Marrying a Delacourt by Sherryl Woods Read Free Book Online Page A

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
    G race 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