Prologue

Pippa Grayhawk was the best horse whisperer in Australia. She’d spent most of her nineteen years taming brumbies—­ wild horses—­on her father’s ­remote cattle station in the Northern Territory.

She was so good with animals that the wildest stallion was soon gentled and eating from her hand. But when it came to men—­or rather, one particular man—­her instincts had utterly failed her.

Pippa whimpered as she pressed a frigid bag of ice against the painful bruise high on her cheek. She’d made a terrible mistake, but one she would never make again. A flush of shame heated her face. How gullible she’d been! How naive! She gritted her teeth to still the quiver in her chin. From now on, she would know better than to trust. She would know better than to give her heart so freely. No man was ever going to hurt her again.

Pippa’s heartbeat ratcheted up a notch when she heard a knock on the door. No one knew where she was. Two days ago, she’d run away from home with one of her father’s wranglers, Tim Brandon. They’d checked into a hotel room in Darwin, which was when Tim had shown his true colors.

Pippa stared at the door, wondering if it was Tim, returning to apologize. He’d walked out in a huff an hour ago—­after slapping her hard enough to cause the bruise on her cheek.

“How the hell did you get pregnant?” he’d ranted. “You told me you were taking precautions.”

“I did,” she’d protested. “I was sick in the middle of the month, remember? I couldn’t’t keep anything down. The pills must have come back up with everything else. What does it matter?” she’d said. “We’re going to be married anyway.”

“No, we’re not.”

Pippa’s heart had nearly stopped at Tim’s announcement. Before she’d given herself to him the first time, he’d told her he loved her. He’d told her he couldn’t wait to marry her so they could start a family together. Was he really taking it all back? “What do you mean?”

Tim stuck his balled fists on his hips and shot her an irritated look. “I can’t marry you, Pippa.”

“But you promised!” she cried, fearful and frantic at his about-­face. All the promises he’d made—­that he loved her, that he planned to take care of her for the rest of her life, that he would be a wonderful husband, that they would have a wonderful life together—­had persuaded her to give him her virginity. She’d waited to part with that precious gift until she’d met the man she planned to marry. She was having trouble wrapping her head around the fact that she’d offered something priceless to someone who’d trampled on it.

And she had no one to blame but herself.

Her father had warned her to stay away from his hired hands. But Tim had been so friendly—­and so good-­looking—­ that she’d spent more and more time seeing him behind her father’s back. Being held in a man’s arms for the first time had made her tremble. Kissing him had left her breathless. She’d honestly believed that Tim cherished her.

How could she have been so wrong?

She reached out her hands in supplication to the inexplicably angry man standing across from her and said, “I love you. You said you love me.”

Tim sneered. “You stupid little ninny. I told you what you wanted to hear to get into your pants. There’s no way I’m marrying you!”

“Why not?” she asked, confused and hurt and still unwilling to believe that the man she loved could be so cruel.

“Because I’m already married!”

Pippa’s heart had physically hurt, as though someone had punched her in the chest. She thought she literally might die from the humiliation of having been so completely duped. “What about the baby?” she asked past the excruciating lump in her throat.

“Give it away or throw it away. I don’t care.”

Enraged at how easily Tim had dismissed the child they’d created, she lashed out at him with her palm. He easily ducked so she missed his face, but his hand shot out and caught her cheekbone, causing her to see stars. Tears of pain sprang to her eyes, joining the tears of distress that had already filled them to the brim. Pippa sobbed as a tear spilled down her stinging cheek.

“Stop your whining! This was supposed to be a holiday. We were supposed to have some good sex and some good grub and that would be the end of it. Now I’m going to have to quit my job and head home to my wife in Sydney, all because you couldn’t take care of business.”

He’d stomped out, leaving her alone without a single pence in her pocket. Likely he’d returned because he’d realized that she had no money to pay for the hotel, or even her next meal, let alone the trip home. She never wanted to see Tim again, but better that than having to call her father to ask for help.

