The Virgin Beauty

by Claire King

She nodded, wiped her nose indelicately on the back of the sleeve of Daniel’s sweatshirt. “Always have been.” She sniffed again, tried a lopsided smile. “My family calls me Gracie.”

  “Well, it suits you.” He bent his knees, swept her into his arms.

  She let out a horrified gasp. “You guys have to stop doing that,” she squeaked as he hauled her down the hallway and into her tiny bedroom.

  He grunted dramatically as he gently placed her on the bed, then gave her a brotherly buss on her forehead. “We do. You weigh a ton.”

  She smiled. “Thanks a lot.” Oh, the bed felt wonderful, and she snuggled in. She was at the end of her rope, emotionally, physically.

  “Say good-night, Gracie.”

  Grace settled into her pillow, her eyes already closed. “Good night, Gracie.”

  Daniel leaned against Grace’s dented vet truck, his arms crossed belligerently across his broad chest, looking ready to rumble.

  “She all right?” he growled as Frank walked up to him.

  “Exhausted. She’s in bed.”

  Daniel looked him up and down.

  “You put her there?” Daniel asked, his eyes narrowing to slits.

  Frank gave him a disgusted glare. “God, what an idiot.”

  “I want an answer.”

  Frank got into his face. “No, you don’t,” he said. “You want a fight. Too bad. You screwed up. I’m not going to make you feel better by pounding the guilt out of you.”

  Daniel stood nose-to-nose with his younger brother for a minute, his fists vised down, then settled back against his truck. He blew out a breath, pulled his lower lip through his teeth. He was being an idiot. But she didn’t love him anymore. She didn’t love him anymore. He couldn’t get past that one pertinent, devastating fact.

  “How’s her ankle?”

  “Why didn’t you just come into the emergency room and find out? I saw you tailing us all the way in.”

  Daniel shrugged, sucking in his cheeks. “She obviously wanted you there instead of me.”

  “Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Do you believe what she said about Lisa?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “I have my own reasons.”

  “Well, I don’t have the same reasons.”

  “You have a better one.”

  “Which is?”

  Frank came close again. “She’d never lie to you, you moron,” he said softly. “Not to save herself, not to save her practice, not even, probably, to save your sorry cattle operation for you. She’s not Julie, but you’ve acted from the beginning like she is. Grace is not responsible for your screwed-up life. She loves you.”

  “No.” Daniel shook his head, felt that peculiar constriction in his throat again. “She doesn’t. Not anymore.”

  Frank ran his tongue over his teeth. “You know, Danny, you better figure this out. And do it quick. Because that woman in there?” He jerked his thumb toward Grace’s little, forlorn-looking house. “She’s great. Amazing. Better than you deserve. And I’m already half in love with her myself.”

  Daniel couldn’t help the lethal look that shot through his narrowed eyes. Frank practically sneered at him.

  “That’s what I thought. Fix this, Danny.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I got nothing more to say to you.”

  Daniel watched Frank walk back to his truck. He turned as his brother drove off and took a dozen involuntary steps toward Grace’s door before he remembered she was already asleep.

  She was probably exhausted. He was on the ragged edge himself, and he hadn’t had a case of hypothermia and a broken ankle.

  But, God, he wanted to see her.

  He tossed the keys to her truck onto the front seat and started off down the street at a jog, his fatigue forgotten. He’d fix it. His brother had told him to fix it and fix it he would.

  He wasn’t losing this time.

  Daniel didn’t have the key to the back door and told himself, as he proceeded to kick it in, it really wasn’t breaking and entering, as the deed to the building did have his name on it. The door splintered easily enough under his size thirteen boot.

  He shouldered his way past the broken door and walked down the dark back hallway. The kennels were empty and the place was quiet; no caged dogs to set up an alarm. It occurred to him he should have a real alarm installed along with the new door. If Grace had to come into the clinic late, he wanted her to be safe.

