Dancing in the Moonlight (5 page)

She wanted so much to accept his offer of a ride rather than face that torturous horseback ride back to the ranch, but the very strength of her desire was also the reason she had to refuse.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll just wear it back to the house and then rest for a while after that.”

He studied her for a moment, then shook his head. “You could teach stubborn to a whole herd of mules, Lieutenant Cruz. Will you at least let me help you mount?”

She had no choice, really. At the barn she had used Viviana’s mounting block to climb into the saddle.

Even with the block, mounting had been a challenge, accomplished best in the privacy of her own barnyard where she didn’t have an audience to watch her clumsy efforts.

Here, she had nothing to help her—unless she could convince the horse to come to this fallen log and stand still out of the goodness of her heart while Maggie maneuvered into the saddle.

He reached a hand out. “Come on. It won’t kill you to say yes.”

To him, it might. She swallowed. “Yes. Okay. Thank you. Just a moment. I have to put the prosthesis back on or I won’t be able to dismount.”

“I can help you with that, too. I’ll just drive around to the barn and meet you there.”

Just leave, for heaven’s sake!
“No. I’ll be fine.”

Ignoring the sharp stabs of pain, she pulled her stump sock back on, then the prosthesis over that. With no small amount of pride in the minor accomplishment, she forced herself to move casually toward the sweet little bay mare she liked to ride whenever she was home.

Jake met her at the horse’s side. Instead of simply giving her a boost into the saddle as she expected, he lifted her into his arms with what appeared to be no effort.

For just a moment he held her close. He smelled incredible, a strangely compelling mixture of fabric softener, clean male and some kind of ruggedly sexy aftershave that reminded her of standing in a high mountain forest after a summer storm.

She couldn’t believe how secure she felt to have strong male arms around her, even for a moment—even though those arms belonged to Jake Dalton.

Her heart pounded so hard she thought he must certainly be able to hear it, and she needed every iota of concentration to keep her features and her body language coolly composed so he wouldn’t sense her reaction was anything but casual.

He lifted her into the saddle and set her up, careful not to jostle her leg, then he stepped away.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“No problem. I’ll meet you at the barn to help you dismount.”

“That’s not necessary,” she assured him firmly. “My dad built a mounting block for my mother to help compensate for her lack of height. It works well for us cripples, too.”

His mouth tightened but before he could say anything, she dug her heels into the mare’s side and headed across the field without another word.

Her mother would have been furious at her for her rudeness. But Viviana wasn’t there—and anyway, her mother had always had a blind spot about the Daltons.

Because Marjorie was her best friend, she didn’t think the arrogant, manipulative males of the family could do any wrong.

Ten minutes later Maggie reached the barn. She wasn’t really surprised to find the most manipulative of those males standing by the mounting block, waiting to help her down.

He wore sunglasses against the late-afternoon sun, and they shielded his expression, but she didn’t need to see his eyes to be fairly sure he was annoyed that she’d ridden away from him so abruptly.

Too bad. She was annoyed with him, too.

“I told you I didn’t need help,” she muttered as she guided the mare alongside it.

“Just thought you might need a spotter.”

“I don’t. Go away, Dalton.” She hated the idea of him witnessing her clumsy, ungainly efforts, hated that he had seen her stump, hated his very presence.

To her immense frustration, he ignored the order and leaned a hip against the block, arms crossed over his chest as if he had nothing better to do with his time.

She wanted to get down just so she could smack that damn smile off his face.

She swung her right leg over so she was sitting sidesaddle, then she gripped the horn, preparing herself for the pain of impact and angling so most of her weight would land on her good leg and not the prosthesis. Before she could make that final small jump to the mounting block, he leaped up to catch her.

She had no idea how he moved so fast, but there he was steadying her. Her body slid down his as he helped her to the block. Everywhere they touched, she could feel the heat of him, and she was ashamed of the small part of her that wanted to curl against him and soak it up like a cat in a warm windowsill.

He didn’t let go completely until he’d helped her from the mounting block to solid ground. With as much alacrity as she could muster without falling over and making an even bigger fool of herself, she stepped away from him.

“Consider this your Boy Scout good deed of the day. I can take it from here.”

He studied her for a moment, then shook his head. “I should offer to unsaddle the horse for you, Lieutenant, but I think the black eye you’d give me if I tried might be tough to explain to my patients tomorrow.”

“Smart man.”

“Put your leg up when you’re done here. Promise?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She turned away from him to uncinch the saddle. She felt his gaze for a long time before she
heard his SUV start up a few moments later and he drove away.

