Marrying a Delacourt Read Free Page B

image. Grace was a real piece of work, all right. She might be pint-sized and fragile-looking, but she had the soul and spirit of a warrior. It was a trait he suspected was going to come in handy.
    “You’ll come because you know I wouldn’t ask unless it was important,” he told her patiently. Then he dangled an impossible-to-resist temptation. “And you can hold it over my head for the rest of our lives, okay?”
    “Now that is an intriguing idea,” she said with considerably more enthusiasm. “Care to fill me in?”
    What a breeze, he thought triumphantly. Even easier than he’d anticipated. He hadn’t even had to pull out the big guns and tell her about the kids.
    “I’ll fill you in when you get here. Can you be at the airport in an hour? I’ll have the Delacourt jet fueled up and ready. The pilot can see to it that you find me once you land over here.”
    “Michael, really, there has to be someone else you could call, someone closer.”
    “There isn’t,” he assured her.
    “But I have plans. I’ve had them for ages. I hate to cancel.”
    Damn, she was still trying to wriggle off the hook. “No,” he said firmly. “It has to be you. This is right up your alley.” He sighed heavily, then added as if it were costing him a great deal to say, “I need you, Grace.”
    “Hah! As if I believe that for a minute. You’re overselling, Michael.”
    “Trust me. You’re the only one for this job.”
    This time she was the one who sighed heavily. “Okay, okay. When you start laying it on this thick, my curiosity kicks in. But I have to finish up what I’m doing here. Make it ninety minutes,” she said. “And, Michael, this is going to cost you. Big time.”
    “I never doubted it for a second,” he said.
    Only after he’d hung up did he stop to wonder why he’d instinctively turned to Grace, rather than his sister-in-law or one of the Adamses right here in town. He told himself it was because this situation all but cried out for a woman to deal with the two runaways, but he hadn’t gotten where he was in life by deluding himself. His sister-in-law was not only obviously female, but a doctor, as well.
    No, he had called Grace Foster, because as much of a pain in the butt as she was to him personally, she was the smartest lawyer he knew. If these boys were in some kind of trouble, he couldn’t think of a better ally than Grace.
    But it was even more than that, he admitted candidly. A part of him liked wrangling with Ms. Grace Foster more than just about anything except watching a new million-dollar gusher spewing crude into the Texas sky.

Chapter Two
    G race could hardly wait to hear what had caused Michael Delacourt to condescend to beg her for help. As annoyed as she was at being imperiously summoned across the state on a Friday night, her curiosity had gotten the better of her.
    And contrary to what she had deliberately led him to believe, he had not caught her in the middle of a pressing engagement. A long, boring weekend had stretched out ahead of her, so Michael’s call had been a welcome diversion, a chance to break out of the rut she’d fallen into in recent months. She slaved like crazy in court all week long, then did more of the same on weekends so she wouldn’t notice how truly barren her social life had become.
    But even better than a break in routine, the promised chance to hold this over the man’s arrogant, egotistical head for the rest of their lives had been an irresistible lure. Given the number of court cases on which they found themselves on opposing sides, it was an edge she couldn’t ignore.
    There was more to it, of course. There had been a time in the distant past when she had almost allowed herself to think about a future with Michael. But then she’d realized she would always play second fiddle to the family business. It was a role she flatly refused to accept.
    Grace had already spent an entire childhood trying to figure out why she hadn’t been smart enough or