Читать книгу The Virgin Beauty - Claire King - Страница 12

Daniel watched his brother drive away until he could no longer see the truck. He was opening the door to his own pickup when Dr. Grace McKenna herself stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Instantly his eyes narrowed and he ruthlessly pushed his brother from his mind. He had a bone to pick with this lady vet, and now was as good a time as any.

“Hey, McKenna!”

Her head jerked around at the sound of his voice. Oh, she should have known. She’d just been about to go back out after him, and here he was. Probably used those hunky long legs of his to run all the way back to town, she thought resentfully. She’d wasted an entire hour feeling guilty about leaving him stranded.

She walked slowly over to where he stood, hip-cocked and fuming.

“You made good time.”

He wasn’t about tell her he got a ride. Let her suffer. “I’m fast.”

“That wasn’t a very good display of common sense, walking back.”

“You never miss a chance at a shot, do you, McKenna?”

“I’m just saying—”

“I know what you’re saying.” She’d cleaned up since she got back, was in her office clothes. Damn if those prim pleated pants and the sensible blouse didn’t distract him. In her coveralls, he could think of her as just another vet, and his nemesis. In this getup she looked like a woman. She smelled like a woman. She certainly made every instinct and cell and nerve ending in his body sit up and take notice of her as a woman. Now, what had he been planning to say? Oh, to hell with it. “Have dinner with me tonight.”

She blinked those big brown eyes at him. “Are you kidding me?”

“No, I’m not kidding you,” he said, exasperated. “Why the hell is it every time I ask you to dinner you act as if I’ve just asked you to saw off my arm or something?”

“That wasn’t asking me to dinner. That was telling me to have dinner with you. Besides, you don’t even like me.” It came out a little less snippy, a little less confident than she wanted it to.

Daniel caught the edge of hurt in her voice. Wondered at it.

He frowned. “I still have to eat. And so do you.”

“Not together.”

His lips thinned. “Okay, Doc. I’m not going to beg you.” He turned on his boot heel and went back to his truck. And just as quickly turned back. He went toe-to-toe, face-to-face. “Listen, why do you have to make this so hard? You look nice in that outfit. I thought maybe we could talk. I don’t dislike talking to you, except when you get all huffy. And dinner at the café with me is not going to kill you.”

“‘Huffy,’” she said, cocking her head to peer up at him. “‘Huffy.’” She stood her ground, though he was close enough that their breaths mingled. When she couldn’t quite manage to hold his green gaze a moment longer, she looked up at the hazy spring sky. “And he asks me why I’m making it so hard.”

Grace shook her head, conscious of the fact they were standing on the sidewalk, and every client she could hope to have could come by at any minute and see the county vet in a knock-down, drag-out with one of the biggest cattlemen in the state. She lowered her voice, leaned in. “Let’s do a rundown, shall we?”

He couldn’t help it. He loved how her voice went from little-girl vulnerable to snotty in less than a moment. Yeah, she was huffy, and it made her darn near irresistible. He inched closer. Her breath tasted like coffee. And he could smell her hair.

“Run it down, Doc.”

“You come into my office the first day I’m in town and practically write down your grievances. I’m too young. I’m inexperienced. I’m a woman.”

“I never said anything about you being a woman.”

She ignored his interruption. “Then, in the middle of the night you bring me a cat that is clearly not in need of my attention, wasting my time. You don’t even know the cat’s name. It may not even be your cat!”

“It was not the middle of the night. And his name is…Boots!”

“Tiger. Then you take me home and act very gentlemanly and kiss me brainless.”

“Brainless?” He had more than enough healthy male ego for that to make him grin.

Grace ignored the grin, too. “Then I don’t see or hear from you for a week.”

That reminded him. “Look, Doc, I kiss a lot—”

She interrupted him this time. “Then you show up today and I think, Okay, he doesn’t seem that weird. He’s totally humorless, but maybe I imagined all that surliness and bad temper. Maybe he’s just a nice man and he can come on my first dairy call with me because he seems to want to and we can talk and maybe he’ll kiss me again.”

His green eyes flashed at that, and too late Grace realized she’d said more—much more—than she should have. Typical. Her temper was usually very even, but when she lost it, she lost it big.

“Then this thing at the dairy,” she rushed on, “and you jump out of the truck and walk ten miles back to town? What is wrong with you?”

“You want me to kiss you again?”

“No!” she shouted at him, forgetting the sidewalk and her potential clients.

He smiled. “All you have to do is ask,” he said mildly.

“Oh, forget it,” she said, swinging away.

She would have sworn later that he barely touched her. But suddenly she was backed up against the side of his dusty pickup and caged between his tree-trunk arms.

