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Dancing in the Moonlight

RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

For a doctor dedicated to healing the human body, he certainly knew how to punish his own. Jake Dalton rotated his shoulders and tried to ignore the aches and pains of the adrenaline crash that always hit him once the thrill of delivering a baby passed.

He had been running at full speed for twenty-two hours straight. As he drove the last few miles toward home at 2:00 a.m., he was grimly aware that he had a very narrow window of about four hours to try to sleep, if he wanted to drive back to the hospital in Idaho Falls to check on his brand-new patient and the newborn baby girl’s mother and make it back here to Pine Gulch before his clinic opened.

The joys of being a rural doctor. He sometimes felt as if he spent more time behind the wheel of his Durango on the forty-minute drive between his hometown and the nearest hospital than he did with patients.

He’d driven this road so many times in the past two years since finishing his internship and opening his own practice, he figured his SUV probably knew the way without him. It didn’t make for very exciting driving. To keep himself awake, he drove with the window cracked and the Red Hot Chili Peppers blaring at full blast.

Cool, moist air washed in as he reached the outskirts of town, and his headlights gleamed off wet asphalt. The rain had stopped sometime before but the air still smelled sweet, fresh, alive with that seductive scent of springtime in the Rockies.

It was his favorite kind of night, a night best suited to sitting by the woodstove with a good book and Miles Davis on the stereo. Or better yet, curled up between silk sheets with a soft, warm woman while the rain hissed and seethed against the window.

Now there was a particular pleasure he’d been too damn long without. He sighed, driving past the half-dozen darkened shops that comprised the town’s bustling downtown.

The crazy life that came from being the only doctor in a thirty-mile radius didn’t leave him much time for a social life. Most of the time he didn’t let it bother him, but sometimes the solitude of his life struck him with depressing force.

No, not solitude. He was around people all day long, from his patients to his nurses to his office staff.

But at the end of the day, he returned alone to the empty three-bedroom log home he’d bought when he’d moved back to Pine Gulch and taken over the family medicine clinic from Doc Whitaker.

On nights like this he wondered what it would be like to have someone to welcome him home, someone sweet and soft and loving. It was a tantalizing thought, a bittersweet one, but he refused to dwell on it for long.

He had no right to complain. How many men had the chance to live their dreams? Being a family physician in his hometown had been his aspiration forever, from those days he’d worked the ranch beside his father and brothers when he was a kid.

Besides, after helping Jenny Cochran through sixteen hours of back labor, even if he had a woman in his life, right now he wouldn’t be good for anything but a PB&J sandwich and the few hours of sleep he could snatch before he would have to climb out of his bed before daybreak and make this drive to Idaho Falls again.

He was only a quarter mile from that elusive warm bed when he spotted emergency flashers from a disabled vehicle lighting up the night ahead. He swore under his breath, tempted for half a second to drive on past.

Even as the completely selfish urge whispered through his brain, he hit the brakes of his Durango and pulled off the road, his tires spitting mud and gravel on the narrow shoulder.

He had to stop. This was Pine Gulch and people just didn’t look the other way when someone was in trouble. Besides, this was a quiet ranch road in a box canyon that dead-ended six miles further on—at the gates of the Cold Creek Land & Cattle Company, his family’s ranch.

The only reason for someone to be on this road was if they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere or they were heading to one of the eight or nine houses and ranchettes between his place at the mouth of the canyon and the Cold Creek.

Since he knew every single person who lived in those houses, he couldn’t drive on past one of his neighbors who might be having trouble.

The little silver Subaru didn’t look familiar. Arizona plates, he noted as he pulled in behind it.

His headlights illuminated why the car was pulled over on the side of the road, at any rate. The rear passenger-side tire was flat as pancake and he could make out someone—a woman, he thought—trying to work a jack in the damp night while holding a flashlight in her mouth.

He bade a fond farewell to the dream he had so briefly entertained of sinking into his warm bed anytime soon. No way could he leave a woman in distress alone on a quiet ranch road.

Anyway, it was only a flat tire. He could have it changed and send the lost tourist on her way in ten, fifteen minutes and be in that elusive bed ten minutes after that.

He climbed out and was grateful for his jacket when the wind whistled down the canyon, rattling his car door. Here on the backside of the Tetons, April could still sink through the skin like a thousand needles.

“Hey, there,” he called as he approached. “Need a hand?”

The woman shaded her eyes, probably unable to see who was approaching in the glare from his headlights.

“I’m almost done,” she responded. “Thanks for stopping, though. Your headlights will be a big help.”

At her first words, his heart gave a sharp little kick and he froze, unable to work his mind around his shock. He instantly forgot all about how tired he was.

He knew that voice. Knew her.

Suddenly he understood the reason for the Arizona plates and why the Subaru wagon was heading up this quiet road very few had any reason to travel.

Magdalena Cruz had come home.

She was the last person he would have expected to encounter on one of his regular hospital runs, especially not at 2:00 a.m. on a rainy April Tuesday night, but that didn’t make the sight of her any less welcome.

A hundred questions jostled through his mind, and he drank in her features—what he could see in the glow from his vehicle’s headlights anyway.

The thick hair he knew was dark and glossy was pulled back in a ponytail, yanked through the back of the baseball-style cap she wore. Beneath the cap, he knew her features would be fragile and delicate, as hauntingly beautiful as always, except for the stubborn set of her chin.

Though he didn’t want to, he couldn’t prevent his gaze from drifting down.

She wore a pair of jeans and scarred boots—for all appearances everything looked completely normal. But he knew it wasn’t and he wanted more than anything to fold her into his arms and hold on tight.

He couldn’t, of course. She’d probably whack him with that tire iron if he tried.

Even before she had come to hate him and the rest of his family, they’d never had the kind of relationship that would have been conducive to that sort of thing.

The cold reality of all those years of impossible dreams—and the ache in his chest they sparked—sharpened his tone. “Your mama know you’re driving in so late?”

She sent him a quick, searching look and he saw her hands tremble a little on the tool she suddenly held as a weapon as she tried to figure out his identity.

She aimed the flashlight at him and, with an inward sigh, he obliged by giving her a straight-on look at him, even though he knew full well what her reaction would be.

Sure enough, he saw the moment she recognized him. She stiffened and her fingers tightened on the tire iron. He could only be grateful he was out of range.

“I guess I don’t need help after all.” That low voice, normally as smoothly sexy as fine-aged scotch, sounded as cold and hard as the Tetons in January.

Help from him, she meant. He didn’t need her to spell it out.

He decided not to let it affect him. He also decided the hour was too damn late for diplomacy. “Tough. Whether you need help or not, you’re getting it. Hand over the tire iron.”

“I’m fine.”

“Maggie, just give me the damn thing.”

“Go home, Dalton. I’ve got everything under control here.”

