Dancing in the Moonlight (10 page)

“Oh, can you?”

He seemed impervious to her sarcasm and simply smiled. “I should have suggested it at the clinic but you seemed in a hurry to get home. I thought you might be more comfortable here.”

She shook her head. “You are a piece of work, Dalton. It’s a wonder you ever have time to eat and sleep if this is the kind of obsessively diligent care you give all your patients.”

He lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “Except, you’re not my patient, remember?”

She rolled her eyes at having her own words thrown back in her face. Nothing she said ever seemed to discourage him, so she decided not to waste her remaining energy reserves in arguing with him this time.

She told herself it was exhaustion that led to her giving in, not the lingering warmth settling on her shoulders like a thick blanket at his concern.

She wouldn’t go so far as to actually issue an invitation to him, but she didn’t protest when he followed her to the house and up the steps of the porch.

The door was locked, the house dark, but she called for her mother out of habit when she unlocked it and walked inside.

On the table in the entryway, she found a note from Viviana:

She shook her head at this and shoved the note into her pocket.

“Mama’s gone to a meeting of the library board.”

“That’s right. I forgot they met tonight. You know, Guillermo’s on that board, too. Maybe they’ll have a chance to talk and start settling their differences.”

“Maybe.” She didn’t expect it, though, especially after she’d met with him and seen he was as intractable on this as Viviana.

Her mother didn’t seem in any kind of mood to make things right with Guillermo. Whenever Maggie brought up his name, Viviana either clammed up or turned prickly and cool. Her visit with her uncle had accomplished nothing. But at least she had tried.

“I’m sure you’re anxious to take off your prosthesis. Why don’t you sit down and let’s have a look?”

She made a face but led the way into the living room, with its Mission furniture and bright, colorful textiles.

She hated being so nervous about all this. He’d seen her leg already so he knew all her ugly secrets. Still, some trace of lingering edginess made her flippant.

“If you keep asking to see my stump,” she said as she
sat down in a leather and oak armchair and started to pull up her pant leg, “I’m going to think you’re one of those weirdoes with an amputee obsession.”

Instead of responding in the same flippant tone, he sent her a look she couldn’t quite identify. “What if I just have a Maggie Cruz obsession?” he murmured.

Her stomach quivered at his words and the intensity behind them. She didn’t believe him. Not for a second. He was teasing her, that was all. Still, her hands trembled a little as she pulled off the prosthesis and the thick stump sock covering her.

The relief of having it off—the sudden absence of irritation and pressure—always left her a little light-headed.

That was the reason her stomach fluttered as he touched her leg just above the amputation and studied it.

“Still a little red, but that might be a result of having just removed the device. Other than that, it looks good.”

“I suppose that’s a matter of opinion.”

“You don’t think it looks better?”

“Better than what? Frankly, I preferred it when it still had a foot attached.”

He gave her a quick, sharp look, and she flushed at her unruly tongue. She hadn’t meant to let that smudge of bitterness slip through. Not to Jake, anyway.

Embarrassed at herself for revealing some of her inner angst, she tugged the leg of her slacks back down. “Okay, you’ve seen enough,” she snapped.

After a moment, he rose. “Keep weight off it as much as you can for a few more days. I called Wade on the way over here, and he’s sending one of his
workers over tomorrow to help your mother with anything that needs to be done until you can move around on it a little better.”

“We don’t need your arrogant Cold Creek charity.”

“It’s not arrogance to watch out for a patient and make sure she doesn’t overdo things. And before you tell me again that you’re not my patient, how about watching out for a friend? Am I allowed to do that?”

She opened her mouth to tell him she absolutely wasn’t his friend, either, and had no desire to be but the words clogged in her throat. They sounded sulky and rude and also didn’t ring true.

Since her return to Pine Gulch, in a strange, twisted way, he
had
become a friend of sorts.

Friends with a Dalton? The concept shook her but she couldn’t dismiss it completely. Friends had been in short supply these last few months. She had a few loyal ones from the Army who visited her at Walter Reed to keep her spirits up during rehab, and a couple other amputees she’d become friendly with during treatment.

