Marrying a Delacourt by Sherryl Woods

We’ll leave things as they are for the time being. Are you ready to talk about what you found out today?” he asked instead.
    “Not just yet,” she said, her attention seemingly riveted on the dishes in the sink. “Why don’t you go on out to the deck? I’ll join you after I’ve finished here and said good-night to Jamie and Josh.”
    He nodded, sensing that she needed the time alone to gather her composure. Because he couldn’t think of any other way to help her, he gave her shoulder a light squeeze, took his glass of wine and went outside.
    That didn’t mean he could shake the vision of the strongest woman he knew looking as if she wanted desperately to cry. Worse, no matter what she said, he knew he was the one responsible for turning her heart inside out yet another time. What he didn’t know was how to make any of it right…or precisely why he wanted to so badly.
     
    Grace didn’t know how to cope with being needed. Oh, sure, her clients needed her. They came to her during an emotional crisis in their lives, but what they needed was legal advice, an advocate in the courtroom, someone impartial who would stand up for them against injustice. They needed Grace Foster, Attorney-at-Law, not Grace Foster the woman.
    Jamie and Josh were different. While Michael might have turned to her for her legal expertise, the boys needed something else. They needed someone to care about them, someone they could love and trust.
    Josh, still an innocent at eight, was already turningto her for that. Jamie—older, wiser, less trusting—was more cautious. It was as if he recognized that she might like them, but that she was also in a position to turn their lives upside down again. She didn’t know how to risk giving them what they needed without setting them up for another possible disappointment. All she could do was play it by ear, one second at a time. She would not allow Michael to interfere in that. He’d brought her over here. He would just have to accept her decisions.
    The boys had already fallen asleep by the time she finished the dishes and climbed the stairs. She leaned down and pressed a light kiss to Josh’s cheek, then stood staring down at Jamie. His blond cowlick was standing up, but his face was more at peace than usual. Long lashes were smudges against his pale cheeks. She smiled at those dark lashes. He was going to be a heartbreaker one day soon. He would grow up, flesh out his lanky frame with muscle, and bestow that rare, dimpled smile of his on some girl who’d fall in love just at the sight of it. Grace had the feeling that whatever happened in the next few days would make all the difference in whether Jamie accepted that love or turned away.
    “Sweet dreams,” she whispered to him, brushing a gentle hand over his mussed hair.
    As if he heard her, he mumbled something in his sleep, then shifted restlessly away from her touch. Grace sighed.
    After casting one last look at the Miller brothers, she switched off the overhead light and left the room. Now she just had to go back downstairs and face Michael.
    What was she going to say to him? After their earlier conversation how could she tell him that she had no intention of calling anyone, not tonight certainly and maybe not even tomorrow, although she knew the time had come to advise the authorities that Jamie and Josh Miller had been found? Michael would be appalled, not only by her lapse of ethics, but by what it said about her emotional involvement. He already suspected she was in too deep.
    Desperate to avoid a conflict with him, she sorted through every alternative she could think of. Maybe she could legitimately buy the boys another day or two here with them through some fancy legal footwork, but after that there would be no choice, she finally concluded with a sigh. Unless she and Michael could come up with another alternative, the boys would have to go back into the foster care system.
    Realistically, they would probably be separated again, too.