She crouched again, though it was actually more a half crouch, with her left leg extended at her side. That position must be agony for her, he thought, and had to keep his hands curled into fists at his side to keep from hauling her up and giving her a good shake before pulling her into his arms.

She must be as tired as he was. More, probably. The woman had spent the past five months at Walter Reed Army Hospital. From what he knew secondhand from her mother, Viviana—his mother’s best friend—she’d had numerous painful surgeries and had endured months of physical therapy and rehabilitation

He seriously doubted she was strong enough—or stable enough on her prosthesis—to be driving at all, forget about rolling around in the mud changing a tire. Yet she would rather endure what must be incredible pain than accept help from one of the hated Daltons.

With a weary sigh, he ended the matter by reaching out and yanking the tire iron out of her hand. “I see the years haven’t made you any less stubborn,” he muttered.

“Or you less of an arrogant jackass,” she retorted through clenched teeth as she straightened.

“Yeah, we jackasses love driving around at 2:00 a.m. looking for people with car trouble so we can stop and harass them. Wait in my car where you can be warm and dry.”

She was still holding the flashlight, and she looked like she desperately wanted to bean him with it but she restrained herself. So the Army had taught her a little self-discipline, he thought with amusement, then watched her carefully as she leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree, aiming the beam in his direction.

He was a doctor with plenty of experience in observing the signs of someone hurting, and Magdalena Cruz’s whole posture screamed pain. He thought of a million more questions for her as he quickly put on her spare tire—what medication was she on? What kind of physical therapy had her doctors at Walter Reed ordered? Was she experiencing any phantom pain?—but he knew she wouldn’t answer any of them so he kept his mouth shut.

Questions would only piss her off. Not that that would be any big change—Maggie Cruz had been angry with him for nearly two decades. Well, not him specifically, he supposed. Anybody with the surname Dalton would find himself on the receiving end of her wrath.

Knowing her animosity wasn’t something she reserved just for him didn’t temper the sting of it.

“Your mom know you’re coming?” Tightening the lugs on the spare, he repeated the question he’d asked earlier.

She hesitated for just a heartbeat. “No. I wanted to surprise her.”

“You’ll do that, all right.” He pictured Viviana’s reaction when she woke up and found her daughter home. She would be stunned first, then joyful, he knew, and would smother Maggie with kisses and concern.

He didn’t know a mother in town more proud of her offspring than Viviana Cruz was of First Lieutenant Magdalena Cruz.

As well she should be.

The whole town was proud of her, first for doing her duty as an Army nurse in Afghanistan when her reserve unit was called up, then for the act of heroism that had cost her so dearly.

He finished the job, then stowed the flat tire and the jack and lug wrench in the cargo area of the Subaru, though he had to squeeze to find room amid the boxes and suitcases crammed in the small space.

Was she home to stay, then? he wondered, but knew she likely would tell him it wasn’t any of his business if he asked. He’d find out soon enough, anyway. The grapevine in Pine Gulch would be buzzing with this juicy bit of information.

He had no doubt that by the time he returned from Idaho Falls in the morning, his office staff would know all the details and would be more than eager to share them.

“There you go.” He closed the hatch. “You don’t want to run for long on that spare. Make sure you have Mo Sullivan in town fix your flat in the morning and swap it back out.”

“I will.” She stood, and in the headlights he could see exhaustion stamped on her lovely features.

“Your help wasn’t necessary but...thank you, anyway.” She said the words like they were choking her, and he almost smiled when he saw the effort they took. He stopped himself at the last minute. Accepting his help was tough enough on her, he wouldn’t make things worse by gloating about it.

“Anytime. Welcome home, Lieutenant Cruz.”

He doubted she heard him, since by then she had already climbed back into her Subaru and started the engine. He shook his head, used to the familiar chill from her.

He watched her drive away, then wiped his greasy, muddy hands on his already grimy scrubs and hurried to his Durango, pulling out behind her.

As he passed his own driveway a moment later, he thought with longing of his warm bed and the sandwich calling his name, but he drove on, following those red taillights another five miles until she reached the entrance to the Rancho de la Luna—Moon Ranch.

When she drove her little Subaru through the gates without further mishap, he flashed his brights, then turned around to drive back toward his house. Somehow he wasn’t a bit surprised when she made no gesture of acknowledgment at his presence or his small effort to make sure she reached home safely.

Maggie had been doing her best to ignore him for a long time—just as he’d been trying equally hard to make her notice him as someone other than one of the despised Daltons.

Despite the exhaustion that had cranked up a notch now that he was alone once more, he doubted he would be able to sleep anytime soon. He drove through the dark, quiet night, his thoughts chaotic and wild.

After a dozen years Magdalena Cruz was home.

He had a sudden foreboding that his heart would never be the same.

* * *

Jake Dalton.

What kind of bad omen made him the first person she encountered on her return?

As she headed up the curving drive toward the square farmhouse her father had built with his own hands, Maggie watched in her rearview mirror as Dalton turned his shiny silver SUV around and headed back down Cold Creek Road.

Why would he be driving back to town instead of toward his family’s ranch, just past the Luna? she wondered, then caught herself. She didn’t care where the man went. What Jake Dalton did or did not do was none of her concern.

Still, she hated that he, of all people, had come to her aid. She would rather have bitten her tongue in half than ask him for help, not that he’d given her a chance. He was just like the rest of his family, arrogant, unbending and ready to bulldoze over anybody who got in their way.

She let out a breath. Of course, he had to be gorgeous.

Like the other Dalton boys, Jake had always been handsome, with dark wavy hair, intense blue eyes and the sculpted features they inherited from their mother.

The years had been extremely kind to him, she had to admit. Though it had been dark out on that wet road, his headlights had provided enough light for her to see him clearly enough.

To her chagrin, she had discovered that the boy with the dreamy good looks who used to set all the other girls in school to giggling had matured over the years into a dramatically attractive man.

Why couldn’t he have a potbelly and a receding hairline? No, he had to have compelling features, thick, lush hair and powerful muscles. She hadn’t missed how effortlessly he had changed her flat, how he had worked the car jack it had taken all her strength to muscle, as if it took no more energy than reading the newspaper.

She shouldn’t have noticed. Even if he hadn’t been Jake Dalton—the last man on the planet she would let herself be attracted to—she had no business feeling that little hitch in her stomach at the sight of a strong, good-looking man doing a little physical exertion.

Heaven knows, she didn’t want to feel that hitch. That part of her life was over now.

Had he been staring? She couldn’t be sure, it had been too dark, but she didn’t doubt it.

Step right up. Come look at the freak.

She was probably in for a lot of that in the coming weeks as she went about town. People in Pine Gulch weren’t known for their reticence or their tact. She might as well get used to being on display.

She shook away the bitter self-pity and thoughts of Jake Dalton as she pulled up in front of the two-story frame farmhouse. She had more important things to worry about right now.

