Dancing in the Moonlight

by RaeAnne Thayne

  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 inc
lement 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.