brother’s treachery, when he found himself shut away on Trish’s ranch, abandoned by his sister, her husband and the very niece he’d supposedly come to see.

Tyler had long since departed, claiming urgent business elsewhere. Probably a woman. That one he’d denied existed over in Baton Rouge. With Ty, it was always about a woman.

At any rate, one minute Michael had been sitting at Trish’s kitchen table surrounded by family, the next he’d been all alone and cursing the fact that he hadn’t been an only child.

“It’s Hardy’s family,” Trish had explained apologetically as she sashayed past him with little more than a perfunctory kiss on his cheek. “An emergency. We absolutely have to go. We shouldn’t be gone more than a day or two.”

Since the phone hadn’t rung, he had to assume this crisis had occurred before his arrival. Naturally no one had thought for a second to simply call him and tell him to stay home.

“I hate doing this to you,” his sister claimed, though she looked suspiciously cheerful. “The cattle shouldn’t be any problem. Hardy’s got that covered. You don’t mind staying here and keeping an eye on the horses, though, do you? Somebody will be by to see that they’re fed and let out into the corral, but you might want to exercise them.”

Already reeling, at that point Michael had stared at his baby sister as if she’d lost her mind. “Trish, unless it has four wheels, I don’t ride it.”

“Of course you do.”

“I was on a pony once when I was six. I fell off. All advice to the contrary, I did not get back on.”

“Well, you’re a Texan, aren’t you? You’ll get the knack of it while you’re here,” she’d said blithely. “We’ll get back as soon as we can. Whatever you do, don’t leave. I won’t have your vacation ruined because of us. This is a great place to relax. Lots of peace and quiet. Make yourself right at home, okay? Love you.”

And then she was gone. Michael felt as if he’d been caught up in a tornado and dropped down again, dazed and totally lost. He knew he should have protested, told his sister that he’d be on his way first thing in the morning, but she already had one foot out the door when she asked him to stick around. She made this sudden trip sound like a blasted emergency. She made it seem as if his staying here was bailing her out of a terrible jam, so what was he supposed to say?

Not until Trish, Hardy and little Laura had vanished did he recall that Hardy didn’t have any family to speak of, none that he was in touch with anyway. With an able assist from Tyler, the whole lot of them had plotted against him again.

Okay, he thought, Tyler might be gone, Trish and her family had abandoned him, but there was still Dylan. Michael comforted himself with that. This time at least he wouldn’t be out in the middle of nowhere without a familiar face in sight. And they’d left him with a working phone. He picked it up, listened suspiciously just in case they’d had the darn thing disconnected, then breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of the dial tone. He punched in his older brother’s number.

But Dylan—surprise, surprise—was nowhere to be found.

“Off on a case,” his wife said cheerfully. “Stop by while you’re here, though. Bobby and I would love to see you. And if you need any help at the ranch, give me a call. My medical skills may be pretty much limited to kids, but I can rally a few of the Adamses who actually know a thing or two about horses and cattle. They’ll be happy to come over to help out.”

Wasn’t that just gosh-darn neighborly, Michael thought sourly as he sat on the porch in the gathering dusk and stared out at the field of wildflowers that Trish gushed about all the time. Frankly, he didn’t get the fascination. They didn’t do anything. Maybe after a couple of glasses of wine, he’d be more appreciative.

He was on his way inside in search of a decent cabernet and livelier entertainment, when he heard the distant cry. It sounded like someone in pain and it was coming from the barn, which should have been occupied by nothing more than a few of those horses Trish was so blasted worried about. Not that he was an expert, but no horse he’d ever heard sounded quite so human.

Adrenaline pumping, Michael eased around the house and slid through the shadows toward the small, neat barn. He could hear what sounded like muffled crying and a frantic exchange of whispers.

Thankful for his brother-in-law’s skill in constructing the barn, he slid the door open in one smooth, silent glide and hit the lights, exposing two small, towheaded boys huddled in a corner, one of them holding a gashed hand to his chest, his face streaked with tears. Michael stared at them with astonishment and the unsettling sense that the day’s bad luck was just about to take a spin for the worse.

“We ain’t done anything, mister,” the older boy said, facing him defiantly. Wearing a ragged T-shirt, frayed jeans and filthy sneakers, he stood protectively in front of the smaller, injured boy. The littler one gave Michael a hesitant smile, which faded when confronted by Michael’s unrelenting scowl.

Michael’s gaze narrowed. “What are you doing here?”

“We just wanted someplace to sleep for the night,” the little one said, moving up to stand side by side with his companion whose belligerent expression now matched Michael’s. His fierce loyalty reminded Michael of the four Delacourt brothers, whose one-for-all-and-all-for-one attitudes had gotten them into and out of a lot of sticky situations when they’d been about the same ages as these two.

“Come over here closer to the light and let me see your hand,” he said to the smaller child, preferring to deal with the immediacy of an injury to the rest of the situation.

“It ain’t nothing,” the bigger boy said, holding him back.

“If it’s bleeding, it’s something,” Michael replied. “Do you want it getting infected so bad, the doctors will have to cut off his arm?”

He figured the image of such an exaggeratedly gory fate would cut straight through their reluctance, but he’d figured wrong.

“We can fix it ourselves,” the boy insisted stubbornly. “We found the first aid kit. I’ve already dumped lots and lots of peroxide over it.”

“It hurt real bad, too,” the little one said.

The comment earned him a frown, rather than praise for his bravery. “If he’d just hold still, I’d have it bandaged by now,” the older boy grumbled.

“You two used to taking care of yourselves?” Michael asked, getting the uneasy sense that they’d frequently been through this routine of standing solidly together in defiance of adult authority.

The smaller boy nodded, even as the older one said a very firm, “No.”

Michael bit back a smile at the contradictory responses. “Which is it?”

“Look, mister, if you don’t want us here, we’ll go,” the taller boy said, edging toward the door while keeping a safe distance between himself and Michael.

“What’s your name?”

“I ain’t supposed to tell that to strangers.”

“Well, seeing how you’re on my property,” he began, stretching the truth ever-so-slightly in the interest of saving time on unnecessary explanations about his own presence here. “I think I have a right to know who you are.”

The boys exchanged a look before the older one finally gave a subtle nod.

“I’m Josh,” the little one said. “He’s Jamie.”

“You two brothers?” Michael asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you have a last name, Josh and Jamie?”

“Of course, we do,” Jamie said impatiently. “But we ain’t telling.”

Michael let that pass for the moment. “Live around here?”

Again, he got two contradictory answers. He sighed. “Which is it?”

“We’re visiting,” the little one said, as Jamie nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. We’re visiting.”

