If there was one thing Daniel Cash understood perfectly, it was a battle.

“I’m helping you on with your damn coat,” he said between his teeth.

Daniel was slowly buttoning up every button on her stupid coat. Winning the battle. His knuckles brushed her breasts as he reached the middle button, and he heard the slightest intake of her breath. His finger froze.

It was probably a little twisted, getting turned on while you were wrestling with a woman for the dubious privilege of helping her on with her coat, but Grace McKenna had been giving him the strangest ideas since the day he met her.

He watched his own fingers slowly unfasten the buttons on her coat, then he slid his hands inside.

“Daniel?”

“Don’t say it’s a mistake,” he whispered thickly. “Please don’t say it’s a mistake.”

She pulled his head up to hers. “I won’t….”

Dear Reader,

The 20th anniversary excitement continues as we bring you a 2-in-1 collection containing brand-new novellas by two of your favorite authors: Maggie Shayne and Marilyn Pappano. Who Do You Love? It’s an interesting question—made more complicated for these heroes and heroines because they’re not quite what they seem, making the path to happily-ever-after an especially twisty one. Enjoy!

A YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY continues with Her Secret Weapon by bestselling writer Beverly Barton. This is a great secret-baby story—with a forgotten night of passion thrown in to make things even more exciting. Our in-line 36 HOURS spin-off continues with A Thanksgiving To Remember, by Margaret Watson. Suspenseful and sensual, this story shows off her talents to their fullest. Applaud the return of Justine Davis with The Return of Luke McGuire. There’s something irresistible about a bad boy turned hero, and Justine’s compelling and emotional handling of the theme will win your heart. In The Lawman Meets His Bride, Meagan McKinney brings her MATCHED IN MONTANA miniseries over from Desire with an exciting romance featuring a to-die-for hero. Finally, pick up The Virgin Beauty by Claire King and discover why this relative newcomer already has people talking about her talent.

Share the excitement—and come back next month for more!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

The Virgin Beauty
Claire King

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Suzie

The bravest, best woman I know.

A special thanks to Sue Vos

For her generous advice and the invaluable loan of her Merck Manual.

CLAIRE KING

lives with her husband, her son, a dozen goats and too many cows on her family’s cattle ranch in Idaho. An award-winning agricultural columnist and seasoned cow-puncher, Claire lives for the spare minutes she can dedicate to reading and writing about people who fall helplessly in love, because, she says, “The romantic lives of my cattle just aren’t as interesting as people might think.”

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 1

Grace McKenna did not want to get out of her truck. Hadn’t wanted to for five minutes, and still didn’t want to. Didn’t suppose she’d ever want to, in fact. So she sat in the cab, considering her options.

She could drive back to her hometown in Washington State. People knew her there, were accustomed to the sight of her. She was hardly ever whispered about, hardly ever asked a single, stupid question about basketball or the weather “up there.”

Or she could go back to the practice she’d left in eastern Washington, where she stayed in the clinic most of the time, working with the animals, who didn’t care in the least what she looked like.

Or she could get out of this cramped pickup and start her new life and let the people talk. She knew from experience they’d find something else to talk about after a time. A year, maybe. Or twenty.

She sighed, looked around a little.

A new town.

It made her nervous. It always did. No matter where she went, she couldn’t escape who she was—didn’t really even want to. But she always dreaded the first day. Until people got used to the look of her, she felt something like a weed suddenly sprouted green and tall in the middle of an even field of wheat. The eye couldn’t help but be drawn to it, opinions formed, discussions begun. It was something to which she was certainly accustomed—having been a conspicuous weed kind of person since she was twelve years old—but she never got over the apprehension of it.

A new town, a new job. A thousand new faces and facts and places.

She looked around at the dusty little Western outpost. Well, maybe not a thousand.

She was on the main street; homey-looking and not too long, with grand winter skeletons of ash trees that in summer would shade it from the ruthless Idaho sun. On the one street was one grocery store, one supply store, one clothing store with fading Wrangler Jeans on sale in the front window. And a Dairy Queen, of course. She’d lived in the west all her life and had yet to see a town of any size without a Dairy Queen. Thank goodness, she thought as she smiled over at the jumble of old pickups and used sports cars in the parking lot. Every teenager west of the Mississippi would starve to death otherwise.

And that was about the size of Nobel, Idaho. She smiled again, a little more confidently. In a little town like this, people would quickly get used to the look of her. With any luck, she’d only spend the first year or so shaking off the whispers that had followed her since puberty.

Time to be brave, Gracie, she told herself. Time to meet your new town. Time to start your new life.

She unfolded herself from the front of her pickup, a rather long chore considering the length of her legs and her reluctance. She snagged two boxes of supplies from the bed of the truck, balanced them in one hand as she unlocked the glass front door of the small cinder-block-and-tin-roof building in front of her, and welcomed herself—there was no one else to do it—into her new home.

Nobel County Veterinary Clinic, here I am.

Daniel Cash leaned against the icy bumper of his pickup and watched her with narrowed eyes. Nice to know he was such a miserable jerk that he could hate a woman on sight, he thought to himself. His mother would swat him a good one if she knew just how much he wanted to stalk across the street to tell that amazingly long drink of water that she didn’t belong in his town, didn’t belong in his county, and she sure as hell did not belong in his building.

Yep. Hated her on sight. Too damn bad for him she was the most interesting-looking female he’d seen since…ever. Too bad she looked a mile long from where he was sitting, and most of that leg. Too bad her butt sat up as high as a fence post and her hips moved kind of slinky-like. That wasn’t going to make a bit of difference. She was in his building, doing his job, living his life. And he wasn’t happy about it.

He’d been waiting for her, brooding about her. When he’d drunk as much coffee as he could hold in the café across the street from the old vet clinic—the new vet clinic, he supposed people would call it now—he’d come back to the truck to brood in the cold spring wind, hoping it’d take the edge off. It hadn’t.

He levered himself off the bumper and crossed the street without looking for cars. There hardly ever were any. Nobel, Idaho, was not bustling. Half the storefronts that in his childhood had glowed with prosperity and the promise of worldly goods now stood dark; the half that were still hanging on by their fingernails were mostly just wasting electricity. The huge warehouse stores and supply companies and chain groceries in nearby Twin Falls were too much temptation for Nobel’s formerly loyal consumers.

Not that he was thinking about his town’s faltering economy just now. She’d come back out of the building and was headed for her truck, which was parked on the street. She didn’t notice him there—which gave him a good indication of just how preoccupied she was, settling into what was supposed to have been his life. He was a hard man to miss. She leaned in and grabbed another couple of bulky boxes from the back. Without a word, he took what looked to be the heaviest right out of her hands.

Lord. The woman was tall, was all Daniel could think as she straightened. Rose, and rose still. She’d looked tall from across the street, but this was…tall.

He was a good bit over six foot four inches, and was accustomed to being just about the tallest man around. And to looking at the tops of every woman’s head; at uptilted eyes with flirty lashes, at the downslopes of noses, at those darling little whorls of hair every woman had at the top of her head she didn’t know about, as distinguishing as finger-prints. But this girl—

Woman, he corrected himself. Nothing girlish about this Amazon. She met him almost inch for inch. If she was under six-two he’d eat his cap. His eyes widened at the sheer damned length of her. And the blood rushed into his face almost as fast as it rushed south to his groin. He couldn’t for the life of him explain either reaction.

Grace felt the package go and gave a little dismayed whimper. Her extra meds were in that box; darn expensive to get and half in glass bottles. She dipped her knees to try to catch it as it fell, but it didn’t fall at all. It swooped into the air instead and landed against the broadest, nicest chest she’d had the pleasure of coming across in years. She straightened slowly, wishing she didn’t have to.

“Thanks,” Grace said, holding her arm out to receive the box he’d nabbed, “but I can get it.”

He didn’t answer her so she frowned at him. She was used to those wide-eyed stares, and was, she told herself sternly, resigned to being a freak of nature. But the man was young and handsome in that Western, aw-shucks kind of way, and she was a little embarrassed he’d dropped his jaw the way he had. Embarrassed and exasperated. Surely even this big, dumb cowboy knew it was rude to stare. Apparently not…

Daniel ignored the frown, knowing enough about women to understand when he was being reprimanded. And why. But he just couldn’t get over it. Over her.