The lights were off in the house and the ranch was quiet—but what had she expected when she didn’t tell her mother she was coming? It was after 2:00 and the only thing awake at this time of the night besides wandering physicians were the barn cats prowling the dark.

She should have found a hotel room for the night in Idaho Falls and waited until morning to come home. If she had, right now she would have been stretched out on some impersonal bed with what was left of her leg propped on a pillow, instead of throbbing as if she’d just rolled around in a thousand shards of glass.

She had come so close to stopping, she even started signaling to take one of the freeway exits into the city. At the last minute she had turned off her signal and veered back onto the highway, unwilling to admit defeat by giving in so close to her destination.

Maybe she hadn’t fully considered the implications of her stubbornness, though. It was thoughtless to show up in the middle of the night. She was going to scare Viviana half to death, barging in like this.

She knew her mother always kept a spare key on the porch somewhere. Maybe she could slip in quietly without waking her and just deal with everything in the morning.

She grabbed her duffel off the passenger seat and began the complicated maneuver for climbing out of the car they taught her at Walter Reed, sliding sideways in the seat so she could put the bulk of her weight on her right leg and not the prosthesis.

Bracing herself, she took a step, and those imaginary shards of glass dug deeper. The pain made her vaguely queasy but she fought it back and took another step, then another until she reached the steps to the small front porch.

Once, she would have bounded up these half-dozen steps, taking them two or three at a time. Now it was all she could do to pull herself up, inch by painful inch, grabbing hold of the railing so hard her fingers ached.

The spare key wasn’t under the cushion of either of the rockers that had graced this porch as long as she could remember, but she lifted one of the ceramic planters and found it there.

As quietly as possible she unlocked the door and closed it behind her with only a tiny snick.

Inside, the house smelled of cinnamon coffee and corn tortillas and the faint scent of Viviana’s favorite Windsong perfume. Once upon a time that Windsong would have been joined by Abel’s Old Spice but the last trace of her father had faded years ago.

Still, as she drew the essence of home into her lungs, she felt as if she was eleven years old again, rushing inside after school with a dozen stories to tell. She was awash in emotions at being home, in the relief and security that seemed to wrap around her here, a sweet and desperately needed comfort even with the slightly bitter edge that seemed to underlie everything in her life right now.

She stood there for several moments, eyes closed and a hundred childhood memories washing through her like spring runoff, until she felt herself sway with exhaustion and had to reach for the handrail of the staircase that rose up from the entryway.

She had to get off her feet. Or her foot, anyway. The prosthesis on the other leg was rubbing and grinding against her wound—she hated the word stump, though that’s what it was.

Whatever she called it, she hadn’t yet developed sufficient calluses to completely protect the still-raw tissue.

The stairs to her bedroom suddenly looked insurmountable, but she shouldered her bag and gripped the railing. She had only made it two or three steps before the entry was flooded with light and she heard an exclamation of shock behind her.

She twisted around and found her mother standing in the entryway wearing the pink robe Maggie had given her for Mother’s Day a few years earlier.

“Lena? Madre de Dios!”

An instant later her mother rushed up the stairs and wrapped her arms around Maggie, holding her so tightly Maggie had to drop the duffel and hold on just to keep her balance.

At only a little over five feet tall, Viviana was six inches shorter than Maggie but she made up for her lack of size by the sheer force of her personality. Just now the vibrant, funny woman she adored was crying and mumbling a rapid-fire mix of Spanish and English that Maggie could barely decipher.

It didn’t matter. She was just so glad to be here. She had needed this, she thought as she rested her chin on Viviana’s slightly graying hair. She hadn’t been willing to admit it but she had desperately needed the comfort of her mother’s arms.

Viviana had come to Walter Reed when Maggie first returned from Afghanistan and had stayed for those first hellish two weeks after her injury while she had tried to come to terms with what had been taken from her in a moment. Her mother had been there for the first of the long series of surgeries to shape the scar tissue of her stump and had wanted to stay longer during her intensive rehab and the many weeks of physical therapy that came later.

But Maggie’s pride had insisted she convince her mother to return to Pine Gulch, to Rancho de la Luna.

She was thirty years old, for heaven’s sake. She should be strong enough to face her future without her mama by her side.

“What is this about?” Viviana finally said through her tears. “I think I hear a car outside and come to see who is here and who do I find but my beautiful child? You want to put your mother in an early grave, niña, sneaking around in the middle of the night?”

“I’m sorry. I should have called to make sure it was all right.”

Viviana frowned and flicked a hand in one of her broad, dismissive gestures. “This is your home. You don’t need to call ahead like...like I run some kind of hotel! You are always welcome, you know that. But why are you here? I thought you were to go to Phoenix when you left the hospital in Washington.”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I stayed long enough to pick up my car and pack up my apartment, then I decided to come home. There’s nothing for me in Phoenix anymore.”

There had been once. She had a good life there before her reserve unit had been called up eighteen months ago and sent to Afghanistan. She had a job she loved, as a nurse practitioner in a busy Phoenix E.R., she had a wide circle of friends, she had a fiancé she thought adored her.

Everything had changed in a heartbeat, in one terrible, decimating instant.

Viviana’s expression darkened but suddenly she slapped the palm of her hand against her head. “What am I doing, niña, to make you stand like this? Come. Sit. I will fix you something to eat.”

“I’m not hungry, Mama. I just need sleep.”

“Sí. Sí. We can talk about all this tomorrow.” Viviana’s hands were cool as she pushed a lock of hair away from Maggie’s eyes in a tender gesture that nearly brought her to tears. “Come. You will take my room downstairs.”

Oh, how she was tempted by that offer. Climbing the rest of these stairs right now seemed as insurmountable to her as scaling the Grand Teton without ropes.

She couldn’t give in, though. She had surrendered too much already.

“No. It’s fine. I’ll use my old room.”

“Lena—”

“Mama, I’m fine. I’m not kicking you out of your bed.”

“It’s no trouble for me. Do you not think it would be best?”

If Viviana had the strength, Maggie had no doubt her mother would have picked her up and carried her the short way off the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom.

This was one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted her mother in Washington, D.C., through her painful recovery, through the various surgeries and the hours of physical therapy.

It was also one of her biggest worries about coming home.

Viviana would want to coddle. It was who she was, what she did. And though part of Maggie wanted to lean into that comforting embrace, to soak it up, she knew she would find it too easy to surrender to it, to let that tender care surround her, smother her.

She couldn’t. She had to be tough if she was going to figure out how to go on with the rest of her life.

Climbing these steps was a small thing, but it suddenly seemed of vital importance.

“No, Mama. I’m sleeping upstairs.”

Viviana shook her head at her stubborn tone. “You are your father’s daughter, niña.”

She smiled, though she could feel how strained her mouth felt around the edges.

“I will take your things up,” Viviana said, her firm tone attesting to the fact that Maggie’s stubbornness didn’t come only from Abel Cruz.

