Читать книгу Dancing in the Moonlight - RaeAnne Thayne - Страница 7
ОглавлениеChapter 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.