Michael was an expert in sizing up people, reading their expressions. He wasn’t buying that line of bull for a second. These two were runaways. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind about that. Hadn’t they just said they’d been looking for a place to spend the night? He decided to see how far they were willing to carry the fib.

“Won’t the folks you’re visiting be worried about you?” he asked. “Maybe we should call them.”

“We’re not sure of the number,” Jamie said hurriedly, his expression worried.

“Tell me the name, then. I’ll look it up.”

“We can’t,” Jamie said. “They’ll be real mad, when they find out we’re gone. We weren’t supposed to leave their place. They told us and told us not to go exploring, didn’t they, Josh?”

“Uh-huh.” Josh peered at Michael hopefully. “You don’t want us to get in trouble, do you?”

Michael faced them with a stern, forbidding expression that worked nicely on the employees at Delacourt Oil. “No, what I want is the truth.”

“That is the truth,” Jamie vowed, sketching a cross over his heart and clearly not one bit intimidated.

“Honest,” Josh said.

Michael feared he hadn’t heard an honest, truthful word since these two had first opened their mouths. But if they wouldn’t give him a straight answer, what was he supposed to do about it? He couldn’t very well leave them in the barn. He couldn’t send them packing, as desperately as he wanted to. They were just boys, no more than thirteen and nine, most likely. Somebody, somewhere, had to be worried sick about them. Maybe he could loosen their tongues with a bribe of food.

“You hungry?” he asked.

Josh’s eyes lit up. His head bobbed up and down eagerly.

“I suppose we could eat,” Jamie said, clearly trying hard not to show too much enthusiasm.

“Come on inside, then. Once you’ve eaten, we’ll figure out where to go from there.”

In Trish’s state-of-the-art, spotless kitchen, they turned around in circles, wide-eyed with amazement.

“This is so cool,” Jamie pronounced, his sullen defiance slipping away. “Like in a magazine or something.”

“There’s even a cookie jar,” Josh announced excitedly. “A really big one. You suppose there are any cookies?”

“We’ll check it out after you’ve eaten a sandwich,” Michael said. He poured them both huge glasses of milk and made them thick ham and cheese sandwiches, which they fell on eagerly, either in anticipation of home-baked cookies or because they were half-starved.

Watching the boys while they devoured the food, Michael realized he needed advice and he needed it now. He needed an expert, somebody who understood kids, somebody who knew the law. Even as that realization struck him, he had a sudden inspiration. He knew the perfect person to get them all out of this jam. He walked into the living room, grabbed his portable phone and punched in a once-familiar number.

Grace Foster answered on the first ring, just as she always did. Grace was brisk and efficient. Best of all, she didn’t play games. If she was home, why act as if she had better things to do than talk? He’d liked that about her once. Heck, he’d liked a whole lot more than that about her, but that was another time, another place, eons ago.

Now about all he could say was that he respected her as a lawyer, even if she did make his life a living hell from time to time.

“What do you want?” she asked the instant she recognized his voice.

“Nice to speak to you, too,” he countered.

“Michael, you never call unless there’s a problem. Since we don’t have any court dates coming up, just spit it out. It’s Friday night. I’m busy.”

“Whatever it is can wait,” he retorted, troubled more than he liked by the image of Grace being in the midst of a hot date, one that might last all weekend long. He preferred to think that she led a nice, quiet, solitary—maidenly—existence.

Although he’d intended only to ask for advice, instead he said, “I need you to get on a plane and get over to Los Piños tonight.”

He said it with absolute confidence that she wouldn’t refuse, not in the long run. She might grumble a little, but once she understood the stakes, she wouldn’t turn him down. He wondered just how little he could get away with revealing. Maybe just the lure of sparring with him would be enough. His ego certainly wanted to believe that.

“Excuse me? Why would I want to do that?” she asked. “It’s not like your every wish has been my command, not for a long time now.”

She employed that huffy little tone that always turned him on although she intended the exact opposite. He could envision her sitting up a little straighter, squaring her shoulders. She had no idea that her efforts to look rigid and unyielding only thrust out her breasts and made her more desirable than ever. He bit back a desire to chuckle at the mental image. Grace was a real piece of work, all right. She might be pint-sized and fragile-looking, but she had the soul and spirit of a warrior. It was a trait he suspected was going to come in handy.

“You’ll come because you know I wouldn’t ask unless it was important,” he told her patiently. Then he dangled an impossible-to-resist temptation. “And you can hold it over my head for the rest of our lives, okay?”

“Now that is an intriguing idea,” she said with considerably more enthusiasm. “Care to fill me in?”

What a breeze, he thought triumphantly. Even easier than he’d anticipated. He hadn’t even had to pull out the big guns and tell her about the kids.

“I’ll fill you in when you get here. Can you be at the airport in an hour? I’ll have the Delacourt jet fueled up and ready. The pilot can see to it that you find me once you land over here.”

“Michael, really, there has to be someone else you could call, someone closer.”

“There isn’t,” he assured her.

“But I have plans. I’ve had them for ages. I hate to cancel.”

Damn, she was still trying to wriggle off the hook. “No,” he said firmly. “It has to be you. This is right up your alley.” He sighed heavily, then added as if it were costing him a great deal to say, “I need you, Grace.”

“Hah! As if I believe that for a minute. You’re overselling, Michael.”

“Trust me. You’re the only one for this job.”

This time she was the one who sighed heavily. “Okay, okay. When you start laying it on this thick, my curiosity kicks in. But I have to finish up what I’m doing here. Make it ninety minutes,” she said. “And, Michael, this is going to cost you. Big time.”

“I never doubted it for a second,” he said.

Only after he’d hung up did he stop to wonder why he’d instinctively turned to Grace, rather than his sister-in-law or one of the Adamses right here in town. He told himself it was because this situation all but cried out for a woman to deal with the two runaways, but he hadn’t gotten where he was in life by deluding himself. His sister-in-law was not only obviously female, but a doctor, as well.

No, he had called Grace Foster, because as much of a pain in the butt as she was to him personally, she was the smartest lawyer he knew. If these boys were in some kind of trouble, he couldn’t think of a better ally than Grace.

But it was even more than that, he admitted candidly. A part of him liked wrangling with Ms. Grace Foster more than just about anything except watching a new million-dollar gusher spewing crude into the Texas sky.

Chapter Two

Grace could hardly wait to hear what had caused Michael Delacourt to condescend to beg her for help. As annoyed as she was at being imperiously summoned across the state on a Friday night, her curiosity had gotten the better of her.