Maggie decided she was too tired to argue, even if she had the tiniest possibility of winning that particular battle. She turned and started the long, torturous climb.

By the time she reached the last of the sixteen steps, she was shaking and out of breath and felt like those shards of glass she’d imagined earlier were now tipped with hot acid, eating away at her skin.

But she had made it, she thought as she opened to the door to her childhood bedroom, all lavender and cream and dearly familiar.

She was here, she was home, and she would take the rest of her life just like that—one step at a time.

Chapter Two

She woke from dreams of screaming, dark-eyed children and exploding streets and bone-numbing terror to soothing lavender walls and the comforting scent of home.

Sunshine streamed in through the lace curtains, creating delicate filigree patterns on the floor, and she watched them shift and slide for several moments while the worst of the dreams and her morning pain both faded to a dull roar.

Doctors at Walter Reed used to ask if her pain seemed worse first thing in the morning or right before bed. She couldn’t tell much difference. It was always there, a constant miserable presence dogging her like a grim black shadow.

She wanted to think it had started to fade a little in the five months since her injury, but she had a sneaking suspicion she was being overly optimistic.

She sighed, willing away the self-pity. Just once she’d like to wake up and enjoy the morning instead of wallowing in the muck of her screwed-up psyche.

Her shower chair was still down in the Subaru and she wasn’t quite up to running down the stairs and then back up for it—or worse, having to ask her mother to retrieve it for her. She hadn’t been fitted for a shower prosthesis yet, and since she couldn’t very well balance on one foot for the length of time needed, she opted for a bath.

It did the job of keeping her clean but was nowhere near as satisfying as the hot pulse of a shower for chasing away the cobwebs. Climbing out of the tub was always a little tricky, but she managed and dressed quickly, adjusted her prosthesis then headed for the stairs to find her mother.

When she finally made her painstaking way to the ground floor, she found the kitchen empty, but Viviana had left thick, gooey sweet rolls and a note in her precise English. “I must work outside this morning. I will see you at lunch.”

She frowned at the note, surprised. She would have expected her mother to stick close to the house the first day after her arrival, though she felt a little narcissistic for the assumption.

Viviana was probably out in her garden, she thought, tearing off a sticky chunk of cinnamon roll and popping it in her mouth.

Savoring the rich, sweet flavor, she poured a cup of coffee and walked outside with the awkward rolling gait she hadn’t been able to conquer when wearing her prosthesis.

The morning air was sweet and clear, rich with new growth, and she paused for a moment on the front porch to savor it.

Nothing compared to a Rocky Mountain morning in springtime. She had come to love the wild primitiveness of the desert around Phoenix in the dozen years she’d lived there, but this was a different kind of beauty.

The Tetons were still covered with snow—some of it would be year-round—but here at lower elevations everything was green and lush. Her mother’s fruit trees were covered in white blossoms that sent their sweet, seductive scent into the air and the flower beds bloomed with color—masses of spring blossoms in reds and yellows and pinks.

The Luna in spring was the most beautiful place on earth. Why had she forgotten that over the years? She stood for a long time watching birds flit around the gardens and the breeze rustle the new, pale-green leaves of the cottonwood trees along the creek.

Feeling a tentative peace that had been missing inside her for months, she limped down the stairs in search of her mother.

There was no sign of Viviana on the side of the house or in the back where the vegetable beds were tilled and ready for planting.

Maggie frowned. So much for being coddled. She didn’t want her mother to feel like she had to babysit her, but she couldn’t help feeling a little abandoned. Couldn’t Viviana have stuck around at least the first day so they could have had a visit over breakfast?

No matter. She didn’t need entertaining. She would welcome a quiet moment of solitude and reflection, she decided, and headed for the glider rocker on the brick patio.

She settled down with her coffee, determined to enjoy the morning on her own here in the sunshine, surrounded by blossoms.

The ranch wasn’t big, only eight hundred acres. From her spot on the patio she could see the pasture where her mother’s half-dozen horses grazed and the much-larger acreage where two hundred Murray Grey cattle milled around, their unique-colored hides looking soft and silvery in the morning sun.

She shifted her gaze toward the creek 150 yards away that gave this canyon and the Dalton’s ranch their names. This time of year the Cold Creek ran full and high, swollen with spring runoff. Instead of a quiet, peaceful ribbon of water, it churned and boiled.

The rains the night before hadn’t helped matters, and she could see the creek was nearly full to the banks. She whispered a prayer that it wouldn’t reach flood stage, though the ranch had been designed to sustain minimal damage for those high-water years.

The only building that could be in jeopardy if the creek flooded was the open-air bowery she and her father had built for her mother the summer she was ten.

She looked at the Spanish-tiled roof that gleamed a vibrant red in the sunlight and the brightly colored windsocks flapping in the breeze and smiled at the vibrant colors.

A little slice of Mexico, that’s what she and Abel had tried to create for her mother. A place Viviana could escape to when she was homesick for her family in Mexico City.

After the car accident that claimed her father’s life, she and Viviana used to wander often down to the bowery, both alone and separately. She had always been able to feel her father’s presence most strongly there, in the haven he had created for his beloved wife.

Did her mother go there still? she wondered.

Thoughts of Abel and the events leading to his death when she was sixteen inevitably turned her thoughts to the Daltons and the Cold Creek Land & Cattle Company, just across the creek bed.

From here she could see the graying logs of the ranch house, the neat fencelines, a small number of the ranch’s huge herd of cattle grazing on the rich grasses by the creek.

In those days after her father’s death, she would split her time here at the bowery between grieving for him and feeding the coals of her deep anger toward that family across the creek.

The Daltons were the reason her father had spent most of her adolescence working himself into an early grave, spending days hanging on to his dreams of making the Luna profitable and nights slogging through a factory job in Idaho Falls.

Bitter anger filled her again at the memories. Abel would never have found himself compelled to work so hard if not for Hank Dalton, that lying, thieving bastard.

Dalton should have gone to jail for the way he’d taken advantage of her father’s naiveté and his imperfect command of English. Thinking he was taking a big step toward expanding the Luna, Abel had paid the Cold Creek thousands of dollars for water rights that had turned out to be virtually useless. Abel should have taken the bastard to court—or at least stopped paying each month for nothing.

But he had insisted on remitting every last penny he owed to Hank Dalton and, after a few years with poor ranch returns, had been forced to take on two jobs to cover the debt.

She barely saw him from the age of eleven until his death five years later. One night after Abel had spent all day on the tractor baling hay then turned around and driven to Idaho Falls to work the graveyard shift at his factory job, he’d been returning to the Luna when he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his old Dodge pickup.

The truck rolled six times and ended up in a ditch, and her kind, generous father was killed instantly.

She knew exactly who should shoulder the blame. The Daltons had killed her father just as surely as if they’d crashed into him in one of the shiny new pickups they always drove.