He knew she wasn’t wearing high heels; he would have noticed that from across the street. He had a definite thing for high heels. He looked down at her feet, anyway. Nope. Boots, low-heeled and clunky.

Well, something had to explain why this woman looked him straight in the eye. Why she was the first woman he’d come across in all his wide and varied experience whose shoulders wouldn’t graze his belly, whose head couldn’t snuggle up under his chin, whose eyes he’d never see head-on unless she was scooted all the way up onto the pillows of his bed.

Grace glared at him. Wonderful. Now he was staring at her feet. They were, naturally, not dainty. She would have tipped over every time she walked if they had been, but she was still a little self-conscious about them. If he was so flabbergasted by their size, she thought, drawing her brows together, maybe she should just kick him with one and show him how useful they could be.

“Excuse me,” she said sharply. He looked up, blinking, his gaze sidetracked briefly in the general vicinity of her chest, as though he somehow expected her face to be there and was surprised when it wasn’t. At least he wasn’t gawking at her feet any longer.

She meant to raise her eyebrows at him when he finally got all the way up to looking at her. Give him a disdainful stare, she told herself. The one she practiced in the mirror for occasions just such as these, when people—when men—made her feel like some kind of circus curiosity for something genetic and completely beyond her control.

But she didn’t raise her eyebrows. When she met his eyes, she felt the oddest jolt. They were mossy-green, the color of the lichen on the trees in her native state. And intense. And looking at her not as an oddity of nature, but as someone who might be backed up against the pickup behind her and pressed against. Taken. Right in front of the Nobel County Veterinary Clinic.

“Uh…” She couldn’t get out another single syllable.

Daniel just stared at her. He was trying to remember why he wasn’t supposed to like this woman. He’d sulked for days about her coming here, and waited in the cold so he could give her a little trouble. That was reason enough why he shouldn’t squeeze up against that long body to see if it fit his as well as he imagined it might. Wasn’t it?

For several seconds he couldn’t answer his own question. Until she shook her head, breaking their strange and electrifying eye contact, and made a grab for the box he was holding.

Daniel recovered, barely, and sidestepped her effort to get her box back. He wanted inside the building, inside the boxes, and this was his chance. Besides, even though he disliked her on principle, that whole long length of her was making him twitch like a teenager, and he was man enough to admit he’d like the feeling to continue awhile.

“I got it,” he said. He stepped in front of her and through the open door as if he owned the place. He put the box down—it clinked and he knew there was medicine in there; his fingers itched to get at it—and looked around.

“You just get into town?” he asked as she came in behind him, though he knew perfectly well she had.

“About five minutes ago,” she said, annoyed and surprised at herself. She was unsettled, and nerves she hadn’t known she had were zinging around inside her like marbles in a centrifuge. This big man had grabbed her box of expensive medicine without warning, gaped at her like a rube, and then short-circuited something important, she was sure, inside her normally very good brain.

Thankfully, she had enough sense left to know now wasn’t a good time to make a blathering fool of herself in front of this, her first townsperson. The people of Nobel, including this giant, were going to be her lifeblood. Or their animals were, anyway. She stuck out a hand. “Grace McKenna. I’m the new vet.”

“I know who you are,” he said shortly. It made his blood simmer just thinking about who she was, what she was doing in his town. He took her hand anyway. “Daniel Cash.”

“Oh, my landlord.” She pumped his hand a couple times, was pleased beyond reckoning to find it was bigger than hers, and tried to pull hers back. He held on. “Uh, excuse me.”

He let her hand go when she tugged the second time. He couldn’t decide whether he’d kept it in some kind of perverse power play, or because it felt perfectly right in his; not butterfly small and crushable like so many women’s hands had, but strong and long-fingered, like his own.

“So…the place is going to be great, I think,” Grace said awkwardly. “Smells like you just had it painted. Thanks.”

He nodded, still taking her in with a pair of depthless, moss-green eyes.

“Dr. Niebaur said you would. Paint it for me. I bought the practice sight unseen.” And she was dying to see it, if this bruiser with the pretty eyes would get out of her way. “But he assured me you took good care of the building.”

He nodded again.

“So—” She moved to open her boxes, wanting something to do. She’d always been a little shy around men, owing mostly to their drop-jawed expressions when they got a good look at her, and this one, with his sudden appearance and intense expression, intimidated her more than most. She felt an old, despised clumsiness as she bobbled the box on the counter and watched him automatically dip his knees to catch it before it crashed to the floor.

“Thanks. So,” she began again after a deep breath, “are you the Nobel welcoming committee, or do you hang around town waiting to help carry boxes around?”

“I was passing by.”

“Well, thanks for the help.” She started lifting items, two-handed, from the boxes.

He’d seen Niebaur’s old vet box bolted into the back of her pickup, knew she’d bought it with the practice she was taking over from the retired vet. This was extra medication, animal supplements, promotional items from feed companies, other fascinating stuff. He could barely keep from brushing her hands away.

“I don’t want to keep you,” she said after an extended, uncomfortable silence between them.

Daniel ignored her polite but pointed comment. She wanted him to leave. Too bad. He shifted so he could get a better look at what she was unpacking, and brushed up against her in the process, making them both jump.

“’Scuse me,” he mumbled.

“Uh-huh,” she said, giving him room. He seemed to need it. He was huge, at least an inch taller than she was. Maybe two, she thought, and a good fifty pounds heavier. His shirt stretched tight at his shoulders, and his forearms, bare despite the weather, looked like tree trunks. She didn’t want to go lower, because she already felt crowded, but she got the impression of narrow hips and long, long legs.

He was less interested in her legs than she was in his, Grace noticed in something resembling relief. He was studying the felt-wrapped bundle she’d laid on the reception counter.

“My surgical tools,” she said.

He grunted and chewed his lower lip. “Mind?”

“Um…” She looked at him warily. He had hardly said two words together. “I don’t think so.”

His dark brows snapped together. Not too difficult to figure out what she was thinking. “I’m not going to attack you with them,” he scolded.

Her brown eyes widened fractionally. “So you say.”

He shot her a look that told her not to be an idiot, and reverently unwrapped the instruments. He picked up a scalpel and examined it.

“You didn’t get these from Niebaur.”

Funny he’d know such a thing, Grace mused nervously. “No. I bought his vet box, but I got these as a gift from my folks when I graduated from vet school.”

Another little grunt. “They look pretty new.”

Nastily said, she thought. That cleared her head, got her back up a little. “They’ve been used. I’ve been out of school for almost two years.”

“Two years, huh?” He put down the set of hide clamps he’d been absently weighing in his hand and looked at her, surprised all over again at how her eyes met level with his. She was slim, but not skinny the way so many tall women tended to be. Nice, wide hips, a nipped-in waist, high, heavy breasts on a gorgeous chest. He glared at her in a rush of lust and annoyance. “This your first practice then?”

“My first on my own,” she conceded.

“It’s a big job for a new vet.”

“I’m not new,” she repeated slowly. “As I said, I’ve been practicing veterinary medicine for two years, mostly large animal work, which is what the bulk of Dr. Niebaur’s practice consists of. I’m good.”

“I’m not saying you’re not. I’m saying you’re young. What are you, twenty-five? I’m saying this is a big area for one vet, much less one just out of W.A.S.U.”

Oh, so he knew where she’d studied, did he? Niebaur must have told him. He’d used the slang term for Washington State University, pronounced “wazoo,” where she’d received her veterinary medicine degree. It made her mad, but because she was accustomed to men making her mad, she just smiled.

“I think I can handle it. And my age is really of no relevance.” He’d underbid her age by a couple years, pleasing her in spite of herself.

He made a sound with his teeth and cheek, and nodded dubiously.

Oh, he was hostile, all right. She didn’t know why, but she could guess. Some men, especially these rangy, manly types, automatically went into full browbeat mode the minute they got a look at her. They were used to walking tall in their little towns, and women such as her unmanned them. Well, tough.

Grace straightened her spine and lifted her chin to give herself every inch and advantage. She watched his Adam’s apple move in his throat as she did. Probably in irritation.

“You want to see my diploma?” she challenged.

