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  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. In fact, he got all choked up.” Diana looked down at her lap and drew a long breath, then lifted her eyes to Corey’s. “Did you mention to your mom about me calling her Mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “She said you’re wonderful,” Corey replied, rolling her eyes in feigned disagreement.

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “She couldn’t,” Corey replied. “She was crying.”

  The two girls eyed one another in smiling silence, then, as if by mutual agreement, flopped onto their backs. “I think,” Diana said after a moment’s contemplation, “this could turn out to be really, really cool!”

  Corey nodded with absolute conviction. “Totally cool,” she proclaimed.

  Yet later that night, as she lay in her own bed, Corey found it hard to believe that things had turned out so well with Diana.

  Earlier that day, she would never have believed it was possible. When Diana’s father had married Corey’s mother after a two-week courtship and brought his new wife and daughter to his Houston home, Corey had dreaded meeting her stepsister. Based on what little she’d already discovered about Diana, Corey figured they were so different they were probably going to hate each other. Besides being born rich and growing up in this huge mansion, Diana was a year older than Corey and a straight-A student; and when Corey took a peek into Diana’s feminine bedroom, everything was so neat it gave her the creeps. Based on what she’d heard and seen, she felt sure that Diana was going to be disgustingly perfect and a complete snob. She was even more sure Diana was going to think Corey was a dumb hick and a slob.

  Her first glimpse of Diana when she walked into the foyer this morning had confirmed Corey’s worst fears. Diana was petite, with a narrow waist, slim hips, and real breasts, which made Corey feel like a deformed, flat-chested giant by contrast. Diana was dressed like a model from Seventeen. magazine, in a short tan skirt, cream-colored tights, and a tan-and-blue plaid vest topped off by a jaunty tan blazer with an emblem on the front. Corey was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

  And yet, despite Corey’s absolute conviction that Diana would be a conceited snob, Diana had been the one who broke the ice. It was Diana who had admired Corey’s hand-painted sweatshirt with the horse on the front, and Diana who’d first admitted that she’d always wanted a sister. Later that afternoon, Diana had taken Corey over to the Haywards’ house so Corey could take pictures of the Haywards’ horses with the new camera Diana’s father had given her.

  Diana didn’t seem to resent the fancy camera her father had bought for Corey or hate the idea of sharing him with Corey. And if she thought Corey was a dumb hick, she definitely hadn’t shown it. Next week, Diana was taking her to Barb Hayward’s birthday party, where everyone was going to ride horses. Diana said her friends would become Corey’s friends, too, and Corey hoped she was right.

  That last part didn’t matter nearly as much as having a sister so close to her own age to spend time with and talk to—and Corey wouldn’t be doing all the taking either—she had some things to give Diana. For one thing, Diana had led an awfully sheltered life, in Corey’s opinion. Earlier that day, she’d admitted she’d never climbed a really big tree, never eaten berries right off the vine, and never skipped rocks across a pond.

  Closing her eyes, Corey sighed with relief.

  Chapter 2

  COLE HARRISON LOOKED OVER HIS shoulder at Diana Foster, who was hovering in the open doorway of the stable, her hands clasped behind her back, watching her new stepsister in the riding ring with the other girls who were attending Barbara Hayward’s birthday party. He picked up a brush and a currycomb and stopped on his way into one of the stalls. “Would you like me to saddle a horse for you?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” she replied, and her soft voice was so very polite and adult that Cole bit back a smile.

  He’d been working as a groom at the Hayward estate for the last two years while he went to college, and during that time, he’d seen and heard enough to form some strong impressions about the teenage daughters of Houston’s ultra-rich. Among those observations was that the thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls who hung around with Barbara Hayward were all crazy about boys and crazy about horses, and they were desperately eager to perfect their skills with both. In addition to their obsession with boys, they were totally obsessed with their looks, their clothes, and their status with their peers. Their personalities ranged from giddy to sulky, and although they could be charming, they were also demanding, conceited, and catty.