She had kept most others at arm’s length, unable to bear their pity. After Clay’s defection, it had become second nature to shut people out.

Jake didn’t make that easy. And, Dalton or not, in his overbearing way he had been kind to her since she returned to Pine Gulch. She had repaid his kindness with sarcasm and meanness at every turn.

Maybe it was the exhaustion or the natural outcome of spending all day in his company, but she was tired of being bitchy with him. More than anything, she suddenly craved an evening of quiet conversation and
companionship. A few moments where she could forget her pain for a while in the company of someone else.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?”

The words escaped before she really thought them through, and for one horrible moment as she saw the surprise register on his rugged, handsome features, she wanted desperately to retrieve them.

Why would he want to spend any more time with her when she had been nothing but bad-tempered and grouchy? Heavens, most days she didn’t even want to spend time with herself!

“Forget it. Of course you wouldn’t.”

“Who says? I’d love it.” His smile appeared genuinely pleased. “I’m starving, and those smells coming from the kitchen are starting to make me feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”

Maggie hadn’t socialized much since her injury, but she remembered enough of conventional etiquette to know it would be considered terribly bad form to rescind an invitation seconds after it had been made, no matter how much she might want to.

She was stuck.

Heart pounding, she picked up her crutches and led the way to the kitchen, hoping she hadn’t just made a terrible mistake.

H
e decided he would never understand women.

Ten minutes later, in the warm Luna kitchen with its bright sunny walls and crisp white curtains, he leaned against the counter trying to make sense of Maggie’s impetuous invitation.

He didn’t know what to make of her. One moment she was prickly and confrontational and didn’t seem to want him anywhere near her, the next she was asking him to share a meal.

The sheer unexpectedness of it left him wary and alert. If her strategy was to confuse and befuddle the opposition, she was definitely succeeding.

Still, who was he to argue when the capricious hand of fate reached down to help him out? Spending more
time with Maggie exactly matched his own agenda, so it seemed foolish and self-defeating for him to question the invitation.

Even on the forearm crutches, she moved through the kitchen with the ease of someone who had spent much time in one. Another surprise. For some reason, he would have expected her to be of the fast-food and takeout persuasion, though with Viviana Cruz for a mother, he supposed that supposition was shortsighted.

Maggie seemed completely at home here despite the challenge of moving through the kitchen on her sticks. She stirred something on the stove, tasted something else, then reached down to open the oven.

The sight of her trying to lift a foil-covered casserole out while balancing on the crutches compelled him to step forward, guilty and embarrassed that he had wasted precious moments watching her when he could have been helping out.

“Here, I can do that.”

She raised an eyebrow. “So can I. Sit down. You’re a guest.”

“Let me at least set the table.”

She appeared torn, then pulled some dishes out of a cupboard to the right of the sink and handed them to him. “Silverware is the top drawer on your right.”

“Glasses?”

“Left of the sink.”

For a moment they worked in a companionable silence and the domestication of it made him smile. Who would have thought a week ago that he would be
preparing to share a meal with the woman who had haunted him for so long?

He arranged the place settings at right angles on the rectangular table. When he finished he tried to help her with the rest of the meal, but she waved him off.

“I’ve got this. Sit down,” she insisted.

Though it pained him like a bad abscess to watch her work while he did nothing, he obeyed, settling into the sturdy oak chair. He watched, uncomfortably helpless as she bustled around the warm kitchen.

She carried the casserole to the table with care, using only one crutch and carrying the dish in her other hand, and he had to admit he let out a sigh of relief when she set it carefully on the table. He didn’t feel like treating any burns tonight.

“I know you think I’ve got some kind of chip on my shoulder about having to do everything without help but it’s important for me to do things on my own,” she said on her way back to the table with a tossed salad. “Mama wants to do everything for me, too, and every day I have to tell her to back off.”

“That’s just a mother thing, isn’t it? Mine still thinks I should be dropping off my laundry at her house.”

She smiled and he thought his heart would burst with delight.

“I tell her that it might take me longer to figure out how to do things now,” she said. “But just because things might take a little longer, that doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”

“That’s certainly true.”