Daniel almost drooled. Her neck was long, like a swan’s, like Audrey Hepburn’s, for crying out loud. And when she got huffy her shoulders seemed to widen until he wanted to take them between his hands and measure their width, dig his fingers in a little, test their resilience. Lord, she was one long, cool drink of water. He was suddenly parched.

“No. Niebaur would have been careful with his practice.” He’d wanted to say yes, just to needle her a little.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, good.” Naturally good-natured and easily mollified, she tried a closemouthed smile on him, a dismissal and peace offering in one. She didn’t like his attitude, but she also wasn’t in any position to alienate a potential client. She couldn’t remember seeing his name on Niebaur’s client list, but he might have a cat he needed spayed someday.

She looked at his sharp face, his vast size, and decided no. No cats for this one. And certainly not anything spayed. This man would have a dog, a wolfhound or something, blissfully un-neutered so as not to offend his manly sensibilities.

“I should probably get busy in here, Mr. Cash. If you would excuse me.”

“It’s Daniel. Where are you living?”

She stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“Where are you living?” he repeated, ignoring her ruffled feathers. He knew he was being rude. He knew why, of course. She was in his building, with the practice that should have been his, would have been his if not for fate and a horrible lie he’d never been able to disprove. What he didn’t know was why he was so reluctant to slink out and leave her to her unpacking. He hoped it was because he was small and petty and bitter, all manageable, if not particularly honorable, emotions. And not because she was just so damn tall and because he could vividly picture where she’d fit if he shoved her up against that newly painted wall she seemed to like and wedged his knee between her thighs. That was not manageable. Not manageable at all.

“Where am I living?” she echoed. She thought of a million reasons he shouldn’t know, all big-city, woman-alone reasons. But what difference did it make, really? She was this town’s vet now, the only one in a hundred square miles. She’d have to post her home phone and address for her patient’s owners anyway, sooner or later. “I’ve rented a house.”

“Here in town?”

“What—what—” Now she was stuttering. Wonderful. She wondered if punching Daniel Cash, landlord and probably Noble County scion, her first day in town would lose her many customers. “Why do you want to know, Mr. Cash?”

“Daniel.” He corrected her again. “I have some other properties here in town. Just curious.”

She doubted that. “On Fourth.”

“Mrs. Hensen’s old house? Did she get those front steps fixed?”

“I don’t know. Also sight unseen.”

“You have plans for dinner tonight?”

She almost laughed. “No.”

“Want some?”

Her eyes went wide. “With you? I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

She cocked her head, looked him up and down. She’d been right about the length of his legs, but she ignored the tiny buzz of interest in them. She put her hands on her hips and gave him her most confident glare. “Because you seem a little unbalanced, frankly. What’s the matter with you?”

He frowned at her. “‘Unbalanced’?”

“Yes,” she said. “Unbalanced. You nab my box of meds without introducing yourself, play with those surgical instruments like some kind of serial killer, grill me on my credentials and my qualifications and then ask me where I live? Not to mention I met you all of three minutes ago. And I’m supposed to go out to dinner with you?”

“Oh, I thought you meant unbalanced because I was asking you to dinner.” He flashed a quick grin at her, making that sharp face go gorgeous. “Like maybe you don’t get many dinner invitations.”

She flushed, because she didn’t, because she knew he was baiting her. “I get thousands. I need to hire a secretary just to handle them all.”

He gave her the long look this time, his head tilted to match hers. “I’ll bet. So what about it?”

“No, thanks.”

He narrowed his eyes on her. She was spoiling his plans. He wanted to know what kind of vet Niebaur had sold his damn practice to, and interrogating her over some fried chicken at the café was as good a way of finding out as any. The fact that he was very nearly aroused to the point of discomfort just standing next to her had nothing to do with it.

“Just a Welcome-to-Nobel dinner. I can give you my folks’ phone number. They’ll vouch for me.”

“Parents never know. Besides, I have a million things to do. I haven’t even been to my house yet.”

“Okay.” He could count on one hand the number of times a woman had turned down a dinner invitation from him. But he supposed a girl such as this, with those legs and that wit and a face like a Klimt painting, was turning them away by the truckload. He shrugged, took one last lingering look at both the legs and the veterinary supplies he wanted to get his hands on. “Welcome to Nobel, anyway, Dr. McKenna. I’ll see you around.”

“Yes. All right. And thank you for the help. My office will be open for business Monday, if you have animals that need tending.”

He considered for a moment. “I have a couple. I’ll be in touch.”

He pushed out the front door and strode across the street without giving so much as a glance around for potential traffic. Grace watched him go with a dead even mix of relief and disappointment.

He’d pronounced it “noble,” the name of his town. She’d been calling it “no-bell,” like the prize. She’d remember that. It was always important, when you were doomed to make a bad first impression, to remember what you could to make a decent second one.

Chapter 2

He walked into his mother’s kitchen late in the afternoon, not surprised to find it empty. Ever since he and his brother had taken over the running of the family cattle ranch at the base of the hills that shadowed Nobel, his mother and father had run amok.

He poked his head into the refrigerator, looking for a little fuel to keep him until dinner, an hour away and nothing much to look forward to anyhow, since he’d be having it alone.

“Mom?” he shouted, just to give general warning he was here and in her refrigerator. “Dad?”

They were probably out playing an afternoon rubber of bridge or something equally goofy and unproductive. They seemed to have taken to the goofy and unproductive since they retired, and he couldn’t have been happier for them. They’d worked like dogs every minute he’d known them, with the cattle and the hay and the occasional field of potatoes or sweet corn or wheat when the futures looked good. Had worked even harder to help him through college and then vet school. They deserved a break. He was more than happy to give it to them.

He pulled out a beer, twisted off the top, pinched the cap between his thumb and middle finger and flicked it across the kitchen, where it rebounded off the wall and landed in the trash.

Of course, he’d planned it all differently. They’d have still had their retirement, but Frank would have had the ranch on his own now, with Lisa helping full-time, and he’d have been in that cinder-block building instead of Grace McKenna, living in town with his wife and the life they’d planned together.

His wife. The phrase left a bitter taste in his mouth and he took a slow pull off his beer to wash it away. Julie had left him to face his disgrace and his failure alone. They’d only been married seven months when his life had started to come apart, so he supposed it was unfair of him to have expected her to ride out the trouble. But he had expected it. And he’d found, during the three years since she’d left, that it was as hard to forgive her betrayal as it was to face his own failure.

Today, standing in the office he’d always thought would someday be his, had brought it all back to him. Not that he ever forgot it, really. It was always there, haunting his days, tainting his nights. But he could back-burner it most of the time. Not today. Not watching Grace McKenna drive through town with his vet box bolted in the back of her truck, opening his office as the official new vet of Nobel County, Idaho.

He didn’t blame the woman for having his life. That would be deranged and foolish. He didn’t blame her.

He leaned back against the kitchen counter, his mossy eyes going dark and flat. Oh, hell, he blamed her a little.

Grace McKenna. Damn her. He took a long swallow of beer, his head tipped back. He wondered if when her mama named her she knew she’d grow into the kind of woman who needed a bigger name. Grace was a name for a petite blond woman with tiny feet and dainty hands. A blue-eyes belle, who never did anything nastier with those hands than pour afternoon tea for her garden club.

He could think of a dozen better names for Grace McKenna. Strong, mythic names, such as Hera, Diana, Minerva. He smirked into his beer. Okay, not Minerva. But a name for a woman with power and height, and that cap of dark curly hair that looked so soft, as though it belonged on a baby.

He knew what Grace McKenna did with her hands. For nearly twenty years he’d trained to do the same thing. She pushed her hands into the back ends of sick or pregnant cattle. She made stud colts into geldings. He’d bet she did not belong to a garden club or pour tea for anyone.

Quite suddenly and against his will, he started to wonder what else Grace McKenna might be capable of doing with those hands. More than a few ideas popped up in full color right in front of his glassy eyes.

He dug his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets. Oh, jeez, where had that stuff come from? The last thing he needed was to start his feeble mind down that particular road with this particular woman.

“Danny!”

He jumped and almost bobbled his beer, feeling as if his mother had caught him looking at dirty pictures up in his room. Again.

“Mom!” He gave her a kiss as she went past, her hands full of grocery bags. “Any more outside?”

“Your dad’s getting them, sugar. What are you doing here?”

