Her belligerent tone finally pierced his daze. Beneath her truculence, she seemed apprehensive, and he wondered at it.
“You look perfect,” he murmured, then couldn’t seem to help himself. He twisted her fingers in his, leaned forward and kissed her cheek.
She smelled divine, some kind of perfume that reminded him of standing in his sister-in-law’s flower garden, and he wanted to dip his face into her neck and inhale.
He forced himself to refrain, and as he stepped back he had the satisfaction of seeing she looked even more adorably flustered.
“Is your mother around?” he asked, knowing perfectly well she wasn’t.
Maggie frowned and tried to withdraw her hand. He held firm. “No. She left a few hours ago. She said she was visiting a friend, though she wouldn’t tell me who. I wondered if it was Guillermo, but she wouldn’t say. She’s been acting very strange today. All week, really.”
It took a great effort to keep his expression blandly innocent. “Really?”
“Taking phone calls at all hours of the day and night, running off on mysterious errands she won’t explain, accepting package deliveries she won’t let me see.”
“Maybe she has a boyfriend.”
Her jaw went slack as she processed that possibility. “Why on earth would you say that? Do you know something I don’t?”
He thought of his own suspicions about Viviana but decided Maggie wasn’t quite ready for them. “Sorry. Forget I said anything. Are you ready, then?”
She looked distracted, and he knew she was still dwelling on the possibility of Viviana entering the dating scene.
“I…Yes. I just need a jacket.”
“What about your sticks?” He gestured to her forearm crutches, propped against a chair.
She made a face. “Am I going to need them?”
“You never know. Doesn’t hurt to be prepared, does it?”
With a sigh she grabbed them. “I’ve really come to hate these things. Someday I’m going to invent a comfortable pair of crutches.”
He took them from her and offered his other arm to her. After a moment’s hesitation she slipped her arm through his, and he wanted to tuck her against him and hang on forever.
“So where are we going?” she asked on their slow way down the porch steps.
“Sorry. Can’t tell you that.”
“Why on earth not?”
“You’ll see. Just be patient.”
She didn’t look very thrilled with his answer, just as he had an uncomfortable suspicion she wouldn’t be very thrilled about their ultimate destination.
He couldn’t worry about that. It was out of his hands, he reminded himself again as he helped her into the Durango, impressed by her technique of sitting first then twisting her legs around so she didn’t have to put weight on her foot.
After he slipped the crutches in the back, he climbed in and then headed down the driveway.
They were almost to the road when she reached a hand out and touched his arm. The spontaneous gesture surprised him enough that he almost didn’t stop in time to miss a minivan heading up the road to the Cold Creek. The traffic was much heavier than normal in that direction, and he could only hope she didn’t notice.
“Is something wrong?”
He stared. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “Your eyes. They seem distracted and you’re not your usual annoyingly cheerful self.”
He thought of the terrible task of telling Bertie her husband was gone, of the sense of failure that sat cold and bitter in his gut. Not wanting to put a damper on the evening, he opened his mouth to offer some polite lie but the words tangled in his throat.
The urge to confide in her was too overwhelming to resist. “I lost a patient today. Will Cranwinkle. Heart attack.”
She touched his arm again. “Oh, Jake. I’m so sorry.”
“I rode the ambulance to Idaho Falls with him, trying to shock him but we could never get a rhythm.”
Her eyes were dark with compassion and he wanted to drown in them. “The last thing you probably feel like doing is socializing tonight. I don’t mind if you take me home. We can do this another time.”
He shook his head. “You’re not getting out of this that easily. We’re going. This is exactly where I need to be.”
“What about where you want to be?”
“That, too. I promise, I wouldn’t be anywhere else tonight.”
He turned east, heading up the box canyon instead of down toward town. She made a sound of surprise. The only thing in this direction was the Cold Creek.
“I need to make a quick stop. Do you mind?”
A muscle flexed in her jaw, and he could tell she did mind but she only shrugged again. “You’re driving.”
She didn’t look very thrilled about it but she said nothing more, though her features looked increasingly baffled as they reached the ranch entrance. Cars were parked along both sides of the road, and one whole pasture was filled with more parked cars.
“What’s happening? Are we crashing some kind of party?”
Despite the lingering ache in his chest over the day’s events, he had to smile. “You could say that.”
They drove under the arch, decorated in red, white and blue bunting. She still looked baffled until they approached the ranch house, where a huge banner Bud Watkins down at the sign shop in town had made up read in giant letters “Welcome Home Lt. Cruz. Pine Gulch Salutes You.”
Under it stood just about everyone in town—men, women, children—smiling and waving at them.
She stared at the crowd, her eyes wide. “Did you do this?”
He searched her features but he couldn’t tell whether that tremor in her voice stemmed from shock or from anger. “I can’t take much credit, I have to admit. Or blame, if it comes to that. Your mother and mine were behind the whole thing. I was only charged with delivering you here at the appointed hour.”
He pulled up in the parking space set aside for her and walked around the SUV to help her out. When he saw the jumbled mix of emotions in her eyes, he paused in the open door of the Durango and shifted to block her from the crowd’s view.