And contrary to what she had deliberately led him to believe, he had not caught her in the middle of a pressing engagement. A long, boring weekend had stretched out ahead of her, so Michael’s call had been a welcome diversion, a chance to break out of the rut she’d fallen into in recent months. She slaved like crazy in court all week long, then did more of the same on weekends so she wouldn’t notice how truly barren her social life had become.

But even better than a break in routine, the promised chance to hold this over the man’s arrogant, egotistical head for the rest of their lives had been an irresistible lure. Given the number of court cases on which they found themselves on opposing sides, it was an edge she couldn’t ignore.

There was more to it, of course. There had been a time in the distant past when she had almost allowed herself to think about a future with Michael. But then she’d realized she would always play second fiddle to the family business. It was a role she flatly refused to accept.

Grace had already spent an entire childhood trying to figure out why she hadn’t been smart enough or pretty enough for her father to love her. Norman Foster had left her and her mom when Grace was barely five. The unexplained departure of her adored father had all but destroyed her self-esteem. It had taken years to restore it, to accept that his going had had nothing at all to do with her. She wasn’t going to waste the rest of her life wondering why she didn’t have another man’s full attention.

She had broken off with Michael the same day she’d graduated from law school. She’d had clues from the beginning of their relationship that work came first with him, but his failure to appear at the important graduation ceremony had made it all too evident where she fit into his priorities. Even his profuse apologies and a barrage of expensive gifts—all of which she’d returned—hadn’t convinced her he would ever be able to change.

After pursuing her with flattering determination for a few weeks, he had accepted that the breakup was final. When he’d actually stopped calling, she’d suffered a few serious twinges of regret, but on balance she knew she’d done what she had to. She knew better than to think a man would change.

That didn’t mean that she couldn’t thoroughly enjoy the occasional sparring match with Michael. He was, after all, exceptionally smart, exceptionally sexy and, when he allowed himself to forget about work, highly entertaining. It gave her a great deal of pleasure, however, to remind him from time to time that he wasn’t God’s gift to women. She figured she had at least a little credibility since she was one of the few who’d ever walked away from him.

Over the years she had observed his pattern from a nice, safe distance. Most of the women he dated were eventually abandoned by him through benign neglect, never in an explosion of passionate fireworks. She suspected that most of those relationships contained less passion than some of the occasional conversations she and Michael had over legal matters. In the deep, dark middle of the night, she took a certain comfort in that.

Tonight as she settled into the fancy Delacourt corporate jet, she glanced around at the posh interior and smiled. Of course Michael expected her to be impressed by the bottle of chilled champagne, the little plate of hot hors d’oeuvres. No doubt he still thought of her as the small-town girl who’d been wide-eyed the first time he’d taken her on a trip in this very same plane.

They had gone from Austin, where she’d been in school, to Houston for a visit to the family mansion. Michael had wanted to introduce her to his family, especially his charismatic, much-idolized father. She had been stunned, if not impressed, by the evidence of their wealth. Even with Michael at her side, she had wondered if she would ever truly fit in there.

These days it took a lot more than champagne and canapés to impress her. Apparently Michael had forgotten that in recent years she’d worked for a lot of people every bit as rich as the Delacourts. In fact, she’d prided herself on taking quite a bit of money away from them.

Oh, yes, she thought with anticipation, this little trip to Los-wherever-Texas held a lot of promise. For Michael to be anywhere other than in his office or at some gala where he could network was so rare that the explanation was bound to be a doozy. She could hardly wait to hear it.

The flight didn’t take long. When they landed, a car was waiting for her at the airport and the pilot gave her very thorough written and verbal directions, then regarded her anxiously.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to drive you, Ms. Foster? I don’t mind, and Mr. Delacourt suggested that would be best.”

Grace understood the insulting implications of that. She drew herself up to her full five-foot-two-inch height.

“Thanks, Paul, but I am perfectly capable of driving a few miles,” she said coolly. Beyond his low regard for her driving skills, she knew what Michael was up to. He wanted her wherever he was at his beck and call, with no car available for a speedy exit. “Thank you, though. You can let Mr. Delacourt know that I am on my way.”

The pilot, who’d been around during the days of their stormy relationship, grinned at her display of defiance. “Whatever you say, Ms. Foster. Nice seeing you again.”

“You, too, Paul.”

Satisfied that she had won that round, Grace got behind the wheel of the rental car, studied the directions one last time and tried not to panic. The truth was, she had a very unfortunate sense of direction. To top it off, the sky was pitch-black, the moon little more than a distant, shimmering sliver of silver. And it wasn’t as if there were a lot of street signs out here in the middle of nowhere.

“I can do this,” she told herself staunchly.

Twenty minutes later she was forced to concede that she was hopelessly lost. She drove around for another ten minutes trying to extricate herself from the tangle of rural roads that apparently led nowhere close to where she wanted to go. By the time she finally abandoned her pride, she was highly irritated. With great reluctance, she called Michael at the number the pilot had discreetly written at the bottom of the page.

“The plane landed forty-five minutes ago. Where the devil are you?” Michael demanded.

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be calling.”

He moaned. “Don’t tell me you’ve gotten yourself lost.”

“It wasn’t me,” she protested. “It was these stupid directions. Whoever heard of telling somebody to turn at a blasted pine forest? I saw a pine tree, I turned. Now I seem to be staring at a pasture. There are cattle in the pasture, and I am not amused.”

He chuckled.

“It’s not funny. Laugh again and I’ll be back at the airport and out of here.”

“Not likely,” he muttered.

“Michael,” she said, her tone a warning.

“Sorry. It’s just that this is one of your many charms,” he said. “For a woman who has a law degree and a thriving practice in a major metropolitan area, you are absolutely pitiful when it comes to getting from one place to the next. I am amazed you ever make it to court on time.”

“Will you just tell me how to get from here to there?” she snapped. She was not about to tell him that only years of practice and sticking to the same, precise route assured her of getting to the courthouse. Unanticipated detours gave her hives.

“Sweetheart, you’re in a ranching area,” he said, pointing out the obvious with what sounded like a little too much glee. “There are a lot of cows. Can’t you just back up, turn around and get right back on the highway where you made the wrong turn?”

“You stay on the phone,” she instructed. “I’ll be back to you for further instructions when I am facing the highway.”

It took another frustrating twenty minutes to backtrack and finally make her way to the turnoff Michael assured her would lead to where he was.

When she found him waiting for her on the front porch of a spectacular house with two boys sound asleep in the rocking chairs flanking him, her annoyance promptly gave way to amazement. This was obviously going to be a whole lot more fascinating than the weekend she’d anticipated spending with her case files and her law books.