What was he doing here? He’d been pissed off and feeling sorry for himself all day, ever since he’d awakened and realized this was the day the new vet came to town. He’d tried to fight it out with the person in question, then tried to sweat it out all day working the herd. Neither tack had taken. Now he wanted a little comfort. And this was the place he’d always come for that.

“Nothing. Just checking in on you guys. Wanted to make sure you hadn’t taken up golf yet or anything.”

His mother laughed. “Not yet. Put them on the counter, Howard.”

Daniel’s father came in, loaded down. “I know where to put groceries, Liz. I’ve been bringing in your groceries for a hundred years. Hi, Danny.”

“Hey, Dad.”

“What are you doing here?”

“You know, I could name fifty 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 she liked the idea of a small-town, large animal practice, and although this part of Idaho didn’t have an abundance of humans, it had enough dairy cows and beef cattle and hobby farms with spoiled horses to get her by. She hoped.

She’d squeezed the folder back into the file cabinet, promising she’d get the Cash Cattle file on computer, along with everyone else’s just as soon as she found an assistant. Niebaur’s office manager had promised to come in a couple of days a week for a while, but she was retiring, too. Couldn’t see herself working for another woman, she’d said. No offense.

Grace hadn’t taken offense, of course. She hadn’t wanted to work for anyone else, either.

Picking up the phone book, she glanced at the wall clock. 9:10 p.m. She riffled through the book for the number to the county newspaper and recorded her ad onto the machine that picked up.

She stretched out her long legs, hooking her heels on the edge of the reception desk. She looked out into dark main street of Nobel, Idaho, and congratulated herself. She had every single thing she wanted, now.

Minutes later she dozed off with a satisfied smile on her face.

He hadn’t meant to come by. He’d dropped his folks off at their house, intending to go home to his own small ranch house, just a half mile down the road from the house where he’d grown up. Instead his pickup truck—of its own accord, he’d swear—found its way the eleven miles back into town and past the building he owned, bought when his future looked exactly as he’d wanted it to look. The lights were on. He glanced at his watch. It was past ten, and he’d bet a hundred bucks she hadn’t been home all day.

He wheeled the truck into a casually illegal U-turn and brought it to rest behind hers by the curb. He scooped up the nameless old barn cat he’d brought with him as an excuse for coming by and tucked it under his arm, trying not to moon over the vet box in Grace’s truck as he made for the office door. He almost managed it, walking past with just a quick yearning glance.

Grace had her feet up on the desk in the reception area and her chin on her chest. Sound asleep. He watched her for a minute, the cat purring happily under his arm, then rapped on the glass of the door with the back of his hand.

She jerked awake and he saw in her brown eyes the instant cognizance of a doctor awakened from a sound sleep. She could perform surgery right now, he knew; intubate a calf, cesarean a breech foal. She had that look as she stared out at him. That completely-awake-and-aware look.

She stood and came toward him. He felt a sudden zip up his spine, a heated pooling of blood between his legs.

Man, oh, man. He’d wasted half the day away wondering if she’d really been the goddess he’d seen that morning, or if he’d imagined that her legs went up to her neck and her hips were narrow and smooth-jointed when she walked and her mouth was wide and lush. He didn’t much like this woman who was stealing his dreams, but he sure as hell wanted her.

For crying out loud, he reprimanded himself pitilessly. Grow up, Cash. He’d gone hard just watching her walk. Heaven only knew what would happen when she got the door open. He smoothed his free hand along the flank of his cat, hoping the thick fur would absorb the sudden dampness there. Didn’t want the goddess to know she’d made him sweat.

She stopped on the other side of the door. She didn’t smile, couldn’t. If she thought he’d been intense this morning, he looked positively dangerous now. It was only common sense and the bone-deep knowledge that she could never, in a million years, with her utter lack of experience and confidence, handle a man with that kind of lust in his eyes, that kept her from throwing the lock on the door and letting him take her.

“Mr. Cash,” she said through the glass.

He cleared his throat. “Doctor McKenna.”

She glanced at the contented bit of fur tucked into his elbow. “Nice cat.”

“Thank you.”

“He looks pretty healthy. Any reason you’re bringing him to my office at—” she checked her watch “—ten-eighteen p.m.?”

“He’s been in a fight.”

Grace frowned. “Really?”

“Would I lie about something like that?” he asked solemnly. Of course he would, but she didn’t need to know that.

“I don’t know. Would you?”

“No. Open the door, McKenna.”

She considered him for a full minute, but her active sense of self-preservation just couldn’t hold up against an injured animal she knew she could help. She reached up and turned the dead bolt.

“Take him back to the examining room.” She relocked the door and followed behind him as he unerringly found the examining room. She did her best not to study his rear end as he walked.

She washed her hands at the little sink and felt a familiar little zing of adrenaline. Her first client in her own practice. Could there be a more productive sensation than that? She turned to find the cat lounging on her stainless-steel examining table, the Neanderthal leaning against it with his hands widespread, watching her.

“Your cat is purring,” she pointed out.

“He’s in shock.”

“Hmm.” She took the cat in her hands. It rolled onto its back to have its belly scratched. Grace obliged automatically while looking for evidence of the fight. “What’s his name?”

“Uh, Tiger,” Daniel said, though the cat had been called “Cat” since the day it was born.

Grace looked up at him. “Tiger, huh?”

Daniel shrugged. “My brother named it.”

“Well, Tiger here has certainly been in a fight.”

“Yeah,” Daniel said, his mouth pursed in studied concern. “I thought I’d better bring him in.”

“And two weeks ago, I might have thought so, too. Mr. Cash.” She lifted the cat and dropped it into Daniel’s arms. He cradled it against his chest automatically, his fingers folding over its small head to scratch between its ears. Grace noted how unaware he was that he was doing it, how utterly at ease the cat was under his fingers. He’d probably spent hours sitting in some dusty old barn somewhere, that cat on his lap. She forced herself not to imagine it. “But probably not even then. The scratches were pretty minor even at the time they were inflicted. They are almost completely healed now.”

Daniel nodded, pretending ignorance. “So, you think he just needs a little antibiotic cream or something?”

“No, I don’t think he needs a little antibiotic cream or something.” She washed her hands. “I think he needs to go home. I think you need to go home. I think I need to go home.” She stalked out of the exam room, muttering something about wasted time.

Daniel ignored her. “Well, that’s a relief,” he said, following her through the office. “I’m glad I dropped by.”

“You didn’t drop by, Mr. Cash.” She unlocked the door and opened it wide. “Your home is eleven miles south of town.”

“How did you know that?”

“I looked through your file. I figured since you knew where I lived, I should know where you lived. In case I ever had to call the police on you or something.”

“Good thinking.” He paused in the doorway. “So, what are you doing here?”

“I work here.”

“So late.”

“I was just getting ready to go home.”

“Have you even been there yet?”

“I drove by it earlier.”

“Not good enough. I’ll see you home if you’re ready.”

She cocked her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on.” He jerked his head in the direction of her truck and his, then held up his cat as proof of his honor. “I own a cat. How bad a person could I be?”

“I believe the number-one choice of pets for crazy people is a cat.”

Man, she was cute. And quick. “Come on. Trust me,” Daniel said.

She did, for some idiotic reason. He didn’t look particularly trustworthy, despite the blissed-out cat in his arms. Something to do with that lingering gleam of reluctant lust in his green eyes, she thought. And he certainly didn’t feel trustworthy. She wasn’t experienced enough to know what it was she felt from him, but she knew she shouldn’t trust it.

Yet somehow… Grace went back for her bag and coat, flicked off the lights, and followed him onto the sidewalk, locking the door behind her. A cold wind sneaked under her sweatshirt and she shivered, ducking her head as much in reflex to the cold as to keep from meeting his eyes. She fumbled with her coat. It was snatched out of her hands at the same instant a cat began winding itself around her legs. She couldn’t decide which was more startling.

“Here,” Daniel said. He tucked her into her jacket, took the zipper between his fingers and pulled it up. If his knuckles brushed against the inside of her breast so slightly, if his hands lingered at the collar for one second too long, that didn’t make him a creep, right? He wasn’t harassing her. He was just being gentlemanly, and accidents happen. He bent and picked up Cat from where he’d dumped him unceremoniously on the sidewalk. Before touching her became less accidental.

