The ache in her throat was back with a vengeance.
Pippa scrubbed away the tears in her eyes and saw that the horse Leah usually rode was missing from its stall. That explained why the eldest Grayhawk girl at Kingdom Come—the one who’d been five years old when King married her mother—hadn’t been at breakfast. Leah had been tight-lipped whenever Matt or Pippa was around, but it was King she blamed—and gave the cold shoulder—for offering Kingdom Come to his prodigal son.
Leah had frequently shown her disapproval of her younger sisters’ behavior toward Pippa with a sharp look or a lifted eyebrow that usually nipped it in the bud. It hadn’t taken long for Pippa to realize that Leah was more a mother than a sister to her mother’s three daughters with King. It was a role she’d apparently taken on at ten years old, when their mother had run away with one of King’s cowhands.
Pippa quickly saddled a horse and rode out, determined to spend the day as far from her aunts as she could. Every story she’d heard about the four women since she’d arrived at Kingdom Come was fraught with calamity. That, combined with what she’d experienced herself over the past three weeks, made it easy to see why the locals had labeled her grandfather’s four youngest daughters “King’s Brats.”
Still, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. No wonder they’d turned out as they had, abandoned by their mother and with a father who’d apparently left the parenting to an older sister and the servants.
Pippa shook her head. Her sympathy was misplaced with those she-devils. The fact was that she’d always been too softhearted. Which made no sense when she’d grown up with a father who didn’t give second chances. She’d never understood how her dad could be so ruthless. But meeting her grandfather, dealing with his children, discovering their sense of entitlement, their arrogance, and their pride, she was beginning to see why her father might have turned out as he had.
Pippa caught her breath when she came around a bend and was greeted by the nearly fourteen-thousand-foot Grand Tetons. She loved the Australian Outback, but these majestic, snow-tipped mountains had to be one of the most beautiful sights in the world. She joined a trail that led along the edge of a forest of spruces and pines, feeling her body—and her soul—warm as the sun and her surroundings did their work.
She spied Leah in the distance, but she wasn’t alone. Pippa shaded her eyes to see if she could identify the other person on horseback riding with her aunt. She was shocked when she recognized the man. It was one of her father’s four Flynn cousins. She’d met two of them, Aiden and Brian. The Flynns lived on a large ranch that bordered Kingdom Come. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was Aiden Flynn. And he was…Oh, my God. He was leaning over to kiss Leah! At the last instant, Leah reared back out of reach.
Pippa realized she must have been mistaken in what she’d surmised. The first thing she’d learned when she’d arrived at Kingdom Come was that Grayhawks hated Flynns—and the feeling was mutual. The feud had started when King divorced his first wife, Jane Flynn, who later died of an overdose of barbiturates. In the aftermath of her death, Jane’s brother, Angus, had done his best to make life miserable for King Grayhawk, and once they were old enough, Angus’s sons and King’s daughters had joined in the fray.
Pippa couldn’t imagine why Aiden and Leah would be out riding together, much less kissing. As she watched, Leah and Aiden rode away in different directions. Leah must have accidentally run into Aiden, and they’d exchanged rancorous words. That must have been what she’d seen.
Pippa saw Leah turning in her direction and quickly angled her horse onto a narrow path that led into the concealing forest. The last thing she wanted was to run into another Grayhawk girl. She kicked her mount into a trot to take her farther away from her aunt and disappeared into a lush, evergreen wonderland, an ethereal world lit by dappled sunlight.
A half hour later, she passed through a gate set in a barbed-wire fence and emerged onto a blindingly bright, breathtakingly beautiful meadow decorated with white, yellow, and purple flowers. A herd of Black Angus cattle was scattered across it, munching grass.
In Australia, her father had raised Brahman cattle, and the sudden bawl of a calf searching for its mother brought a wistful look to her face. She watched as the cow and calf were reunited and the calf took suck. And felt all the sadness of being alone in a strange place well up inside her again.
She kicked her mount into a lope, following a creek that flowed along the lower end of the meadow, determined to outrun the feelings that were so unfamiliar to her. She tried to remember the last time she’d laughed. Too long ago, for sure.
Pippa firmed her jaw. She wasn’t going to let these Grayhawks get her down. She was going to make the best of her situation for herself and her child. Which reminded her that she needed to find a doctor in town and get a checkup. She’d been putting it off, wondering if she could trust a small-town doctor—and his nurse and receptionist—to be discreet.
Pippa was so caught up in her thoughts that she was nearly upon the other rider before she was aware of him. He pulled up his mount at the same time as she did.
Her heartbeat stuttered as she registered the fact that she was completely alone in the back of beyond. Common sense came to her rescue. The stranger was dressed like one of King’s cowhands in a buff cowboy hat, blue chambray shirt, fleece vest, jeans, chaps, and boots. His presence made perfect sense, considering the fact that she was riding across a meadow filled with cattle.
Then he smiled, his gray-green eyes crinkling at the corners, his lips uptilted more on one side than the other, and Pippa felt all the tension ease out of her.
“Good morning,” he said in a rich baritone voice. “What brings you here?”