Daddy is going to be so mad at me for running away. And so disappointed when he finds out what a fool I’ve been. How can I tell him I’m pregnant? It’s a good thing Tim is running for the hills. Daddy would kill him. Pippa had watched her father punish a wrangler when the man brutalized one of the brumbies. The most terrifying part was that, through it all, her father had never shown any emotion. He’d just done what needed to be done to make sure that that sort of behavior was never repeated.

Tim’s attack had caught her off guard because her father had never lifted a hand to her or her six-­year-­old brother, Nathan. He’d found other ways to discipline them that were especially effective—­like the silent treatment her father employed when she failed to live up to his very high standards of behavior.

Pippa set down the bag of ice and rose from the bed to answer the persistent knock at the door. “I’m coming, Tim!”

She opened the door and gasped in shock. She tried to slam the door, but a large, booted foot caught the door at the bottom and prevented it from closing.

“Go away!” she cried.

“Open the door, Pippa,” her father said. “We need to talk.”

Pippa could see half of her father’s face through the open door: one piercing blue eye, a hank of black hair falling onto his forehead, an angry, flared nostril, and half of a mouth flattened to a harsh, judgmental line. She didn’t want to let him in, but there was no way to keep him out. She took a step back, crossing her arms defensively over her chest.

Just as half of his face had been hidden, half of hers had been concealed. When her father stepped into the room, she heard him draw a sharp breath and watched his eyes narrow as he surveyed the bruise on her cheek. She lowered her gaze to the floor, unable to look at him, unable to bear the condemnation she was sure she would see on his face.

A moment later he was standing in front of her, his voice hoarse with emotion as he asked, “Are you all right?”

Pippa couldn’t get words past the thickness in her throat, so she just nodded.

His fingertips hovered over the bruise, as though he wished to soothe the hurt, but never touched her face. He dropped his hand and said, “Let’s sit down.”

It was a good thing he’d suggested it, because Pippa’s knees felt so weak she was afraid they would crumple, and she’d land on the dingy carpet. She dropped onto the cheap bedspread, her eyes on her white-­knuckled hands, which rested on her jean-­clad knees. She felt the bed sink as her father sat down beside her. “Where’s Tim?” he asked.

“He left.”

“Is he coming back?”

Pippa was ashamed to admit the truth, but she forced herself to say, “He’s gone back to his wife in Sydney.” “Good riddance.”

Pippa frowned, because her father didn’t sound the least bit surprised. “You knew he was married?”

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t you say something to me?”

“I told you to stay away from him—­from all of my wranglers, in fact. That should have been enough.”

Pippa wanted to argue that a heads-­up would have been nice. But she remembered all the times she’d snuck out behind her father’s back to see Tim. If she hadn’t been so secretive, she might have saved herself a lot of heartbreak.

“What happened is my fault,” her father said.

Pippa turned to stare at him.

“I should have sent you away to Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane for school, instead of keeping you with me. Then you wouldn’t have fallen for whatever line of bullshit Tim fed you. But .?.?.”

Pippa knew why he hadn’t. He would have been lonely without her. She and Nathan were the only family he had. Her mother had remained a mystery all her life, someone her father refused to discuss.

She had only vague memories of her father’s first wife and no idea why their marriage hadn’t stuck. His second wife, Nathan’s mother, had left her father while Nathan was still a baby, shrieking in a voice Pippa had heard through the bedroom door, “I can’t stand to live in this deserted back­water. There are no neighbors. There is no culture. There is nothing here except those awful green frogs and a thousand poisonous snakes and a million flies.”

She hadn’t heard what her father replied. But she’d heard the screamed response. “Keep the boy. I don’t care! Just let me go. Please. If you ever loved me. Let me go!”

She’d left, and she hadn’t come back.

Her father had been sad for a long time afterward, but he’d never said a word against Nathan’s mother. One night, after Pippa had gone to bed but before she’d fallen asleep, she’d heard a glass break in the kitchen. She’d gotten up to make sure everything was all right. When she reached the kitchen door, she saw that her father was staggering, apparently drunk. And he had tears on his cheeks.

