The Virgin Beauty

by Claire King

  “Run it down, Doc.”

  “You come into my office the first day I’m in town and practically write down your grievances. I’m too young. I’m inexperienced. I’m a woman.”

  “I never said anything about you being a woman.”

  She ignored his interruption. “Then, in the middle of the night you bring me a cat that is clearly not in need of my attention, wasting my time. You don’t even know the cat’s name. It may not even be your cat!”

  “It was not the middle of the night. And his name is…Boots!”

  “Tiger. Then you take me home and act very gentlemanly and kiss me brainless.”

  “Brainless?” He had more than enough healthy male ego for that to make him grin.

  Grace ignored the grin, too. “Then I don’t see or hear from you for a week.”

  That reminded him. “Look, Doc, I kiss a lot—”

  She interrupted him this time. “Then you show up today and I think, Okay, he doesn’t seem that weird. He’s totally humorless, but maybe I imagined all that surliness and bad temper. Maybe he’s just a nice man and he can come on my first dairy call with me because he seems to want to and we can talk and maybe he’ll kiss me again.”

  His green eyes flashed at that, and too late Grace realized she’d said more—much more—than she should have. Typical. Her temper was usually very even, but when she lost it, she lost it big.

  “Then this thing at the dairy,” she rushed on, “and you jump out of the truck and walk ten miles back to town? What is wrong with you?”

  “You want me to kiss you again?”

  “No!” she shouted at him, forgetting the sidewalk and her potential clients.

  He smiled. “All you have to do is ask,” he said mildly.

  “Oh, forget it,” she said, swinging away.

  She would have sworn later that he barely touched her. But suddenly she was backed up against the side of his dusty pickup and caged between his tree-trunk arms.

  “Everything you say is true, Doc,” he murmured. He brushed against her, took another whiff of that baby-soft hair. “I’m a bastard.”

  “You are.” Her nerve endings were zinging, and her breath was coming short. He needed to stop nuzzling her hair if she was going to be able to think coherently. “Get off me. We’re on the street.”

  “In a minute,” he said, indulging himself. She was right; he didn’t much like her—a fact he had to remind himself of on a near-daily basis—but he could overlook that in the face of this raging attraction. “How do you work with animals all day and still smell this good?”

  “That’s not— What does that—? Daniel, stop!”

  Vulnerable again, Daniel thought, and just stopped himself from biting her earlobe. Anyway, his hands were slippery on the hood of his truck, and if he didn’t stop now, he’d end up making a town spectacle of them both.

  “You want to know what I meant today?”

  She was trembling. “About what?” she asked, dazed.

  “About being trained to stand in stinking barns with sick cattle?”

  She barely knew what he was talking about. “Um. Okay.”

  “Then meet me at the Early Bird and we’ll have dinner.”

  “I don’t think that’s—”

  “God, you’re a mule. You can pay for your own meal if it’ll make you feel better.”

  She took a deep, calming breath. It didn’t help. She could smell him, and he smelled amazing. Like a big, tough man. “It probably would.”

  “Fine. When you get done in there—” he nodded toward the clinic; the clinic he was slowly, reluctantly beginning to think of as hers “—come on over.”

  “All right,” she agreed, suspicious and hesitant.

  “And, Doc?” he whispered, leaning back in.

  “Yes?”

  He kissed her. Right in front of God and everyone who happened by on Main Street, Nobel, Idaho. Kissed her hard and slow and thoroughly. His mouth made a small sucking sound when he pulled away. She could only stare at him.

  “I may be humorless, but I can follow orders pretty well.” He grinned in her stunned, wide-eyed face and pushed away. “You just have to make your needs clear.”

  “It’s not— My needs are— That was a despicable—”

  “You stutter when you’re turned on, Doc,” he said, low, into her ear. “Against my better judgment, I have to wonder what else you do.”

  “What else— What else—” She clamped her mouth shut before she proved him right. She fisted her hands before they grabbed the lapels of his sheepskin cowboy coat and yanked him back against her.

  “See ya, Doc.”

  He walked away—swaggered away, Grace thought dazedly—and left her backed up against his truck unable to string two thoughts together.

  He met her outside the Early Bird, had the distinct pleasure of watching her cross the street on those gams.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.” She felt bashful, and wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t that she was unaccustomed to being with men; in her business she spent most of her time with men. Dairies and ranches were primarily run or owned by men, and her fellow vets were mostly men. And she had brothers; three irritating, smelly, pompous and pushy brothers she adored.

  But this man was different from any of those. Certainly.

  “Have you been waiting over here all afternoon?”

  “No, I had some other business in town.” He’d walked around for a couple hours, ostensibly doing business, but actually trying to walk off a little of the heat that had exploded into his system when he’d kissed her. He’d meant it as a sort of lesson, a salve to his ego after the fight—that she’d won—out at the dairy, but he’d ended up learning more than he wanted to. Less than an hour ago he’d stood right at this spot, tempted to go to her office and drag her out. He’d decided against it. Urges as strong as the ones Grace McKenna gave him were probably best resisted, for the time being.