Pippa realized she was smiling back. Her smile broadened as she said, “I’m just enjoying the sunshine.”
“Me too.” He held up a paper bag, then gestured toward a large pond surrounded on three sides by budding aspens and vivid evergreens. “I was going to eat breakfast. Want to join me?”
Pippa realized that her morning sickness had passed and that she was ravenous. A little tucker sounded wonderful. “Sure.”
He kicked his mount so they were riding side by side as they headed for the idyllic spot. “You must be one of the new arrivals from Australia.”
Pippa cocked her head. “How did you know?”
He laughed. “Your accent gives you away. I like it, by the way.”
Pippa liked his laugh and his smile. She liked the fact that he’d offered to share his breakfast. She liked the easy way he sat in the saddle and how one large, callused hand held the reins while the other rested on his muscular thigh. She especially liked the day-old beard on his jaw and his warm, moss-green eyes.
Pippa felt a surprising frisson of physical awareness skitter down her spine. She stared, wide-eyed, at the stranger beside her, suddenly breathless, conscious of a strong desire to know more about him. Pippa warned herself to be careful. She had no intention of letting another man into her life right now, especially one as charming as this cowboy.
They’d reached the pond, and he dismounted and tied his reins to a budding aspen branch. He crossed to catch the reins by her horse’s mouth as she dismounted and then tied her horse off next to his. Then, without making any attempt to touch her, he headed toward a broad, flat stone, the perfect height to sit on, at the edge of the pond.
“King had this stone put here,” he said as he dropped onto it.
“Why would he do that?” Pippa asked as she joined him on the sun-warmed river rock.
“I think he used to come here to be alone and think.”
“And he doesn’t anymore?”
He shot her a wry smile. “Nobody ever comes here these days but me and those cows.”
Pippa leaned back on her palms, inhaling the crisp scent of the pines and listening to the jays calling to each other in the evergreens as she watched two white trumpeter swans glide across the pond. “That’s a shame. It’s beautiful here.”
“You’re beautiful.”
Pippa sat up, startled by the compliment, and her eyes locked with the stranger’s.
He must have sensed her sudden wariness, because he grinned and added, “You fit right in with the mountains and the columbine and the pond and the forest.”
She exhaled with relief that he’d simply been comparing her looks with the beauty of their surroundings. She didn’t want to be admired as a woman. She wasn’t looking for another boyfriend. What she really needed was a friend. She hoped she could steer this chance meeting in that direction. “It’s all very breathtaking, isn’t it?”
Instead of answering, he took his hat off and laid it crown down on the rock behind him, thrusting his fingers through sun-shot chestnut hair that fell over his brow. Then he opened the bag and pulled out two items wrapped in tinfoil. He handed one to her, then unwrapped the other and took a big bite of what turned out to be a biscuit with ham.
Pippa unwrapped hers and took a small bite, unsure how her stomach would react. But everything tasted wonderful.
“I could have eaten this at home this morning,” he said, “but you have to admit there’s something about eating outdoors that makes everything taste better.”
He was smiling again, and Pippa felt herself smiling back again.
“How do you like living at Kingdom Come?” he asked.
She opened her mouth to admit the truth and shut it again. King’s Brats were mean as cat’s piss, but they were also her aunts. She didn’t want to bad-mouth her family to a stranger, especially one of King’s cowhands. She settled for saying, “It’s not what I expected.”
“Better? Worse?”
She shook her head, unwilling to be pinned down. “Just different.”
“Everyone is curious about how you’re getting along.”
Pippa stiffened. “Why is that?”
“It’s common knowledge that Matt brought a grown daughter home with him, but nobody’s seen hide nor hair of you in town.”
“I haven’t had any reason to go to town.” And having grown up driving on the opposite side of the road in Australia, she was still leery of traveling on the highway.
“To be honest, I don’t go to town much myself,” he admitted.
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “Prefer my own company, I guess.”
“Oh.” She felt surprisingly disappointed. Did that mean he wasn’t interested in making a new friend?
He lifted a brow and said, “What?”
She had nothing to lose by admitting the truth, so she said, “I was hoping we could be friends.”
He reached out and brushed a callused thumb across her lower lip. “Biscuit crumb.”
The explanation came too late to keep her entire body from surging to fiery life at his touch. Unsettled, Pippa rose to her feet, crushing the foil into a ball in her hand.
He rose as well, replaced his hat, tugging it low on his forehead, and then held out his hand. “I’ll take that.”
She dropped the foil into his hand, careful not to touch him.
“I’ve never had a female friend,” he said, looking directly into her eyes. “Sounds like something worth exploring.”
Pippa’s heart began racketing in her chest as though she were facing some feral animal. She knew she should run for the hills, but her feet refused to move. Then it was too late. He’d already turned and headed toward his horse. He untied and mounted it, then rode back to where she still stood by the stone.
“I come here now and again. Guess I’ll see you when I see you.” He touched a finger to his hat brim and said, “So long for now.”
“Hooroo,” Pippa called after him.
He glanced back over his shoulder, grinning at her use of the Australian goodbye, then turned and kicked his mount into a lope across the meadow in the opposite direction from which she’d come.
