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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
    P IPPA 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