“I’m going to be confronting challenges the rest of
my life. Bumpy sidewalks, prostheses that don’t fit right, the inevitable stares and questions from strangers. I know I have to be tough enough on my own to face whatever comes along.”

“Accepting help once in a while doesn’t make you weak, Maggie. Only human.”

“You know, I’m getting a little tired of being human. Where are some superhero powers when I need them?”

Before he could respond, she carried a bottle of wine to the table. “That’s it. I think everything is ready.”

He stood until she was settled in her chair, then he slid it to the table for her. Something close to amusement sparked in her dark eyes but she said nothing.

Jake sat down, determined to enjoy every moment of the meal. Viviana Cruz was a fabulous cook and he knew he was in for a treat—even beyond the obvious pleasure of sharing Maggie’s company.

From the first bite of moist, spicy chicken in a molé sauce, he knew he was right.

Perhaps because of the food or perhaps because she had put in such a long day, Maggie seemed to have sheathed her prickly quills. She was in a mellow mood and seemed content with quiet conversation.

“So tell me what it’s like being the only doctor in Pine Gulch,” she asked after a moment.

He swallowed a bite of chicken. “Busy. I don’t have time for home-cooked meals like this one very often. It’s usually TV dinners or takeout.”

“Poor baby.” Again she seemed amused at him. “Maybe you need to hire a housekeeper to cook for you. Or a wife.”

“I believe I’ll continue to muddle through.”

“So why don’t you have one?”

“A wife or a housekeeper?”

She took a sip of wine. “A wife. You’re probably prime meat on the Pine Gulch dating scene. I mean, the Dalton good-looks gene obviously didn’t pass you by. And judging by the way you kiss, at least, you’re quite comfortable with your heterosexuality. You’re wealthy, successful and a doctor, for heaven’s sake. You should have women out the eyeballs. So what the heck is wrong with you?”

He laughed out loud. “Do you practice being insulting or does it just come naturally when you’re with me?”

“It’s a gift. So why aren’t you attached, Dr. Dalton?”

“Maybe I’m too picky.”

And maybe the one woman he compared all others to was a heartbreakingly beautiful wounded soldier who wanted nothing to do with him.

“Any near misses?”

“In the relationship department? A few. I was engaged a few years ago, right after I finished my residency.”

“What happened? She dump you?”

“It was a mutual decision, if you must know. Sad, really. Our lives were heading on different tracks, and neither of us seemed willing to shift direction to accommodate the other. Carla was a lawyer and she couldn’t bear the idea of moving to Podunk, Idaho, and I couldn’t imagine practicing anywhere else. It was a mistake from the beginning, I guess.”

“Knowing that doesn’t make it hurt less, does it?”

He thought about the sense of guilt and failure he’d
lived with for some time after they called it off. Eventually that had given way to relief when he realized how miserable they would have made each other.

“What about you?” he asked. “Any—what was the phrase you used—‘near misses’ for you?”

She took a healthy swallow of wine, and he wondered if she’d eaten any of her chicken or just pushed it around her plate.

“So near I can still feel the wind whistling past my ears,” she said with a smile that didn’t seem at all amused.

“That close?”

“I was engaged until just a few months ago, actually. Dr. Clay Sanders, brilliant young surgeon at Phoenix General. Which, by the way, I think he had printed on his business cards. But I digress.”

“What happened?”

She tried for a nonchalant shrug, but he could clearly see it was forced. “A similar story to yours. We dated for a year or so, then he asked me to marry him before my reserve unit headed for Afghanistan. When I returned, the intervening months had changed us both too much and we both decided we no longer suited.”

She said the words with a studied casualness that told him far more than he was sure she intended and he could feel a slow, simmering fury spark to life.

“Because of your injury?”

“Not officially.” She turned her attention to her plate, though she was still mostly moving her food around.

“Did you break it off or did he?” Some wild need inside him compelled him to ask.

“Do you really need to hear all the gory details?”

Hell, yes, if only so he could go find the bastard and pound his smarmy face in.

“I broke it off.” Her smile seemed forced, wooden. “I decided I would rather not spend the rest of my life with a man who couldn’t hide his pity and revulsion when he looked at me.”

