COREY WAS TOO EXCITED TO EAT MORE THAN A FEW BITES OF her dinner, and when her grandmother remarked on it, the conversation at the large oak kitchen table came to a halt and everyone except Diana turned to her with concern. "You've hardly touched your dinner, Corey. Is anything wrong, dear?"

"No, nothing's wrong. I'm just not very hungry," she said.

"Are you in a hurry?" her mother asked.

"Why do you think that?" she asked innocently.

"Because you keep looking at your watch," Grandpa observed.

"Oh, that's because Diana and I are going over to the Haywards' to ride tonight," Corey said, feeling harassed by all this scrutiny. "Doug has a new polo pony, and we're going to watch him work in the ring. Mr. Hayward had big lights put up so the ring can be used at night, when it's cooler."

"A new polo pony!" her father exclaimed with a knowing smile at her perfect hair and carefully applied makeup. "I guess you're hoping to make a good impression on him when you see him for the first time."

To satisfy everyone, Corey had taken a large bite of chicken. Now she swallowed it and looked at her father with a puzzled smile. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, because your hair looks like you spent the day at the beauty shop, and you're wearing lipstick and that pink powdery stuff on your cheeks, and is that—" Suppressing a laugh, he peered at her eyelids. "Is that mascara I see on your lashes?"

"I don't think there's anything wrong with getting dressed up for a family dinner now and then, do you?"

"Certainly not," he agreed at once. Pretending to address his remarks to his wife, he said, "I had lunch at the club today, and I ran into Spence's grandmother. She was playing bridge in the ladies' card room."

"How is Mrs. Bradley?" Diana asked hastily. Spence had lived with his grandmother since he was a little boy, and Diana had a feeling she knew what her father was getting at. Trying to spare Corey the inevitable teasing, she added, "I haven't seen her in months."

"Mrs. Bradley is very well. In fact, she was in remarkably high spirits today. The reason she was in such—"

"She has so much energy for someone her age, doesn't she, Mom?" Diana asked.

Diana had rushed in, but her father wasn't going to be deterred. "—high spirits was because Spence surprised her by coming home for the weekend to celebrate her birthday with her."

"He's such a nice young man," Gram said. "So charming and thoughtful."

"And so fond of polo, too," Grandpa provided with a meaningful smile aimed straight at Corey. "And such a good friend of the Haywards, isn't he?" Four faces gazed at Corey with identical expressions of knowing amusement. Only Diana abstained.

"The problem with this family is that everybody pays too much attention to what everybody else is doing and thinking."

"You're right, dear," Gram said, giving Corey's shoulder an affectionate pat as she got up to help Glenna clear away the dinner dishes. "It's not good to eat on a nervous stomach. Why don't you run upstairs and fix your lipstick so it looks as nice as it did when you came down to dinner."

Relieved, Corey slid out of her chair and carried her plate over to the sink; then she headed upstairs. Over her shoulder, she said to Diana, "Let's leave in fifteen minutes."

Diana nodded, but her thoughts were on Cole. "Gram," she said, "can I take that leftover chicken to the Haywards'?"

Her grandmother said yes immediately, but at the table, her mother, father, and grandfather exchanged startled looks. "Diana," her father said, sounding baffled, "What would the Haywards do with our leftover chicken?"

"Oh, it's not for them," Diana said as she opened the refrigerator and took out several apples and oranges. "It's for Cole."

"Coal?" He repeated, nonplussed. "As in the black rock we used for fuel in the old days?"

Diana laughed. "No, Cole as in your friend Cole Martins," Diana explained, referring to a wealthy rancher friend of her father's. She opened the pantry doors, surveying the contents as she continued, "This Cole works at the Haywards' stable and lives there, too, but he's thin, and I don't think he wants to 'waste' what little money he has on food."

"Poor old feller," Grandpa said, filled with misplaced sympathy for the plight of the elderly.

"He's not old," Diana said absently as she eyed the rows of home-canned fruits and vegetables on the shelves. "He doesn't like to talk much about himself, but I know he is in college, and he's had to work to put himself through school." Diana glanced over her shoulder at her grandmother, who was already piling broiled chicken breasts and steamed vegetables into a large plastic container. "Gram, could I take some of your canned peaches and a few of these jams, too?"

"Yes, of course you can." Mrs. Britton wiped her hands on a towel and walked into the pantry to assist Diana. She got down a paper bag and put three jars of each item into it.

"The last time I brought Cole some of your strawberry preserves," Diana added, "he said it was better than candy, and he's crazy about candy."

Aglow at this praise from a hungry stranger, Mrs. Britton promptly added four more jars of strawberry preserves to the bag, then headed for an antique blue transfer ware china platter on the kitchen countertop. "If he likes sweets, he should have some of these blueberry muffins. There's no sugar and hardly any fat in them, so they're very healthy." She piled a half dozen of them on a plate. "Oh, and he really ought to have some of those hazelnut brownies I made yesterday."

When she reached for a second paper bag and headed back into the pantry, Diana stopped her. "I don't want him to think this is charity, Gram." With an apologetic grin, she added, "I have him completely convinced that you're sort of a 'compulsive canning addict' and that we always have piles of leftovers after every meal."

Grandpa had gotten up to refill his coffee cup, and he chuckled at Diana's fabrication. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he said, "He must think we're either addled or wasteful."

"I'm sure he thinks both," Diana admitted, blissfully unaware that her parents were eyeing her with barely concealed fascination. "I figured it was better to let him think that than to let him feel like a charity case," she explained with a smile as she picked up the heavy brown paper bag and wrapped both her arms around it.