“Everything you say is true, Doc,” he murmured. He brushed against her, took another whiff of that baby-soft hair. “I’m a bastard.”

“You are.” Her nerve endings were zinging, and her breath was coming short. He needed to stop nuzzling her hair if she was going to be able to think coherently. “Get off me. We’re on the street.”

“In a minute,” he said, indulging himself. She was right; he didn’t much like her—a fact he had to remind himself of on a near-daily basis—but he could overlook that in the face of this raging attraction. “How do you work with animals all day and still smell this good?”

“That’s not— What does that—? Daniel, stop!”

Vulnerable again, Daniel thought, and just stopped himself from biting her earlobe. Anyway, his hands were slippery on the hood of his truck, and if he didn’t stop now, he’d end up making a town spectacle of them both.

“You want to know what I meant today?”

She was trembling. “About what?” she asked, dazed.

“About being trained to stand in stinking barns with sick cattle?”

She barely knew what he was talking about. “Um. Okay.”

“Then meet me at the Early Bird and we’ll have dinner.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“God, you’re a mule. You can pay for your own meal if it’ll make you feel better.”

She took a deep, calming breath. It didn’t help. She could smell him, and he smelled amazing. Like a big, tough man. “It probably would.”

“Fine. When you get done in there—” he nodded toward the clinic; the clinic he was slowly, reluctantly beginning to think of as hers “—come on over.”

“All right,” she agreed, suspicious and hesitant.

“And, Doc?” he whispered, leaning back in.

“Yes?”

He kissed her. Right in front of God and everyone who happened by on Main Street, Nobel, Idaho. Kissed her hard and slow and thoroughly. His mouth made a small sucking sound when he pulled away. She could only stare at him.

“I may be humorless, but I can follow orders pretty well.” He grinned in her stunned, wide-eyed face and pushed away. “You just have to make your needs clear.”

“It’s not— My needs are— That was a despicable—”

“You stutter when you’re turned on, Doc,” he said, low, into her ear. “Against my better judgment, I have to wonder what else you do.”

“What else— What else—” She clamped her mouth shut before she proved him right. She fisted her hands before they grabbed the lapels of his sheepskin cowboy coat and yanked him back against her.

“See ya, Doc.”

He walked away—swaggered away, Grace thought dazedly—and left her backed up against his truck unable to string two thoughts together.

He met her outside the Early Bird, had the distinct pleasure of watching her cross the street on those gams.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” She felt bashful, and wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t that she was unaccustomed to being with men; in her business she spent most of her time with men. Dairies and ranches were primarily run or owned by men, and her fellow vets were mostly men. And she had brothers; three irritating, smelly, pompous and pushy brothers she adored.

But this man was different from any of those. Certainly.

“Have you been waiting over here all afternoon?”

“No, I had some other business in town.” He’d walked around for a couple hours, ostensibly doing business, but actually trying to walk off a little of the heat that had exploded into his system when he’d kissed her. He’d meant it as a sort of lesson, a salve to his ego after the fight—that she’d won—out at the dairy, but he’d ended up learning more than he wanted to. Less than an hour ago he’d stood right at this spot, tempted to go to her office and drag her out. He’d decided against it. Urges as strong as the ones Grace McKenna gave him were probably best resisted, for the time being.

They sat in a back booth. Daniel was grateful the place was Monday-night empty. Everyone in Nobel was well acquainted with his miserable tale of woe. It had been discussed and dissected and gossiped about until, like most stories started in small towns, the truth was almost completely obscured by rumor and innuendo. But he’d been back for years; other more scandalous legends had boiled up and over and his disgrace had cooled. He would have hated to stir the pot again.

The waitress came and Grace ordered a salad and an iced tea. She wasn’t exactly sure what a person was supposed to order on an occasion such as this, but she was sure it wasn’t what one normally ate. Daniel smiled into his menu, then ordered two long-neck beers and enough food to feed three people.

“You hired my cousin, I hear,” Daniel said in the way of small talk after the waitress left. He was in no hurry to spill his guts.

Grace nodded. “I assumed from her last name she was related to you. Her résumé said she worked for your outfit.”

“Lisa had a résumé?”

Grace smiled. “It was short. Yours was the only name on it. She’s worked for you since high school.”

“Yeah. She’s a pretty hard worker. Once a month, though, you have to give her a couple of days off if you don’t want your head ripped off for the slightest little thing.”

“Chauvinist.”

“Wait and see.”

Grace smiled in spite of herself. “Okay, I’ll keep it in mind. Why does she want to work in town all of a sudden? You cut her pay?”