The Virgin Beauty. Claire King

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