Dancing in the Moonlight Read Online Free PDF

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 thedoorway. “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