“Get in your truck before you freeze solid.”

“Is it always so cold in March?” she asked pertly, to keep her mind off how gentle his hands had been, and how personal.

“Yes. March is a bitch. But January and February are worse, so by March you hardly notice how miserable you are.”

He’d walked her to her truck, stood while she dug in her purse for her keys. “I don’t need an escort home,” she said. “I know where I live.”

“Barely.” He took the keys and unlocked her door, then stepped back before the urge to put his hands on her again got to be too much to resist. He kept reminding himself how much he resented her, how much he couldn’t get involved with another woman who would betray him the minute she heard about his past.

“Why didn’t you tell me this morning you had a thousand head of beef cattle?” she asked, a little accusingly.

He shrugged. “I figured Niebaur would have told you.”

“He didn’t. I thought you were a real estate agent or something.”

He laughed despite his uncertain mood. “A real estate agent. Is that what I look like?”

She brought her shoulders to her ears, shy again. She didn’t want to say out loud what he looked like to her. It would have sounded silly, telling him he looked big and strong, man enough to make her feel small and feminine. For once. “I don’t know. You own this building, and you said you had others in town.”

“Oh.” He scratched his nose, knitted his brows in annoyance and embarrassment. “That was kind of a stretch of the truth. I own this building and a little house on Temple. Well, I own part and the bank owns part. I bought them both three years ago when I thought I’d— When I thought about moving to town.”

“Good thing you changed your mind about moving. I imagine it’d be hard on the neighbors to have a thousand head of cattle in town. It’s a big herd. Are you looking for a new vet?”

“I thought you were the new vet.”

“You know what I mean. Are you going to someone else now that Niebaur’s retired?”

He looked at her for a minute. Glared at her, she might have said if she could think of a single reason he might do so.

“We’ll try it out,” he finally said. “I’ve got some heifers need checking week after next.”

“Okay.” While she didn’t appreciate his antagonistic attitude, her practical heart wanted to sigh in relief. “Okay. Good. I could use the business.”

They stood on the sidewalk, staring at each other, unsure of what to say or do. They were having a moment, it occurred to both of them; what that meant, they hadn’t the slightest idea.

“So,” Daniel began slowly, “Niebaur still have all his files on paper?”

Grace smiled, relieved. She’d been scrambling for something to say, anything to break the peculiar, tingly tension between them. “Yes. I have to find an assistant right away so I can get started on getting them on computer. I don’t know how he ever managed to keep his billing straight.”

“I don’t know, either, but he must have. Frank and I have paid out enough to him over the years to prove it.”

“Is Frank your dad?”

“My brother and business partner. Are you cold?”

Grace wondered at the way his face closed at the mention of his brother. “A little. I’d better get home. I still have my suitcases in the back of the truck.”

“Come on, then,” He slapped the side of her truck, shuffled off grim thoughts of his brother. “I’ll follow you.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Do you argue this much with everyone?” he asked testily. He wanted to feel testy; he wanted the low-level anger and bitterness he’d lived with for three years to shoot back into his system. Because if it didn’t he was very much afraid he was going to grab the woman and kiss her. Damn the male sexual response, anyway. He needed to think with his brain right now, but his other, more aggressive organs were pushing for equal time, it seemed.

He closed the door, jogged back to his own truck, tossed in Cat and hoisted himself inside.

Grace didn’t get lost, that would have taken a 14-carat idiot in a town the size of Nobel, but she drove five miles an hour down her street until she spotted the little house. It was as dark as a tomb.

They got out of their respective vehicles and stood looking at it.

“You should have gone in when it was still light out,” he whispered in deference to the late hour, the quiet neighborhood, the breath he could barely catch, just standing next to her, with her shoulder against his.

“I should have,” she conceded in the same quiet tone. His breath had moved her hair aside, brushed against her temple. She blinked. “It looks pretty dark in there.”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He gritted his teeth, rolled his eyes, sighed. It didn’t help. He still wanted to take that anxious look out of her eyes. But that would be it, he told himself. She was no little girl, no damsel in distress. She was the personification of every single thing that had pissed him off for three long years. He’d look around her dark little house and then he and Cat would head home for a long, comforting brood.

“I’ll come in with you,” he offered reluctantly.

Oh, she should say no. She should tell him she could handle herself just fine, thanks. But she wanted him to come in with her, chase out all the spooks and spiders. It was a rare thing, a man offering to do such a thing. Not since her father, not since her brothers, had a man looked beyond the size of her to the tender, sometimes fragile woman beneath.

“What about Tiger?”

“Who?”

She looked at him. “Your cat?”

“He’s okay in the truck. He’s sleeping in my rain slicker.”

“Oh.” She chewed on her lower lip a moment. “Okay. Thanks. Sorry.”

He walked in front of her. “For what?”

“For asking you to do this.”

“You didn’t ask me,” he rumbled crossly.

“Oh. Well, just thanks, then.”

He nodded shortly.

He walked up the steps, unlocked the door with her key, and flicked on the lights. The place was furnished sufficiently, if a shade shabbily, and was well-lighted and thickly draped. She’d be safe enough in here. He walked through the rooms, leaving her in the living room, snapping on the lights as we went. It didn’t take long. The house was tiny.

“Everything looks okay.”

“Good. Thanks again.”

“No problem.”

They stood across the room from each other. He pretended to look at the structure of the room, scanning the ceiling for signs of a leaky roof, bouncing lightly on his toes to listen for a creaky floor. She studied the furniture, the worn carpet, to keep from looking at him. Finally she took in a deep breath, then let it out.

He heeded the signal. “Well, I better be going.”

“Yes. It’s late. Thanks again.”

“You said that already,” he noted brusquely. “A couple times.”

“Oh. Well.”

He walked toward the door, toward her. She wanted to move out of his way, desperately, but found herself rooted to the spot. It was as if her mind was certain she should do one thing, the safe and sensible thing, but her body, her unruly, nothing-but-trouble body, was making the decisions.

He came to her slowly, brushed against her shoulder as he reached for the doorknob. And stood so still she could hear him swallow. Just stood there, his right shoulder against hers, for the space of ten heartbeats. He stared at the door, his throat working. She stared unseeing into the room, her heart pounding.

Then he turned his head slightly, and nuzzled her neck. Her breath caught and held while her face went a dozen shades of scalding red. She was paralyzed with arousal and shock. No one had ever nuzzled her neck. Not ever! Never anything so simple, so erotic. He took his time, let her flush redder, kissing his way up her neck to her ear, taking her earlobe between his teeth.

She’d heard people say, countless times, that their knees went weak, but she’d never believed it actually happened. No empirical scientific evidence to support such a claim. She had some now. She reached out a hand to steady herself, found nothing there, and let the hand hang in midair.

He made his way to her jaw, nipped it gently when she didn’t turn her head, drop it back. She hadn’t known she was meant to until then, and when she did, he kissed her.

The most amazing kiss. Wet and deep and slow. Her head turned fully to his, his turned to hers, both necks arched back in greed and surrender, the kiss made sweeter, more erotic because they touched in not a single other spot. When his tongue flicked forward, licked at her mouth, she managed to choke back only half the moan that slid up from her chest.

That little sound shot all the way down to his toes and he had to dig his short nails into his palms to keep from grabbing those wide shoulders of hers, turning her to face him. He wanted to, possibly more than he’d ever wanted anything. More even than he’d wanted her job, he wanted her. And that scared the hell out of him. He reared back suddenly, his mouth wet, his brain scrambled, his blood roaring. He met her wide-open eyes for the briefest moment, then fumbled for the doorknob. Without so much as a second glance in her direction, Daniel walked out into the cold night.

Grace’s knees did buckle then, and as she slumped to the floor, she laughed. A gasping, dumbfounded, girlish little giggle of complete surprise and joy.

Chapter 3

Grace’s office had been a zoo all week, populated by a large assortment of domesticated animals, some of which, like Daniel’s cat, did not have a thing wrong with them. Which was more than Grace could have honestly said about some of their owners.

The kid with the bike was back today, with a perfectly healthy white rat who rode happily in a plastic milk crate he’d strapped to the handlebars with a bungee cord. She’d looked over the rat while the kid looked over her. The rat was quiet and polite, the boy was not, giving her a little headache with questions about how tall she was, and had she ever played basketball for the Utah Jazz, and could she change a lightbulb without getting on a chair?