  They sat in a back booth. Daniel was grateful the place was Monday-night empty. Everyone in Nobel was well acquainted with his miserable tale of woe. It had been discussed and dissected and gossiped about until, like most stories started in small towns, the truth was almost completely obscured by rumor and innuendo. But he’d been back for years; other more scandalous legends had boiled up and over and his disgrace had cooled. He would have hated to stir the pot again.

  The waitress came and Grace ordered a salad and an iced tea. She wasn’t exactly sure what a person was supposed to order on an occasion such as this, but she was sure it wasn’t what one normally ate. Daniel smiled into his menu, then ordered two long-neck beers and enough food to feed three people.

  “You hired my cousin, I hear,” Daniel said in the way of small talk after the waitress left. He was in no hurry to spill his guts.

  Grace nodded. “I assumed from her last name she was related to you. Her résumé said she worked for your outfit.”

  “Lisa had a résumé?”

  Grace smiled. “It was short. Yours was the only name on it. She’s worked for you since high school.”

  “Yeah. She’s a pretty hard worker. Once a month, though, you have to give her a couple of days off if you don’t want your head ripped off for the slightest little thing.”

  “Chauvinist.”

  “Wait and see.”

  Grace smiled in spite of herself. “Okay, I’ll keep it in mind. Why does she want to work in town all of a sudden? You cut her pay?”

  “No. I don’t know why exactly,” he hedged. “I haven’t talked to her. She wasn’t supposed to start farming until the middle of next month, and I haven’t seen much of her. I think she’ll work out well for you, though.”

  “Will you have to hire someone else?”

  “Yeah. Maybe a couple more people, if I can afford it. My brother—” He trailed off.

  “Your brother?” Grace prompted. He had that look again, that furrowed-brow look that made her think his relationship with his brother was not a smooth one.

>   “Nothing. It’s nothing,” he said again, making Grace sure it was something. “Here comes our food.”

  He watched the waitress slap the plates onto the table, then, without a word, he slid half of what he’d ordered onto one plate and shoved it over to her, along with one of the beers.

  “You’ll starve to death on that rabbit food.”

  “I like salad.” But her mouth watered at the smell of the fried chicken he’d just pushed her way. She took a pull off the beer, straight from the bottle. When she put the bottle down and saw Daniel grinning at her, she frowned. Should have poured it into the glass, she thought belatedly.

  “I like to see a woman eat something when I take her out.”

  “You’re not taking me out. It’s Dutch treat, remember?”

  “Fine. Then you can pay for that beer.”

  “Fine.” She forked up a dainty bite of salad, though her stomach growled over the chicken. “You said you were going to explain to me why you were interfering with my diagnosis out at Spandell’s.”

  “I wouldn’t call it interfering,” he muttered. He took a drink from his own beer; from the bottle, which made Grace feel slightly better. “I was in vet school for a while.”

  She nodded. “I figured that out after I calmed down. You certainly seemed to know what you were doing out there.”

  His heart expanded a little at the compliment. He had known, had always known. It was an instinct.

  “I worked for Niebaur before I went to college, then during the summers. I learned a lot, even before I went to W.A.S.U.”

  “Why did you drop out? You’d have made a good vet.”

  “I didn’t drop out. I was expelled.”

  She put her fork down, stared at him. So many vet students dropped out of school. It was extremely difficult, exhausting, and mentally and physically taxing as any medical school; only you didn’t have to learn just the ailments that could attack a single species, as M.D.s did, but a whole range of species, from fish to horses to goats, and everything in between. But she only knew of a couple people who had been expelled. And that was for—

  “Cheating,” she breathed, hardly able to believe it.

  His teeth clamped down at her automatic assumption. He wouldn’t defend himself. He’d tired of that back at school. He’d just tell her the facts and let the chips fall where they would.

  “I was accused of cheating on the infectious diseases exam, final year. I was expelled.”

  She blinked. “How horrible.”

  “It was pretty bad,” he agreed. He could remember exactly where he’d been when he found he was being suspended. Standing in the dean’s office, sick, dumbfounded and furious, his hands in fists and his heart in his throat.

  “Did you have a hearing?”

  Daniel grimaced. “Yeah. The dean gave me the choice. Go quietly and he’d hush it up for me, promising doctor and all-around nice guy that I was, or I could demand a hearing and have it aired in front of the whole faculty. I chose to have a hearing, of course. I thought certainly the truth would come out.”

  “And did it?”

  He met her beautiful brown eyes, irrationally annoyed that she didn’t believe, instantly, that he hadn’t done it.

  He shrugged, though it cost him to do so. “They found the exam answers in my apartment, they found notes I had allegedly taken from the professor’s files, a whole stack of evidence against me. It took the hearing board about two minutes to boot my butt out of there.”

  “Why didn’t you enroll somewhere else? You only had a few months to go.”

  “I applied at U.C. Davis, University of Kansas, a couple other places, but, Doc, think. How easy is it for anyone to get into vet school, much less someone who’s been tossed out of a place like Washington State University for cheating on an infectious diseases exam?” Infectious diseases. It still galled him. He knew that stuff by heart, backward and forward. Most of it he’d learned before he ever left high school, right at Dr. Niebaur’s side.