She sipped her coffee and shifted her leg as the constant pins-and-needles phantom pains became uncomfortable.

Was there room in her life right now for old bitterness? she wondered. She had plenty of new troubles to brood about without wallowing around in the mud and muck of ancient history.

Now that she’d come home, she saw no reason she and the Daltons couldn’t just stay out of each other’s way.

Unbidden, an image of Jake Dalton flitted across her mind, all lean strength and rumpled sexiness and she sighed. Jake should be at the top of the list of Daltons to avoid, she decided. He had always been the hardest for her to read and the one she had most in common with, as they had both chosen careers in medicine.

For various reasons, there had always been an odd bond between them, fragile and tenuous but still there. She would just have to do her best while she was home to ignore it.

A tractor suddenly rumbled into view, and she was grateful for the distraction from thoughts of entirely too-sexy doctors.

She craned her neck, expecting to see her tío Guillermo, her father’s bachelor brother who had run the ranch for Viviana since Abel’s death. Instead, she was stunned to find her mother looking tiny and fragile atop the rumbling John Deere.

Ranch wives were bred tough in the West, and Viviana was no different—tougher than some, even. Still, the sight of her atop the big tractor was unexpected.

Viviana waved with cheerful enthusiasm when she spied Maggie in the garden. The tractor shuddered to a stop and a moment later her mother hopped down with a spryness that disguised her fifty-five years and hurried toward her.

“Lena! How are you feeling this morning?”

“Better.”

“You should be resting after your long drive. I did not expect you to be up so early. You should go back to bed!”

Here was the coddling she had expected and she decided to accept it with grace. “It was a long drive and I may have overdone things a little. But I promise, I’m feeling better this morning.”

“Good. Good. The clean air of the Luna will cleanse your blood. You will see.”

Maggie smiled, then gestured to the tractor. “Mama, why are you doing the planting? Where’s Tío Guillermo?”

An odd expression flickered across her mother’s lovely features, but she quickly turned away. “Do not my flowers look beautiful this year? We will have many blooms with the rains we’ve had. I thought many of them would die in the hard freeze of last week but I covered them with blankets and they have survived. They are strong, like my daughter.”

With Viviana smiling at her with such love, Maggie almost let herself be deterred, but she yanked her attention back. “Don’t change the subject, Mama. Why are you planting instead of Guillermo? Is he sick?”

Viviana shrugged. “This I cannot say. I have not seen him for some days.”

“Why not?”

Her mother didn’t answer and suddenly seemed wholly focused on deadheading some of the tulips that had bloomed past their prime.

“Mama!” she said more firmly, and her mother sighed.

“He does not work here anymore. I told him to go and not return.”

Maggie stared. “You what?”

“I fired him, sí? Even though he said he was quitting anyway, that I could not pay him enough to keep working here. I said the words first. I fired him.”

“Why? Guillermo loves this place! He has poured his heart into the Luna. It belongs to him as much as us. He owns part of the ranch, for heaven’s sake. You can’t fire him!”

“So you think I’m a crazy woman, too?”

“I didn’t say that. Did Guillermo call you crazy?”

Her mother and her father’s brother had always seemed to get along just fine. Guillermo had been a rock of support to both of them after Abel’s death and had stepped up immediately to run the ranch his brother had loved. She couldn’t imagine what he might have done to anger her mother so drastically that she would feel compelled to fire him—or what she would have said to make him quit.

“This makes no sense, Mama! What’s going on?”

“I have my reasons and they are between your tío and me. That is all I will say about this to you.”

Her mother had a note of finality in her voice but Maggie couldn’t let the subject rest.

“But Mama, you can’t take care of things here by yourself! It’s too much.”

“I will be fine. I am putting an ad in the newspaper. I will find someone to help me. You are not to worry.”

“How can I not worry? What if I talk to Guillermo and try to smoothe things over?”

“No! You are to stay out of this. You cannot smooth this over. Sometimes there are too many wrinkles between people. I will hire someone to help me but for now I am fine.”

“Mama...”

“No, Magdalena.” Her mother stuck her chin up, looking at once fierce and determined. “That is all I will say about this.”

This time she couldn’t ignore Viviana’s firmness. But Maggie could be every bit as stubborn as her mother. “Fine.” She pulled herself up to stand. “Between the two of us, we should be able to manage until you’re able to hire someone.”

Her mother gaped, her flashing dark eyes now slightly aghast. “Not the two of us!”

She reverted to Spanish, as she always did in times of high emotion, and proceeded to loudly and vociferously tell Maggie all the reasons she would not allow her to overexert herself on the Rancho de la Luna.

Maggie listened to her mother’s arguments calmly, hands in her sweater pockets, until Viviana wound down.

“Don’t argue. Please, Mama,” she finally said, her voice low and firm. “You need help and I need something to keep me busy. Working with you will be the perfect solution.”

Her mother opened her mouth to renew her objection but Maggie stopped her with an upraised hand. “Please, Mama. The doctors say I must stay active to strengthen my leg and I hate feeling so useless. I want to help you.”

“You should rest. I thought that is why you have come home.”

Maggie had her own reasons for coming home but she didn’t want to burden her mother with them, especially as she was suddenly aware of a deep, powerful need to prove to herself she wasn’t completely helpless.

“I will be careful, Mama, I promise. But I’m going to help you.”

Viviana studied her for a long moment while honeybees buzzed through the flowers and the breeze ruffled the pale new leaves on the trees, then she sighed.

“You are so much like your father,” she said in Spanish, shaking her head. “I never could win an argument with him, either.”

Maggie wasn’t sure why she was suddenly filled with elation at the idea of hard, physical labor. She should be consumed with fear, with trepidation that she wouldn’t be able to handle the work. Instead, anticipation coursed through her.

She meant her words to her mother—she needed something to do, and pitting herself against the relentless work always waiting to be tackled on a small ranch like the Luna seemed just the thing to drag her off her self-pitying butt.

* * *

“No wonder the kid’s not sleeping.” Jake finished his quick exam and let his three-year-old nephew off the breakfast bar of the sunny, cheerful Cold Creek kitchen. Glad to be done, Cody raced off without even waiting for a lollipop from his uncle.

“What’s the verdict?” his sister-in-law, Caroline, asked, her lovely, normally serene features worried.

“Ear infection. Looks like a mild one but still probably enough to cause discomfort in the night. I’ll write you a prescription for amoxicillin and that should take care of it.”

“Thank you for coming out to the ranch on such short notice, especially after a long day. We probably could have waited a day or two but Wade wouldn’t hear of it. He seems to think you have nothing better to do than spend your free time making house calls to his kids.”

“He’s right. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.” Jake smiled at her but Caroline made a face.

“If that’s true, it’s about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Why?” he asked. “Because I love the chance to see my niece and nephews?”

“Because you need something besides work, even when that work involves family! I’m not going to lecture you. But if you were my client, we would definitely have to work on finding you some hobbies.”