Why Mrs. Handleman had sent the child and a perfectly healthy animal back into the examining room was a question Grace posed the first chance she got.

“Because his mother has an account with this clinic,” Mrs. Handleman explained, gravely affronted at having her authority questioned, Grace gathered from her tone. “And I didn’t want that filthy vermin in the front office. You’re the vet. You deal with the filthy vermin.”

Grace was the vet, and everyone in town seemed to know it. The company she’d had moving in was nothing compared to the rush during her first official week. Several times she sent up a quick prayer to thank Dr. Niebaur for lending her Mrs. Handleman until she found an assistant. A prayer that was almost always followed by a curse. Under her breath, of course.

She’d had just one applicant for Mrs. Handleman’s job. A woman who’d shown up at the clinic before Grace’s ad had even appeared in the newspaper. Lisa Cash, a relative of the hunk, she presumed. Grace secretly decided “Lisa” was a rather plain name for a rather flashy young woman. She’d come into the office in tight jeans and a pearl-buttoned cowboy shirt pressed to within an inch of its life. Her hair was bleached until it was more dead straw than live follicle, with what looked like intentionally dark roots. She wore a good quarter pound of eye makeup, as well, which only added to the barmaid aspect of her. Grace was thrilled with her, and envious. As much as it would have galled her to look in the mirror and have a yellow head and Bride of Frankenstein eyes staring back at her, she’d always secretly wished she could work up the courage to look like a hooker every once in a while. For novelty. As a change from looking like someone an eleven-year-old rat owner might mistake for a member of the starting lineup of the Utah Jazz.

Lisa didn’t have any experience in a vet’s office, but she was good on a computer, she said, and could file and take appointments. Grace hired her on the spot. Anyone who looked like Lisa Cash would be unlikely to sniff at something so inconsequential as a rat, and besides, Grace couldn’t wait to get rid of Mrs. Handleman.

The woman was bossy, tyrannical and territorial. And if she mentioned how Dr. Niebaur did things one more time, Grace was going to put her fingers in her ears and start screaming. But she knew everyone who came through the door, whatever their species, and filed them back to the examining room in a reasonably orderly manner, so Grace fought off the urge to fire her before Lisa was trained.

“You have the dairy call at two,” Mrs. Handleman reminded Grace again, at a quarter to the hour. “It’s a good ten miles out of town. Dr. Niebaur would have left by now.”

“Uh-huh. Right. Thanks.”

Grace was tempted to make a face at the old woman’s wide, retreating back. She only just managed to pull in her imaginary tongue when the woman looked back, suspicious.

“Anything else?” Grace asked innocently, peeling off her lab coat and reaching for the hook behind her door for her coveralls.

Mrs. Handleman gave her a cross, distrustful look, then stomped officiously down the hall. Grace almost giggled.

Even Mrs. Handleman couldn’t puncture Grace’s good mood, apparently. Her first dairy call, and she could hardly contain her excitement. Nobel County had several large dairies, mostly transplants from California, where dairymen had been all but zoned out of the crowded suburban landscape. Grace was happy they had been. She loved working with the big, gentle dairy cattle, but wanted, too, the kind of rural lifestyle only a sparsely populated place such as Idaho could offer. The best of both worlds, she thought, smiling.

“You look pretty when you do that.”

Him. She stopped short, halfway wiggled into her insulated coveralls. Oh, the gorgeous, giant Daniel Cash. The man who had kissed her until she was a wide, giggling ooze of pudding on her living-room floor, then hadn’t called her for a week. Weren’t men who kissed you that way supposed to call you right after? Or at least the next day? Or the day after that? She didn’t know, but she thought so. She turned down the corners of her mouth. Wouldn’t do to have him think the smile was for him.

“Mr. Cash.”

“Dr. McKenna.” He gestured to the coveralls. “Don’t let me keep you.”

She finished worming her way into the coveralls with as much dignity as ten pounds of stiff canvas and padding would allow.

Daniel watched her worming, and fought back the little thrill it gave him. She toed off her sneakers and stepped into her boots. He hid an unexpected smile at the picture she made. The bulky coveralls, with the right sleeve cut off as befits a large animal vet, fit her fine in the torso, but the legs were a good five inches short, and her heeled boots gave her another inch, making her look a little like a stork wearing a winter coat. He doubted she’d have appreciated the analogy.

Grace knew exactly how she looked, and she would have given a lot at that moment to have been dressed in anything else. She furrowed her brows, shook off the wave of self-consciousness. She was a vet, she had a call to make. The last thing she needed was to be worrying about the fashion opinion of some man.

“How’s Tiger?”

“Who?”

“Tiger,” she offered blandly. “Your cat?”

“Oh.” He looked a little sheepish. “Tiger’s good. Where are you headed?”

“I have a dairy call. Spandell’s.”

“Dairy call?” Daniel’s brain kicked automatically into a familiar, low-level hum of excitement. It had been the same for him since he was a kid, when he’d splinted the broken leg of a pup his dad had run over. Doc Niebaur had told he’d make a hell of a vet someday. Had used the word “hell” even, which at ten was forbidden to Daniel, and had made him feel like a man. He’d hoped, after all this time, the buzz would fade. No damn luck, evidently. “What’ve you got?”

“Mild fever, probably.”

He nearly rubbed his hands together. Milk fever. He could have cured that in his sleep. Then again, so, probably, could have most dairymen. “Spandell call you in?”

She nodded. “About twenty minutes ago. He sounded pretty worried about it. He seems to have a very close attachment to his cows. Plus, I think he wants a look at me.”

Daniel narrowed his eyes fractionally. “I bet.”

Grace didn’t know whether to be flattered or annoyed by the glower that had come over his face. “I’ve got to go. I’m going to be late as it is.”

“I’ll ride along with you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s my first call on this place. I want to make a good impression.”

“Then you should have gotten some longer coveralls.”

Grace’s face dropped, then flamed.

Daniel watched the transformation of her face and felt an uncomfortable little bite of regret gnaw through him. He’d been teasing, of course, didn’t realize she’d be so sensitive. She seemed so confident. A woman the likes of Grace McKenna, embarrassed by a silly thing like her coveralls?

“I was just kidding you,” he said roughly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt like such a heel.

She smiled gamely. “I know. They are funny, aren’t they?”

“Look, Doc—”

“I got them as long as I could, but the only ones they had in my length were so big in the torso I couldn’t swing my arms when I walked. I looked like Frankenstein.”

“I’m sorry I said anything.”

“It’s okay. Seriously. I’m used to teasing.” But not from him. Since he’d kissed her, she’d been working up to wondering if maybe this man saw her as someone desirable, feminine maybe, and possibly even, when she was sitting down and her big feet were tucked under, a little bit delicate. She’d always wanted one man, someday, to consider her a little bit delicate. “I really do have to go.”

He’d hurt her feelings, Daniel knew. Being…well, a man, he wasn’t quite sure why, but he felt like a jackass.

“Let me ride along. I went to high school with Larry Spandell. He won’t mind.”

She considered him a minute, looked down at his boots. “Well, since you already have manure on your boots, I guess you can come. But don’t get in my way.”

Get in her way? She was in his way, and had been ever since she’d stepped down from her truck with his vet box in the back. Get in her way. He jammed his cowboy hat onto his head, vexed with both of them. “I won’t.”

Larry Spandell had a small operation, milked just seventy-eight Holsteins on a place his mother had inherited from her mother. Every cow was his baby, and the one with milk fever was his favorite. When Grace and Daniel walked into his milk barn, Larry was worrying over the sick cow like a nanny over a fevered child.

“Mr. Spandell? I’m Grace McKenna.”

He shook her hand, didn’t give her more than a glance. Daniel saw how she’d braced herself for the introduction, how relieved she was when Larry didn’t gape up at her from his five feet, eight inches. Daniel filed that observation away. He’d kick it around later, when the nearness of the woman and the excitement of the job wasn’t clouding his judgment.

“Doc. This is her.”

Grace could see that. She could tell it was milk fever from the position of the cow; lying on her sternum with her head displaced to the right, turned into the flank.

She sterilized her hands and knelt to the cow, already reaching for her bag. Daniel placed it in her hands.

