Dancing in the Moonlight - Harlequin.com

170 DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT
Heart attack, he’d quickly determined. A bad one,
much worse than the one Wilford had suffered two years
earlier that had led to behavior and diet changes.
Jake had ridden the ambulance with Wilford to the
hospital in Idaho Falls, trying everything he and the
paramedics could to save the man’s life, to no avail.
By the time Bertie arrived, the task of telling her
that her husband of forty-two years had not survived
fell to Jake.
It had been a bitter day, the kind of terrible loss that
made him question whether he could have done more—
and even if he ever should have become a physician in
the first place.
He also couldn’t help but remember that fall day
more than nineteen years earlier when he and Maggie
had tried and failed to save another heart attack victim.
Some days it seemed the ghost of Hank Dalton
followed him around everywhere, whispering in his ear
what a poor excuse for a doctor he was, how he was a
miserable excuse for a son, how he would never amount
to any kind of stockman if he couldn’t yank his nose out
of a damn book.
As he’d been showering and changing to prepare to
pick up Maggie, he also couldn’t help thinking how his
efforts to pierce her hard, prickly shell reminded him
painfully of his youth and adolescence spent trying so
hard to win his father’s approval.
She pushed him away at every turn, blocking his
every attempt to reach through her defenses to the
woman inside.
Tonight, for instance, he half expected her to back out