The Virgin Beauty

by Claire King

  “I’m packing a couple things. I’m selling the practice. I told you that last week.”

  “That was last week,” he said tersely, a buzz of alarm humming through him. “Things have obviously changed since last week.”

  She couldn’t help the sideways glance she shot him. “Not really.” She worked more tape from the dispenser.

  He picked it out of her grasp and threw it against the opposite wall with enough force to crack the plastic into a dozen pieces. “I think it has,” he replied conversationally while Grace stared at the shattered dispenser on the floor. “Lisa’s been charged, everyone knows the truth about what happened. Your reputation is totally cleared.”

  “That’s good,” she said slowly. “It’ll be easier for me to get a position somewhere else.”

  Oh, he was frustrated beyond endurance with the woman. And scared to death. “Why do you need a new position?” he asked as casually as he could manage, thinking perhaps smashing her tape dispenser had not been such a good idea, as she couldn’t seem to stop looking at it.

  “We both know why,” she said, then continued before he could interrupt her again. “I talked to Phil Brown about your herd. We agreed that since the cow Lisa exposed was separated from the rest of the herd, the waiting period can be lifted sooner. All the cattle will have to be tested and inoculated before you can sell them or put them back out on public lands, but you won’t be quarantined past that point.”

  “Fine,” he said shortly. He was relieved, of course. That solution fit perfectly with his plans, though, if it hadn’t, he would have simply adjusted his plans. He was, after all, a very determined man. “Because I plan to sell them.”

  “You plan to sell them?” Grace finally looked over at him. Daniel did all he could do not to brush back the hair that fell against her cheek. “You’re going to sell the whole herd?”

  He nodded once. “As soon as they’re cleared.”

  She searched his face for a moment. “Daniel, those cattle are your whole life.” She knew that better than anyone. She’d been in his way when he’d had to prove what he would do to save them, in fact. “Why would you sell them?”

  “My whole life, Grace?” He frowned at her. “I don’t think so. I think I know what constitutes my whole life, and it isn’t a bunch of cows.”

  “I just meant—”

  He held up his hand. “I know what you meant. You meant I was willing to sacrifice everything for that herd, including you.”

  She turned back to her packing. Where was her tape? Oh. Right. She bent the cardboard top to fit together as an alternative. “I don’t want to go over this again, Daniel.”

  “Well, we’re going to have to go over it, because there are obviously some things you don’t understand, but for the moment I’d like to explain why I’m selling the herd.”

  Grace faced him again, nodded slowly, wary. The man always seemed to put her on her guard. She remembered thinking the first time she saw him, lifting that unwieldy meds box as though it weighed no more than a pile of feathers, that she’d better watch her step.

  “Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”

  Daniel ran his hand down his face, pulled at his bottom lip with his thumb and index finger. How to explain? How to make her understand? He frowned thoughtfully at her. Oh, hell, he told himself, take a shot. You’re bigger than she is; if she doesn’t understand this explanation, you’ll just have to keep her here until you can come up with one she does understand.

  “Frank is going into rehab,” he began.

  Grace’s wide and pretty mouth went soft with sympathy. “I’m glad.”

  “I realize a lot of Frank’s problems in the last few years have been because of me.”

  “Daniel, you can’t—”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “He came to me a dozen times since his wife and baby died in that accident. He wanted out of the ranching business, wanted to leave Nobel, get away from the ghosts here. But I was too stubborn to let him go. I thought I knew what was best for him, what was best for all of us. I didn’t want to fail again, and I kept Frank here through money and family ties. Because if he left, I’d have had to admit everything I put a hand to, the vet thing, my marriage, the ranch, was bound to fail. I let him take the fall for my pride.”

  “Frank’s a grown man, Daniel. He could have walked away anytime.”

  Daniel shook his head. “I made it too hard for him to do that. He was already hanging on to his life by a thread. He would have had to leave here broke and estranged from his family, and I just don’t think he had the strength to do it. I didn’t want to see that.”

