Dancing in the Moonlight - Harlequin.com

84 DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT
She spied the rope, still there but looped over the
rafters, and she could vividly picture her father standing
about where she was, watching with delight as she
would swing down from the loft, shrieking all the way
until she let go and landed in the welcoming piles of hay.
It was a good memory, one she hadn’t thought of in
years. She wondered if, before her accident, she ever
would have taken time to notice something as quietly
lovely as a barn in springtime, to remember that longago
moment with her father.
She would have been in too much of a hurry to get
somewhere important.
A person learning to walk all over again moved at a
slower pace by necessity. Sometimes that wasn’t always
such a bad thing.
She made her way through the barn to the ranch
office. The small room was cluttered with tack and
coiled rope and other odds and ends. She pulled out the
log book Guillermo had always maintained religiously
in his neat, precise English.
Under the day’s date, she wrote, “Rode entire perimeter
of ranch checking fence. Significant repairs performed
on southwest corner and near road.”
Kissed Jake Dalton until I couldn’t think straight.
Knees still wobbly.
She set down her pencil when she realized where her
mind carried her again. At least she’d only thought that
last bit, not written it down. It might be a little tough to
explain to her mother.
Nothing like that would happen again, she thought
sternly. She couldn’t allow it.