  Grace nodded, sympathetic. She’d begun applying to vet schools her sophomore year in college, as soon as she’d declared her major in veterinary pre-med. There were just a couple vet schools in the west, and they were packed, with interminable waiting lists. Because of the overcrowding, only the best students, with the most spotless academic reputations, got in.

  “How did you live with it?”

  “I didn’t, very well, for a while.” He smiled, a halfhearted thing that mostly just twisted his lips. “I got divorced, just about first thing. Then started getting drunk pretty regular, drove my family crazy. Classic textbook reaction. Eventually I got tired of that and started back working at the ranch. It got easier to deal with. My brother was in trouble here, and it wasn’t fair to leave him alone, with all the responsibilities. I decided maybe it was for the best, that the ranch and my family needed me there as much as this county needed another vet.”

  She was suddenly having a tough time with a wedge of lettuce that refused to move past her esophagus. “Divorced?”

  “I was married. My wife left me a couple days after I was expelled.”

  “Why?”

  He made a sound in the back of his throat. “I don’t imagine she wanted to be married to someone who cheated on an infectious diseases exam,” he said nonchalantly, and had to take another pull off his beer to wash down the bitter taste in his mouth. “We were only married seven months. After I left school, she decided since I wasn’t going to be a veterinarian, and there was no way in hell she was going to live on the ranch, it would be better if we cut our losses.”

  He sounded very matter-of-fact, Grace thought. But she wondered at the vein that had started to throb at the base of his neck.

  “Why was your being a vet so important to her?”

  “Because she was a vet. She’d graduated the year before, was already working in a practice in Pullman. We were going to come back here eventually, take over Niebaur’s practice. She’d cover the small animal aspect of the practice, I’d cover the large animal. When I got kicked out, those plans had to be scrapped. The marriage was scrapped along with them.” He took a bit of chicken. It tasted like chalk in his mouth. “Julie was a good vet. She said she didn’t want her reputation to be tainted by mine.” He shrugged, and Grace could see how it cost him. “Can’t blame her.”

  But you do, Grace thought. And somehow, that censure extends to me.

  “Why didn’t you work as an assistant to Dr. Niebaur? You obviously still love working with the animals.”

  “I don’t know. Pride, as much as anything, I guess.” He smiled again, easier this time, and cut another slice of his fried chicken. He’d rather have picked it up and gnawed it off the bone, but he was on his best behavior. “I’d been his pup-dog, following him around, for eleven years. I couldn’t go back to it.”

  “I can understand that.”

  He chewed slowly, watching her pull the plate of food he’d passed her onto her paper place mat. She picked up a piece of chicken with her fingers and bit into it. She licked the juice from her lips, hummed pleasure without knowing it. Daniel wanted to hum a little himself, just watching her.

  “So.” She had to know, but she asked casually, around the chicken, just as though the answer wouldn’t matter to her. “Did you do it?”

  He gave her a long, steady look, ashamed of her for asking, ashamed of himself for wanting so badly for her to believe in him.

  “What do you think?”

  She chewed for a long time, wanting to get the chicken into tiny pieces so she wouldn’t choke on it. “I think no. I don’t know how much I like you, Daniel Cash,” Grace said finally, quietly. “But I doubt you’d cheat on anything.”

  Daniel’s jaw worked back and forth for a minute and he ran his tongue over his teeth. He considered her awhile, making her pulse jump curiously. “I think you like me,” he said in that same low, persuasive voice he’d used on her when he’d had her backed up, achy and needy, against his pickup. “I think you like me i
n exactly the same way I like you. Someday we may have to do something about that.”

  Grace stared across the table at him. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Satisfied, Daniel went back to his meal.

  Grace cleared her throat, cleared it again. She had to say something or she was going to dissolve with mortification, and just maybe desire.

  “I feel the same way about this practice,” she said after a minute. “What you said about Niebaur,” she added quickly when he raised his brows at her. “It’s pride as much as anything. I’ve worked in some good, solid practices since I finished vet school, where the other vets were well respected and had an extensive client base.”

  “But there’s something about having your own place.”

  She smiled. “True. I saw Dr. Niebaur’s ad for the practice in the back of a vet magazine. The large animal side of it, the small town, walking into a well-established practice, I couldn’t resist it. I want to be my own boss. I don’t want to be anyone’s junior partner anymore.”

  The waitress came over to check on them.

  “Do you want dessert?” Daniel asked Grace.

  She looked down at her plate. Just bones left. Aah! How had that happened?

  “No, thank you.”

  He smiled at the waitress, then turned his attention back to Grace. “You should come out to the ranch,” he said casually. “I’d like you to see it.”

  “I’m scheduled to check your heifers next week.”

  “I meant now.” Inviting her had been an impulse, but the more he thought about it, the better the idea sounded. He wanted her to see the success he’d made of himself after the mess he’d made of vet school. He wanted her respect, if nothing else. Having another female vet looking down her nose at him for his failures was something he didn’t think he could stand. “Tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “It’s early yet. won’t be full dark for at least an hour, then we’ve got a full moon.”

  “I can’t. I’m on call.”