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,”