“Whose house is this and why are you here?” Grace asked as she and Michael settled in the living room with the cup of tea she’d insisted she preferred over wine. She wanted all her wits about her for this conversation.

“My brother-in-law built it for Trish,” Michael explained. “And I’m here because I’ve got a whole family of conspirators.”

“Another forced vacation?” She’d heard all about the last one. The tale had circled the Houston grapevine before landing in the society column of the daily paper. Imagining Michael’s indignation, she had laughed out loud at the story, but she was wise enough to stifle a similar urge now.

“You don’t have to look so amused,” he said, his own expression thoroughly disgruntled.

“I guess even the high-and-mighty Michael Delacourt has someone he has to answer to on occasion.”

“If you’re going to start taking potshots, I’m going to regret calling you.”

“It’s all part of the package,” she informed him. “But let’s get down to business.”

She gestured toward the stairs. The boys had been awakened and sent off to bed in a guest room. Since they’d barely been alert enough to acknowledge her existence, she imagined they were sleeping soundly again by now.

“Who are they?” she asked.

Michael appeared not to have heard her. They were alone in a cozy room that had been designed for the comfort of big men. He was sprawled in an oversized chair, looking frazzled. Even here he was dressed in slacks and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open. No jeans and T-shirts for this man. No wonder he made the society pages so often. He always looked like a million bucks.

Grace liked her power suits as well as the next person, but on the weekends, she settled into shorts or comfortable, well-worn jeans, faded, shapeless T-shirts, and sandals. She’d deliberately worn her weekend wardrobe to demonstrate how unimpressed she’d been by this out-of-the-blue invitation.

Now, with her shoes kicked off, she was curled up in a matching chair opposite Michael regretting the fact that she’d left all those power suits at home. She could feel the tensions of the week easing away, right along with her defenses.

This was just a little too cozy. She’d barely resisted the urge to flip on every light in the room, so it was bathed only in the glow of a single lamp in the corner. The atmosphere was disturbingly romantic and Michael was enchantingly rumpled for a man who usually looked like he’d just stepped out of an ad for Armani suits. She had to force herself to concentrate on the topic at hand.

“Michael, who are they?” she asked again, when she realized his attention was focused intently on her. He looked as if he were trying to memorize every little detail about her. Under other circumstances it might have been flattering. Under these circumstances, it rattled her in a way she didn’t want to be rattled.

His gaze finally snapped up. “Jamie and Josh,” he replied. “Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. They refused to disclose a last name.”

“Smart kids. It’ll slow you down tracing where they belong. Any idea where that might be?”

“Not a one. I found them in the barn.”

She was relieved to be able to finally slip into lawyer mode. “Like a couple of stray cats?” she asked. “Or burgling the place?”

“Looking for a place to sleep, they said.”

“Did you believe them?”

“I believe they weren’t there to steal anything. I also believe they’re in some sort of trouble. They wouldn’t give me a clue about where they came from, wouldn’t let me call anyone to let them know they were okay. They claimed to be visiting in the area, but they wouldn’t give me a name.”

“Runaways,” Grace deduced, her heart aching. She’d seen the sorry state of their clothes. More than that, she’d detected the worry in their eyes that not even being half-asleep could disguise. They had to be exhausted if they were risking sleep. Otherwise they’d probably be at the top of the stairs eavesdropping or slipping out an upstairs window as she and Michael discussed their fate.

“Looks that way to me,” Michael agreed.

“Have you checked the local paper, turned on TV to see if they’ve been reported missing?”

“No, I just called you.”

“Why?” she asked, bewildered by him turning to her. She would have expected him to go straight to his family. With the Delacourt resources, including a private eye for a brother, wouldn’t that have made more sense? Even if he was ticked at most of them at the moment, they were the closest, most obvious people to call.

“What about Dylan?” she asked. “Isn’t he living over here now?”

“He’s away.”

“And Trish? Maybe she knew about the boys hiding out in the barn but didn’t say anything.”

“I can’t imagine Trish going off and leaving two runaways behind. She’d have brought them in and mothered them to death,” he said wryly.

“Maybe you should call her and ask.”

He looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

A scowl settled on his face again. “Because, if you must know, I have no idea where she is. She deliberately kept me in the dark about her destination. Made up a bunch of hogwash that turned out not to be true.”

“So that makes me what? Third choice after Dylan and Trish?”

“Nope, first,” he insisted. “Like I told you on the phone, this is right up your alley. You know about all this family law stuff. You’re compassionate. You’re a woman.”

“And your sister-in-law, Dylan’s wife, is what?” she asked wryly. Because the Delacourts were big news in Houston, she’d been able to keep up. She knew all about their marriages.

Michael shrugged off the question, as if it wasn’t worthy of a response.

“Unreachable by phone?” she suggested. “Out in the hinterlands delivering a baby, perhaps?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t try. Look, Grace, I know this is an imposition, but you’re the best. Face it, I’m out of my element. When that happens, I know enough to call in an expert.”

If she’d been on her feet, she’d probably have fainted at the admission. “That has to be a first,” she commented.

“What?”

“You admitting you’re at a loss.”

He regarded her evenly. “I’m not blind to my faults, Grace.”

“Just not interested in correcting them?” she surmised.

His gaze narrowed. “Do you really want to take that particular walk down memory lane?”

Her cheeks burned. She swallowed hard and shook her head, reminding herself that his calling her wasn’t personal. He hadn’t dragged her over here because he’d been pining away for her for the past few years. It was about those two scared boys upstairs. Nothing else. Period. She had to keep that in mind. It would be way too easy to get caught up in all of this, to imagine that they were partners, a team…a family.

No sooner had that thought slammed into her head, than she jerked herself sternly back to reality. They were nothing to each other. Nothing. Old friends, at best. And this weekend was nothing more than a tiny, last-gasp blip on their flat-lined relationship. It was not evidence that there was life in it.

“No, of course not,” she said briskly.

“I thought not.” He studied her intently. “So, what do I do with them?”

He sounded genuinely perplexed, as if the decision-making king of the business world had finally butted up against a problem he couldn’t solve with a snap of his fingers or a flurry of memos. Grace found the uncertainty more appealing than she cared to admit. For Michael Delacourt to show his vulnerability, especially to her, was something worth noting.

“What options have you considered?” she asked, curious to know exactly where he was coming from. “And speaking of experts, why didn’t you just call the police and let them deal with the situation?”

To her relief, he looked genuinely appalled by the suggestion.

“They’re a couple of scared kids. How could I call the police? They haven’t done anything wrong.”