She’d quickly stepped back so he wouldn’t see her, putting a hand to her heart to keep it from pounding right out of her chest. She’d never seen her father cry. He was her rock. Always steady. Always dependable. He rarely drank, and even then, rarely had more than a single drink. It was terrifying to see him in such a state.

Pippa had hesitated, unsure whether she should try to comfort him or go away and let him grieve—

­if that was what he was doing. While she stood there, he began to mutter something, and she leaned closer, hoping to hear some explanation for whatever disaster had befallen them to cause such behavior.

Pippa would never forget the malevolence in her father’s voice as she listened behind the kitchen door. She had never imagined he could hate someone as much as he seemed to hate his own father. She heard the agony in his voice as he expressed his fear that he might be just like him. She was amazed to learn that he’d run away from home. And that he was never, ever, ever going back.

The fading sunlight hit the bruised side of her face through the hotel window, and Pippa heard her father make an angry sound in his throat. She turned her head away. Matthew Grayhawk didn’t need any more villains to hate. He had enough demons from his past to haunt him.

“Are you ready to go home?” her father asked.

“How can I go home? How can I ever hold my head up before our friends and neighbors again?”

“You might think this is the end of the world, Pippa, but it’s not. You’ll be fine.” His hand tenderly brushed through her long blond hair, tucking a bit of it behind her ear. “In a few weeks, or months, you’ll move past this incident in your life. Someday, you’ll find a nice young man in town who’ll love you for the extraordinary person you are.”

His gentle voice brought tears to her eyes. He had no way of knowing that in seven months she would have a lifelong reminder of Tim. She had to tell him. There wasn’t going to be any “nice young man.” Not when the small town of Underhill got wind of the fact that she was unwed and pregnant. Not to mention pregnant with a married man’s child. She was going to have to leave her father’s cattle station and go .?.?. where?

Pippa had been homeschooled, but the sole focus of her life had been working with horses. She had no skills that would serve her if she moved to the city. And she couldn’t imagine any other cattle station accepting a wrangler with a baby, even if she were the best at what she did.

“No one has to know about this,” her father said. “We can —­”

“I’m pregnant,” she blurted.

Her father let out a long, soughing sigh. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean whether you’re going to keep the baby?”

Pippa jumped up and turned to confront her father. “Of course I’m going to keep my baby! What else would I do?”

“You could give it up for adoption.”

“And have it be raised by strangers?”

“There are a lot of couples out there who would love your child as though it were their own. And you wouldn’t spend the rest of your life paying for one mistake.”

Pippa couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She’d known her father would be upset when she told him she was pregnant, but she’d never imagined he would ask her to give up her child. “I’m keeping my baby. And that’s that.”

“Underhill is a conservative town with strict morals. Are you ready to face the scandal of being an unwed mother? Forget the scandal. That will pass. Are you ready to be a teenage mother? That responsibility will never end.”

“I’ll be twenty when the baby is born,” Pippa shot back.

He made a tsking sound of disgust. “You know what I mean. This is the rest of your life, Pippa. Just be sure you know what you’re doing. How are you going to feel about raising Tim Brandon’s child?”

Pippa’s heart skipped a beat. She already felt an abhorrence for her former lover that knew no bounds. What if the baby was a boy and looked like Tim? Would she be able to separate the child from its lying, cheating, deceitful parent? Would she be able to love her baby when she loathed its father?

Pippa shuddered. She would have to deal with that problem if—­or when—­it arose. She only knew that she couldn’t abandon her own flesh and blood.

She looked her father in the eye and said, “I’m keeping this baby.”

He slapped his palms on his thighs as though the matter were settled. “Fine. Let’s go home.”

Pippa eyed him warily. He hadn’t put up much of a fight, but if he thought he could wear her down, he was wrong. She would hold her head high and face the tabbies in Underhill. She would defy them all. And she would prove to her father that this baby was no “mistake.” She would love her child despite its father. And she would do it all in the town where she’d grown up.

