Dancing in the Moonlight - Harlequin.com

194 DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT
for my beautiful daughter to attend college and become
the nurse she had dreamed of for many years.”
She pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling shaky
and almost nauseous. During all those years of hatred,
the Daltons had been paying to support her. They had
put her through nursing school. Everything she had, everything
she had become, she owed to Jake and his
family, a family she had treated with nothing but scorn
and anger.
No, she thought. Her father had given his life to pay
that debt. Perhaps she shouldn’t look at it as blood
money from the Daltons but as her one enduring legacy
from her father.
“You should have told me, Mama.”
Viviana sighed. “Perhaps. But I did not wish you to
think poorly of your father. He was a good man who acted
as he thought best for his family and for his conscience.”
“All for nothing! He should have let them make
things right.”
“I think by then he was so angry he couldn’t see
what was right.” Viviana paused. “But while he hated
their father, Abel never blamed Hank Dalton’s sons for
their father’s actions. He knew, as I know, that those
three boys suffered much from growing up with a cold,
harsh man. Even with a father such as that, they grew
into good, decent men who love their families and this
town. None of them deserves your anger, Lena.”
Everything she believed, everything she thought she
had known, had just been shaken and tossed into the
air like a handful of dry leaves, and she didn’t know
what to think.