Candace Camp - Hard-Headed Texan

“Sugar and creamer?”

“Right.” He quirked an eyebrow. “We’re kind of plain here. Bachelor household.”

“That’s okay. I’m kind of plain myself.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

Antonia’s eyebrows sailed upward. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He glanced up at her, looking uncomfortable. “Sorry. Have I put my foot in my mouth again? You can see I don’t get out much. I didn’t mean anything bad. It’s just that you look—I don’t know, not plain, anyway. You look sort of like Grace Kelly, like some guy in a tux ought to step out onto the veranda and take you back inside to the Harvest Ball.”

Antonia chuckled. “Is that a compliment or a putdown?”

“I meant it as a compliment. You’re beautiful,” he replied simply.

Antonia felt herself blushing. “I…uh…”

“Don’t worry. I’m not coming on to you. Just a statement of fact,” he said quickly, then sighed. “I’m making a real mess of it, aren’t I? James would despair of me if he were here. He thinks I’m the lamest when it comes to women, and he’s probably right.”

“It’s okay,” Antonia said with a smile. “I don’t mind being told I’m beautiful. It’s a lot better than saying I look like a city girl or like I’ve never gotten my hands dirty in my life, which are also things people have told me.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I was cursed with a country club background. I can’t even tell people how wrong they are. I was, sorry to say, a debutante.”

“Really?” He looked surprised. “You’re kidding. I didn’t know they had those anymore.”

“Oh, yes, still going strong in Richmond, Virginia. It was part of my bargain with my parents—I’d have my coming out if they would let me go to the University of Virginia and get a science degree instead of going to Sweet Briar, like a proper young lady.” Antonia was a little surprised at her words. She didn’t usually reveal that much of herself to strangers.

Daniel’s grin lit up the rugged planes of his face, and Antonia noticed with some surprise that it caused the nerves of her stomach to go into a crazy little dance. It occurred to her that she was feeling about the same age as a debutante.

“Well, I’d say you’re about as far as you could get from Sweet Briar now.”

“You’re right.”

“So how you’d wind up in Angel Eye, Texas?”

“I went to veterinary school at Texas A&M,” she explained. No need to go into the reasons why she had wound up there. She had found that Texans rarely questioned why anyone would have chosen to come to Texas or to remain once they had lived there a while. They considered that obvious; they were usually curious only about how it had happened. “After that, I wanted to stay in Texas.”

Proving her point, Sutton nodded in agreement.

“So I got a job with a vet in Katy.” She named a suburb of Houston on the west side of the city. “His practice had a lot of show horse farms, tax write-off cattle places, that kind of thing. I didn’t want to live in the city, but I wanted to work with horses, and, well, most large animal vets weren’t interested in hiring a woman.”

“Chauvinistic pigs,” Daniel commented, his black eyes twinkling.

“I know. Terrible, isn’t it? Anyway, Dr. Carmichael knew Matt Ventura, the head of the clinic, and he asked him if any of his associates would be interested in moving to Angel Eye and eventually taking over a practice. I was the only one. I wanted to live in the country, and I prefer real working ranches and farms. You know? Where you actually talk to the owner, not some manager hired by a bank president or some cardiologist whose tax lawyer told him to buy a farm for a write-off. Real people who care more about their animals than about how picturesque all the white rail fences look.”

“You won’t find much of anything picturesque in Angel Eye.”

“There’s its name,” Antonia pointed out. “The Spanish calling it Los Ojos de Los Angeles for the stars.”

“And Anglos shortening and anglicizing it,” Daniel added. “Yeah, I guess that’s pretty unique.”

“Angel Eye is real. It has its own unique charm. I like it. Fortunately Dr. Carmichael was getting pretty desperate by that time, so he was willing to take a chance on a woman vet.”

“I’m glad.” His eyes were warm on her for a moment, reminding Antonia of that moment in the barn when his arms had enfolded her and she had thought about kissing him.

She glanced away from him quickly. “Me too. Well…” She took a last sip of her coffee and stood up. “I’d better be going. I’ll be way behind at the clinic.”

“I’m sorry.”

Antonia shrugged. “It happens all the time. We have emergencies. Dr. Carmichael will have taken up as much of the slack as he can.” She hesitated, then said, “It was nice meeting you—well, maybe not nice, but I’m glad we met.”

“Me too.” He had risen when she did and stood, hands hooked in his back pockets, looking undecided and faintly uncomfortable.

“Thanks for the coffee.”

“Any time. I…uh, I reckon the clinic’ll just bill me, like they usually do.”

Antonia nodded. In a moment, she thought, the two of them would start shuffling their feet and hemming and hawing around like first-graders. Reminding herself that she was a poised, confident adult on a business footing with Daniel Sutton, she stuck out her hand to shake his.

Daniel glanced from her face down to her hand. He reached out and enfolded her hand in his. His was warm and large, the palm roughened by years of calluses. Antonia was startled by the surge of electricity that shot through her at his touch. She raised her eyes to his a little wonderingly, and for a brief moment they looked at each other, unsure, pulses quickening in a way that was a little foreign to both of them.

Then, suddenly, he dropped her hand and stepped forward, his hands going to her shoulders. He pulled her to him, and his mouth swooped down to claim hers.

Antonia stood stock still, stunned by the sensations that flooded her body. She had dated casually a few times in the four years since Alan, but she had never felt with any of those men the sudden, searing heat that rushed through her now. Her lips beneath Daniel’s tingled and burned; her skin was fiercely, instantaneously hot. Her hands came up and curled into the front of his shirt. She trembled; it was as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice, and she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to step back or forward.

Just as suddenly, Daniel’s mouth left hers. He pulled back and stared down into her eyes, his face mirroring her own confusion. Antonia could feel her blood racing through her veins; she could hear the rasp of her own breath, strained and too fast. Her hands fell away from his shirt. She turned, faintly surprised to find that her legs still worked, and hurried across the room and out the door. By the time she reached the small side stoop, she was running. She dashed across the yard and jumped into the mobile van, never looking back.

She turned the truck around and drove far too fast down the dirt road. As she neared the end of the drive, the electronic gate opened for her. She gunned the engine and rattled out onto the highway. She drove automatically, braking and turning on instinct alone, while her brain tumbled chaotically.

Whatever was she doing—kissing a man she scarcely knew! And a client, at that! And why had it felt so wonderful and scary? Why did she feel as if she might fly apart at any moment?

Her life was calm, even, uneventful. Antonia had worked hard to make it that way, to avoid the chaos that had marked her marriage. Today, in a matter of moments, Daniel Sutton had turned all that hard work upside down. Antonia could not decide whether that more excited, irritated or scared her.