Only when the engine sounds started to fade did she trust herself to turn her head to watch him go, her cheek resting on the mare’s twitching side.

She hated all those things she’d thought of earlier—that he’d seen her stump, that she’d been so vulnerable, that he wouldn’t take no for an answer, like the rest of his family.

Most of all, she hated that he left her so churned up inside.

How could she possibly be attracted to him? Her stomach still trembled thinking about those strong arms holding her.

She knew better, for heaven’s sake. He was a Dalton, one of those slime-sucking bastards who had destroyed her father.

Even if they hadn’t had such ugly history between them, she would be foolish to let herself respond to him. That part of her life was over. She’d been taught that lesson well by her ex-fiancé.

Though she tried not to think of it very often, she forced herself now to relive that horrible time at Walter Reed five months ago when Clay had finally been able to leave his busy surgery schedule in Phoenix to come to the army hospital.

Of all the people in her life, she thought he would be able to accept her amputation the easiest. He was a surgeon, after all, and had performed similar surgeries himself. He understood the medical side of things, the stump-shaping process, the rehab, the early prosthesis prototypes.

She had needed his support and encouragement desperately in those early days. But the three days he spent in D.C. had been a nightmare. She didn’t think he had met her gaze once that entire visit—and he certainly hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at her stump.

One time he happened to walk in when the nurses were changing her dressing and she would never forget the raw burst of revulsion in his eyes before he had quickly veiled it.

She had given him back his ring at the end of his visit, and he had accepted it with an obvious relief that demoralized and humiliated her.

She couldn’t put herself through that again. She had been devastated by his reaction.

If a man who supposedly cared about her—who had e-mailed her daily while she was on active duty, had sent care packages, had uttered vows of undying love, and who was a surgeon—found her new state as an amputee so abhorrent, how could she ever let down her guard enough to allow someone new past her careful defenses?

She couldn’t. The idea terrified her. Like her career as a nurse practitioner, sex was another part of her life she decided she would have to give up.

No big whoop, she decided. Lots of people lived without it and managed just fine.

She hadn’t even had so much as an itch of desire since her accident, and she thought—hoped even—that perhaps those needs had died. It would be better if they had.

If she wasn’t ever tempted, she wouldn’t have to exercise any self-control in the matter.

To find herself responding on a physical level to any
man would have been depressing, proof that now she would have to sublimate those normal desires for the rest of her life or face the humiliation of having a man turn away from her in disgust.

To find the man she was attracted to was none other than Jake Dalton was horrifying.

The best thing—the only thing—would be to stay as far away as possible from him. She had enough to deal with, thanks. She didn’t need the bitter reminder that she was a living, breathing, functioning woman who could still respond to a gorgeous man.

T
he sneaky, conniving son of a bitch went over her head.

Maggie stood with her mother at the window of the Luna kitchen. From here, she had a perfect view of the ranch—the placidly grazing Murray Greys, the warm, weathered planks of the barn, the creek glinting silver in the sunlight.

And that scheming snake Jake Dalton unloading the hay that had just been delivered.

His muscles barely moved under a thin International Harvester T-shirt, she couldn’t help notice. He was far more buff than she would have guessed. Tight and hard and gorgeous.

She indulged herself by watching that play of muscles under cotton for only a moment before wrenching her eyes away and forcing her hormones under control.

“I cannot believe you did this, Mama!”

Her mother raised an eyebrow at her accusatory tone. “Tell me what did I do that is so terrible, hmm?”

“You let Jake Dalton sucker you into letting him come to the ranch and help us!”

Viviana laughed. “Oh, yes. I am such a fool to accept the help of a strong, hardworking man when it is offered. Yes. I can see how he—what is the word you used?—
suckered
me. I am a crazy old woman who allows this man to take terrible advantage of me by hauling my hay bales and mending my fences.”

Maggie ground her teeth. “Mama! He’s a Dalton!”

“He’s a good boy, Lena,” her mother said, her voice stern. “A good boy and a good neighbor. He says he will help us when he has the time, and I can see no reason to say no.”

She could come up with at least a hundred reasons, including the dreams she’d had the night before. Those steamy, torrid dreams of strong muscles and hard chests and sexy smiles.

While she had to admit, she had experienced a tiny moment of gratitude to be caught up in dreams that didn’t involve explosions and terror for a change, she had hated waking up alone and aching and vaguely embarrassed at her unwilling attraction to him.

She shifted away from the window, hoping her mother wouldn’t notice her suddenly heightened color. “Just what did you have to offer him in return?”