“I don’t want this, Jake.” The distress in her voice matched her eyes. “I’m not some kind of hero. I can’t go out there and pretend otherwise. I’m a mess. You know I am. Physically, emotionally, all of it.”
He grabbed her hands and held them tight. “You don’t see yourself as we all do, sweetheart. This town is bursting with pride for you.”
“For what? I returned a cripple! Everyone can see that. I can’t even take a damn shower without it turning into a major production!”
“Maggie—”
“I didn’t come home to be embraced and applauded by my hometown. I came to Pine Gulch to hide away from life, because I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Her eyes glittered, and he hoped like hell she didn’t start to cry. He knew she would hate that more than anything, to break down in front of the whole town.
A heavy weight of responsibility settled on his shoulders. He knew whatever he said was of vital importance, and he tried to choose his words with the utmost care.
“You can say what you want, but I don’t believe you came home because you had nowhere else,” he said quietly. “You came home because you knew this was where you belonged, a place where you knew you would be loved and supported while you try to adjust to the changes in your life. People in this town want to celebrate what you did over there and the fact that you’ve returned. Your mother wants to celebrate your return. Don’t break her heart, Maggie.”
She shifted her gaze past him to where Viviana stood, her hands clasped together at her chest and worry in her dark eyes. He held his breath, watching indecision flicker across her features for just an instant. She let out a long sigh, then nodded slowly, her eyes resolute.
She pasted on a smile—a little frayed around the edges but a smile nevertheless—and gripped the doorjamb to pull herself out, her shoulder
s stiff and determined.
If he hadn’t already been hopelessly in love with her, he knew as he watched her face her fears that he would have tumbled headlong and hard at that moment.
She had never felt less like celebrating. But for the next hour Maggie forced herself to smile and make small talk and to ignore the stubborn pains in her leg as she moved from group to group.
It was a lovely night for a party, she had to admit, the twilight sweetly scented and just cool enough to be refreshing. The Daltons had strung lights in the trees, and more bunting hung from every horizontal space. Everything looked warm and welcoming.
She hadn’t been to the Cold Creek in years, and she’d forgotten how beautiful the gardens were. Marjorie and her mother had that in common, she remembered, their love of growing things. Perhaps that had been one of the things they’d built their friendship on.
She knew Jake’s mother didn’t live on the ranch anymore, she owned a house in town where she lived with her second husband, so perhaps Wade Dalton’s new wife was the gardener in the family. Whoever created it and maintained it, the gardens were lovely and peaceful.
On a makeshift wooden floor under the swaying branches of a weeping willow, locals danced to the music of a country music band that included Mr. Benson, the high school choir director, Myron Potter, who owned the hardware store, and a pretty girl with a dulcet voice Maggie could vaguely recall babysitting eons ago.
Not that she heard much of the band, introduced as Sagebrush Serenade. She didn’t have much chance, too busy talking to everyone in town. She had been hugged more times tonight than she had in the entire dozen years since she left Pine Gulch, and she thought she had been greeted by every single person she went to school with.
She couldn’t believe all the people who turned out—people she never would have expected. Mrs. Hall—her tenth-grade English teacher whose favorite phrase on grade sheets had been ‘You’re not working up to your potential’—looked as if she hadn’t so much as changed a wrinkle in twenty years.
Pat Conners, her first date, was there with his wife and two young children.
Even Jesse Johnson, the bus driver who had picked her and the Dalton boys up as long as she could remember, was out on the dance floor, and he had to be pushing eighty by now.
More surprising was the sight of Carmela, the young pregnant woman she’d met at Jake’s clinic. When she’d seen her in the crowd, Maggie had kept an eye on her. Carmela had started out sticking with others in the Latino community; now she was talking with two Anglo women, one of whom also looked pregnant.
Maggie probably would have found it all heartwarming, a reaffirmation of small-town values, if she hadn’t been the guest of honor.
“We couldn’t be more proud of you, young lady. You’re a credit to the whole town.”
She turned back to Charlie Bannister, the mail carrier who had been mayor of Pine Gulch as long as she could remember. She didn’t think his years of service to the town had anything to do with a particular craving for power, more that no one else wanted the job.
She smiled politely. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.”
“Purple Heart, I understand.”
“Yes sir.”
“A great honor. Yes, indeed. I’m only sorry you had to make such a sacrifice to earn it. But looks like you’re learning to adjust. Good for you. Good for you.”
She didn’t know what to do except nod and smile as the mayor went on at length about how his cousin had to have a leg amputated—“the diabetes, don’t you know”—and how he never walked again.
“You’re getting around well. I wouldn’t even know your leg was a fake if I didn’t know your story,” the mayor said.
As the mayor went on and on, Maggie spied Jake moving among the guests. Though she tried to catch his eye to send him a subliminal message to rescue her, he seemed to be as much in demand as she was.
He was the only doctor in town, she reminded herself. He probably couldn’t even walk into the little grocery store in town without being assaulted for medical advice.
“Excuse me, won’t you?” The mayor suddenly said, much to her relief. “The boss is trying to get my attention.”