  He started with the paper files he knew Mrs. Handleman kept of all transactions with the veterinary supply companies. Nothing. He then went into the client files. Nothing. He rummaged through the desks and cabinets, scoured the lab, the kennel area, the examining room. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Daniel rolled the tension out of his shoulders, unbelievably frustrated. Not one piece of evidence that would point to anyone—Lisa or Frank—having tampered with the results of the bangs tests or the cow that was contaminated with anthrax.

  He forced his ingrained cynicism aside, though. Just because there was nothing here didn’t mean Grace was wrong about the tampering. He just had to look harder.

  “Daniel!”

  He rammed his head on the underside of the meds cabinet when he heard the shocked female voice. He was nearly wedged into the cabinet up to his shoulders, so it took him a moment to disengage himself and look up at the woman.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He rubbed at the small sore spot on his cranium. “Hey, Lisa.”

  “What are you doing here?” she repeated in that high voice of surprise. “What happened to the back door?”

  “I kicked it in.”

  “You—you—?” She couldn’t get her mouth around that one.

  “Kicked it in,” he assured her calmly. “What are you doing here?”

  “I saw the back door as I was driving by.”

  “You were driving by the back door? In the alley? Why were you driving down the alley?”

  She looked nonplussed. “What? Why would you even ask me? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m looking for evidence,” he said, rising to his feet.

  Lisa’s eyes widened. “Evidence of what?”

  “Of tampering. Someone contaminated those Bangs samples Grace took from our heifers, and someone also came on to the place and exposed that cow to anthrax.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Yeah.”

  Lisa groped for the desk behind her, rested her hip there. “Oh, God, Danny.”

  “You got something to tell me, Lisa?”

  “I don’t— Oh, this is terrible.”

  “It’s pretty terrible,” he agreed, watching her, his voice and his face utterly expressionless.

  “Do you have any proof?”

  “Yes,” he lied coolly.

  “Did you find it on him?”

  Daniel’s mouth barely twitched. “On him?”

  “On Frank.”

  “Frank didn’t do this, Lisa.”

  Her eyes clouded with tears. She was either damned sincere, Daniel thought, his heart beginning to race, or she was a hell of an actress. “No,” she said quickly, her hand out in supplication. “No, of course he didn’t. I shouldn’t even have said that.”

  “Then why did you?”

  She took a deep breath. “Forget I did. What kind of proof do you have?”

  Daniel took a chance. “We have confirmation from the laboratory supply company that they shipped both anthrax spores and brucella here for examination purposes.”

  Lisa’s eyes sharpened imperceptibly. “You do?” Her lips flattened, her brows knit. “How could he—how could someone have done that?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t Frank.” Though he wasn’t nearly as sure as he sounded.

  “Danny—”

  Daniel took a step toward her, using his height, the stretch of his shoulders, the menace in his eyes, to intimidate her. But she’d grown up with this giant, knew he didn’t have it in him to tou
ch a woman in anger. She didn’t even flinch.

  “If you have an accusation to make,” he growled at her, “you’d better just make it.”

  “Your brother has a drug habit.”

  He said nothing.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  He shrugged, though the casual gesture cost him. His guts had knotted into a clump at the accusation. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Danny,” Lisa said sadly, compassionately. “Everyone else does. Even your parents. They’ve been trying to get him into rehab for months.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, Daniel. Call them and ask them. He’s been fighting them tooth and nail. Haven’t you noticed the tension between them?” She ran her hands down her face and clasped them at her chin, sighing sadly. “He’s come to me for money a hundred times. And I’m not the only one. Ask almost anyone in town. He has a supplier here, a woman who hangs out at the Rowdy Cowboy.”

  “You’re lying,” he raged. He wished fervently he was a different kind of man; he would have liked to wrap his hands around her throat and stop the words from coming. “You did this.”

  “I did what? This tampering thing?” She shook her head. “No, Daniel. I didn’t.”

  “You had opportunity. You had access to everything you’d need.”

  “Ha! Mrs. Handleman barely lets me answer the phone. And besides, what could possibly be my motive?”

