The Virgin Beauty

by Claire King

  Daniel pulled his lips between his teeth and took a deep breath in through his nose. He blew it out again. “Okay. When do they test the new samples?”

  “Wednesday. I’ll call you.”

  “Fine.”

  “I have to come out tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  She fought back the urge to cringe at his angry question. A natural reaction for her, to round her shoulders and make of herself the smallest possible target. But she wasn’t doing that anymore, she reminded herself. She bristled instead. “I’m the vet of record. I have to make sure you’re following quarantine instructions.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  The bitter little laugh, unprofessional though it was, was out of her before she knew it. “I don’t think that’s a particularly fair question, coming from you.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he bellowed at her, though he knew perfectly well. He’d been haunted by her face all evening. It was why he was still here, pacing the night away in his parents’ kitchen, keeping them awake. He couldn’t go home, face the quiet devastation he’d put on Grace’s pale, pretty face. The image of her swam in front of his eyes even now, hours later, and he dug his fingers into them, trying to make it disappear.

  “I don’t want to talk about this with you,” Grace said.

  “Tough. I think I deserve an explanation for that remark,” he shouted, taking the well-traveled path of men everywhere: the best offense was almost always a good defense.

  “I think, Daniel, that you certainly know what I’m talking about.” She forced her heart and breathing to slow. Her voice was a little quavery, but there was nothing to be done about that. “I’ll be out in the morning.”

  “Wait a minute— Dammit!” He slammed the receiver back into its hook. Then, when that gave him no satisfaction, he took the high road. And punched a hole in his mother’s kitchen wall. “Dammit!” he shouted again, but this time as much for the useless pain in his fist as anything else. He glared for a minute at the hole he’d just made, his jaw working. Then he turned to his mother. “I’ll patch that.”

  “Okay, honey.”

  “Look, don’t be nice to me now, Mom.” He dropped his head back, closed his eyes. “I don’t need sympathy.”

  She pursed her lips. “You’re beating yourself up enough. I’ve decided you don’t need my help.”

  “She’s wrong about all this mess. She’s got to be wrong.”

  “We all hope she’s wrong, Danny.” Howard got up from the kitchen table and poured himself another cup of coffee. “But that’s no excuse for what you did to her out there.”

  “If her lab standards are faulty, the department of agriculture needed to know,” he insisted, though his argument held little heat. “Those samples could have been contaminated in any number of ways. She’s only been in practice two weeks,” he repeated for his own peace of mind, being stubborn, feeling miserable.

  “That’s true,” Frank said from the door. He’d been away from the ranch since they’d fed the heifers, and as always after an evening in town, his eyes were bright, his pupils in pinpoints. He toed off his boots, walked in his socks to the coffeepot. “And how much of those two weeks has she spent in bed with you?” he asked casually.

  Daniel was across the kitchen in the blink of an eye. He grabbed his brother’s collar and twisted it in his fist, shoving him against the wall.

  “Say anything like that again, and I’ll put your nose through the back of your skull.”

  “Daniel!” his mother cried, rushing toward them. Howard caught her by her wrist and hauled her to a stop.

  Frank wearily met his brother’s furious glare. At that moment it occurred to Daniel that Frank possibly didn’t care whether Daniel broke his nose or not. The significance of that barely penetrated his self-absorption.

  “My point is, Danny,” Frank said quietly, “that whether she’s been in practice two weeks or two decades, she’s something more to you than just the county vet.” He raised his eyebrows, his expression contemptuous. “And you turned on her like a dog.”

  “Hell.” Daniel loosened his grip on his brother, dropped his chin to his chest in defeat. “Hell.”

  Frank nudged him aside, got his cup of coffee. Daniel stood staring at his back for a moment, then started for the door.

  “Danny, hold up there, son,” his father said.

  “I think she’s wrong about all this, Dad. I have to think that. The alternative—” He shook his head quickly. “But Frank’s right. I should go talk to her.”

  “Not tonight,” Howard said firmly. “We’ve got about eight hundred head of cattle to get off the range in the next twenty hours, and now’s not the time to go tearing off to town.” He went to Daniel, put his broad hand at the back of his son’s neck and squeezed. “Get some sleep, son.”

  Daniel shook off the comforting gesture. “I can’t, Dad,” he said as he grabbed his coat and headed out the door. He wouldn’t sleep, he knew. He had to talk to Grace, though he wasn’t at all sure what he’d say once he got to her.

  He couldn’t recant, because he did believe she’d made a mistake in her lab. He had to believe that, particularly now that the Ag department had confirmed the presence of bacterium in the original samples. If he didn’t believe it, then all this would become a terrible, crushing reality, rather than someone’s blunder. And that prospect he could not—would not—face. Not even for Grace.

  Her house was dark when he arrived and he sat in his truck for ten minutes before working up enough nerve to go to her door and knock. He saw a light flicker on in her bedroom, bleeding through to the hall.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me,” he barked.

