Dancing in the Moonlight - Harlequin.com

RAEANNE THAYNE
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the house to call for an ambulance, then he rapidly did
an assessment with the limited knowledge of first aid
he’d picked up in Boy Scouts.
“I know CPR,” he remembered Maggie offering
quietly, her dark eyes huge and frightened. “I learned it
for a babysitting class.”
For the next fifteen minutes the two of them worked
feverishly together, Jake doing chest compressions and
Maggie doing mouth-to-mouth. Only later did he have
time to wonder about what kind of character strength it
must have taken a young girl to work so frantically to
save the life of a man she despised.
Those long moments before the volunteer ambulance
crew arrived at the ranch would live forever in his
memory. After the paramedics took over, he had stood
back, shaky and exhausted.
He had known somehow, even as the paramedics
continued compressions on his father while they loaded
him into the ambulance, that Hank wouldn’t make it.
He remembered standing there feeling numb,
drained, as they watched, when he felt a slight touch and
looked down to find Maggie had slipped her small, soft
hand in his. Despite her own shock, despite her fury at
his father and her anger at his family, despite everything,
she had reached out to comfort him when he needed it.
He had found it profoundly moving at the time.
He still did.
Maybe that was the moment he lost a little of his
heart to her. For all the good it would ever do him. She
wanted nothing more to do with him or his family, and
he couldn’t really blame her.