  “To ruin Grace? To ruin me?”

  “Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I ruin you and Grace, and then I have no job here and no job at the ranch. Get a grip, Daniel.”

  She came off the edge of the desk, reached up and took him by the shoulders.

  “I love the ranch. I love you and the folks. After Daddy died, they became my parents, too. I even want to buy into the business with you all, if you’ll let me. Frank is the one who wants out. You won’t let him out. What better way than this to pay you back for that?”

  Daniel took a step back, stared at her, his mind spinning. Lisa did not take her eyes from his. And, damn her, he could see no hint of guile or malice in her.

  “No, Lisa,” he said slowly. “You’re lying.”

  Her hand fluttered up to her mouth, and a single tear tracked down from her green eyes.

  “No. God, Danny, no.”

  “Yes, Lisa,” Grace said from the doorway. “You are.”

  Chapter 14

  Lisa whirled. “Grace!” She quickly composed her features and pulled her hand from the pocket of her coat. “Oh, thank God, you’re here,” she said, her voice cracking. “Frank has— Oh, I can’t even explain it. Frank has been the one behind this whole thing, and Daniel and I just figured it out.”

  Grace hobbled through the door on her crutches. She looked magnificent, Daniel thought. Tall and angry and beautiful, like an avenging angel. He moved toward her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Fine.” She didn’t so much as glance at him. She stared at Lisa, who looked as ingenuous and amiable as ever. Grace could have smacked her. “You’re lying, Lisa,” she repeated slowly, and watched with some satisfaction as the color drained from the smaller woman’s face.

  Lisa’s hand dipped again into her pocket.

  “Grace,” she pleaded with a good measure of confused warmth, a last-ditch effort, “what happened to your poor leg?”

  Grace shook her head. “It hardly matters.”

  “Will you please tell me what the heck you’re talking about, the both of you?” Lisa asked, looking between them. A hint of menace had seeped through the honeyed tones, and Daniel moved instinctively closer to Grace, protecting her.

  “I’m talking about tampering with the blood serum tests in my lab, a criminal offence. About illegally ordering anthrax, forging a doctor’s signature, exposing the people and livestock of this state to a deadly disease, all federal offenses.”

  “Grace, please,” Lisa sputtered with shock. “You can’t possibly believe I’d do something like this.”

  The sincerity in her voice wasn’t even cloying. It was as convincing as the dawn. She was an excellent liar, pathological probably, Grace thought. It’d be work to convict her in front of a jury.

  “I do believe it,” Grace said, unruffled. “And I have proof. I called the lab supply company. They confirmed my vet stamp on both the bacilli and the brucella. They’d authenticated the order by telephone, and when it was delivered to the clinic, I apparently signed for it myself. They have verification from the courier. They even e-mailed me a scan of the order, and my forged signature.”

  Lisa took one look at Grace’s forbidding expression and appealed to Daniel instead. “I don’t even know what that stuff is.”

  “I think you do,” Daniel said slowly. He pinned Lisa with those deadly green eyes. “I think you forged an order from Grace’s lab, and I think you confirmed the order with the supply company.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “They said you did,” Grace stated flatly.

  “You’re lying,” Lisa said, turning to her. “They didn’t say that.”

  “They did,” Grace insisted. “They even described your voice.”

  “My voice? My voice?” She was incredulous now, vigorously annoyed and provoked. “How could they have possibly described my voice? It wasn’t even a woman who—” She stopped midsentence, her jaw clamping shut.

  “It wasn’t a woman who spoke with them, was it, Lisa?” Daniel said. “You had them talk to a man.”

  “I didn’t have them—”

  “Shut up,” he ordered bluntly, and Grace was somewhat surprised to see Lisa obey. She may be nuts, Grace mused, but she knows an irrefutable command when she hears one. “You had them talk to a man because you were planning all along to frame Frank for this,” he said. “Just as you framed me three years ago at the university.”

  That really did stun her. The wide-eyed candor and persecuted surprise fell away like a mask from her face, and she stared at him, astounded.

