Dancing in the Moonlight (18 page)

“Do you remember when you helped me do CPR on my father?” he finally asked.

Of all the things she might have expected him to discuss at a time like this, his father’s death wouldn’t even have made the first cut. Tension tightened her shoulders at the mention of Hank Dalton but she took a couple of deep breaths to push it away.

“Of course.”

With an odd premonition that she didn’t want to have this conversation naked, she reached for her robe hanging onto the bedpost and shrugged into it, then moved to sit at the opposite end of her narrow bed, her back propped against the footboard.

“You hated us all by then, especially Hank,” Jake went on quietly. “Remember? For a long time all you ever gave me was a drawn-up kind of look like you just walked past a nasty-smelling barrow pit. Yet when we
got off that school bus and saw Hank lying in the field, you didn’t hesitate for a second. You ran right over to see what you could do.”

She wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this, but she folded her hands in front of her and listened.

“Most adults I know wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help someone they hated,” he went on. “You were only twelve years old but you sat there for a quarter of an hour while we waited for the ambulance, blowing the breath of life into your enemy’s mouth, willing him to survive.”

Everything had happened so fast that day she didn’t remember many of the details. But she did remember how she had forced her mind to focus only on the first-aid part of what she was doing, not the literal act of breathing for Hank Dalton.

She had closed her eyes and tried to pretend the man she despised was just one of those rubber dummies she had practiced on during the Red Cross CPR training.

“It was all for nothing. What I did didn’t help at all. Not in the long run. We couldn’t save your father and neither could the paramedics or Doc Whitaker.”

“But you tried. That was the important thing to me. You hated him and deep in your heart you probably wanted him dead. But you still tried to save him.”

He paused, his features unusually solemn. “And after the paramedics came, while we stood there watching them load him into the ambulance, do you remember what you did?”

Went home? She couldn’t really remember doing
anything but the CPR part of it. She remembered being emotionally and physically exhausted and probably a bit in shock. “Not really.”

“I do. I remember it perfectly. You stood beside me—the son of the man you hated—and you held my hand. The whole time they worked on Dad, while they loaded him up, after they drove away. For a long time you stood and held my hand. You were only a kid, just a little girl, but somehow you knew that was what I needed more than anything else in the world at that moment.”

She gazed at him, not at all sure what to say. His eyes met hers and she caught her breath at the tangle of emotion in them.

“I fell in love a little with you that day,” he murmured.

Her eyes widened and her heart seemed to forget how to beat.

“Jake…”

“I fell in love with you when I was fifteen years old, and I’ve never climbed back out. I love you, Maggie. I’ve been in love with you most of my life.”

“You have not!”

He gave a short laugh. “You can argue with me all you want, sweetheart, but you won’t change what I know is true. In a time of great trauma, somehow I fell a little in love with that girl. But only after you came back to Pine Gulch—my sad, wounded warrior—did I realize how deeply my feelings for you ran. I love you, Maggie. Your courage, your strength, your compassion. The whole beautiful package that makes up Magdalena Cruz.”

She met his hot, glittering gaze and felt stunned, breathless, as if she’d just taken a hard punch to the gut.

She didn’t know what to say, what to think. He couldn’t love her!

She suddenly wanted distance from him, if only to give herself room to think. But with her prosthesis off, she was effectively trapped. Her crutches were still down in his SUV, she remembered. And since she didn’t relish the idea of hopping across the room to the chair, she could do nothing but wrap her robe more tightly around her.

“How can you?” she finally asked. “I’ve been miserable to you and to everyone else since I’ve been back to Pine Gulch. I’ve been so mean and contrary and confrontational, I can’t even stand to be around myself most of the time!”

His smile was rueful. “I almost hate to admit this, because you’ll think I’m crazy, but I even love that about you, too. I know it’s only one of your coping methods.”

She gazed at him, her thoughts whirling. A bright and hopeful joy fluttered inside her like a trapped bird trying to break free, but she was afraid to let it go, terrified of her own insecurities.

She was so afraid to believe him, afraid to let herself trust.

“You could say something,” he said after her silence dragged on. “You don’t need to leave me hanging here, flapping in the wind.”

“What do you want me to say?” she asked, vying for time.

A muscle tightened in his jaw, and she thought she
saw hurt flicker in his eyes before he veiled them. “Nothing. You’re right.”

Expression closed and hard, he rose from the bed and shoved on his pants with the economical motions of someone used to getting dressed in a hurry for emergency calls.

Before she realized what he was doing, he grabbed up the rest of his clothes and headed for the door. More than her next breath she wanted to go after him, but without her crutches she was helpless.

“Jake. Please don’t leave.”

He turned, his smile not really bitter, just inexpressibly sad. “I pushed you too hard. I should have quit while I was ahead.”