“Parturient paresis,” he murmured absently, using the diagnostic name for the affliction. Grace glanced at him in surprise. He was taking the cow’s pulse at the carotid artery. “Muzzle’s dry, extremities cool, temperature below normal.”

Grace decided she’d be curious about Daniel Cash later. She turned to the dairyman. “When’d she calve?”

“Yesterday.”

“Pulse is seventy-five, pupils dilated,” Daniel mumbled, talking to himself.

“Thank you,” Grace said tightly. She took a brown bottle from her vet bag. “When’d she go down?”

“’Bout an hour ago. I called your office as soon as I saw.”

“Good.” She filled a syringe, injected it smoothly into the thick vein on the cow’s neck. “She’s an old cow, Mr. Spandell. I’m giving her some calcium borogluconate. She should be up soon, but next calf I want you to give her a single dose of ten million units of crystalline Vitamin D eight days before calving. That should prevent this happening again.”

Daniel rose. “Your older cows should be on high-phosphorus, low-calcium feed, Larry. I told you that last time you had a cow go down with milk fever.”

“I know, Dan, but I’m on a budget here, you know.”

“Be harder on your budget to lose a cow.”

Grace shot Daniel a glare, then turned to the dairyman. “Call my office in a couple hours. If she’s not up by then, I’ll come back on my way home and treat her again.”

“You may have to inflate the udder,” Daniel said.

Grace whipped around, said in a low voice, “I know my job, thanks.”

Daniel nodded, sucked in his cheeks. Geez, he’d made her mad, and no wonder. But he didn’t care. It had felt so right, so incredibly good, kneeling beside this old cow in this milk-smelling barn. He’d wanted it to go on all day, treat every one of Larry Spandell’s seventy-eight Holsteins for problems they didn’t even have.

“Okay, Mr. Spandell?” she was worried he hadn’t heard her, mooning over his downed cow the way he was. “You’ll call me?” She pressed one of her new business cards against his shoulder. He reached up and absently pushed it into his shirt pocket. “That card has my home number and my pager number on it.”

“I will. Thanks a million, Doc. Doc Niebaur said you was a good vet.”

“Thanks. I think she’ll be fine. You take care now.”

Daniel, had anyone asked, would have had to say Dr. Grace McKenna practically stomped out of that milking barn. And a woman like her made a powerful physical statement, stomping around in a full-on snit, he decided.

“Doc!”

But she had already tossed her bag back into her vet box and was gunning the truck. He loped over and scooted inside just as she roared off.

“Listen, McKenna—”

“You better not talk to me right now, Cash.”

“I can explain.”

“You don’t have to explain. I know exactly what was going on back there.”

“You do.” Well, of course, she would. Nobel was a small town, and she’d been here a week. Surely she’d heard from a dozen people already how he’d been drummed out of vet school just months shy of graduation, for cheating. For cheating! Something that never would have occurred to him.

“I do,” she said through gritted teeth.

He put a booted foot on the dash and glared out the window. “Well, I’m interested to hear what you have to say about it.” The old, helpless sense of anger nearly overwhelmed him. The injustice of it had almost killed him at the time, and now this woman was going to tell him all about how she’d managed to get through vet school without stealing any test results.

“I think you don’t trust me and you came with me today to make sure I didn’t kill any of your high school buddy’s precious cows!”

His foot hit the floorboard with a thump. “What?”

She yanked the wheel of the truck, screamed onto the shoulder, spitting gravel twenty feet behind her, and came to a sliding halt. She shoved the stick into neutral and turned on him. “I’ve seen you driving by, don’t think I haven’t.”

“You’re on Main Street, McKenna. I can’t come to town without passing your office.”

“And Mrs. Handleman told me you’d gone out into the clinic’s corral Monday to look at that mule Katie Reed brought in while I was on a call.”

Handleman! What a snitch. She’d been ratting him out since he was ten. “Katie asked me to,” Daniel argued stubbornly. And he’d been flattered, thrilled.

“I think you’ve been checking up on me since the very minute I got into this town because you don’t think I can do this job. Well, you’re wrong! I can, and I will. And for your information, pal—” She reached out a long finger and poked him in the chest as he turned to stare, dumbfounded, at her. “The day I need anyone’s help diagnosing parturient paresis is the day I sell my vet box and start a bakery!”

He couldn’t help it. He was angry and she was angry, and now wasn’t the time, but a bakery? He could just picture her wearing an apron. He laughed.

She was going to punch him. He may have had the most beautiful eyes and a glorious body and he may have been tall enough to kiss her without craning his neck toward the heavens, but she was going to punch him anyway. It was a matter of principle. She balled up her fist.

“Wait, wait,” he said. “Wait a minute. I’m not laughing at you.”

She glared at him.

“Okay, I am, but just at the thought of you in a bakery. Do you even know how to bake?”

“You think just because I look like this I can’t bake,” she shouted at him. Hideous tears burned at the back of her throat. Silly, girlish tears. She could have screamed in frustration. “I am still a woman.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” he yelled back at her. “My mother can’t bake worth a damn. And look like what?” He knew what she meant, couldn’t let it pass no matter how much he wanted to. No matter how angry he was, or how desperately he did not want to be attracted to this woman, he couldn’t let her think he meant she wasn’t desirable as hell. “Tall and willowy as a wheat stalk? Beautiful? Sexy? Mouthwatering? No, I think because you’re a young vet with a busy new practice you might not have had the time to learn to bake cookies.”

“Well, I haven’t!” she yelled.

“That’s all I was saying,” he bellowed.

“Look, I don’t need you or anyone else looking over my shoulder, Cash. I’m a hell of a vet. Born to it, I’ve had people say.”

People had said the same thing to him. “Fine. Fabulous. You’re the best vet around, McKenna.”

“Stop yelling at me!”

“You’re yelling at me.”

“Because you laughed about the baking thing.” She turned back in her seat, folded her arms across her chest and stared out the front window. “If you’re not checking up on me, Cash, then why hang around in some stinking barn with a sick cow?”

He pulled at his jaw, stalling. When he couldn’t think of anything better to tell her than the truth, he said, “Because it’s what I was trained to do.”

She turned her head. “I beg your pardon?”

Daniel dropped his head back, and when that gave him no comfort, scrubbed his face with his hands. “Never mind.”

“What do you mean, it’s what you were trained to do?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“You’re a vet?”

“No, dammit, I’m not a vet.”

“You’re shouting again.”

“You bring it out in me.”

She barked out a laugh. “I doubt it’s my fault. You’ve acted like a jackass since the instant I met you, and except for one rather bizarre moment last week which we won’t mention despite the fact that you didn’t even call me afterward, when that would have been the polite thing to do, and I should give you hell for that—” she took a deep breath, struggling to keep on the matter at hand “—you’ve been a jackass ever since. This just tops it.”

He scowled at her. She was right about the jackass part, damn her, and that just made her all the more insufferable. But call her? After that mind-slaughtering kiss? Did she think he was a masochist, too?

Okay. Good enough. He reached for the door handle and jerked open the truck door. He was over it now. Over whatever weird, obsessive sexual witchcraft she wielded that had made him kiss her in the first place, that had drawn him back to her office to see her this afternoon despite the fact that it was the last place he wanted to be. He was cleansed, free. Her witchy power was helpless against his stronger will. Ha!

“I’ll walk back to town.”

“Great!”

“I don’t need this kind of aggravation from a woman I hardly know,” he muttered.

“I imagine most women would have to get in their aggravation where they could with you,” she muttered back. “They wouldn’t want to have to wait until you did get to know them before they started aggravating you!”

“What?”

“You know what I mean.” She always got flustered when she was nervous. And this huge man breathing fire was making her very nervous. “You’re very hard to be around!”

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

“See you around.”

“What did you mean you were trained to hang around barns treating sick animals?”

He’d reared back in preparation for giving Grace McKenna’s passenger door a slam she’d not soon forget, but he froze halfway into it. He scowled at her, a bluff as much as anything. He didn’t particularly want this gorgeous woman with her snotty attitude and his vet practice to know what a failure he’d been.

“I’m not going to stand here on the side of the road and discuss this with you.”

“Are you really going to walk back to town?”

“You betcha.”

