Dancing in the Moonlight - Harlequin.com

RAEANNE THAYNE
187
even though they were standing several feet apart now,
he still couldn’t seem to look away from Viviana, his
eyes hot and hungry.
Her mother raised trembling hands to her cheeks and
looked miserably horrified. “Lena! Oh, Lena.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” she mumbled. For the life of her,
she couldn’t think of anything else to say, and for a few
seconds the three of them stood there in a painfully
awkward tableau.
“We were just, um, just…”Viviana’s voice trailed off.
“I think it’s safe to say I can figure out what you were
doing, Mama,” she said quickly.
Guillermo wore a stiff kind of dignity that seemed a
little out of place on a man with lipstick on his jaw and
a collar that looked as though it had been twisted in a
hundred different directions.
“You are not to think less of your mother for this. I
alone am responsible,” her beloved uncle said, his voice
stern, then he bowed slightly and headed down the steps
with one last heated look at Viviana.
Maggie drew a breath, feeling as if she were the one
caught in a wind tunnel, as if one of the last few solid things
she had to hang on to had just been tossed to the heavens.
In that single look, her calm, easygoing uncle
appeared tormented, wretched. A man thoroughly, miserably
in love.
After he left, her mother dropped her hands from her
cheeks and faced Maggie, her eyes just as miserable.
“I am sorry you saw that.” Her mother spoke in
agitated Spanish. “I do not know what to say. It was…
we were…”