“They’ve run away for starters, and you don’t know that they haven’t done more,” she pointed out realistically. “They could have been roaming around for weeks breaking into places, stealing food, jewelry and who knows what else.”

“If they were stealing food, they weren’t much good at it. They were starved,” he said, ignoring the rest.

“Think back, Michael. All boys that age are starved at least a half-dozen times a day,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

She was still mystified by what he expected. “Look, Michael, what exactly do you want me to do?”

“Talk to them. Handle it. Figure out what’s going on. Get them back home.” He raked his hand through his thick, dark brown hair in a gesture of frustration that pretty much destroyed the usual neat style. “I don’t know.”

She found that appealing, too. Because her reaction irritated her, she snapped, “Just get them off your plate and onto mine, I suppose.”

His expression brightened. “Exactly.”

“Sorry, pal,” she said, getting to her feet. She needed to get out of here before she succumbed to Michael’s charm and the very real distress of those two boys. This was heartache she didn’t need. There were plenty of other people around who could step in here and solve this, professionals with nothing at stake except doing their jobs.

“I think handling a couple of kids ought to be a piece of cake for a man who controls a multinational corporation,” she said. “You’ll be good for each other. Consider it your good deed for the century. Just think, you’ll have it out of the way right at the start.”

With the pointed barb delivered, she skirted past him and aimed for the door. Conveniently, her overnight bag was still there. She’d barely made a grab for it, though, when he stepped into her path. Even though Michael went through life with an economy of movements, he had always been able to move as swiftly as a panther when he chose to. Apparently right now he was highly motivated.

“You can’t leave,” he protested.

“Oh, but I can.”

“Grace, don’t do this to me. You’re a lawyer. You know how to cut through red tape, get things done.”

She regarded him with amusement. “And you don’t? Please. Compared to convincing a foreign government to let you steal mineral rights, this is just a little inconvenience. Deal with it.”

“Do you want me to beg?”

She grinned at the prospect, then regarded him curiously. “An interesting possibility. Are you any good at it?”

“Let me give it a shot.”

He reached for her hand, pressed a kiss against her knuckles that sent shockwaves cavorting right through her. It wasn’t exactly begging, but she had to admit it was an excellent start. Something inside her was melting right along with her resolve.

“Please, Grace. Stick around through the weekend at least. Help me get a straight story out of those kids. Once we’ve figured out what to do, you can race straight back to Houston and I won’t bother you again for another half-dozen years or so.”

She withdrew her hand, because she didn’t like the sensations his touch was kicking off. “Nice try, but I’m not convinced yet that you really need me. Any old lawyer would do. Doesn’t Delacourt Oil have a slew of them on retainer?”

He frowned at that. “None like you.”

She regarded him with surprise. “I almost believe you mean that.”

“Believe me, Grace, I have never meant anything more, never needed you more,” he said with convincing solemnity. “Never.”

There was a time when those words would have made her pulse ricochet wildly. Unfortunately, they still had a disconcerting effect. Ignoring it, she shook her head and took another step back, a step toward putting a safe emotional distance between them.

“Maybe this will be good for you, Michael. Put you in touch with real human beings for a change.”

He appeared genuinely offended by the implication. “I deal with real human beings all the time.”

“You just don’t find them nearly as interesting as the bottom line, is that it?”

“You’re not being fair.”

“Probably not,” she agreed. “But we both know life isn’t always fair.”

His gaze locked on hers. “But you are, Grace. Fairness is what you’re all about. You fight for the underdog. Nobody knows that better than I do. I’ve seen you take some of my friends to the cleaners to make sure their ex-wives get what they deserve. Hell, you’ve taken me apart on the witness stand to pry out some ugly truths about friends of mine. We both know how tough you are when it matters. You handled that situation for Jeb’s wife when you thought the company was misjudging her. If it hadn’t been straightened out to your satisfaction, you would have fought like a tiger for her.”

“You lucked out. Brianna was in love with Jeb and he was smart enough to go to bat for her in the end. Otherwise we would have sued your pants off and won.”

He grinned. “That’s what I mean. You don’t care who you go up against, if you think the cause is just.”

“There’s a difference this time,” she said.

“What’s different?”

“You and I would be on the same side. I think I like it better when we’re battling on opposite sides,” she admitted candidly.

“Safer that way?” he inquired, an all-too-knowing glint in his eyes.

She was surprised that he could read her so well. “Smarter,” she corrected.

He regarded her with amusement. “You don’t still have a thing for me, do you, Grace? Being here with me isn’t dredging up old memories, is it?”

She bristled at the suggestion. “Of course not.”

“Then it shouldn’t be a problem, right?” he said, clearly laying down a challenge. “We’ll leave the past off-limits, stick strictly to the situation at hand.”

It rankled that he thought it would be so easy to avoid rekindling their old passion. But if he could spend this weekend with her and keep it impersonal, then she certainly could…or she would die trying.

“Fine,” she said, picking up her bag again, this time turning toward the stairs. “Okay, where’s my room? Since I’m staying, I’m obviously too beat to think straight. We’ll tackle this in the morning.”

And in the morning, maybe she’d be able to figure out why Michael Delacourt was the only male on earth who could still twist her right around his finger without even trying.

Chapter Three

Michael had never been so relieved to see anyone in his life as he had been to see Grace pull into the driveway the night before. The fact that his heart had done a little hop, skip and jump had been gratitude, nothing more, he assured himself. The woman was far too prickly for him to consider another run at anything more, especially when there were plenty of willing women who’d be grateful for his attention and who wouldn’t grumble if he had to cancel a date every now and again.

Not that he didn’t understand why Grace had been furious when he’d missed her law school graduation years ago. He’d known exactly how important that day was to her. She had struggled and sacrificed to go to college, worked herself to a frazzle to succeed. She had earned that moment of triumph, and he should have been there to witness it.

Even understanding all that, he’d gotten caught up in a tough negotiation and hadn’t even glanced at a clock until it was too late to make the ceremony. He’d apologized in every way he could think of, but she’d been unforgiving. Still was, as far as he could tell.

At the time, he’d told himself it was for the best. After all, how could a man in his position be expected to work nine to five? If he followed the workaholic example set by his father, his career was destined to be time-consuming. If Grace was going to be unreasonably demanding, it would never work out. Better to find that out before they were married.

He winced when he thought of how he’d tried to deftly shift all of the blame to her, tried to make her feel guilty for his neglect, as if it were her expectations that were at fault, not his insensitivity. No wonder she’d taken every opportunity since to make him squirm in court. He was amazed that she’d shown up here at all, much less stayed. But, then, Grace had too much grit, too much honor, to let her distaste for him stand in the way of helping someone truly in need.