“No you didn’t. I’m just—You keep saying I’m brave but I’m not. Inside, I’m a quivering mass of nerves, full of self-doubt and insecurities. This is hard for me.”

She let out a breath. “But I faced one fear tonight. I might as well tackle an even bigger one now.”

He waited, his features solemn, hard.

Twelve years in the Army Reserves had taught her the importance of quickly condensing her options down to bare bones. Survival often depended on it.

As she saw things, she had two choices. She could surrender to her fear and insecurities, afraid to reach out and grab the wonderful gift he was offering because she worried he might snatch it away when he decided she was too much work and bother.

Or she could decide the time had come to go on living.

When it came down to it, there was really no choice at all.

“I love you,” she murmured. “It’s not easy for me to say, and I’m not quite sure how it happened, but there it is. I love you, Jacob Dalton.”

At first he looked as if he hadn’t heard her. He didn’t move a single muscle, just continued to stare at her, then he released a shaky breath, and a fierce wonder sparked in the glittering blue of his eyes.

“Now is the part where I kiss you to show you I mean it. But I can’t come after you, unless you want me to crawl.”

“No. Never that.”

In an instant he reached her and scooped her into his arms, then his mouth found hers.

He murmured words of love between kisses, and she held each one to her heart like a precious jewel.

This was good and right and wonderful. She thought of the long, agonizing journey she’d traveled the past five months. In a strange way she felt like each step was leading her back here, to this moment and this man.

“Our mothers will be over the moon,” he murmured against her mouth.

“Ugh. Don’t remind me. Mama has been throwing you at me since the moment I came back to town.”

“I’m glad you listened to your mother and finally had the good sense to catch me,” he said with a grin.

He kissed her again, and the tenderness of his arms around her brought tears to her eyes.

“Are you sure about this, Jake? You’re a doctor. More than probably anybody else, you know I’m only just started on this road. There are plenty of challenges I haven’t even faced yet and none of it will be easy.”

“I know that. But I have great faith in your stubbornness to get through whatever comes along.”

“I’m glad you have faith in me, because I’ve lost mine somewhere along the way.”

“You’ll find it. I’ll help you. And in the meantime, you can just hang onto mine. I love you, Maggie. With your leg, without your leg. On your good days and on your grumpiest. Whatever comes along, I want to help you through it if you’ll give me the chance.”

“Are more of those massages part of the deal?”

His grin was slow and sexy. “Oh, you can count on it.”

Some time later, she drew her mouth away from his and cupped his face in her hand. “I came back to Pine Gulch thinking my life was over. Everything I knew about myself was gone, destroyed in a moment. I’ve always considered myself pretty strong, tough enough to handle just about anything. I was a soldier and a nurse, two jobs that require the toughest of the tough. But being injured, losing my leg, this was so much harder than I ever would have imagined.”

“I hate when you’re so hard on yourself. Anybody would have had the same reaction, Maggie.”

She let out a breath. “I told you I came home to hide out. That’s what I thought I wanted, to be somewhere safe and comfortable where no one demanded anything of me. But you wouldn’t let me cower there. Since the day I came back, you’ve been dragging me out of my narrow little comfort zone and back into the wide world.”

She drew her mouth over his slowly, gently. “Thank you for that. It’s much scarier out here, I have to admit. But I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

His kiss was hard and fierce but so tender she wanted to cry and laugh and dance at the same time.

“Neither would I, Lieutenant Cruz,” he murmured. “Neither would I.”

I
t was a gorgeous evening for a wedding.

Maggie lifted her face to the cool August air, sweet and lush with the scents of summer and the hundreds of flowers that filled her mother’s bowery on Rancho de la Luna.

The setting sun sent long shadows across the ranch and created a rich palette of colors. The moon was just starting to rise above the Tetons, shining on the tiny lights that twinkled in all the trees.

Her right foot tapped the rhythm of the salsa music as she shifted in her chair at a corner table and cuddled the little bundle in her arms closer.

Jorge Sanchez made a pouty little sound but didn’t awaken, content for now to sleep while his parents danced to the music. She smiled at Carmela and her
quiet husband Horatio, who had managed to obtain a green card and returned to Idaho just days before his son’s birth.

Maggie touched the soft cheek of the sleeping infant, remembering the precious wonder of that day. It had been incredible on several levels. She always loved the magical experience of participating in a birth and this one had seemed especially poignant, watching Jake in action and tumbling in love with him all over again as she had watched his quiet calm in the face of a young, first-time mother’s anxieties.

Her own mother danced by in Guillermo’s arms, where she’d been all night, and she smiled at the picture they made—Viviana, feminine and beautiful in her flowing peach dress, and Guillermo, so stiffly dignified in his suit and so deeply in love with his new wife.

