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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