The Virgin Beauty. Claire King

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