She followed his gaze and found Dellarae, his dumpling-plump wife, gesturing to him.
“Of course,” she said with barely concealed relief. “It wouldn’t do to keep the boss waiting.”
The mayor gave her a grateful smile and a fatherly pat on the arm. “Knew you’d understand. You always were a sensible girl.”
Since when? she wondered. If she were sensible, she wouldn’t be here. She would have climbed back into Jake’s SUV and driven away the moment she caught sight of the row of cars out front.
No, if she were sensible, she wouldn’t have been in Jake’s SUV in the first place. A woman with common sense certainly would know better than to spend time with a man who turned her knees to mush just by looking at her out of those stunning blue eyes of his.
Would her mother ever forgive her if she ditched the party and found a ride back to the Luna? Probably not.
But then, where was her mother? she wondered. She’d seen her that first moment when they pulled up, but since then she seemed to have disappeared. Probably in the kitchen. That was usually Viviana’s favorite locale.
She spied the Elwood sisters heading in her direction, their lined faces set in matching expressions of pity and avid interest, and decided now would be a good time to check on her mother.
Shifting around so quickly she almost lost her balance, she turned and headed for the house. She discovered the back door opened into the Cold Creek kitchen, which at first glance wasn’t at all what she expected. It was large and open, painted a sunny, welcoming yellow.
Her mother wasn’t in sight—the only occupant was a young woman in a white apron who looked to be arranging food on a platter.
“Sorry,” Maggie murmured, guilt washing through her as she watched the woman work. This was all for her, she realized. Everyone throwing this party had been so kind, and all she could do was feel sorry for herself and wish she were anywhere else on earth.
“I was looking for my mother, Viviana Cruz.”
The woman’s smile was as warm as the room. “You must be the guest of honor, aren’t you? I’m Caroline, Wade Dalton’s wife. What a pleasure to meet you! I tried to talk to you earlier but you were surrounded by well-wishers. I’m so pleased to have a chance to say hello and welcome you back to town.”
Maggie blinked, unsure how to respond to this woman. She tried to drum up her usual antipathy toward anyone related to the Daltons, but this woman seemed so nice and genuinely friendly, it was hard to feel anything but warmth.
“Um, thank you,” she finally said. “Thank you for opening your home. I’m sure it wasn’t easy throwing a party for a stranger.”
“You’re only a stranger to me, not the rest of the family. When Marjorie and Viv came up with the idea for a party, we knew the Cold Creek was the ideal place for it. We’ve got the room here for parking and for dancing, so when Jake suggested it, it just made sense. Wade insisted.”
Wade? Jake’s older brother barely knew her. Why would he want all these people wandering through his house, their vehicles ripping up a perfectly good pasture?
“Still, I’m sorry you had to go to so much bother.”
“It was no trouble, I promise. Your mother and Marjorie did most of the work, with a little help from Quinn.”
“Quinn?”
“My father. Marjorie’s husband. He loves a good party.”
“Right. I’m sorry, I forgot his name.”
Her mother had told her the story of Majorie Dalton’s elopement with a man she had an e-mail romance with—a man whose daughter had come to the ranch in search of the newlyweds and ended up falling for Jake’s widowed older brother and his three young children.
“I believe I met him shortly after we arrived. Tall, handsome, charming smile.”
“That’s my dad,” Caroline said
ruefully. Her gaze sharpened suddenly, and Maggie had the odd sensation this woman could see into her deepest secrets.
“This all must be very uncomfortable for you.”
She almost equivocated, gave some polite denial, but something in the woman’s expression compelled her to honesty. “Yes. A bit. I’m not really crazy about being the center of attention.”
“Jake warned Viv and Marjorie you might not be ready for a big party, that they should start with something small and intimate with just close friends if they insisted on celebrating, but I’m afraid things spiraled a little out of control. I must say you’re handling it all very graciously.”
Maggie made a face. “Not really. Why do you think I came in here to hide out?”
Caroline laughed, and Maggie felt an instant connection with this woman with the kind eyes. The other woman’s laughter slid away after a moment, and her eyes filled with a quiet concern.
“I’m sure you’ve had all the counseling you could stand at the Army hospital, but if you ever need to talk to someone here, I hope you know I’m always willing to listen.”
Maggie suddenly remembered her mother telling her Wade Dalton’s new wife was a therapist who had become an author and life coach, focused on helping people find more joy in their lives.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“Listen, I need to run this tray out. I’ll be back for more in a moment. You are more than welcome to stay here as long as you’d like.”
She suddenly remembered the ostensible reason for her escape from the party. “I actually stepped in here looking for my mother.”
“That’s right. Viviana was in here a few moments before you came in but then I thought I heard her go out the front door. You could try the porch out there,” Caroline suggested.
“Thank you,” Maggie murmured as the other woman headed back out to the party.
The band had shifted to something slow and romantic. For a few moments, she stood alone in the kitchen, listening to the music and swaying a little.
She pressed a hand to her chest, to the little ache in her heart there, for all the slow dances she would have to sit out the rest of her life.
Dancing in the Moonlight Page 14
