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, la 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."