Pippa felt both excited and anxious as she watched the stranger ride away. He’d given her no way to contact him. She didn’t even know his name! What were the chances she would ever be here again at exactly the same time as he was? Slim to none.
And yet, he’d offered to be her friend, when a friend was exactly what she needed in this new home. She knew he came here in the mornings. Maybe it was time she started eating her breakfast far away from King’s Brats.
Pippa looked at her watch and then raced for her mount. By now Nathan would be up and hunting breakfast. At least for the short term, her little brother was her responsibility. There was no telling what kind of trouble he would get into if she wasn’t there to keep an eye on him.
Pippa felt happy—and hopeful—as she headed back into the forest. Next time she would ask the stranger’s name. And find out who he was and where he lived. And she would ask him all the other things she’d forgotten to ask because she’d been entranced by a lopsided smile and a pair of mesmerizing green eyes.
Chapter 3
PIPPA RACED HER mount across the meadow in the moonlit darkness as though the hounds of hell were after her. She replayed the terrible conversation with her father in her head as she made her way toward the retreat where she’d found peace over the past week. She’d escaped every morning to the pond, hoping to meet her new friend again. But the stranger had never returned.
Dinner had replaced breakfast as the worst part of her day, and tonight she’d reached her limit. Her father had merely asked Eve to move her herd of mustangs off land that he needed for quarter horses he’d purchased. Instead of saying, “Okay,” Eve had accused Pippa’s father of being heartless and demanded, “How can you be so cruel?”
Pippa had responded to the attack before her father could. “My dad doesn’t want anything to do with you Grayhawks. We had a great life in Australia until he showed up and lured my dad back here.” She’d jerked her chin toward her grandfather, then lurched to her feet and snarled, “I can’t wait till this year is up! Maybe then you’ll leave us alone and stop making my dad so sad.”
Her father hadn’t looked anywhere but at his plate. “Sit down, Pippa,” he’d said quietly, “and finish your supper.”
“I’m not hungry.” She’d thrown her napkin halfway across the table and marched out of the dining room, her stomach threatening to erupt.
Several hours later, hunger had forced her out of her room. Her father had caught her by the stairs on her way to the kitchen and said, “I can fight my own battles, Pippa.”
“You can, but you don’t,” she shot back. “How can you let them speak to you like that?”
“Lower your voice,” he hissed. “Do you want the whole house to hear?”
“I hate it here. I want to go home!”
“You know why you can’t do that.”
“It’s not as though I’ve committed some heinous crime. I’m just pregnant.”
“With a married man’s child!”
Pippa had been struck dumb by the ferocity of her father’s voice. And the blame she heard in it. “I loved him,” she’d replied softly. “When I ran away with him, I didn’t know he was married. He lied to me.”
He’d tipped her chin up with a forefinger until he could look into her eyes and said in a heartbreakingly sad voice, “The gossip would never have died. You’d have been an outcast the rest of your life.”
She couldn’t remember exactly what else he’d said, but his point was clear. There was no going back.
“You can start over here,” he said.
“And do what?”
“Whatever you want. You can give up the baby for adoption and—”
Pippa had jerked her chin free, her heart clutching at the thought of giving up her child. “Stop right there. Is that what you thought? That I’d give up my baby so no one would ever know what a shameless bitch I am? Think again! I’m having this baby. And I’m keeping it!”
She never heard the rest of what he’d said. She was already running. She’d grabbed her coat and left the house, muttering angrily to herself that she would love her child no matter who its father was. B
ut all the while, she felt chilled to the marrow of her bones at the thought that it simply might not be possible to separate her loathing for Tim from the child he’d sired.
She’d saddled a horse and galloped away, wishing there were some way she could keep on riding and never come back.
But she had nowhere to go.
Except the refuge she’d found where the ever-constant wind rustled in the evergreens and the elegant white swans came during the day to glide silently by. She wondered where the stranger was and what he was doing. And why he’d never come back to see her.
The pond seemed different at night. Eerie and fantastical, as though there were ghosts in the shadows. She stepped off her horse and tied the reins to a nearby pine, then headed for the perch where she’d first sat down with the stranger. She shivered as her jean-clad bottom hit the cold stone and wrapped her arms around herself to stay warm in her fleece jacket.
She put a hand to her belly and murmured to her unborn child, “I will find a way to put the past behind me. And I will love you with all my heart and soul and mind.”
But she wasn’t going to be able to live at Kingdom Come any more than she’d been able to stay in Underhill. Here everyone would know she was an unwed mother. She needed to go somewhere else. But where? And how?
Tears stung her nose and one fell onto her cheek. She angrily brushed it away. Tears solved nothing. She had to start planning a life for herself and her unborn child. But the enormity of the task ahead caused more tears to well in her eyes. Pippa covered her face and sobbed for her lost dreams of a husband who would love her and a child who would laugh and play in their happy home.
She heard a low growl and froze. She’d been warned that gray wolves stalked these mountains, along with cougars and bears. She’d felt safe riding through the forest during the day because she always made plenty of noise, knowing the wild animals would do their best to stay out of her way. She’d hardly given the danger a thought when she’d left the house tonight. She regretted that now.
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