  She stayed silent, and Daniel took a deep breath. So far, so good, he thought. She was still standing there.

  “I don’t know what he’s going to want to do after he gets out of rehab. But I do know the folks don’t want and shouldn’t have to pick up the slack.” His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “And obviously Lisa is out of the picture.”

  Grace nodded. “Phil Brown is out for blood.”

  “I reckon he is. She could have destroyed the stock cow business in Idaho.”

  “So what will you do without them?”

  “I’m going to sell the cattle as soon as the state clears them. The then lease out the farm ground until I get back.”

  Grace stared at him. “Get back? You’re leaving Nobel?” She couldn’t imagine it. He was as much a part of this town as the cracked sidewalks and the Grange and the sprawling dairies. She couldn’t imagine Nobel without Daniel Cash. Of course, she couldn’t imagine much of anything without Daniel Cash. Including the rest of her life.

  Daniel screwed up his courage. Speaking the words out loud was clearly more difficult than thinking them. If she discouraged him, or laughed at him, he’d lose his taste for it altogether. He needed her approval, needed her encouragement. Needed her.

  “I’m going back to vet school,” he said.

  Grace’s hand flew to her mouth, but he rushed on before she could speak.

  “I called the university yesterday and got through to the dean. I talked to him about Lisa, about what she told us in the clinic about framing me for cheating. He said if I could get a deposition stating that she was responsible, he’d go to the board, try and have me reinstated.”

  “Oh, Daniel,” Grace breathed.

  He grinned. “Yeah.” The impact of it hit him for the first time, as though telling her had made it real to him. His dream, his lifelong dream. It was coming back to him. “I’ll have to take refresher courses, obviously, because I’ve been gone so long. I’ve probably forgotten half of everything I ever learned, but he thinks I could finish in two semesters.”

  “You haven’t forgotten anything,” she insisted loyally.

  He laughed, reached out with all friendliness and wiped away the tear that had streaked her cheek. “Maybe not. I keep my Merck in my bedside table, next to the girlie magazines,” he joked, absently rubbing the tear along his fingertips.

  “Daniel, I’m so happy for you.”

  He smiled at her, could see the truth of that in her shining eyes. “No one but you can understand what this means to me.”

  That made her breath catch, and Grace had to duck her head and wipe at her eyes.

  “You’ll come back here, then,” she said, already knowing the answer. She worked up a smile. “Dr. Niebaur will be so proud of you.”

  “I hope so. It’s always been a sore spot for me that he thought I cheated on an exam.” He hadn’t touched her except to wipe that tear away, but he needed to now. He gathered her hands in his free hand. He noticed hers were cold and he chafed at them gently with his thumb. “You know, I’ve always wanted his clinic, his practice.”

  “I know,” Grace nodded, swallowing the rest of her tears. She squeezed his hands, tried to release them. “Well, it’s good that I’m leaving. You belong here.”

  “So do you, Grace.”

  She smiled gently. No hard feelings, right? Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be? �
��No. It was always your place.”

  He pulled her closer, looked down at her. Tall girl, he thought. Pretty, warm, wonderful woman. “I think it’s our place,” he said. He rubbed his thumb rhythmically across her knuckles. “I was just waiting for you to get here.”

  She was certain she hadn’t heard him correctly. But she pulled her hands free, in case she had. “Don’t do this.”

  He felt cold without her close, and pulled defensively at the jacket that was slung across his wide shoulders. “I have to. I don’t want you to go.”

  “Don’t, Daniel,” she said, shaking her head. “I won’t be able to forgive you if you do.”

  “If I do what? Ask you to stay?”

  She gaped at him for a moment. “You want to be partners?”

  I want to be married, he almost blurted, but decided he’d better hash this out with her first. She wasn’t taking his declaration the way he’d hoped.