One glance at those two boys and Michael had seen her heart begin to melt. Despite her tough exterior, she was a soft touch. Always had been. Even when she’d been struggling to pay tuition, refusing to accept so much as a dime from him, she’d never been able to turn away a lost kitten or a stray dog. She’d craved family the way some people needed sex. He’d counted on that to work in his favor when he’d called her.

And speaking of sex, being in such close proximity to her was going to be sheer torture. Just because he’d recognized that they weren’t suited for marriage didn’t mean that recognition shut off his hormones. The minute she’d stepped out of that rental car, looking annoyed and disheveled, he’d promptly envisioned her in bed with him, and in this scenario he was doing some very clever and inventive things to put a smile back on her face. He doubted she would have been pleased to know the direction of his thoughts.

He was none too pleased about them himself, since he’d been in an uncomfortable state of arousal ever since his first glimpse of her the night before. He figured an icy shower was going to be his only salvation and, if Grace was sticking around, he might as well get used to taking them. Uncontrollable lust or not, he had no intention of strolling down that particular dead-end road again. He had trouble enough on his hands with Jamie and Josh under his roof—or Trish’s roof, to be more precise about it.

He considered hanging around upstairs for a while longer, giving her plenty of time to solve the problem of the runaway kids, but guilt had him showered and dressed and on his way downstairs just after dawn. To his surprise, he was the last one up.

When he wandered into the kitchen, he found Grace blithely flipping pancakes for two wide-eyed and eager boys, whose blond hair had been slicked back and whose faces had been scrubbed clean. Grace’s influence, no doubt.

They were currently falling all over themselves to get the table set for her. Given the fact that she was barefoot and had chosen to dress in shorts and a T-shirt, he could understand their reaction. He was pretty darned anxious to do whatever he could to please her, too. Unfortunately, his ideas would have to wait for another time, another place…probably another lifetime.

“Grace says as soon as we eat, we’re going to talk about what to do with us,” Josh announced, sounding surprisingly upbeat about the prospect. Obviously he was crediting Grace with the good judgment not to do anything against his will.

“We’re not going back,” Jamie inserted direly, his gaze pointedly resting first on Michael, then on Grace. “So, if that’s what you’re thinking, you can forget it.”

Obviously he was not as willing to assume Michael’s good will or Grace’s powers of persuasion as his little brother was.

“Back to where?” Michael asked, hoping to get a quick, uncensored response.

Grace shot a warning look at him. “That’s enough for now. We’ll talk about it after breakfast,” she soothed, a hand resting gently on the boy’s shoulder. “We’ll all be able to think more clearly after we’ve eaten. How many pancakes, Jamie?”

“Four,” he said, his distrust clearly not extending to the matter of food.

“I want five,” Josh said.

“You can’t eat five,” Jamie countered. “You’re littler than me.”

“Can so.”

“How about you both start with four and see if you want more?” Grace suggested, deftly averting a full-scale war between the two boys. She turned her attention to Michael for the first time since he’d entered the kitchen. “And you?”

“Just coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.”

“The pancake offer only goes around once,” she advised him. “I’ll give you four, too. You look like you could use a decent breakfast for a change. You probably have the executive special back home.”

“What’s that?” Josh asked.

“Half a grapefruit and dry toast,” Grace said with obvious distaste. “Keeps them lean and mean.”

“Oh, yuck,” both boys agreed in unison.

It was too close to the truth for Michael to contradict Grace’s guesswork or the boys’ disgust. “Whatever,” he mumbled, pouring himself a cup of coffee and taking his first sip gratefully. It was strong, just the way he liked it.

When they were all seated at the round kitchen table, plates piled high with pancakes that had been drowned in maple syrup, Grace regarded Michael with interest. “In all the confusion last night, I forgot to ask. Where exactly are we? You said Los Piños on the phone. The pilot neglected to give me any details about our flight plan.”

“And we all know your sense of direction is seriously flawed,” Michael teased. “Los Piños is in west Texas. That’s the opposite side of the state from Houston, in case you were wondering.”

“How exactly did Trish manage to lure you over here before deserting you?”

“She didn’t. Tyler came into my office and nagged until he got me on the company jet under the pretense of bringing me over here for a big family reunion.”

“And you bought that, after what they did to you last time?” she asked, looking incredulous.

“What happened last time?” Josh asked, his face alight with curiosity, his overloaded fork hovering in midair.

“They took him off to a cabin in the woods and left him,” Grace said with a certain amount of obvious delight. “One whole week.”

“Cool,” Jamie declared.

“No cell phone. No TV. No newspapers. No financial news,” Grace added cheerily, as if she knew exactly what had driven him up a wall during those seven endless days. “Did they stock the refrigerator, or were you expected to catch your dinner in the lake?”

Michael scowled at her but didn’t bother to reply. He was not about to discuss his lack of expertise with a fishing rod or the fact that Trish had left him with a freezer filled with meals prepared and labeled, complete with microwave instructions.

“No TV?” Josh asked with evident shock. “What did you do?”

“Cursed my family for the most part,” Michael said. He’d also read half the books on the shelves, even the classics that he’d avoided back in school. “Could we drop the sorry saga of my sneaky relatives, please? Just thinking about it is giving me indigestion.”

“What amazes me is not their sneakiness, but your gullibility,” Grace said, ignoring his plea to end the topic. “Once, maybe, but twice? That radar of yours must be slipping, Michael. You’ve obviously lost your edge. I hope none of your competitors get wind of that.”

He frowned at her taunt. “My edge is just fine, thank you. I got you over here, didn’t I?”

She laughed. “Touché.”

“What does that mean?” Josh asked.

“It means he got the last laugh, at least for now,” Grace told him. “Now eat. Your pancakes are getting cold.”

Jamie regarded Michael worriedly. “If you’re here on some kind of vacation, does that mean this place ain’t yours?”

“No, it isn’t mine,” Michael said, in a probably wasted attempt to correct the boy’s pitiful grammar. “It belongs to my sister.”

“Oh,” Jamie said flatly. He looked as disappointed as if Michael had revealed that there was no Santa Claus. Of course, these two probably hadn’t believed in Santa for quite some time, if ever.

“Does that bother you for some reason?” Grace asked Jamie.

“It’s just that it’s real nice, the nicest place we’ve been in a while. Even the barn was real clean.”

“Were you hoping to stick around?” Grace inquired casually.

“Maybe,” Jamie admitted, clearly struggling to keep any hint of real hope out of his voice. “For a little bit. Just till we figure out what to do next. I gotta get a job if I’m gonna take care of me and Josh.”

