The Virgin Beauty. Claire King

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.”