She nodded to her father and said, “Let’s go home.”

Chapter 1

“We’re moving to America.”

Pippa stared at her father with wide, horrified eyes. “Why? What’s happened?” You vowed you would never, ever go back.

Her father’s face looked grim. “I’ve come to an understanding with my father. He’s offered to give me the ranch in Wyoming where I grew up.”

Pippa knew there was no way her father would be doing this if it weren’t for her. Tim must have told some of his mates that she was pregnant, because, even though her pregnancy didn’t show, she’d been treated like a pariah by everyone in Underhill since her return. Her father had ended up thrashing someone who’d made a remark about her, which had caused him to spend a night in jail. He’d said it didn’t matter, that the lout had deserved what he’d gotten.

A few days later, she’d been bombarded with rotten fruit by a couple of teenage boys when she’d come out of the grocer’s shop. Her defiance had wilted as she swiped at the gooey stuff on her plaid shirt and brushed foul-­ smelling muck off her jeans. She was sure if her father could find the culprits, he’d wreak havoc again. And end up in jail again.

There was no help for it. She was going to have to leave Underhill. She’d just been waiting for the morning sickness to pass so she could find a job somewhere in Darwin—­and for the right moment to tell her father that she was going.

And then he’d made his grand announcement.

It was impossible to admit that she knew her father didn’t want to return to Wyoming, because then she would have to explain how she could possibly know such a thing. She could never tell him that she’d seen him cry. Never tell him that she knew he hated his father and had sworn to stay as far away from King Grayhawk—­and King’s ranch in Wyoming—­as possible.

“You don’t have to uproot your life and Nathan’s because of me,” she said. “I can leave Underhill on my own.”

“I have my own reasons for returning home,” he replied.

“Such as?”

He cocked a brow. “My reasons are my business.”

Pippa was pretty sure his only reason for returning to a place he’d hoped never to see again was to spare her any more pain. “Daddy, please. You don’t have to do this.”

“It’s done. Start packing.”

That conversation had taken place a mere three weeks ago. She and Nathan and their father were now settled in a suite of rooms at her grandfather’s ranch in Jackson Hole, where Pippa found herself in a situation that was fraught with every bit as much tension as she’d faced back home in Underhill.

Her father had neglected to mention that the ranch house at Kingdom Come was already occupied by her grandfather and his four youngest daughters. Or that King Grayhawk was the richest man in Wyoming. Or that the ranch house, built more than a hundred and fifty years ago, had been expanded and modernized into a home so fantastic it had been featured in several magazines.

More to the point, there had been no joyous homecoming, no delighted welcome for the prodigal son. King Grayhawk’s four grown daughters had greeted the invaders with silence and glares.

Her father’s half sisters, Taylor, Victoria, and Eve, and their half sister, Leah, bitterly resented

her father for laying claim to a ranch that was still their home. Pippa had been appalled when she learned the terms of the “deal” her father had made with King. All he had to do was live for one year—­three hundred and sixty-­ five days—­at Kingdom Come, and the ranch was his. Her father hadn’t helped matters when he’d ordered the four girls to find another place to live before the year was out, telling them bluntly, “Once the ranch is mine, you’re no longer welcome.”

No wonder King’s daughters hated them!

To say that Pippa felt like an interloper was the understatement of the century. Entering the kitchen for breakfast was like walking into a war zone.

The early-­morning nausea—­from a pregnancy she was determined to keep a secret for as long as she could—­ didn’t help matters. Pippa had decided that eating late at night, when she was less likely to run into one of them, or be sickened by the sight of food, made a lot more sense.

Pippa was peering into the open refrigerator, trying to find something on the shelves that looked appetizing, when she heard a chair scrape behind her. She lifted her head over the edge of the door and discovered the twins, Taylor and Victoria, both wearing pajamas and robes, perched on stools at the breakfast bar.

Her aunts weren’t identical twins. Taylor, tall and full-­figured, was take-­your-­breath-­away beautiful. Victoria had the same blond hair and blue eyes, but she was more lithe and merely pretty in comparison with her sister. Right now, both girls had a glint in their sapphire eyes that boded no good for her.