Michael was about to question what sort of a job he expected to get at his age, but Grace gave him a subtle signal, as if she knew what he’d been about to say and wanted him to keep silent.

“Where’s home for you guys?” she asked instead, sneaking in the very same question she’d wanted Michael to back away from earlier.

“Ain’t got one,” Jamie said, returning her gaze belligerently.

“Okay, then, where did you run away from?” When they didn’t answer, she said, “You might as well tell us. Otherwise, we’ll just have to call the police so they can check all the missing persons reports.”

Josh regarded them worriedly. “If we say, can we stay here? I can do laundry and make my bed. We won’t be any trouble. Honest.”

It was already too late for that, Michael thought. He was harboring two runaways and a woman he had a desperate desire to kiss senseless. Talk about a weekend fraught with danger.

“No,” he said a little too sharply. He saw the look of betrayal in their eyes and felt like a heel. Before he could stop himself, he moderated the sharp refusal. “Tell us the truth and then we’ll talk about what happens next.”

“You’ll really listen to what we got to say?” Jamie asked skeptically.

“We’ll listen,” Grace promised.

“We gotta tell,” Josh said, regarding his big brother stubbornly. “Maybe they’ll let us stay.”

“I say we don’t,” Jamie insisted. “They’re grown-ups. They’ll just make us go back. They’ll say they gotta, because it’s the law or something. You want to be separated again, like last time?”

He seemed unaware of just how revealing his question was. Michael was uncomfortably aware of an ache somewhere in the region of his heart. These two were getting to him, no doubt about it. As for Grace, they’d clearly already stolen her heart. She was regarding them sympathetically.

“You were in foster care, weren’t you?” she guessed. “And not together?”

“Uh-huh,” Josh said, shooting a defiant look at his brother. “Nobody would take both of us last time or the time before that. They said we were too much trouble when we were together.”

“I’m old enough to look out for my own kid brother,” Jamie said, regarding them both with his usual belligerence. “We’ll be okay. You don’t have to do nothin’. Soon as we eat, we’ll go.”

“Go where?” Michael asked, feeling as if the kids had sucker punched him. He tried to imagine being separated from Dylan, Jeb and Tyler when they’d been the ages of these boys. He couldn’t. They were bound together by a shared history, by family and by the kind of fierce love and loyalty that only siblings felt despite whatever rivalries existed.

He focused his attention on Jamie, since he was clearly the leader. Josh would trustingly go along with whatever his big brother wanted. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Jamie said, drawing a shocked look from his brother.

“I’d guess thirteen, tops,” Michael said, turning to gauge Josh’s reaction, rather than Jamie’s. The boy gave him a subtle but unmistakable nod. “How about you, Josh? Eight? Nine?”

“Eight,” Josh admitted readily. He was apparently eager to provide any information that might persuade Michael and Grace to keep the two of them at the ranch. “Last week. That’s when Jamie came for me, on my birthday. We’ve always been together on our birthdays, no matter what. We promised.”

“And that’s a very good promise to try to keep,” Grace said. “Families should stick together whenever they can.”

As she said it, she kept her gaze locked on Michael. He got the message. There were now evidently three against one in the room should he decide to fight for an immediate call to the proper authorities. Grace wasn’t going to turn these two over to anybody who would separate them again, though how she hoped to avoid it was beyond him. There were probably a zillion rules about how to handle this, and he’d brought her here precisely because she knew them. Now she was showing every indication that she might just ignore all zillion of them. For the moment, however, it had to be her call. She was the expert.

“How long have you been in foster care?” she asked, apparently inferring from Michael’s silence that he was willing to withhold judgment until all the facts were in.

“Since Josh was four,” Jamie finally confessed. “We were together in the first place, but then they got mad at me, ’cause I wouldn’t follow all their stupid rules, so I got sent away to another family. They kept Josh till he ran away to find me. When they dragged him back, he cried and cried, till he made himself sick. Then they said they couldn’t cope with him either.”

Michael swallowed hard at the image of a little boy sobbing his heart out for his big brother. Instead of being treated with compassion, he’d been sent away. What kind of monsters did that to a child? He glanced at Grace and thought he detected tears in her eyes.

“How many places have you been since then?” she asked gently.

“Four,” Jamie said without emotion. “Josh has been in three.”

“Because you keep running away to be together?” Grace concluded.

“Uh-huh.”

“What happened to your parents?”

“We don’t got any,” Jamie said flatly. His sharp gaze dared his brother to contradict him.

Even so, Josh couldn’t hide his shock at the reply. “That’s not true,” he protested, fighting tears. “We got a mom. You know we do.”

“For all the good it does. She’s been in rehab or jail as far back as I can remember,” Jamie said angrily. “What good is a mom like that?”

“I’m sure she loves you both very much, despite whatever problems she has,” Grace said. “Sometimes things just get to be overwhelming and people make mistakes.”

“Yeah, like turning her back on her own kids,” Jamie said with resentment. “Some mistake.”

Michael was inclined to agree with him, but he kept silent. This was Grace’s show. She no doubt knew what to say under very complicated circumstances like this. He didn’t have a clue. He just knew he wanted to crack some adult heads together. The vehemence of his response surprised him. Grace was the champion of the underdog, not him. He’d wanted to distance himself from this situation, not get drawn more deeply into it. But with every word Jamie and Josh spoke, he could feel his defenses crumbling.

“Where are you from—I mean originally, back when you lived with your mom?” Grace asked the boys.

The question surprised him. He’d just assumed the boys had to be from someplace nearby. How else would they have wound up in Trish and Hardy’s barn? Realistically, though, how many foster homes were there likely to be around Los Piños? How much need for them would there be in a town this size, anyway?

“We were born in San Antonio,” Jamie said. “But we moved around a lot, even before Mom ditched us. I can’t even remember all the places. She liked big cities best because it was easier to get…” He shrugged. “You know…stuff.”

Michael was very much afraid he did know. He held back a sigh.

“And your last foster home?” Grace asked. “Was it near here?”

The boy shook his head. “Not really. When I got Josh, I figured this time we’d better get far away so they could never find us. I figured they’d just give up after a couple of days. It’s not as if anybody really cares where we are. We’ve been hitching rides for a while now. Like a week, maybe.”

“Yeah,” Josh said. “We must have gone about a thousand miles.”

“It’s only a couple of hundred, doofus,” Jamie said.

“Well, it seems like a lot. We didn’t get a lot of rides, so we had to walk and walk. Jamie wouldn’t get in a car with just anybody. He said we could only get in pickups where we could ride in the back.”