  “Yes,” he said stubbornly, and waited for the explosion.

  It came instantly. “You jerk,” she said, keeping herself from cracking him across the face through sheer willpower. “You blamed me for everything, and didn’t trust me for a minute until Lisa told you the truth herself.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “That is true!” she shouted. “You fed me to the wolves the minute something went wrong. You never believed in me, in my abilities and ethics as a vet.”

  “Of course I did. I’m just an idiot! I can’t say anything in my defense, Grace. I was wrong and stupid and scared. I knew it all along.”

  “But still you blamed me, accused me in front of my peers.”

  He nodded shortly. “Yes, and I’m ashamed.” Oh, it was intolerably harder to admit it than he’d hoped it would be.

  “You should be!”

  He stood in front of her, defenseless. He didn’t even try to offer an excuse. He loved her, and she deserved to be angry with him for his betrayal. He wondered if she’d ever understand that he hated himself far more for it than she would ever hate him. “I am, Grace.”

  “I can’t forgive you.”

  He battled back the surge of panic the words brought. “Yes, you can,” he asserted mulishly. “I know you.”

  “If you knew me, you would have known I could never do this kind of thing, made this kind of mistake. You would have known I’d have done anything to not have allowed it to happen.”

  “I do know that. I did all along. I just fought against it because the only other explanation was that I had failed as a cattleman just as I’d failed as a veterinarian. Just as I’d failed as a husband. I couldn’t live with it.”

  “Clearly.”

  “But I was here, Grace, when Lisa came through that door with her little gun and her vial of anthrax. I was already here.”

  Grace stared at him, her chest rising and falling heavily. “What?”

  Ah, that stopped her, he thought with a small rising of hope. “You’re wrong when you say it took Lisa coming here and spilling her guts to make me believe in you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You sat in my bed, naked except for that old W.A.S.U. sweatshirt and told me my cousin, whom I’d known all my life, was responsible for everything. It’s true—” he said quickly when he saw she was about to interrupt him “—I didn’t want to buy it at first, and I’m sorry for that. But you didn’t even give me five minutes to come to grips with the idea before you called my brother and went tearing off to town.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’d better not even try to pawn this off on me.”

  “I’m not,” he said, frustrated. “I’m just saying I’m not the only one who has trouble with faith in this relationship. You left me looking at an empty bed that still had the print of your head on the pillow!” And that had hurt, more than he could explain. “You said you didn’t love me anymore. You didn’t have any faith in me, either.”

  “Did you expect me to? I fell in love with you, Daniel, and you couldn’t run fast enough from me. I’ve been so careful to not let that happen until you, and I tell you, Daniel, I was right to. It was a terrible mistake, opening my heart to you. Did you expect me to limp along after you professionally, as well, until you decided what was right and what was wrong.”

  “No,” he admitted. He rubbed hard at his eyes. “No.” He looked at her. “But you hurt me.”

  “You hurt me, too,” she whispered.

  He could see that, and it tormented him. He pulled her to his chest with his undamaged arm, thankful she went, however stiffly. He held her close with his right hand between her shoulder blades. “I know I did, Grace,” he whispered into her soft, brown curls. “And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  She held herself like a stone, not allowing her heart to be moved by the misery and remorse she heard in his deep voice. “Who broke my door?” she asked after a minute, her voice even and strong again.

  “What?” he murmured, so grateful, finally, to be holding her again. His shoulder ached where hers met it, but he didn’t care.

  “Who kicked in the door? You?”

  “You think Lisa could have?”

  “You have a key,” she argued, but of course he was right. Lisa could never have kicked in that door. She’d never considered what that meant, was too busy getting Daniel to the hospital, clearing the mess with the Animal Industries Division.

  “I left it at home. I drove your vet truck in.”

  She eased herself away from him, careful of his shoulder. “You were here first?”

  “Yes. Lisa saw the door and came in after me. I confronted her.”