  Some of the girls were already raiding their parents’ liquor cabinets, most of them wore too much makeup, and all of them tried to flirt with him. Last year, their efforts had been amusingly clumsy and easy to deflect, but they were becoming bolder as they grew older. As a result, he was beginning to feel like a sex object for a bunch of single-minded, precocious adolescent girls.

  That wouldn’t have been nearly as exasperating if they’d restricted themselves to blushing and giggling, but lately they’d progressed to come-hither looks and languishing stares. A month ago, one of Barbara’s friends had taken the lead in the “chase” by boldly asking Cole’s opinion on French kissing. Haley Vincennes, who was the unchallenged head of the clique, instantly reclaimed her position as lead by informing Cole that she thought he had “a great butt.”

  Until a week ago, when Diana Foster brought her new stepsister down to the stable to introduce her to Barbara, Cole had rarely seen Diana, but the petite brunette had always struck him as a refreshing exception. Everything about her was appealing and wholesome, and yet he sensed there were depths to her that the other girls lacked. She had hair the color of dark copper and a pair of startlingly large, long-lashed eyes—clear, luminous, mesmerizing green eyes that regarded him, and the rest of her world, with genuine interest. They were expressive eyes, bright with lively intelligence, glowing with wit, and yet filled with a sweetness that never failed to make Cole feel like smiling at her.

  When he’d finished brushing the mare, Cole patted her flank and left the stall, closing the heavy oak door behind him. As he turned to put the currycomb and brush on a shelf, he was surprised to see that Diana hadn’t left. She was still standing in the doorway, her hands clasped tightly behind her back, her expression anxious as she observed the noisy activities in the riding ring and the practice area outside it.

  She was looking so intently at whatever she was watching that Cole leaned to the left to get a better angle of the riding ring. At first, all he noticed was twenty girls who were laughing and shouting as they watched each other trotting in figure eights or jumping low hurdles. Then he noticed that Corey, Diana’s new stepsister, was completely alone at the far side of the corral. Corey shouted a compliment to Haley Vincennes as she rode past with three other girls, but Haley stared right through Corey as if a compliment from her was completely meaningless, then said something to the other girls that made them look at Corey and laugh. Corey’s shoulders drooped; she turned her horse and trotted out of the ring as if she’d been verbally ejected instead of silently shunned.

  Diana’s hands tightened convulsively behind her back, and Cole saw her bite down hard on her lower lip, reminding him of a distressed mother bird who knows her chick isn’t doing well outside the nest. He was both surprised and impressed by Diana’s obvious dismay over her new stepsister’s plight, but he also knew her hope of seeing Corey accepted was probably futile.

  He’d been present last week when she first brought Corey down to the stables and introduced her to Barbara and several of the other girls who’d come to the stable to see a new foal. He had witnessed the stunned silence that followed Diana’s introduction, and he’d seen the expressions of hostile superiority as the young debutantes-to-be discovered Corey’s background and judged her an inferior.

  That day, Diana had seemed to take for smiling granted that Corey would be made welcome by her wealthy friends. In Cole’
s opinion, she was in for some sharp and lasting disappointments, and based on Diana’s worried frown now, she was arriving at the same conclusion.

  Touched by the intensity of the emotions playing across her expressive face, Cole tried to distract her. “Corey’s a pretty decent rider. I don’t think you have to watch her that closely or worry about her.”

  She turned partway around and gave him a reassuring smile. “I wasn’t worrying just then; I was thinking. Sometimes I frown when I think.”

  “Oh,” Cole said, trying to protect her dignity by pretending he believed her. “A lot of people do that.” He thought for something else to say. “What about you, do you like horses?”

  “Very much,” she said in her strangely adult and oddly endearing way. With her hands still clasped behind her back, she turned fully toward him, obviously willing to continue the conversation. “I brought them a bag of apples,” she added, nodding toward a large brown sack just inside the door.

