Dancing in the Moonlight - Harlequin.com

RAEANNE THAYNE
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lived with for some time after they called it off. Eventually
that had given way to relief when he realized how
miserable they would have made each other.
“What about you?” he asked. “Any—what was the
phrase you used—‘near misses’ for you?”
She took a healthy swallow of wine, and he
wondered if she’d eaten any of her chicken or just
pushed it around her plate.
“So near I can still feel the wind whistling past my
ears,” she said with a smile that didn’t seem at all amused.
“That close?”
“I was engaged until just a few months ago, actually.
Dr. Clay Sanders, brilliant young surgeon at Phoenix
General. Which, by the way, I think he had printed on
his business cards. But I digress.”
“What happened?”
She tried for a nonchalant shrug, but he could clearly
see it was forced. “A similar story to yours. We dated
for a year or so, then he asked me to marry him before
my reserve unit headed for Afghanistan. When I
returned, the intervening months had changed us both
too much and we both decided we no longer suited.”
She said the words with a studied casualness that told
him far more than he was sure she intended and he
could feel a slow, simmering fury spark to life.
“Because of your injury?”
“Not officially.” She turned her attention to her plate,
though she was still mostly moving her food around.
“Did you break it off or did he?” Some wild need
inside him compelled him to ask.
“Do you really need to hear all the gory details?”