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“I’ve sworn off relationships.”
“What would a man have to do to change your
mind?” Jake asked, his voice low.
For a charged moment, their gazes held as he
watched awareness blooming to life in those dark
and seductive eyes that suddenly looked huge in
her slender face.
He watched her throat move and felt a delicate
tremor in her fingers.
He might have been able to release her fingers
and let his question lie there between them.
But then her gaze shifted to his mouth and
something hot and sultry sparked between them
and he knew he was doomed.
With a muffled groan, Jake leaned forward and
touched his mouth to hers.
He ached to touch her, to caress and explore, but
some dark corner of his mind urged caution.
A kiss was one thing, but he knew Maggie wasn’t
ready for anything else.
Dear Reader,
In 2009 Harlequin will celebrate sixty years of
providing women with pure reading pleasure. To mark
this special anniversary, we are pleased to offer you
this book written by popular author RaeAnne Thayne.
Silhouette Special Edition has always celebrated life,
love and family, and it continues to be the place where
readers can find stories with a wide range of sensuality
featuring contemporary women—and irresistible
men!—on the path to true love. Our heroines are easy
to empathize with, and Maggie Cruz, featured in
RaeAnne’s Dancing in the Moonlight, is no exception!
She’s always harbored a crush on physician Jake
Dalton, even if their families were sworn enemies. But
Maggie is back from the war, with a crushing
development to live with—and she’s not sure how the
handsome doctor will react….
Silhouette Special Edition is truly a celebration of life,
love and family, and we are delighted to offer you this
unprecedented opportunity to join us!
Happy anniversary,
The Silhouette Special Edition Editors
DANCING
IN THE
MOONLIGHT
RAEANNE THAYNE
Published by Silhouette Books
America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance
Books by RaeAnne Thayne
Silhouette Special Edition
††Light the Stars #1748
††Dancing in the Moonlight #1755
††Dalton’s Undoing #1764
**The Daddy Makeover #1857
**His Second-Chance Family #1874
§A Merger…or Marriage? #1903
**A Soldier’s Secret #1918
††The Cowboy’s Christmas Miracle #1933
Silhouette Romantic Suspense
The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom #960
Saving Grace #995
Renegade Father #1062
*The Valentine Two-Step #1133
*Taming Jesse James #1139
*Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid #1144
The Quiet Storm #1218
Freefall #1239
Nowhere to Hide #1264
†Nothing to Lose #1321
†Never Too Late #1364
The Interpreter #1380
High-Risk Affair #1448
Shelter from the Storm #1467
High-Stakes Honeymoon #1475
*Outlaw Hartes
†The Searchers
**The Women of Brambleberry House
††The Cowboys of Cold Creek
§The Wilder Family
RAEANNE THAYNE
finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah moun-
tains, where she lives with her husband and three children.
Her books have won numerous honors, including two
RITA® Award nominations from Romance Writers of
America and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic
Times BOOKreviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear
from readers and can be reached through her Web site at
www.raeannethayne.com.
To all men and women who have made sacrifices
for freedom. You have my deepest gratitude.
Chapter One
F
or 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
8 DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT
asifhespentmoretimebehindthewheelofhisDurango
ontheforty-minutedrivebetweenhishometownandthe
nearest hospital than he did with patients.
He’d driven this road so many times in the past two
yearssincefinishinghisinternshipandopeninghisown
practice, he figured his SUV probably knew the way
withouthim.Itdidn’tmakeforveryexcitingdriving.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
RAEANNE THAYNE 9
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 bit-
tersweet 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.