Caroline was an author and life coach who had moved her practice to the Cold Creek after she married his oldest brother eighteen months earlier and willingly took on the challenge of Wade’s three young kids.

In that time, she had wrought amazing changes at the ranch. Though the house was still cluttered and noisy and chaotic, it was filled with love and laughter now. He enjoyed coming out here, though seeing his brother’s happiness only seemed to accentuate the solitude of his own life.

“I don’t have time for a hobby,” he answered as he returned his otoscope to his bag.

“My point exactly. You need to make time or you’re going to burn out. Trust me on this.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I’ve been right where you are, Jake,” she said. “You might scoff now but you won’t a few years in the future when you wake up one morning and suddenly find yourself unable to bear the idea of treating even one more patient.”

“I love being a doctor. I promise, that’s not going to change anytime soon.”

“I know you love it and you’re wonderful at it. But you need other things in your life, too.”

Her eyes suddenly sharpened with a calculating gleam that left him extremely nervous. “You at least need a woman. When was the last time you went on a date?”

He gave a mock groan. “I get enough of this from Marjorie. I don’t need my sister-in-law starting in on me, too.”

“How about your stepsister then?”

“You can tell her to keep her pretty nose out of my business, too.”

She grinned. “I’ll try, but you know how she is.”

They both laughed, as technically Caroline filled both roles in his life, sister-in-law and stepsister. Not only was she married to his brother but her father, Quinn, was married to his mother, Marjorie. The happy couple now lived in Marjorie’s little house in Pine Gulch.

“I heard through the grapevine our local hero has returned,” Caroline said with a look so sly he had to wonder what he possibly might have let slip about his barely acknowledged feelings toward their neighbor. “Maybe you ought to ask Magdalena Cruz on a date.”

A snort sounded in the kitchen and he looked over to find his youngest brother, Seth, lounging in the doorway. “Maggie? Never. She’d probably laugh in his face if he dared asked.”

Seth sauntered into the kitchen and planted himself on one of the bar stools.

Caroline bristled. “What do you mean? Why on earth wouldn’t she go out with Jake? Every woman in the county adores him.”

Though he was touched by her defense of him, he flushed. “Not true. Seth’s the Romeo in the family. All you have to do is walk outside to see the swath of broken hearts he’s left across the valley.”

“Does that swath include Magdalena Cruz’s heart, by any chance?” Caroline asked.

Seth snorted again. “Not by a long shot. Maggie hates everything Dalton. Always has.”

“Not always,” Jake corrected quietly.

Caroline frowned at this bit of information. “Why would she hate you? Oh, I’ll agree you can be an annoying lot on the whole, but as individuals you’re basically harmless.”

“You never knew dear old Dad.”

Seth’s words were matter-of-fact but they didn’t completely hide the bitterness Jake and his brothers all carried toward their father.

“I don’t know all the details,” Jake said. “I don’t know if even their widows do—but Hank cheated Viviana Cruz’s husband Abel in some deal the two had together. He lost a lot of money and had to work two jobs to make ends meet. Maggie blamed us for it, especially after her father died in a car accident coming home from his second job one night.”

“Oh, the poor thing.” Caroline’s eyes melted with compassion.

“Maggie left town for college a few years after her dad died. She studied to become a nurse and along the way she joined the Army National Guard,” Jake went on. “The few times she’s been back over the years, she usually tries to avoid anything having to do with the Cold Creek like a bad case of halitosis.”

Unless one of the Daltons happens to stumble on her in the middle of the night, he thought.

“Hate to break it to you, Carrie, but you might as well take her right off your matchmaking radar.” Seth grinned around a cookie he’d filched from the jar on the counter.

Caroline looked disappointed, though still thoughtful. “Too bad. From all her mother says, Lieutenant Cruz sounds like quite a woman.”

Oh, she was that, Jake thought a short time later as he drove away from the ranch. Their conversation seemed to have opened a door in his mind and now he couldn’t stop thinking about Maggie.

He was quite certain she had no idea her impact in his life had been so profound.

If not for her, he wasn’t sure he would even have become a doctor. Though sometimes it seemed his decision to pursue medicine had been blooming inside him all his life, he could pinpoint three incidences that had cemented it.

Oddly enough, all three of them involved Maggie in some way.

Though the Rancho de la Luna was next door, he hadn’t noticed Maggie much through most of his youth. Why should he? She was three years younger, the same age as Seth, and a girl to boot. A double whammy against her, as far as he’d been concerned.

Oh, he saw her every day, since she and the Dalton boys rode the same school bus and even shared a bus stop, a little covered shack out on the side of the road between their houses to protect them in inclement weather.

Her father constructed it, of course. It never would have occurred to Hank Dalton his sons might be cold waiting outside for the bus in the middle of a January blizzard.

Even if he thought of it, he probably wouldn’t have troubled himself to make things easier on his sons. Jake could almost hear him. A little snow never hurt anybody. What are you, a bunch of girls?

But Abel Cruz had been a far different kind of father. Kind and loving and crazy about his little girl. Jake could clearly remember feeling a tight knot of envy in his chest whenever he saw them together, at their easy, laughing relationship.

Maggie had been a constant presence in his life but one that didn’t make much of an impact on him until one cold day when he was probably eleven or twelve.

That morning Seth had been a little wheezy as they walked down the driveway to the bus. Jake hadn’t thought much about it, but while they were waiting for the bus, his wheezing had suddenly developed into a full-fledged asthma attack, a bad one.

Wade, the oldest, hadn’t been at the stop to take control of the situation that day since he’d been in the hospital in Idaho Falls having his appendix out, and Marjorie had stayed overnight with him.

Jake knew there was no one at the Cold Creek, and that he and Maggie would have to take care of Seth alone.

Looking back, he was ashamed when he remembered how frozen with helplessness and fear he’d felt for a few precious seconds. Maggie, no more than eight herself, took charge. She grabbed Seth’s inhaler from his backpack and set the medicine into the chamber.

“I’m going to get my mama. You stay and keep him calm,” he could remember her ordering in that bossy little voice. Her words jerked him out of his panic, and while she raced toward her house, he was able to focus on calming Seth down.

Seth had suffered asthma attacks since he was small, and Jake had seen plenty of them but he’d never been the one in charge before.

He remembered thinking as they sat there in the pale, early-morning sunlight how miraculous medicine could be. In front of his eyes, the inhaler did its work and his brother’s panicky gasps slowly changed to more regulated breathing.

A moment later, Viviana Cruz had come roaring down the driveway to their rescue in her big old station wagon and piled them all in to drive to Doc Whitaker’s clinic in town.

That had sparked the first fledgling fire inside him about becoming a doctor.

