“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.”