  “What?” she breathed.

  “You framed me for cheating while I was at W.A.S.U.” He shook his head. “Grace figured it out. You know, I never suspected it. Not once.”

  She squinted at him, furious. “But of course you do now. You’ve both decided this is all my fault. With no proof at all, you’re tried and convicted me. That’s typical.”

  “We have proof,” Grace said. “We know it was you, and you’re not going to get away with it. Did you think you could? The state would have investigated my clinic, Lisa. They would have found out in a matter of days that someone ordered both the brucella and the anthrax spores through here.”

  Lisa chuckled acidly, and Grace felt a chill go up her spine. Daniel felt her shiver and stepped between the two women, shielding Grace from whatever was to come.

  “How much evidence did you plant at Frank’s place, Lisa?” Daniel asked.

  There was long silence in the room. The frosty bite at Grace’s backbone doubled and her shoulder blades clenched involuntarily. She could practically hear the other woman running through her options. Fight or flee? Deny or admit? She peered over Daniel’s shoulder, saw Lisa smile, slowly. Grace felt the dread of that small smile all the way to her toes.

  “Well,” Lisa said with a palpable quantity of satisfaction in her voice. She pulled a small vial from her pocket and watched their eyes go wide. “Another vial of this, for one.”

  Daniel’s first, overwhelming instinct was to charge her, wrest away the threat to himself and Grace, but Lisa was watching him closely enough to see his muscles tense for attack. She raised the bottle in the air. “Uh-uh,” she scolded, grinning.

  “If you drop it, Lisa,” Grace said, hobbling her way around her protector, “you’ll be exposed to the spores, as well.”

  Lisa shook the vial of deadly anthrax. “That would be a shame,” she agreed. “But I won’t die from it. They have antibiotics now that can control it. You will die, though.” She reached into her pocket with her other hand and brought out the sm
all handgun. She raised her eyebrows, grinned. “What do you think? I brought it in from my pickup when I saw the back door kicked in. Pretty dramatic ending to this whole thing, huh?” She pointed the gun at Grace, stopping Daniel’s heart. “You’re exposed to anthrax through the lab.” She moved the gun to Daniel. “You’re exposed from the cow. You’re both found in the desert a couple days later, having started walking home after the vet truck broke down, dead as doornails.”

  Daniel snorted derisively. “That’s not very plausible,” he sneered, and Grace pinched him, hard, on his rigid upper arm. No way to treat a lunatic, she wanted to hiss at him.

  The smug smile was wiped from Lisa’s face in an instant. She glared at her cousin. “It’s plausible. I hate to break it to you, Danny, but you’re not in charge here.”

  “He’s right, though, Lisa,” Grace said, trying her best to be persuasive, though her voice fairly shook. “Who will believe this?”

  Lisa scowled at Grace. “Everyone will,” she insisted. “You’re a screwup, Dr. McKenna. Not a single person in this county doesn’t believe you botched this whole thing from the beginning. I’ve helped them along, with some scary stories about the way things are run around here. The fact that you exposed both of us to anthrax through shoddy lab techniques won’t surprise anyone.”

  “And you,” she continued, smiling at her cousin, “are even easier to explain. Everyone knows what a failure you are.”

  “If you planned all this with the anthrax,” Grace asked quietly, “why did you tamper with the blood samples from the heifers?”

  “I had to make sure he didn’t sell those bred heifers. The money they brought in would have kept him afloat too long.”

  “You could destroy the livestock industry in the whole state with this, Lisa,” Daniel said, watching her roll the tiny bottle rhythmically across her palm, the fragile glass making a clicking sound as it hit the trio of silver rings she wore. “Why in God’s name unleash something like anthrax?”

  “Because you couldn’t squirm out of that, Danny. No blood tests would clear you. You have one cow dead on your place of anthrax, you’re screwed. That’s what I was going for.” She grinned at him. “I wanted you to be screwed so bad you’d never recover.”