The second experience had been a year or so later. Maggie and Seth had still been friends of sorts, and the two of them had been tossing a baseball back and forth while they waited for the bus. Jake had been caught up in a book, as usual, and hadn’t been paying attention, but somehow Maggie had dived to catch it and landed wrong on her hand.

Her wrist was obviously broken, but she hadn’t cried, had only looked at Jake with trusting eyes while he tried to comfort her in a slow, soothing voice and carried her up the long driveway to the Luna ranch house, again to her mother.

The third incident was more difficult to think about, but he forced his mind to travel that uncomfortable road.

He had been fifteen, so Maggie and Seth would have been twelve. By then, Maggie had come to despise everything about the Daltons. They would wait for the bus at their shared stop in a tense, uncomfortable silence and she did her best to ignore them on the rides to and from Pine Gulch and school.

That afternoon seemed no different. He remembered the three of them climbing off the bus together and heading toward their respective driveways. He and Seth had only walked a short way up the gravel drive when he spotted a tractor in one of the fields still running and a figure crumpled on the ground beside it.

Seth must have hollered to Maggie, because the three of them managed to reach the tractor at about the same moment. Somehow Jake knew before he reached it who he would find there—the father he loved and hated with equal parts.

He could still remember the grim horror of finding Hank on the ground not moving or breathing, his harsh face frozen in a contortion of pain and his clawed fingers still curled against his chest.

This time, Jake quickly took charge. He sent Seth to the house to call for an ambulance, then he rapidly did an assessment with the limited knowledge of first aid he’d picked up in Boy Scouts.

“I know CPR,” he remembered Maggie offering quietly, her dark eyes huge and frightened. “I learned it for a babysitting class.”

For the next fifteen minutes the two of them worked feverishly together, Jake doing chest compressions and Maggie doing mouth-to-mouth. Only later did he have time to wonder about what kind of character strength it must have taken a young girl to work so frantically to save the life of a man she despised.

Those long moments before the volunteer ambulance crew arrived at the ranch would live forever in his memory. After the paramedics took over, he had stood back, shaky and exhausted.

He had known somehow, even as the paramedics continued compressions on his father while they loaded him into the ambulance, that Hank wouldn’t make it.

He remembered standing there feeling numb, drained, as they watched, when he felt a slight touch and looked down to find Maggie had slipped her small, soft hand in his. Despite her own shock, despite her fury at his father and her anger at his family, despite everything, she had reached out to comfort him when he needed it.

He had found it profoundly moving at the time.

He still did.

Maybe that was the moment he lost a little of his heart to her. For all the good it would ever do him. She wanted nothing more to do with him or his family, and he couldn’t really blame her.

He sighed as he hit the main road and headed down toward town. Near the western boundary of the Luna, he spotted a saddled horse standing out in a field, reins trailing. Maybe because he’d been thinking of his father’s heart attack, the sight left him wary, and he slowed his Durango and pulled over.

What would a saddled horse be doing out here alone? He wondered, then he looked closer and realized it wasn’t alone—Maggie sat on a fallen log near the creek, her left leg outstretched.

Even from the road he could see the pain in her posture. It took him half a second to cut his engine, climb out and head out across the field.

Chapter Three

He had always considered himself the most even-tempered of men. He didn’t get overly excited at sporting events, he had never struck another creature in anger, he could handle even the most dramatic medical emergencies that walked or were carried through his clinic doors with calm control.

But as Jake raced across the rutted, uneven ground toward Magdalena Cruz and her horse, he could feel the hot spike of his temper.

As he neared her, he caught an even better view of her. He ground his teeth with frustration mingled with a deep and poignant sadness for what she had endured.

She had her prosthesis off and the leg of her jeans rolled up, and even from a dozen feet away he could see her amputation site was a raw, mottled red.

As he neared, he saw her shoulders go back, her chin lift, as if she were bracing herself for battle. Good. He wasn’t about to disappoint her.

“Didn’t the Army teach you anything about common sense?” he snapped.

She glared at him, and he thought for sure his heart would crack apart as he watched her try to quickly yank the leg of her jeans down to cover her injury.

“You’re trespassing, Dalton. Last I checked this was still Rancho de la Luna land.”

“And last I checked, someone just a few days out of extensive rehab ought to have the good sense not to overdo things.”

She grabbed her prosthesis as if she wanted to shove it on again—or at least fling it in his face—but he grabbed hold of it before she could try either of those things.

“Stop. You’re only going to aggravate the site again.”

Every instinct itched to reach and take a look at her leg but he knew he had to respect her boundaries, just as he knew she wouldn’t welcome his efforts to look out for her.

“How long have you had this prosthesis?” he asked.

She clamped her teeth together as if she wasn’t going to answer him, but she finally looked away and mumbled. “A few weeks.”

“Didn’t your prosthetist warn you it would take longer than that to adjust to it?” he asked. “You can’t run a damn marathon the day after you stick it on.”

“I wasn’t trying to run a marathon,” she retorted hotly. “I was only checking the fence line. We had a couple cows get out last night and we’re trying to figure out where they made a break for it.”

“Two days back in town and you think you have to take over! Tell me why Guillermo couldn’t handle this job.”

She slanted him a dark look. “Tell me again why it’s any of your business.”

“Maggie.”

She sighed. “Guillermo can’t check the fence because he no longer works for the Luna.”

He blinked at this completely unexpected piece of information. “Since when?”

“Since he and my mother apparently had a falling out. Whether she fired him or he quit, I’m not exactly sure. Maybe both.”

Jake knew Guillermo Cruz had taken over running his brother’s ranch for Viviana after Abel’s death. As far as he could tell, the man was hardworking and devoted to the ranch. He knew Wade had nothing but respect for him and his older brother didn’t give his approval lightly.

“Anyway, he doesn’t work here now. It’s just Mama and me until she hires someone.”

He couldn’t take any more. Despite knowing the reaction he would get, he reached out and put a hand on the prosthesis she was trying to jam onto her obviously irritated residual leg, unable to bear watching her torture herself further.

“You don’t have to try to hide anything from me.”

“I wasn’t!” she exclaimed, though color crept up her high cheekbones.

“I’m a physician, remember? Will you please let me take a look to see what’s going on with your leg?”

“It’s just a little irritated,” she said firmly. “Nothing for you to be concerned about.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Here are your choices. You either let me look at it or I’m packing you over my shoulder and driving you to the E.R. in Idaho Falls so someone there can examine you.”

She glared at him, her stance fully combative. “Try it, Dalton. I dare you.”

This bickering wasn’t accomplishing anything. He moderated his tone and tried for a conciliatory approach. “Don’t you think it’s foolish to put yourself through this kind of pain if you don’t have to? How quickly do you think you can get in to see a specialist at the VA? A week? Two? I’m here right now, offering to check things out. No appointment necessary.”

Her glare sharpened to a razor point, but just when he thought she would impale him on the sharp points of her temper, she drew a deep breath, her gaze focused somewhere far away from him, then slowly pulled the prosthesis away.