"I haven't heard a word about this young man before tonight," her father said flatly. "What's he like?"

"Like? He's… well… he's different—from any of the other boys we know."

"Different how?" her father asked. "Different as in a rebel—a renegade—a malcontent?"

Diana considered that from the kitchen doorway, shifting the heavy bag into her right arm for better balance. "He's probably a renegade, but not in a bad way. He's…" She looked at them, and finally added, "… special. He's just special. I can't explain why or how, but I know he is. He's not like the other boys I've known. He seems much older, more worldly. He's—he's just not like any other boy," she finished lamely. She wiggled her hand in a cheerful wave, too eager to be on her way to notice the speculative looks on the faces she left behind. "Bye, everybody."

After several moments of silence, her father looked from his wife to his in-laws. "I happen to like the other boys she's known."

"This one is different," Gram echoed.

"Which is why I feel sure I won't like him."

"Robert," big wife soothed, "this is the first young man Diana has showed a particular interest in, and you're a little jealous. You acted the same way last year when Corey started talking about Spence all the time."

"I'm used to that now," he said, a little disgruntled. "I never thought in my wildest dreams her crush on Spence would last a month. It's lasted a year, and it's gotten worse, instead of better."

"She thinks she's in love with him," Mary Foster said wryly.

"She thought she was in love with him the night she met him. Now she's sure she wants to marry him. Have you looked in her bedroom lately? She's wallpapered her walls with his pictures. She's turned it into a shrine. The whole thing's ridiculous."

Grandpa Britton shared a little of his son-in-law's pique over being replaced in the girls' lives by other males. "Corey will get over it. It won't last. Girls don't fall in love when they're fourteen; they only think they're in love."

His wife picked up a pencil to put the finishing touches on a simple but elegant stencil design she was creating for a border along the top of the guest bathroom walls. "Henry, I fell in love with you when I was fourteen."

Robert Foster had lost the thread of the conversation. Staring toward the doorway where he'd last seen Diana, he said, "Was it just me, or did it look to anyone else like Diana was blushing when she talked about that stableboy?"

"College student," Mary corrected quietly; then she laid her hand over his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He relaxed and smiled sheepishly. "It's just that I have such big plans for the girls. I don't want them to get absorbed with boys and all that too early to realize what they'll miss if they get married too young."

"Don't make any plans for Corey," Gram said dryly. "She's already made her own. She wants to marry Spence, and she wants to become a famous photographer."

"Not, I hope, in that order," Robert said.

Gram ignored that. "As for Diana, I can see her becoming an interior designer, or maybe an architect, or maybe a writer. She has a lot of talent for all of those things, but she doesn't seem too eager to be any of them. I hate to see gifts like hers go to waste."

"Her real gift won't go to waste," he argued. When everyone looked expectantly at him, he said proudly, "She may have gotten her mother's artistic eye, but she has my brain. In time, she'll find her own ways of putting it to use. She's always been interested in business."

"Business is good," his wife said with a nod and a smile.

"Business is very good," Grandpa said.

The women looked at each other and both of them got up. "There's only a half hour of daylight left, Mom. I could use some advice about the table arrangements."

Mrs. Britton hesitated and looked at the men. "Are you both sure you don't want some fresh strawberries with yogurt topping for dessert?"

"I couldn't eat another bite," Mr. Foster said.

"Me, either," Henry Britton agreed, patting his stomach to indicate it was stuffed to capacity. "You're right about these all-natural, low-fat meals, Rosie. They're very satisfying once you get used to them. That broiled chicken hit the spot; it really did. You girls go ahead outdoors and do what you need to do."

The two men sat there in innocent silence, listening for the sound of the back door opening. The moment it closed behind their wives, they got up. Robert Foster headed straight for the freezer and took out French vanilla ice cream, while Henry Britton hurried to a lower cupboard and removed a Dutch apple pie that Glenna had bought at the bakery earlier and hidden there for them.

Henry cut into the deep-dish pie and glanced at his coconspirator. "Large piece or medium?" he asked his son-in-law.

"Large."

Henry cut two hefty pieces of the pie and laid them carefully on plates, while Robert dug the ice cream scoop deep into the container and came out with a heaping portion.

"One scoop or two, Hank?"

"Two," Henry said.

They glanced up at Glenna as she moved efficiently around the kitchen, tidying up. "You're a saint, Glenna."

"I'm a traitor."

"You have job security for as long as I live," Robert countered with a grin.

"Your wives would fire me if they knew what you two make me do."

"We'd hire you right back," Henry said, closing his eyes and savoring the sublime taste of forbidden sugar and fats. He looked at his son-in-law, whose expression of utter contentment matched his. "I thought Mary and Rose were never going to leave us alone in here tonight. I was afraid we'd have to wait until after they'd gone to sleep to raid the kitchen."

Outside on the lawn, Mary stood with her back to the kitchen window, discussing rearranging the tables for tomorrow night's party. "I think we should," Rose said. "I'll get Henry and Robert to help us."

"Not yet," Mary said dryly. "They haven't finished their dessert."

Rose plunked her hands indignantly on her hips. "What is it this time?"

"Dutch apple pie."

"We ought to fire that Glenna. Before Conchita retired, she kept Glenna out of the kitchen."

Mary sighed with resignation and shook her head. "Glenna's only following orders. Besides, they'd just hire her back. Except for the desserts they sneak, we've got them both on a sound low-fat diet, and I know Robert sticks with it at breakfast and lunch." She started to move the heavy table into position a little at a time, and Rose pitched in to help her. "His doctor told him yesterday that his cholesterol level was finally coming down," Mary added.

"What about his blood pressure?"

"Don't ask."