The Virgin Beauty. Claire King
people right now who would kill to get a visit from their son.”
“Not a son who drinks the good beer.” He pulled one out for himself. “I keep the cheap stuff in the can for you and Frank.”
Daniel grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Do that. You see the new vet?”
Daniel’s green eyes went flat again. “Yeah, I saw her.”
“Figured you had. Just saw Pat down to the grocery store and he said you’d been staring out the window of the Early Bird for pert near an hour this morning before she showed up.”
Daniel moved his ax-handle shoulders. “I just wanted to make sure she got settled in.”
Howard tossed his wife a glance. “Right. Did she?”
“She was getting there. She already had Doc Niebaur’s vet box bolted into the back of her truck, but she hadn’t even been to her new house, so I guess she’s got her priorities set.” He took another slug of beer, to wash the acid taste of animosity down his throat.
“Where’s she living?”
“The little house of Fourth. The one I tried to buy from Mrs. Hensen last year.”
“I hope she fixed that front stoop, the old skinflint.”
“She did. I went by to check on it.”
Howard and his wife exchanged another apprehensive look. Daniel watched his father take in a deep breath, knew from experience a lecture was coming. “Now, son—” he began.
Daniel warded him off with a raised hand. “It’s okay, Dad. I was just being neighborly.” They were both looking at him, his father’s arm slung across his mother’s plump shoulders, united in their love and concern for him. He smiled. “Really. She seems like a nice person. I just wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to go through her front porch on her first day, is all.”
His mother eyed him. “Sugar, I think you need to just let the whole thing go.”
“I know, Mom. I’m getting there.”
“Well, I hear she’s a big gal,” Howard said his booming voice emphasizing the “big.” “Pat said she was six foot if she was an inch.”
Daniel smiled. “More like six-two or three. Tall, but not skinny. She looks pretty good, actually.” He took another drink, dropped the bomb. “I asked her out to dinner.”
His parents goggled at him.
“Now, honey—” his mother began.
“Hell, boy—” his father said at the same time.
Daniel put both hands up this time, the long fingers of one stretched around the neck of his beer bottle. “She said no anyhow, but I didn’t ask her out because I’m interested in her. She could have been a troll for all I care, or a man. I was just going to grill her about her plans for my practice.”
“Oh, Danny,” his mother said. She shook her head at him. “It would have been better if you had asked her out because she’s good-looking.”
He grinned at her, to make that worry line between her brows disappear. Dammit, he hadn’t meant to say “my” practice. It had just slipped out. “I make it a policy to not date women who can take me in an arm wrestle.”
“Bad policy,” his father said under his breath, making Daniel laugh.
“I won’t have you harassing the girl,” his mother warned.
“I wasn’t harassing her. Exactly. Anyway, she caught me at it and made some nasty comment about my mental health.” Which, somehow, had both stung a little and made him want to laugh. He couldn’t figure it. “And she told me she wouldn’t have dinner with me, so I came to ask you guys if you want to go out. My treat. We can call Frank if you want to. Lisa, too, if she’s not doing anything.”
“I don’t think I can take an evening with Frank tonight,” Liz said, sighing. She put the last of the groceries away. “Besides, we have a canasta game.”
“Which we can cancel,” Howard countered. “You know I hate to play with the O’Sullivans, anyway. Harry cheats at cards like a lying dog.”
“Ha,” Liz said. “When it comes to cards, I wouldn’t talk about lying dogs if I were you.”
“I don’t cheat at cards!”
“Ha again! I’ve played poker with you, buddy boy. I know a cheater when I see a cheater.”
“Just at strip poker, Liz.” He leered at her stupidly, making her laugh.
Daniel smiled, threw his arms around them both. “I’ll get you back in time for your canasta game.” He headed them out the kitchen door. “I’d hate for you to miss anything as goofy as that.”
Grace’s day had turned out plenty goofy. First of all, there had been people everywhere. Not under her feet exactly, but close enough. They’d started coming by the minute Daniel Cash and his splendid body and Neanderthal brain had loped, flat-footed, back to whatever cave he’d come from.
She noticed the kid first, riding back and forth on his bike. He was all of eleven, she thought, and he’d passed the office a dozen times before getting up the nerve to come in to gawk sideways at her while pretending a remarkably intense interest in bovine nose pliers. She let him gawk. Better to get it over with.
Then a couple old men, bored with checkers and coffee or whatever occupied the long days of retired farmers, had sauntered over from the café across the street, made a complimentary comment or two about Doc Niebaur, wished her the best. They’d gawked at her, too. One of them taking to calling her “Stretch” in the middle of their short conversation.
One by one, two by two, people had come by, most too shy to poke their heads inside to say hello to the new vet, but hardly a soul in Nobel willing to miss out on the chance to get a load of the lady veterinarian who looked “pert near tall enough to be in the circus or something.”
She’d gone about her work vaguely accustomed to it all. She’d been the junior vet in three other offices since graduation and she’d always encountered these kinds of reactions. She supposed it would have been the same if she’d chosen secretarial work as her profession, or grocery clerking. Anything but women’s basketball or modeling. She’d never had the interest in one, the looks or the intellectual indifference required for the other.
She’d unpacked her boxes, snooped through the cabinets in the examining/operating room, though from the inventory list Niebaur had sent her when she’d bought his practice, she’d known almost to the syringe what was in there. She’d checked the kennel cages and taken a quick run through the files, trying not to look for “Cash, Daniel” on the folder labels. She’d found it, anyway, and dug it out.
A thousand head of cattle! No, she’d thought, that couldn’t be right. But there it was. Daniel and Frank Cash—a father, or a brother, maybe—owned Cash Cattle, Incorporated, and a thousand head of mother cows. A huge operation.
He’d said he had a couple animals. What a smart aleck.
She shook her head in memory of his smug grin.
She’d riffled through the file again, found the brucellosis vaccination records for the past ten years, the trich tests results on fifty Angus bulls, lapsed for three years now. He’d gone to artificial insemination then, she’d noted, and felt a little thrill when she’d realized she’d get to do it this year. A lucrative thing. The A.I. business. If he continued to go to a vet for it rather than hire one of the freelance A.I. technicians. Which he might do, considering his inexplicable animosity toward her earlier in the day.
She hoped he wouldn’t, though. She needed the income. Her parents had borrowed against everything they owned to help her pay for this practice, and she was determined to make it work. It was a huge risk, but