Viviana met her gaze briefly then looked away. “Nothing.”

Her sweet, churchgoing, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-
my-mouth mother was lying through her teeth. Maggie had absolutely no doubt.

“Mama!”

Viviana’s shoulders lifted in a casual shrug. “Nothing you need to worry about right now, anyway.”

Maggie said nothing, only continued glaring. After a moment Viviana sighed heavily.

“Okay, okay. I told him I would see that you help him at the clinic on the days he opens to the Latinos.”

She added
manipulative, underhanded
and
duplicitous
to the list of unflattering adjectives now preceding Jake Dalton’s name in her mind. She had told him no. But with typical Dalton arrogance, he’d found a way around her.

“How could you promise that without talking to me?”

“I thought you would be happy to help him.”

“I’m not!”

“But why?” Viviana looked genuinely bewildered. “I thought it would be a good chance for you to stay involved in medicine until you are ready to return to being a nurse.”

“I’m not going back, Mama. I told you that.”

As usual, her mother heard only what she wanted to hear. “You say that now but who knows what you might want to do a few months from now? This way you are, how do you say, covering your bases.”

“I don’t want to cover anything! Mama, this is my decision. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet but I’m not going back to nursing.”

How could she? She had been a good nurse, dedicated and passionate about her patients. But nursing could be physically demanding work and she couldn’t even stand up for longer than a few moments at a time.
She couldn’t see any way that she could spend a whole shift on her feet. Or on one foot and one stump, to be more precise. It wouldn’t be fair to her patients.

In her mother’s eyes she saw the one thing she hated above all other maternal manipulative tactics—disappointment.

“I gave Jacob my word that he would have a translator, Lena. If you refuse to do this, I will.”

Maggie pinched the bridge of her nose. Did anyone on earth know how to lay on the guilt better than her mother?

More than anything, she would have liked to tell her to go right ahead. Translate for the sneaky bastard. But Viviana’s English could be dicey sometimes and she had absolutely no background to translate difficult medical concepts.

While it would serve Jake right if she sent her mother to his clinic in her place, she knew she couldn’t put Viviana through something that would be so difficult for her.

“You would be much more help to the people than I, of course,” Viviana said guilelessly, “but I will do my best.”

She watched Jake again, who was looking suspiciously cheerful as he pulled another bale of hay off the truck.

If he’d been within arm’s reach, she would have been hard-pressed not to slug him.

He had very neatly boxed her into a corner, and she couldn’t see any way to climb out without hurting her mother.

“Fine,” she growled. “I’ll do it.”

Viviana’s smile reminded her of a cat with a mouthful of canary feathers. “Oh, good. Jacob will be so pleased.”

“Yippee,” she muttered, wondering how she could have so completely reverted to her childhood after being home less than a week. Her mother could play her as well now as she could when Maggie was ten.

Viviana stepped away from the window, and for the first time, Maggie registered her clothes. Her pale-green sweater, slacks and bright, cheerful silk scarf weren’t exactly appropriate for ranch work and Maggie’s stomach gave an ominous twist.

Her mother’s words confirmed her sudden suspicion. “I must go to Idaho Falls today for a meeting of the Cattleman’s Association. I told Jacob you would be here to show him what to do.”

“Me?”

“Is that a problem?”

I don’t want to,
she almost said. But since she had taken a solemn antiwhine pledge to herself at Walter Reed, she just shrugged and went on the offensive. “What about Tío Guillermo?”

Her mother’s shoulders stiffened. “What about him?”

“When are you going to stop this silliness and hire him back to do his job?”

“I hear he has a new job now. He works for the Blue Sage. Lucy Warren told me when I went to the feed store yesterday.”

She digested this and tried to imagine her uncle working anywhere but the Luna, especially for a Hollywood actor and wannabe rancher like Justin Hartford.

“Even if that’s true, you know he would come back in a minute if you said the word. He loves the ranch.”

“Not this time.” For just a moment, Maggie thought
she heard something deeper behind her mother’s brisk tone, but before she could analyze it, Viviana turned away. “I will be late if I do not leave. You are to be nice to Jacob while I am gone.”

Hmmph. When those cows out there started singing “Kumbaya.”

After her mother left to finish preparing for her meeting, Maggie shifted her weight, trying to ignore the ache in her leg from standing in one position. Though she knew it was cowardly, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to walk out there.

She dreaded facing him again, especially knowing she would have to spend an entire day with him, after all.

No, more than one, since her mother had committed her to helping him as a translator.