How was he supposed to respond to that? His first reaction was fury at any bastard who would hurt her, especially at such a vulnerable time in her life. But he also had to wonder if she might have been exaggerating her ex’s reactions, looking for reasons to end the relationship.

He chose his words carefully. “Are you sure it was pity and not just concern for what you were going through?”

“Maybe. I don’t know, those first few months were a weird time for me. But I can say without question we were both more relieved than crushed when I gave him back his ring.”

“Well, the man was an idiot, then. Want me to go beat the hell out of him?”

Her laugh seemed much more natural this time, and he thought he saw some of the darkness lift from her eyes. “And deprive your patients of your special brand of above-the-call-of-duty care while you’re gone? I couldn’t do that to the good people of Pine Gulch. But thanks for the offer—I’ll keep it in mind.”

He thought about changing the subject but he wasn’t quite ready to leave Dr. Clay Sanders behind. “So was your heart broken?” he asked, trying for a casual tone.

Her brow furrowed as she appeared to give the question serious thought. “I don’t know. That’s the sad thing, I guess. I’ve had quite a bit of time to analyze it.
Amazing how much time you have to think when you can’t go anywhere. To be honest, I think I would have ended things with him when I finished my tour, explosion or not. My time in Afghanistan changed me in some significant ways. Just like you and your lawyer, I don’t think we were on the same page anymore.”

“Such as?”

“Well, Clay loved the wealth and privilege from being a successful doctor, unlike certain people at this table.”

“I’ve got to tell you, I’m disliking the guy more and more with every word.”

“No, he wasn’t a jerk. I wouldn’t have agreed to marry him in the first place if he had been. Maybe I missed the signs that he was a little superficial. He just grew up in a large, poor family where there was never enough to go around and he liked having money and being able to spend it on himself. But after serving in Afghanistan and seeing the conditions there, I had a hard time imagining a life devoted to caring about which country club to join and how to improve my tennis swing. That wasn’t what I wanted anymore.”

“What do you want now?” The question exposed his raw heart but he doubted she even noticed.

“Nothing. I’ve sworn off relationships.”

He hadn’t meant to tip his hand this early, but he couldn’t let such a misguided blanket statement pass unchallenged. Maybe it was time to let her know where he stood. He reached for her fingers and leaned across the table until his face was only inches from hers.

“What would a man have to do to change your mind?” he asked, his voice low.

For a charged moment, their gazes held and he couldn’t breathe as he watched awareness blooming to life in those dark and seductive eyes that suddenly looked huge in her slender face.

He watched her throat move as she swallowed and felt a delicate tremor in her fingers. He might have been able to release her fingers and let his question lie there on the table between them. But then her gaze shifted to his mouth and something hot and sultry sparked between them and he knew he was doomed.

With a muffled groan, he leaned forward and touched his mouth to hers, heedless of the plates and glasses and serving dishes between them.

She tasted sweet and heady like the wine, and it took every ounce of strength he had to keep the kiss gentle, easy, when he wanted to slake his ravaging thirst, then come back for more.

With the table between them, only their mouths and fingers touched yet that slim connection was enough to send heat pouring through him. More than enough. He wanted to throw her onto the remains of their dishes and devour her.

Still he held himself in check, not pushing her at all, letting her become accustomed to the taste and feel of him. After what felt like a blissful eternity he felt her lips part slightly and the soft, erotic slide of her tongue against the corner of his mouth.

He deepened the kiss, nibbling and tasting until his breathing was harsh and ragged and his blood pumped through his veins like liquid fire.

He ached to touch her, to caress and explore, but
some dark corner of his mind urged caution. A kiss was one thing, but he knew she wasn’t ready for anything else.

It was harder than the time he’d had to deliver a baby who was in too much of a hurry to wait for the hospital in the back seat of a VW Bug. But with arduous effort, he drew away from her and had the minor satisfaction of seeing her sway slightly, her eyes unfocused, aroused.

“Don’t cloister yourself off from life, Maggie,” he murmured, and couldn’t resist caressing her soft cheek with his fingers. “You lost part of a leg, something that genuinely sucks. But you don’t have to give up the rest of yourself because of it.”