  There was a long hesitation before Daniel heard her turn the bolt. She opened the door and looked at him. Daniel could tell she’d been crying and was shocked by how contrite those red, puffy eyes made him feel. He’d known she was furious, had accepted that. It hadn’t occurred to him she’d cry.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said gruffly, burning sentiment under bluster.

  “I told you everything I know on the phone,” she said.

  “That’s not what I— Not about that.”

  “Go home, Daniel.” Grace started to close the door. “I’m not up to easing your conscience tonight.”

  He put his hand on the door and stopped it. “I don’t need my conscience eased,” he said stubbornly.

  She studied him for a minute. “Fine. My mistake. Go home, anyway.”

  “I can’t go home.” He couldn’t stop himself. He reached up, ran the pad of his thumb gently under her eye. “You’ve been crying,” he murmured, guilt-stricken.

  She shook off his hand. “Don’t do that.”

  Daniel shoved his hands into his pockets. She clearly didn’t want him touching her, and he was sure he didn’t want to touch her. Sure of it. “I understand you’re upset, Grace.”

  “I’m a doctor, Daniel. I don’t get personally involved in these things,” she lied smoothly.

  He was taken aback by her calm response. “Then what the hell was that all about on the phone? About me not trusting you?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  He took careful tack. “It’s not a matter of that. It’s a matter of you being human. Of you making a mistake.”

  “You think I could contaminate forty blood samples with brucella bacterium and not know it?”

  Daniel shook his head, frustrated. “How do I know? I’ve never been in your lab. I don’t know what you’re doing in there.”

  “Well, I’m not trying to ruin you, Daniel.” She tried to close the door again but it was like pushing at the gates of the Panama Canal. He held it open with no effort at all. It galled her.

  “I don’t think that,” he said.

  “You just think I’m an idiot.”

  “I don’t think that, either.”

  “Daniel, it’s one or the o
ther.”

  He watched her for a minute, watched those fine brown eyes flash at him and the wide, firm set of her shoulders and the almost imperceptible lines of pain and fatigue around her beautiful mouth.

  “I don’t trust you,” he said finally.

  She nodded, turned without speaking and started toward her kitchen, leaving the door open. She’d rather face a town full of burglars than spend another moment with him.

  Daniel strode through the open door, catching her in two long strides. He wrenched her around, one broad hand encircling her strong, slender upper arm.

  She flicked a glance to his hand and back, giving him a chilling stare. “Get your hands off me,” she said quietly.

  The look she gave him made him desperate. He couldn’t have said why. “I want to explain.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “This had nothing to do with you, personally.”

  “I beg your pardon? Did I hear you correctly?” She went up on her toes, quiet acceptance and the lie of professional detachment falling away like sand. She was furious now. Her lips pulled across her teeth. “Nothing to do with me personally? Are you out of your mind?”

  “You’re making this about you and me. It isn’t.”

  “No, it isn’t about me and you. It’s only about you!” she shouted at him. “It’s about you being so afraid of failure, you’re willing to do whatever it takes to make it so it isn’t true.”

  “It isn’t true!”

  “Yes, Daniel, it is. You have brucellosis in your herd, and it’s not my fault. But you’re willing to throw me to the wolves, humiliate and hurt me, so you can live a couple more days pretending everything will clear up. As your vet, as your friend, I want to help you, but you never even gave me a chance. You went for my throat the instant you saw a problem.”

  “This isn’t just a problem, Grace!” He took in a great, shuddering breath. It unmanned him, admitting it, but she deserved the truth. “This is my life. If I lose this, there’s nothing left for me. The only two things I know, the only things I ever wanted to do, will have been taken from me. Do you think that’s an easy thing for me to face?”

  “No! I don’t think it is. But I’m not Julie. I wouldn’t have abandoned you the minute things got tough. You didn’t have to push me away. I could have helped you. As a good friend.”

  “I don’t need a good friend, Grace,” he yelled at her. “I need a good vet.”

  If he could have taken back the words, he would have, because he could see the impact of them. She literally reeled on her feet. But he stood resolute, trying to shield himself from shame with righteous conviction.

  “I am a good vet, Daniel,” she said, drawing professional pride around her again. “But you’re too angry and bitter and scared to see it. It’s not my fault I’m here and you’re there. You’ve blamed me from the beginning for something that never had anything to do with me.”

  “I don’t mean to hurt you,” he said, feeling inexplicably wretched. “I don’t want to hurt you. But—” his voice caught, disgracing him “—you can’t be right.”

  She battled back a fresh sting of tears. She would have sworn she couldn’t cry again. “The instant you were backed against the wall, Daniel, you came out fighting. I expected that from you. I just didn’t expect, after…after everything we’ve—” She took a moment to pull herself together, staring at the ground at his feet. It hadn’t meant as much to him as it had to her, and she be damned if she’d use their lovemaking as a way to shame him. “I just didn’t expect you to come out fighting me.”

  She turned on her heel and fled down the hall. Daniel heard her bedroom door close, heard the click of a tiny lock being thumbed into place. He worked his jaw. How stupid of her to think a lock would keep him out.

  He strode toward her bedroom, intent on kicking in her door, splintering it into a million pieces, forcing her to stop crying, dammit. Stop looking at him as if he were the one ruining everything.