“I guess she thinks she’s too good to eat with the rest of us,” Victoria said to her sister.

Pippa ignored her, turning back to look at the leftovers in the refrigerator. But her appetite was gone, and her stomach was churning.

I will not be sick. I will not give them the satisfaction. And I will not run away. This is my home now, too.

But Pippa could understand their antagonism. She wouldn’t have wanted a bunch of strangers making themselves at home at her family’s cattle station in Underhill, either. That is, if she still had a home there. The station had been sold. There was no going back.

She chose a plastic bowl containing leftover fried chicken, closed the refrigerator door, and turned to confront the two young women, swallowing down the bile spilling into the back of her throat. “I wasn’t hungry earlier. I am now.”

She set the container on the counter and opened the cupboard, looking for the saltine crackers that usually settled her stomach. They weren’t there.

“If you’re looking for those Australian crackers you brought with you, they’re gone,” Taylor said. “We had tomato soup for lunch today—­which you also missed—­and ate the last of them.”

Pippa didn’t so much mind sharing the last of her Arnott’s Salada biscuits—­an Australian version of American saltine crackers—­but the smug look on Taylor’s face, and her vindictive tone of voice, rubbed her the wrong way. She felt her stomach heave and realized she was in no condition to start a fight. She needed a cracker now, or she was going to embarrass herself by throwing up. But the kitchen was huge, and she had no idea where everything was kept.

“Since you’ve eaten the last of my crackers,” she said, swallowing hard to keep her stomach from losing its contents, “perhaps you can tell me where you keep yours.”

Victoria threw out an arm and said, “In the cupboard, of course.”

Through gritted teeth, Pippa asked, “Which one?”

“What’s going on here?”

Pippa whirled and teetered dizzily, grabbing the counter to steady herself.

Her father took one look at her, scowled at the two women seated at the bar, and said, “I asked a question.”

Pippa didn’t want to be the cause of any more dissension between her father and his sisters than already existed. “I’m looking for some saltines,” she said. “Victoria was going to point me in the right direction.” She met Victoria’s gaze with a lifted brow that suggested discretion in this situation was the better part of valor.

Victoria ignored the suggestion, rising to confront Pippa’s father. “Well, Matt, it’s like this. Taylor and I were wondering why your precious daughter can’t be bothered to eat with the rest of us.”

It felt odd to hear her father called by his first name. Unfortunately, the attempt at familiarity did nothing to soften her father’s response.

“When or where or how or what my daughter chooses to eat is none of your damned business,” he retorted.

Pippa had one hand over her mouth and the other hand over her unsettled stomach. She wanted to run from the room, but it felt too much like giving up and giving in. She’d promised herself she would never let anyone ride roughshod over her again. She had to stand her ground.

Her father must have divined her problem, because he started opening cupboards and slamming them closed until he found a box of saltines. He yanked it out and pulled it open, tearing into a sleeve of crackers so it spilled across the counter.

Pippa grabbed for a saltine and began chewing, her back to the two young women, letting the salt and soda crackers do their work. She was focused on keeping her stomach from erupting, but she could hear her father arguing with his sisters.

“As far as I can see, you two have been living high on the hog here with no responsibility for anyone or anything. You’re twenty-­eight. You should be out doing something with your lives. On March 31st of next year, Kingdom Come will be mine. Find yourselves another place to live, because I have other plans for this ranch.”

“Like what?” Victoria asked.

Her father ignored the question. “And if I see you bothering Pippa again, you’ll find yourselves out in the cold a lot sooner than that.”

“You can’t kick us out!” Taylor shot back.

“Watch me.”

“Daddy will never let you do it,” Victoria said.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” her father threatened.

Pippa heard scraping chairs and then an ominous silence. She concentrated on what turned out to be a futile attempt to swallow the dry saltines. She gave up and dropped a half-­eaten saltine on the counter, searched for and found a glass, and filled it with water. She took careful sips, worried that her stomach wouldn’t tolerate the liquid. She closed her eyes and leaned over the sink until she was sure it would stay down, then took another sip.