Michael listened, horrified. He saw the same sense of dismay on Grace’s face. Clearly, they both knew all too well what might have happened to two small boys on the road alone. Obviously Jamie, at his age and with his street smarts, understood the dangers as well, but it was also clear that he thought those were preferable to another bad foster care experience or another separation.

“We told the truth,” Jamie said, looking from Grace to Michael and back again. “You gonna let us stay?” He didn’t sound especially hopeful. His expression suggested he was ready to run at the first hint that Michael and Grace might not agree to let them stick around.

“Why don’t you boys go and check on the feed for the horses?” Michael suggested. “Grace and I need to talk things over and decide what’s best.” He scowled at Jamie. “And don’t get any ideas about taking off while we do, okay? We’ll work this out. I promise.”

He meant that promise more than he’d ever meant anything in his life.

Unfortunately, he had a feeling that the solution to this particular problem wasn’t going to come to them over a second cup of coffee. And judging from Grace’s troubled expression, she knew it, too.

Chapter Four

Grace wanted to cry. As the boys straggled dejectedly out of the kitchen as if the weight of the world were on their narrow shoulders, she couldn’t bear to meet Michael’s gaze. She was afraid if she did, the tears would come and she wouldn’t be able to stop them.

She identified with Josh and Jamie a little too much. She could remember exactly what it felt like to have no one around she could count on. After her father’s departure, her mother had sunk more and more deeply into a depression from which she never recovered. Grace had been eighteen when her mother died, a sad, lost woman.

Because for so many years Grace had been as much caregiver as child, she had felt the loss even more deeply, felt even more abandoned and alone. She blinked back tears at the memory of that time. She had been so frightened and so determined not to show it.

That was when she had met Michael and, for a time, she had felt connected. She had leaned on him, drawing strength from the attention he had showered on her, envisioning herself a part of his large family even though at that time she’d never met them.

But, in the end, he hadn’t been able to give her what she desperately needed—a storybook family in which she would come first with him, just as he did with her. Graduation day had been a brutal awakening for her. She had realized then that the only person she could truly count on was herself. She’d clung to her independence ever since, not wanting to risk more disillusionment with another man.

But while her lifestyle suited her now, she didn’t want that for Jamie and Josh, who were already far too used to fending for themselves. She wanted them to be surrounded by people who cared, people they knew would be there for them always.

“Grace?”

Michael’s concerned voice drew her back to the present. “What?” she said without glancing up.

“You okay?”

“Of course,” she said, forcing a brisk, confident note into her voice. It was her courtroom tone, the one she drew on so no judge or jury would ever sense a hint of vulnerability. Even so, she wasn’t quite ready to look him in the eye.

“This is a hell of a mess, isn’t it?” he said.

“Now there’s an understatement, if ever I heard one.”

“What are we going to do?”

Her gaze came up at that. “We?” she echoed, not bothering to hide her surprise. “I thought you intended to dump this into my lap.”

“Look, if you don’t want my help, that’s fine by me. Believe me, nothing would please me more that to turn this over to you and get on with my nice, peaceful vacation.”

She regarded him skeptically. “‘Peaceful’ and ‘vacation’ are not two words I normally associate with you,” she said. “You’re here under duress, remember?”

“The prospect has become considerably more appealing overnight.”

“How unfortunate, since we have a crisis on our hands,” she declared, emphatically echoing him.

“I knew it was a mistake the minute I said that,” he muttered.

He didn’t sound half as disgruntled as she was sure he meant to. In fact, he sounded like a man who’d unwillingly been deeply touched by what those boys had already been through in their young lives. For the first time ever, she thought maybe she knew Michael Delacourt better than he knew himself. She had always known that he possessed a heart. He just wasn’t in touch with it very often. He wouldn’t allow himself to be, because he wanted nothing to compete with the time he devoted to Delacourt Oil.

Those boys had reached him in a way she suspected he rarely allowed to happen. She wasn’t about to let him back away from the experience. Just as he was about to rise from his seat—probably intent on beating a hasty retreat—she put her hand on his.

“Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not getting out of this that easily.”

He sank back down with a sigh of resignation, then reached for a piece of paper. “Okay, what’s the game plan?” he asked.

He sounded as if he were strategizing a corporate takeover and wanted every detail nailed down in advance. He almost seemed eager to get started. Or maybe, she thought more realistically, he was simply anxious to get finished.

Despite Michael’s sense of urgency, Grace considered their options thoughtfully. “I’m going to make a few discreet inquiries,” she began slowly.

He regarded her worriedly, as if he already sensed that he wasn’t going to like the role she had in mind for him. “What about me?”

She regarded him with a certain amount of delight. “You’re going to go out there and see how much more information you can pry out of Josh and Jamie.”

“Such as?”

“A last name would be helpful. So would their mother’s name.”

“Grace, those two fell in love with you at first sight. They were all but falling all over themselves earlier to please you. If they wouldn’t talk to you, how do you expect me to get them to open up? They don’t trust me. The only reason they didn’t sneak away from here last night was because they were too exhausted to try.”

“It’s not too late to change that. You can become their new best buddy.” She looked him over carefully. He was in another pair of slacks with creases so sharp they could have cut butter and a shirt that probably cost more than everything in her suitcase. “One little suggestion, though, before you go outside.”

“I could use more than one suggestion, sweetheart. I need a damned manual.”

“You were a boy once, Michael. You had brothers. Surely you recall what that was like.”

“Of course, but Jamie and Josh are nothing like we were.”

“For good reasons.”

“I know that. What I don’t know is how to get through to them, especially Jamie. He’s got solid concrete walls built around himself.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Of course not, but—”

“Michael, give it up. You’re a bright man. You can do this. For starters, how about changing into a pair of jeans and some boots? Dressed like that, you’d intimidate a CEO. That outfit might be fine for an afternoon at the country club, but out here you are seriously overdressed.”

To her surprise he chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was wondering how long it was going to take before you tried to get me out of my clothes.” He winked at her on his way out of the room. “Turned out to take a whole lot less time than I’d imagined.”

Michael’s taunting good humor was short-lived. He exited the house in the jeans and scuffed boots he normally wore to the oil fields feeling about as confident as a man facing a firing squad.

He stood silently for a moment, drawing in a deep breath of the scented morning air. He had a feeling it was the first time in years he’d actually been aware of the air he was breathing. The last time had probably been at the beach house where he’d always enjoyed sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee and the scent of salty sea breezes surrounding him.

“Whatcha doing?” Josh asked, slipping up beside him and regarding him curiously.

“Trying to decide what that scent in the air is,” he admitted. “Take a deep breath and see if you can tell.”

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