  Since she apparently preferred to feed them, not ride them, Cole leapt to the obvious conclusion. “Do you know how to ride?”

  She surprised him again by nodding. “Yes.”

  “Let me see if I have this straight,” he joked. “When you come here, you don’t ride, even when all your friends are riding, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And you do know how to ride, and you do like horses very much. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “In fact, you like horses so much that you bring apples for them, right?”

  “Right again.”

  He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and studied her curiously. “I don’t understand,” he admitted.

  “I like them much better when I’m on the ground.”

  There was embarrassed laughter in her voice, and it was so contagious that Cole grinned. “Don’t tell me—let me guess. You were thrown and got hurt, is that it?”

  “You got it,” she admitted. “I rushed a fence and got a broken wrist.”

  “The only way to get over your fear is to get right back on,” Cole lectured.

  “I did that,” she assured him gravely, but with a twinkle in her green eyes.

  “And?”

  “And I got a concussion.”

  Cole’s stomach growled, and his thoughts shifted to apples. He lived on a tight budget, and he seemed to have an appetite that was never satisfied. “I’d better put that bag of apples away before it gets stepped on or someone trips over it,” he said. Harrison picked up the bag and started toward the rear of the stable, fully intending to share in the horses’ bounty. As he passed one of the stalls near the end of the long aisle, an ancient named Buckshot put his head out over the door, his eyes hopeful and inquisitive, his soft nose aimed at the bag in Cole’s arm.

  “You can’t walk and you can’t see, but there’s nothing wrong with your sense of smell,” Cole told the horse as he dug an apple out of the bag and gave it to him. “Just don’t go telling your stablemates about these apples. Some of them are mine.”

  Chapter 3

  COLE WAS PUTTING FRESH HAY into the empty stalls when several of the girls who’d been riding marched into the stable. “Diana, we need to talk to you about Corey,” Haley Vincennes announced. Cole looked up from his chore, took one look at the group, and knew that the all-girl jury was about to deliver their verdict. And it wasn’t going to be a good one.

  Diana obviously sensed it, too, and tried to head them off, her voice sweet and persuasive. “I know you’ll all like Corey when you get to know her, and then we’ll all be good friends.”

  “That just can’t happen,” Haley decreed with haughty finality. “None of us have anything in common with somebody from a hick town we’ve never even heard of. I mean, did you see that sweatshirt she was wearing last week when you brought her over here? She said her grandmother painted that horse’s head on it for her.”

  “I liked it,” Diana said stubbornly. “Corey’s grandmother is an artist!”

  “Artists paint on canvases not sweatshirts, and you know it. And I will bet you a month’s allowance those jeans she’s wearing today came from Sears!”

  A chorus of murmured laughter from the other girls was proof they agreed; then Barb Hayward finally added her vote to the majority opinion, but she looked a little timid as she decreed poor Corey’s fate: “I don’t see how she can be our friend, or yours either, Diana.”

  Cole winced with empathy for Corey and with sympathy for poor little Diana, who he was certain would buckle under the intense peer pressure, but poor little Diana didn’t give an inch, even though her voice never lost its softness. “I’m really sorry you all feel that way,” she said sincerely, directing her words to Haley, who Cole already knew was the leader in this and the nastiest of the dissenters. “I guess I never realized you’d be afraid of the competition if you gave her a chance.”

  “What competition?” Barb Hayward asked, looking baffled but concerned.

  “Competition with boys. I mean, Corey is very pretty, and she’s lots of fun, so naturally the boys are going to be hanging around her wherever she goes.”

  In the stall across from the girls, Cole paused, pitchfork in hand, a smile of admiration on his mouth, as he realized Diana’s strategy. As he’d learned while working there, boys were the most desirable, most valued of commodities to teenage girls, and the possibility that Corey might attract more boys into their collective lair was almost irresistible. He was wondering if that possibility wouldn’t be outweighed in their minds by the threat that Corey might steal their existing boyfriends, when Diana interjected smoothly, “Of course, Corey already has a boyfriend back home, and she isn’t interested in having another one here.”