She’d been so focused on not vomiting that she didn’t realize she and her father were alone until she heard him say in a surprisingly gentle voice, “Are you all right, Pippa?”

She opened her eyes and found him standing beside her. She leaned her head against his chest and let his arms close around her. “That was awful,” she said against his shirt.

“They’re just spoiled rotten. I think the sooner they’re out of this house and on their own, the sooner they’ll grow up. I know how it is, because I’ve lived here with King for a father. He’s worked his way through four wives, who’ve given him eight children, including your aunts’ half sister, Leah. None of those wives were around long enough to become much of a mother to any of us.”

This was all new information to Pippa, who was astonished at what she was hearing. Her father had never been forthcoming about his family, and none of her aunts had been friendly enough toward her during the three weeks she’d been at Kingdom Come to encourage questions.

“King was far too busy to spend any time with me, either, when I was growing up,” her father continued. “It doesn’t look like things have changed much in the twenty years since I’ve been gone.”

Pippa leaned back and looked at her father with wide, assessing eyes. She quickly did the math and said, “You left home at seventeen?”

He nodded.

Pippa blurted the next thought that came into her head. “So my mother was an American?”

She felt her father’s body stiffen. He was silent so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer. At last he said, “Yes. She was.”

“Did she live here in Jackson Hole?”

He nodded.

Then it dawned on her that he’d used the past tense. “What happened to her? Did she die?”

“She moved away.”

Pippa was trying to work out what might have happened to her mother, but she didn’t have enough facts to make sense of the situation. “It’s been twenty years since you left home. I’m nineteen. Does that mean I was born here in the States before you left home?”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t my mother come with you to Australia?”

Pippa didn’t think she’d ever seen her father’s blue eyes look so bleak.

“It’s a long story, Pippa.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “Your mother and I were never married.”

“Oh.” Pippa’s active imagination went to work making up a story from the information her father had revealed. Obviously, her mother hadn’t wanted to keep her. That thought caused a sharp ache in her chest. It was one more reason to keep her child—­so it would know it was cherished.

Had her father had his heart broken when her mother rejected him—­and his daughter? Was that why his first marriage hadn’t worked out, and why he’d waited so many years to marry Nathan’s mother? Or had Pippa’s birth been an “accident,” the result of sex with some stranger? Maybe the reason her father had never spoken of her mother was that he hadn’t known her well.

Pippa had questioned her father about her mother many times as a child. His reaction had always been so agitated, and his answer so brusque, that she’d stopped asking. Since her mother hadn’t lived nearby, there was no chance she was ever going to run into her, so she’d let it drop.

But here she was in Wyoming, where her mother had come from. Should she try to find her? Or just leave well enough alone?

“Is your stomach feeling better?” her father asked.

Pippa managed a weak smile as she stepped back from his embrace. “Yes.”

“I presume that’s why you haven’t been joining us for meals.”

She nodded. “I’ve felt nauseated. Or I haven’t been hungry.”

“If you want to keep this pregnancy a secret, I suggest you do a better job of showing up at the table. I still think you should—­”

“Don’t say it, Daddy. Please.”

He shook his head in what she presumed was disappointment, which she didn’t think was fair, considering the startling new information that she was a child born out of wedlock. But maybe he didn’t want her to have to go through what he’d been through, trying to raise a child on his own. She could still remember a time when they’d moved around a lot, a time when she’d been both cold and hungry. But that was all so far in the past she’d almost forgotten about it.

It was hard to imagine why her father should have struggled so much to survive when he was the son of such a wealthy man. Which made Pippa wonder what King Grayhawk had done to his son to make him run so far from home and stay gone for so long.

She was here now, where her mother and father had met, where her father had lived until he was seventeen, where her grandfather still played lord of the manor, and where she had four aunts who presumably knew some of the family history her father had never shared. Before her child was born, Pippa intended to have some answers.