It had been a lovely ceremony, quietly moving as Viv and Guillermo had married here beside the stream in this beautiful place created by a man they had both loved. She had felt her father’s presence strongly today and had the oddest feeling that he rejoiced along with the rest of them.

She had felt Abel just as keenly a month earlier during her own wedding, at the little church in town. Her husband—she still wasn’t used to that word—danced past with his niece Natalie in his arms. Jake looked tall and masculine and gorgeous, and she wondered if her breath would still catch just looking at him after they’d been married for fifty years.

He must have felt her watching him. Their eyes met and he smiled, that intense light in his eyes that always
made her feel as breathless and overwhelmed as if she were sitting atop those majestic mountains looking down at the world.

As she sat surrounded by everyone she loved and watched Jake twirl his niece, she was bursting with so much joy she didn’t know how her heart could possibly contain it all.

She couldn’t believe a few short months ago she actually had been foolish enough to believe her life was over. When she limped home to Pine Gulch four months earlier, she had been certain everything good and right was gone from her world forever.

Instead of withering away as she had fully expected to do, she had blossomed here. What a miraculous gift these last months had been, full of more joy than she had ever believed possible.

Life wasn’t perfect. She was still struggling to adjust to the prosthesis, still had some unresolved pain issues. But she had her own very sexy private physician on standby at all times. With Jake’s help, she knew she could face whatever hurdles still waited on the road ahead.

Seth Dalton sauntered over and sprawled into the chair next to her. “Hey, gorgeous. What are you doing over here in the corner all by yourself?”

She held up the sleeping infant. “Babysitting duties.”

He made a face. “The little rugrat looks asleep to me. Why don’t you put him in his car seat thingy and come dance with me?”

She shook her head with regret. “Can’t. I’m on doctor’s orders to sit out the fast stuff.”

“What’s the fun in that? Sounds like your doctor’s a real pain in the you-know-what.”

“No question.” She smiled. “But I’m keeping him anyway.”

The flirtation that seemed as much a part of Seth as breathing slipped away for a moment and his entirely too handsome features turned serious. “I can’t imagine two people more perfect for each other than you two. You both deserve every bit of it.”

Touched and warmed, she squeezed his hand. Beneath Seth’s charm and flirtatiousness was the boy she had been best friends with so long ago. She felt blessed that they were finding that friendship again.

She never would have believed this either but one of the perks of falling in love with Jake had been his family. All the Daltons had embraced her, to her shock. They had welcomed her into the family, had instantly seemed to forget her years of antipathy and anger.

The first time Jake had taken her to dinner at the ranch, Marjorie had fussed and cried and hugged her close and his niece and nephews had jumped all over her. Tanner and Cody thought the fact that she could take off her prosthesis and wave it around was just about the coolest thing in the world.

She and Caroline had bonded instantly and she was beginning to feel like Wade’s wife was the sister she’d always dreamed of having. Even Jake’s oldest brother seemed less intimidating these days.

The band suddenly shifted into a slow ballad and Seth stood up and reached for her hand. “Come on, Mag. No excuses now.”

She would have refused if Carmela hadn’t returned to the table then to take Jorge. “Thank you for watching him,” Carmela said in Spanish. “But he’s going to wake up hungry. We must be leaving.”

She gave both Carmela and Horatio hugs as they said their goodbyes, then turned back to Seth. “All right. Let’s dance. But I’ll warn you in advance I’m still not very good on the dance floor. I can’t blame having two left feet anymore since I don’t even have one.”

“Bad joke,” Seth said. He had just started to lead her out to the floor when Jake appeared over his shoulder and her heart gave its usual happy sigh of welcome.

He didn’t say anything, just raised one of those expressive eyebrows at his younger brother.

Seth sighed. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Get my own girl.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem for you,” Jake said dryly. “If only you could narrow the field down to just one.”

Seth grinned. “Now why would I want to do that?”

He kissed Maggie on the cheek. “Thanks anyway,” he said, surrendering her to Jake.

She settled into her husband’s strong arms with a sigh of contentment, wanting to be nowhere else on earth but right here with the summer breeze ruffling her hair and the moonlight gleaming through the trees.

Somehow Jake always seemed to move at just the right pace—not too fast that she had to move awkwardly to keep up with him but not so slow that she grew frustrated.

Here was another joy she thought long behind her but like so many other things, Jake had helped her through.

“It’s been a good day, hasn’t it?” he asked, his breath warm in her ear, and she saw they had moved out of
the bowery closer to the creek, secluded in the shade of the trees.

She smiled, her arms tightening around him. “Wonderful. They’re so happy together.”

“What about you, Mrs. Dalton?”

In answer, she pulled his head down and pressed her mouth to his. As he pulled her closer, they stopped moving but she didn’t mind. There would be time for dancing.

They had the rest of their lives.