Despite his assurance that she didn’t have to hide anything from him, he found himself filled with an odd trepidation as he turned for his first real look at her amputation.

Despite the obvious irritation, her stump looked as if it had been formed well at Walter Reed, with a nice rounded shape that would make fitting a prosthesis much easier. Scar tissue from various surgeries puckered in spots but overall he was impressed with the work that had been done at the Army’s premier amputee care center.

She gave him possibly ninety seconds to examine her before she jerked away and pulled her jeans down again.

“Are you happy now?”

Despite her dusky skin, her cheeks burned with color and she looked as if she wished him to perdition.

“No,” he said bluntly. “If you were my patient, I’d recommend you put your leg up, rent a bunch of DVDs with your mother and just take it easy for a few days enjoying some time with Viv.”

“Too bad for you, I’m not your patient.”

He stood again. “And you won’t take my advice?”

She was silent for a moment and he had maybe five seconds to hope she might actually overcome her stubbornness and consider his suggestion, then she shook her head. “I can’t. My mother needs help. She can’t run Rancho de la Luna by herself.”

“Didn’t you say she was looking to hire help?”

“Sure. And I’m certain whole hordes of competent stockmen are just sitting around down at the feedlot shooting the breeze and waiting for somebody to come along and hire them.”

In the late-afternoon sunlight, she looked slight and fragile, with the pale, vaguely washed-out look of someone who had been inside too long.

All of his healer urges were crying out for him to scoop her off that log and take her home so he could care for her.

“Someone out there has to be available. What about some college kid looking for a summer job?”

“Maybe. But it’s going to take time to find someone. What do you suggest we do in the meantime? Just let the work pile up? I don’t know how things work at the Cold Creek, but Mama hasn’t quite figured out how to make the Luna run itself.”

His mind raced through possibilities—everything from seeing if Wade would loan one of the Cold Creek ranch hands to going down to the feed store himself to see if he might be able to shake any potential ranch managers out of the woodwork.

He knew she wouldn’t be crazy about either of those options but he had to do something. He couldn’t bear the idea of her working herself into the ground so soon after leaving the hospital.

“I can help you.”

While the creek rumbled over the rocks behind her and the wind danced in her hair, she stared at him for a full thirty seconds before she burst out laughing.

He decided it was worth being the butt of her amusement for the sheer wonder of watching her face lose the grim lines it usually wore.

“Why is that so funny?”

She laughed harder. “If you can’t figure it out, I’m not about to tell you. Here’s a suggestion for you, though, Dr. Dalton. Maybe you ought to take five seconds to think through your grand charitable gestures before you make them.”

“I don’t need to think it through. I want to help you.”

“And leave the good people of Pine Gulch to drive to Jackson or Idaho Falls for their medical care so you can diddle around planting our spring crop of alfalfa? That should go over well in town.”

“I have evenings and weekends mostly free and an afternoon or two here and there. I can help you when I’m not working at the clinic, at least with the major manual labor around here.”

She stopped laughing long enough to look at him more closely. Something in his expression must have convinced her he was serious because she gave him a baffled look.

“Surely you have something better to do with your free time.”

“Can’t think of a thing,” he said cheerfully, though Caroline’s lecture still rang in his ears.

Maggie shook her head. “That’s just sad, Doctor. But you’ll have to find something else to entertain you, because my answer is still no.”

“Just like that?”

He didn’t want to think about the disappointment settling in his gut—or the depressing realization that he was desperate for any excuse to spend more time with her.

If she had any idea his attraction for her had any part in his motive behind offering to help her and Viv, she would be chasing him off the Luna with a shotgun.

“Right. Just like that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.”

She moved to put her prosthesis back on but he reached a hand to stop her, his mind racing to come up with a compromise she might consider. “What if we made a deal? Would that make accepting my help a little easier to swallow?”

She slid back against the log with a suspicious frown. “What kind of deal?”

“A day for a day. I’ll give you my Saturday to help with the manual labor.”

“And what do you want in exchange?”

“A fair trade. You give me a day in return.”

* * *

Why wouldn’t the man just leave?

Maggie drew a breath, trying to figure out this latest angle. What did he want from her? Hadn’t he humiliated her enough by insisting on looking at her ugly, raw-looking stump? The man seemed determined to push her as far as he could.

“Give you a day for what?” she asked warily.

“I’m in dire need of a translator. I open my clinic on Wednesdays for farm workers and their families. A fair number of them don’t have much English and my Spanish is limited at best. I’ve been looking for someone with a medical background to translate for me.”

“No.”

“Come on, Maggie. Who would be more perfect than a bilingual nurse practitioner?”

“Former nurse practitioner. I’m retired.”

His pupils widened. “Retired? Why would you want to do that, for heaven’s sake?”

She had a million reasons but the biggest was right there in front of her. Who the hell wanted a one-legged nurse? One who couldn’t stand for long periods of time, who was constantly haunted by phantom pain, who had lost all of her wonder and much of her respect for the medical establishment over the last five months?

No, she had put that world behind her.

In civilian life, she had loved being a nurse practitioner in a busy Scottsdale pediatric practice. She had admired the physicians she worked with, had loved the challenge and delight of treating children and even had many parents who preferred to have her, rather than the pediatricians, see and treat their children.

How could she go back to that world? She just didn’t have what it took anymore, physically or emotionally. It was part of her past, one more loss she was trying to accept.

She certainly didn’t need Jake’s accusatory tone laying a guilt trip on her for her choices. “I don’t recall making you my best friend here, Dalton,” she snapped. “My reasons are my own.”

More than anything, she wanted him to leave her alone, but she had no idea how to do that, other than riding off in a grand huff, something she wasn’t quite capable of right now.

“Whatever they are, one day translating for me is not going to bring you out of permanent retirement. These people need somebody like you who can translate the medical terminology into words they can understand. I do my best, but there are many times I know both me and my patients walk out of the exam room with more questions than answers.”

“I’m not interested,” she repeated firmly.

He opened his mouth, gearing up for more arguments, no doubt. After a moment he shrugged. “Your call, then.”

She stared at him, waiting for the other punch. Dalton men weren’t known for giving up a good fight and they rarely took pity on their opponents, either.

Jake only stood, brushing leaves and pine needles off the knees of his tan Dockers. “I’m sure you know the risks of wearing your prosthesis too long at a stretch if it’s causing that kind of irritation. If I were your doctor—which, as you said, too bad for me I’m not—I would advise you to leave it off for the rest of the day.”

“I can’t ride a horse without it.”

Exasperation flickered in his blue eyes. “I can give you a ride back to the ranch. We can walk the horse behind my Durango.”

She hated herself for the little flickers of temptation inside her urging her to accept his offer. The pain—or more accurately, the powerful need to find something to ease it—sometimes overwhelmed every ounce of common sense inside her.

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 side-saddle, 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.

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