Marrying a Delacourt

“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.”