She’d been ready to soften, but he’d snapped at her. Again. She wasn’t such a wimp that she’d let Daniel Cash bully her around.

She raised her patrician eyebrows. “Have a nice walk, then.”

“I will.”

“Do,” she retorted primly.

“Thank you,” he yelled back incensed.

“You’re welcome!”

He did slam the door then, and was gratified when she sat there awhile longer, truck idling, as he started off down the long road to town.

When she finally roared past him, her truck tires sprayed a fine coating of sand and gravel over him, head to toe.

He glared at the retreating vehicle and shook dust out of his hair. He sucked a clod of dirt off his bottom lip.

Witch.

He was glad he was no longer under her spell.

He walked for almost an hour before he saw the truck coming toward him. Five miles, he figured he’d walked in his cowboy boots on this damn country road. If he ever saw Grace McKenna again, and he fervently hoped he wouldn’t, he was going to give her a pretty big, pretty loud, piece of his mind. And then he was going to tell her he could check his own damn heifers, and the law be damned. And then he might just tell her the reason he didn’t call her after he kissed her was because he kissed a lot of women. A lot. And that one kiss in her living room didn’t mean anything to him.

That’s what he’d tell her. And at least most of it was true.

The truck slowed as the driver caught sight of him. Daniel sighed as he recognized both the rig and its driver. Hell, he would rather have just kept on walking.

“Hey, Danny,” his brother called as the truck stopped.

Daniel walked across the road, leaned in the open window.

“Frank.”

Frank looked around idly. “You’re a ways from home.”

“Very observant,” he snapped. “I need a lift back to town.”

“Hop in.”

Daniel rounded the hood and got in on the passenger side. Frank flipped a U-turn on the empty road and headed back the way he’d come.

“Your rig broke down?”

“No,” was the terse reply.

There was a long silence. “Just out for some exercise?”

“Shut up.”

Frank scratched idly at his jaw. “I saw the new lady vet come tearing into her parking space ’bout forty-five minutes ago while I was having lunch at the café. She looked mad. And sorta scary. I’d hate for her to be mad at me.”

Daniel stared out his window.

“That have anything to do with you walking this road in the middle of the afternoon?”

“Frank, I’m warning you—”

“Okay, okay. I wanted to talk to you, anyway, Danny. That’s why I came into town.”

Daniel sighed again, knowing what was coming. “What do you want, Frank?”

“You know what I want. I want out.”

“I know.”

“But you’re not going to do it.”

“No.”

Another silence.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Frank said.

“If you spent half as much time thinking about getting on with your life as you do thinking about how to sell this ranch, you’d be better off.”

“Thanks for the advice, Danny. You can shove it.”

Daniel eyed his little brother. “Nice talk.”

“Better yet, take a little of that advice yourself. I was with you when it all came down up at W.A.S.U., Danny, and I was right there when you put Julie on that plane back to her parents. You haven’t been the same since. Maybe you should get on with your own life.”

Daniel pulled his bottom lip through his teeth, a habit when he was mad. “What do you want, Frank?” he asked, though he already knew.

“Borrow on your shares of Cash Cattle. Buy me out.”

“We’ve gone over this a million times. I owe more on the property in town than I own. I’m stretched. The bank will never loan me enough to buy your shares in the corporation. I don’t want them, anyway.”

“You’d be majority shareholder.”

“So what? I could boss Mom and Dad around then?”

“What about Lisa?”

“What about her?”

“She could buy my shares.”

Daniel stared at his brother. “She doesn’t have that kind of money.”

Frank thrust out his chin. “I think she does.”

Daniel’s cousin Lisa worked for them, putting up hay in the summer, helping with calving in the spring, feeding the cattle during the long winter. Daniel knew exactly what she made.

Daniel shook his head. “It doesn’t matter if she has it or not. You’re not selling.” He looked at his brother. “What about all we’ve talked about? What about keeping the ranch between the two of us, for our children? It was what Grandad wanted, what Mom and Dad want. How many ways do you want to parcel it out? You want the rest of the cousins in? How about the neighbors?”

“Children?” Frank’s handsome, weathered face drained of color. He’d taken hold of that single word like a man on a lifeline. “Our children?”

“Oh, hell, Frank. I’m sorry.”

“We’re not going to have children, Danny. I’m sure as hell not going to, and you’re not moving in that direction as far as I can tell, either. You’ve had—what?—a dozen dates since Julie left you. Two dozen? How many of those women you considered having kids with? What children are we going to give this place to?”

Daniel turned his head, watched the farmland and dairies go by. Frank was right. He wouldn’t have children, would never marry again, would never fall in love. The first go-around had taught him more about loss and betrayal than he’d ever wanted to know. A second such lesson would probably kill him.

And Frank was less likely to have children than even he was. Frank’s wife, the silly, laughing Sara he’d married two weeks after they’d graduated from high school, had died three years ago on an icy highway between Nobel and Boise. Daniel thought Frank could have gotten over that, eventually. Could have outgrown his grief, go on to be the man he was meant to be.

But the accident had taken a baby, as well. Frank and Sara’s firstborn. Frank was only twenty-five years old. And already three years gone to his grave.

“Do you really love the place so much?” Frank asked finally. “Is it really that important to you?”

“It’s important to me.” Daniel moved his shoulders restlessly. He hated putting emotions into words. It was a sorry, unmanly habit to get into. “As much as anything, though, it’s the folks. They poured their lives into Cash Cattle so they could give it over to us.”

Frank eyed him. “You liar,” he said flatly, and snorted when Daniel’s fists clenched. “That isn’t why you won’t sell out, Danny. You think because of the thing at W.A.S.U., you have to hold on to the ranch with both hands. You don’t want to fail again, and you don’t care who gets in the way in the meantime. This isn’t about the folks and their ‘dream’ for us. And even if it were, I don’t want that dream. And until you got booted out of vet school, you didn’t want it, either.”

“You know I was always going to keep a hand in.”

“While I was stuck running the place on my own.”

“You wanted it, Frank. Remember? And you had Lisa there. She loves the ranch as much as we do. Did.” Daniel shook his head. “Why the hell are we discussing this now? It didn’t work out that way, it worked out this way. We both have to live with it.”

“That’s what I’m saying. We don’t. We could sell the outfit, lock, stock and barrel. Get a fresh start somewhere else.”

“And how would Mom and Dad live? We don’t have enough equity in the land to give them a big chunk of money all at once, and the capital gains taxes would take what we did make off it. Would we just leave here and let them fend for themselves after everything they’ve sacrificed for us?”

Frank slumped over the wheel of the truck, studying the road ahead of him. “We could work around that.”

“No, we couldn’t.” After a long silence Daniel said, “I need you there, Frank. I need you, and I’m not about to pay you to leave.” He ran his hands down his face, pulled reflexively at his bottom lip. “Look, I know you’re frustrated. I know you’re overworked. Maybe we can see our way clear to hire on a summer rider. That’d leave me free to help you and Lisa with the farming.”

“She’s getting a job in town.”

“Lisa? Where?”

“With the new vet. Heard about it down at the Rowdy Cowboy, I guess. She doesn’t know much about vetting, but she took those secretary courses in high school, and those computer classes a couple years back.”

“Huh. I didn’t know she wanted a job in town.”

“Guess she does.”

“We’re about to start farming.”

Frank shrugged. “We’ll have to hire someone else.”

“Is she moving to town?”

“No. She said she’ll stay out in her house. Cost her too much to rent in town.”

“Huh,” he said again, though the longer he considered, the more sense it made. Lisa had been complaining, albeit gently, subtly, for months about Frank’s erratic behavior. It was no wonder she wanted out. “I guess I’ll have to hire a rider, after all. You’ll need help with the farming until we find someone.”

“Whatever.”

“Frank—”

Frank turned pleading eyes to his brother. “I can’t take much more, Danny. I swear to God.”

“You’ll be okay, Frank. You’re just feeling blue right now.”

“I’m not just feeling blue. It’s more than that.”

“I can see that it is.” He could, quite clearly. “Have you thought about seeing someone about it?”

“You were an animal doctor, Danny, not a human doctor.”

“I wasn’t either. But it’s been three years, Frankie. You need some help.”

“Yep.” His brother pulled up to the curb, behind Daniel’s pickup. “And I keep hoping you’ll give me some.”

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