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
