“You’re going about it all wrong,” a voice said from behind her.

Katie spun, then caught her breath as she saw Jack Darby. The boy rode lazily toward her, his battered bike looking as if it had been run over and left for dead more than once. He rode off the curb with the easy grace of a natural athlete, then skidded to a stop three feet in front of her.

Although only a year older, Jack was about five inches taller and twenty pounds heavier. Like all the Darbys he had dark hair and eyes. Katie swallowed her fear. She wasn’t about to let any Darby know she was scared of him.

“You want me to hold the bike steady?” Jack asked, letting his bike drop to the ground. He moved next to her and reached for the seat. “You need to get your balance, Katie. Once you learn that, the rest of it’s easy.”

“I’m fine,” she said stiffly, wishing she could ride to safety, but she was trapped. “I don’t need help from you.”

Something flashed in his eyes-something that she might have thought was hurt, except he was a boy and from what she’d seen with her brothers, boys didn’t have any softer feelings.

He stood beside her, studying her. Katie stared right back. Jack Darby didn’t look like he was gonna hurt her or anything. In fact he looked friendly. But Darbys hated Fitzgeralds from their first breath to their last…didn’t they? Darbys and Fitzgeralds had been feuding for about as long as Texas had been a state-at least that’s what her father always said.

Jack pointed at her bleeding knees. “You keep falling, you’re gonna scrape off all your skin. You’ll end up looking like a plucked chicken, and then what?”

Despite her fear and the pain from her slips off the bike, she smiled at the image of herself as a naked chicken. “Will not.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Then you’ll get all scabby and gross and everyone will run when they see you.” He gave a little shake of the seat. “Come on, Katie. Both my sisters can ride, and they’re younger than you.”