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had been. Even when she’d been struggling to pay tuition, refusing to accept so much as a dime from him, she’d never been able to turn away a lost kitten or a stray dog. She’d craved family the way some people neededsex. He’d counted on that to work in his favor when he’d called her.
    And speaking of sex, being in such close proximity to her was going to be sheer torture. Just because he’d recognized that they weren’t suited for marriage didn’t mean that recognition shut off his hormones. The minute she’d stepped out of that rental car, looking annoyed and disheveled, he’d promptly envisioned her in bed with him, and in this scenario he was doing some very clever and inventive things to put a smile back on her face. He doubted she would have been pleased to know the direction of his thoughts.
    He was none too pleased about them himself, since he’d been in an uncomfortable state of arousal ever since his first glimpse of her the night before. He figured an icy shower was going to be his only salvation and, if Grace was sticking around, he might as well get used to taking them. Uncontrollable lust or not, he had no intention of strolling down that particular dead-end road again. He had trouble enough on his hands with Jamie and Josh under his roof—or Trish’s roof, to be more precise about it.
    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