  He stood in the hallway, the fist he’d formed sliding silently open on her door. He leaned his forehead against the wood, his eyes closing. It was better this way, he told himself. Better she hate him, better he hang on for dear life to his suspicion and his fear.

  If he didn’t, God only knew what would become of them both.

  The tests that came back from the Animal Industries Department were clean. Negative. Showed absolutely no trace of brucella bacterium in the blood serum.

  Grace stared at Phil Brown, who sat across her desk in the little chair she kept there for client consultations.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. They were clean. I sent a man out this morning to bleed the heifers for the second round of tests, but the first ones are clean.”

  Grace shook her head, torn between a stunning relief—it was her county, her client, her adopted state, and a brucellosis outbreak would have meant the destruction of all of those things—and the beginnings of a paralyzing self-doubt. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Neither can I. I saw your serum samples. They were loaded.”

  “Yes, they were. There was no chance for contamination, Phil.”

  “I’m not saying there was.”

  “But there must have been,” she argued against herself, “if your samples were clean.”

  “Well, we’ll see how this next round of tests turns out. This may be an anomaly.”

  Grace cocked her head, gave him a skeptical frown. “You know as well as I do, one bunch of samples loaded with bacterium and another from the same group of cattle with nothing is more than just an anomaly.”

  Phil cleared his throat. ‘Do you, uh, keep brucella bacterium samples in your lab?”

  “No. How ridiculous.”

  “If the second and third tests on those cattle come back clean, the only explanation can be that your samples were somehow contaminated.”

  “Yes.”

  Phil rose. “You’re going to have to figure out how. Have you checked your dairy herds, possibly transmitting the bacterium from an infected cow through the use of a syringe?”

  “No, of course not. I know procedure, Phil. Besides, this county is clean. The dairymen around here are like little old ladies about that kind of thing.”

  “What about manure?”

  “Not in my lab. It’s impossible.”

  “Well, I don’t know, then.” Phil shrugged, his hand on the closed door to her office. “But I’ll call you, Grace, when we get these next results.”

  Grace nodded. “Thanks, Phil.” When he opened the door, Grace caught a glimpse of Lisa passing by. “Lisa, will you please get Daniel Cash on the phone for me?”

  “Why?”

  Grace sighed, would have been embarrassed in front of her colleague, but was frankly too preoccupied at the moment for worries over protocol. “Could you please just call him for me?”

  Lisa raised her shoulders. “Okay,” she said.

  A moment later the phone in Grace’s office buzzed.

  “Daniel.”

  “I heard.” He gripped the cell phone in his hand. He was elated, but the sound of her voice took the blush off the victory.

  “They’ll take the second tests on Friday. If those are clean, they’ll take more blood before the weekend. You could be clear to end the quarantine by Monday.”

  “That’s fast.”

  “Everyone wants this over as quickly as possible.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll call you Friday as soon as I hear anything.” There was a pause. “Congratulations, Daniel.”

  “Grace—” The small phone buzzed in his ear. She had a tendency to hang up on him, walk away before he was finished talking. He closed the phone, stuck it back into his pocket and restarted his four-wheeler. That was probably for the best.

  Grace spent an agonizing two days waiting for the results of the second test. On the one hand, she wanted more than anything to have been wrong. On the other, she could think of no explanation why that should be so. Her lab
was spotless, her procedures faultless. She’d never made a mistake like this; couldn’t remember many mistakes at all. When a woman looked the way she did, she drew enough attention. There was an overwhelming need to be meticulous in everything else, so as not to draw any more.

  But she must have made a mistake somewhere, because the second tests were negative.

  She began searching for answers in her lab. She went over both her recorded and written notes, and could find no aberrations. She called in Lisa and Mrs. Handleman and together the three of them went over everything. The tested the autoclave, they took swabs from equipment to see if it showed signs of bacterium, they even tested slides, petri dishes, syringes, anything Grace could think of that might have made a difference in her testing procedures. And they found nothing.

  “Maybe the state department of agriculture is doing something wrong,” Lisa offered helpfully. “Maybe their tests are wrong.”

  Grace dismissed that as too slim a possibility, and continued her search for what had gone awry. When the third and final tests came back negative from the Animal Industries two days later, releasing Daniel’s herd from quarantine and proving that Grace had, in fact, been wrong in her diagnosis, she knew something terrible had happened. She just for the life of her could not figure out what it was.

  She took the drop-off in business over the next few days as perfectly natural, as was the fact that Daniel did not call her. He’d been right all along; she had made a horrible mistake that had almost cost him and his family generations worth of work and financial security. And everyone in the county knew it.

  Her dairy calls, the mainstay of her practice and, she knew, the only way she’d survive in Nobel, declined until no one was calling at all, not even Spandell. The vet from Payton called her for records several times, and she knew her reputation had been destroyed. She visited with the occasional sick dog over the following week, spayed a couple cats, vaccinated the animals brought in by Animal Control, and spent the rest of her waking hours and sleepless nights trying to determine what had gone wrong.