  “I think we should give her a chance and take some time to get to know her before we make up our minds we don’t want her in the group,” Barb said in the earnest, hesitant tone of a girl who knows the difference between right and wrong, but who lacks the courage to be a leader.

  “I’m so glad!” Diana said happily. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down. If you had, I’d have missed all of you—I’d have missed sharing some of my best clothes with you, and missed having you go with us to New York next summer.”

  “Missed us? What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Corey is going to be my best friend. And best friends have to stick together.”

  When the others left to return to the party, Cole strolled out of the stall, startling Diana. “Tell me something,” he said with a conspiratorial grin. “Does Corey really have a boyfriend back home?”

  Diana nodded slowly. “Yes.”

  “Really?” Cole asked dubiously, noticing the guilty laughter in her sparkling eyes. “What’s this boyfriend’s name?”

  She bit her lip. “It’s sort of an odd name.”

  “How odd?”

  “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

  Enchanted with her face, her voice, her loyalty, and her cleverness, Cole drew an X over his heart with his index finger.

  “His name is Sylvester.”

  “And he’s a—?” Cole prompted.

  Her gaze mischievously slid away from his, her curly russet lashes casting shadows on her cheekbones as they lowered over the jade of her eyes. “A pig,” she confessed.

  Her voice had been so low, and Cole had been so certain that Sylvester was a dog or cat, that he thought he had misunderstood. “A pig?” he repeated. “As in oink? As in piglet?”

  She nodded. “As in ‘hog,’ actually,” she admitted as she lifted glowing green eyes to his. “Corey told me he’s huge, and he tags after her at home like a cocker spaniel. At her old home, I mean.”

  At that moment, Cole decided that Corey was a very lucky girl to have a diminutive but potent champion like Diana Foster to help her bridge the social gulf. Unaware of his silent compliments, Diana glanced at him. “Is there anything to drink in here? I’m really thirsty.”

  Cole smiled. “Deceit is hard work, isn’t it? And there’s nothing like going to b
attle against a half-dozen stuck-up girls to work up a thirst, is there?”

  Unabashed, she rolled her eyes at him and smiled. She was spunky as hell, Cole decided, but with a unique soft-spoken style that completely belied her determination and courage. “Sure,” he relented, tipping his head to the rear of the stable. “Help yourself.”

  At the end of the hallway, on the right, Diana found a small room that she assumed was Cole’s, with a single bed made up with military perfection and an old desk with an ancient lamp. Books and papers were neatly stacked on the desk and one of them was open. Opposite the bedroom, to the left of the hallway, was a bathroom and tucked behind that was a kitchen area containing only a sink, a small stove, and a miniature refrigerator like the one under Diana’s father’s bar at home. Diana assumed the refrigerator would be stocked with soft drinks for everyone’s use, but when she opened it, there was nothing inside but a package of hot dogs, a carton of milk, and a box of cereal.

  She was surprised to see that he kept his cereal in the refrigerator and even more surprised that although this refrigerator was obviously for his use he didn’t keep much food in it. Puzzled, she closed the door and filled a paper cup up with water from the sink. When she dropped the cup into the little trash can, she saw two apple cores in it. The apples she brought had been old and soft and completely unappetizing, and she couldn’t imagine why he would eat one, let alone two of them. Unless he was hungry. Very, very hungry.

  The empty refrigerator and the apple cores were on her mind as she paused to pet a pretty palomino quarter horse; then she returned to the stable entrance to see how Corey was doing. Three girls were talking to her near the corral.

  “Do you think you should go out there, in case she needs more help?”

  “No, Corey will be fine. She’s really great, and they’ll find that out. Besides, I don’t think she’d like it if she thought I was sort of . . . helping things along.”

  “You’re quite a ‘helper outer,’ ” Cole joked, then realized she was embarrassed, and hastily said, “What if they decide they don’t like her?”