  “Why were you here, Daniel?”

  “I was looking for some evidence against her. Records or order copies or something in the lab that would implicate her.”

  Grace watched his face, those beautiful, lichen-colored eyes. “Why?”

  “Because I believed you. When I saw you driving away with Frank, I knew you’d been telling me the truth. I knew how unforgivably stupid I’d been.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I love you, Grace. And I realized, way too late, I admit it, that if you loved me half as much as I loved you, you never could have lied to me.”

  She never expected those words. They blindsided her. She expected an apology, because he was the man he was. But those words. She’d have given anything to hear them a few weeks ago, now they made her want to double over in pain.

  “No,” she whispered hoarsely. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes and she despised them. She warded him off when he advanced on her. “It’s too late.”

  “No. I love you.” And God, how amazing it felt saying it out loud. “I love you,” he said again, just for the joy of it, “and I realized I’d loved you probably from the first minute I saw you.”

  “Daniel, don’t.”

  “You’ve got to stop telling me don’t when I have to,” he said, smiling gently at her. The vulnerable woman was in front of him now—no Amazon stature or traditionally male profession or a lifetime’s armor separated them—and he had to be so careful to not hurt her again. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted. You’re beautiful and strong and smart and I have been a little bit out of my mind since the day you came to town. You make me mad, you make me laugh, you make my eyes cross every time I look at you. How could I not love you?”

  She was hyperventilating, she was almost positive. She could not take in enough air. If not for her traitorous ankle, she would have fled. Because the bittersweet pain of it was too much to bear. If he was lying, if it was a joke or a mistake, she wouldn’t be able to live through it. And if it was true, it was the first time in her life she’d heard it said outside the small circle of her family. The impact was stronger, more brutal than she could have anticipated.

  “And how,” he continued thoughtfully as he watched her face change, watched the apprehension build in her eyes, “could I not believe in you? What happened these last weeks was all my fault, Grace. I was terrified o
f failing again, and so determined to not let anything stand in the way of my success that I forced my head to ignore what my heart already understood. I came here after I left your truck for you because I knew you were right. I wanted to prove it for you, to you. I thought if I could find what you needed to clear your name, I’d lay it at your feet and you’d be able to forgive me for doubting you.” He was embarrassed by her silent regard. “That sounds stupid.”

  It sounded noble and dear, she thought. The idea of it chipped at the last fragments of the hull that covered her tender heart. “It sounds like you,” she said simply.

  He frowned at her slender, straight back. “Does that mean you think I’m stupid?”

  He saw her shoulders tremble, saw her raise her hand to her mouth. God, he was shaking himself. She wasn’t going to forgive him, wasn’t going to love him again. He could feel it.

  He pressed his body against hers in desperation, fitting himself to her bottom, taking her hips in his hands and flexing his fingers into her flesh. He heard her gasp, felt her shudder.

  He put his face to her ear, closed his eyes. “Grace,” he whispered low, fervently, “don’t tell me you don’t love me anymore. I won’t believe you. I’ll believe everything you ever tell me from now on, but not that.” He buried his face at the side of her neck, but not before Grace heard the curious hitch in his voice. “Not that,” he mumbled.

  She reached up without thought and cradled his head in her palm, pushing her fingers through his short hair. “No,” she whispered after a minute, “not that.”

  He stood at her back, trying to pull himself together. Nothing scared him as much as this did. He finally turned her so they were facing each other. He kept his hands at her hips, digging in, holding on. “I can’t do anything without you, Grace. I can’t go back or go forward without you.”

  She shook her head. “No. You don’t have to.” She reached up, wiped the dampness from under his eyes with her thumbs, then kissed him gently on his mouth. “I love you, Daniel.”

  He searched her eyes, their noses nearly touching, their breath falling hard upon one another. Then he smiled slowly, that killer smile, and she knew she was lost, forever. “I believe you,” he said, and made her laugh.