So much for staying away from him. She sighed, despising her cowardice. She could do this. He was only a man.

Only a man she couldn’t stand, a man she wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

A man who had played the starring role of some pretty feverish dreams. And played it quite flawlessly.

She turned on the faucet, ran the water as cold as it would go, then took a bracing drink. She could handle this. She had survived eight months in Afghanistan, a terrorist attack and having a third of her leg chopped off, for heaven’s sake.

She could surely face one man.

Chin high, she headed outside, where she found him spreading some of the new hay in the horse pasture.

He stopped working as soon as she approached, folding
his arms on top of the pitchfork to watch her progress. It took every bit of concentration but she forced herself to walk slowly and confidently, with no trace of limp.

“You must think you’re so clever,” she said when she reached him.

He shrugged. “When I have to be.”

“You Daltons don’t know the meaning of the word
no,
do you?”

“Oh, we know the meaning of all kinds of words. Like
stubborn,
for instance. Or
obstinate. Thick-headed
is another phrase in our vocabulary, though I think we’d all agree you’ve got us beat on that one.”

For one moment, she was tempted to swing her prosthesis out and sweep that pitchfork he leaned on right out from under him. That would probably be childish, not to mention would likely hurt her like the devil.

“I don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve by all this, but I’m not about to make it easy for you. You offered to work so, believe me, I’m going to make you work. I only hope your whole doctor gig hasn’t turned you into a pansy.”

She sounded like a serious bitch, she realized, but he didn’t seem offended. He laughed and gave a mock salute.

“Private Pansy reporting for duty, Lieutenant. Put me to work. I’ll let you know when it’s time for my afternoon nap.”

Her insides twirled at the sight of that smile. How in the world was she going to get through this?

She wiped her hands on her jeans and frowned. “Why are you standing around, then?”

“I’m about done here,” he said. “I was thinking about
heading back along the fence line you were riding yesterday, if that’s okay with you. I brought my own horse down from the Cold Creek and thought I’d see how far I could get around the perimeter of the ranch.”

“That’s as good a place to start as any, I suppose.” She gave him a determined look. “I’m coming with you.”

She saw arguments brimming in his blue eyes, but after a moment he sighed. “I suppose there’s no way you’ll let me talk you out of that idea so you can rest.”

“You could try. But you wouldn’t win.”

He studied her a moment longer, those blue eyes probing. “And I guess you’re going to climb up my grill if I ask how your prosthesis feels today.”

“It doesn’t have feelings. It’s a fake leg, Doc. That’s kind of the point.”

“Ha-ha. Seriously, how’s the leg?”

He seemed genuinely concerned so she dropped the attitude for a moment and gave him the truth. “A little better. I made sure to put it up last night, just as the doctor ordered.”

“Good. You can do more harm than good if you push yourself too hard. Adjusting to a prosthesis can be a complicated process. You can make it worse if your stump becomes too irritated to wear the thing for the long stretches of time needed to become accustomed to it.”

“Yeah, that’s what they tell me.”

She wasn’t in the mood to take medical advice from a man in a tractor T-shirt, so she quickly changed the subject. “I’ll go get my horse while you finish things here. Oh, and I don’t know how you did things on the Cold Creek but we’ve learned pitchforks work better if
you actually lift them out of the dirt instead of just leaning on them.”

His low, amused laughter sent shivers rippling down her spine, and she forced herself to turn away and head for the horse pasture as fast as her fake leg would take her.

Jake watched her hurry for the horse pasture. She stumbled a little on a rough patch of grass and he had to fight every impulse to race ahead of her and smooth her path.

She wouldn’t appreciate it, he knew, but he couldn’t stand watching her struggle, especially when he could see she wasn’t telling the complete truth about her pain level.

She was hurting worse than she let on. Whether that was phantom pain or continuing adjustment irritation from the prosthesis, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter, anyway. She wouldn’t want his help, even if he had the magic potion to fix either problem.

She had to make her own way. While the doctor in him might want to do his best to take away her pain, he knew she was trying her best to play the wild card she’d been dealt the way she saw fit, and he had to respect her determination.

Of course, there was a fine line between determination and outright stubbornness.

He was leading his own horse out of the trailer when she rode around the corner of the barn on the same mare she’d ridden the day before. She led another horse loaded with coiled wire.

She looked beautiful on horseback, natural and relaxed and graceful. No one watching her ride with such confidence would ever guess what she’d been through the last five months.

Her glossy dark braid swung behind her, and she lifted her face to the sun as if she couldn’t soak in enough.