For 60 years, Harlequin has been providing millions of women with pure reading pleasure. We hope you enjoy this great story! From passion, paranormal, suspense and adventure, to home and family, Harlequin has a romance for everyone! Visit www.HarlequinCelebrates.com to choose from a variety of sixteen great series romance stories that are absolutely FREE to download! (Total approximate retail value $60.) Look for all the variety Harlequin has to offer wherever books are sold, including most bookstores, supermarkets, discount stores and drugstores. Enjoy! “I’ve sworn off relationships.” “What would a man have to do to change your mind?” Jake asked, his voice low. For a charged moment, their gazes held as he watched awareness blooming to life in those dark and seductive eyes that suddenly looked huge in her slender face. He watched her throat move and felt a delicate tremor in her fingers. He might have been able to release her fingers and let his question lie there between them. But then her gaze shifted to his mouth and something hot and sultry sparked between them and he knew he was doomed. With a muffled groan, Jake leaned forward and touched his mouth to hers. He ached to touch her, to caress and explore, but some dark corner of his mind urged caution. A kiss was one thing, but he knew Maggie wasn’t ready for anything else. Dear Reader, In 2009 Harlequin will celebrate sixty years of providing women with pure reading pleasure. To mark this special anniversary, we are pleased to offer you this book written by popular author RaeAnne Thayne. Silhouette Special Edition has always celebrated life, love and family, and it continues to be the place where readers can find stories with a wide range of sensuality featuring contemporary women—and irresistible men!—on the path to true love. Our heroines are easy to empathize with, and Maggie Cruz, featured in RaeAnne’s Dancing in the Moonlight, is no exception! She’s always harbored a crush on physician Jake Dalton, even if their families were sworn enemies. But Maggie is back from the war, with a crushing development to live with—and she’s not sure how the handsome doctor will react…. Silhouette Special Edition is truly a celebration of life, love and family, and we are delighted to offer you this unprecedented opportunity to join us! Happy anniversary, The Silhouette Special Edition Editors DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT RAEANNE THAYNE Published by Silhouette Books America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance Books by RaeAnne Thayne Silhouette Special Edition ††Light the Stars #1748 ††Dancing in the Moonlight #1755 ††Dalton’s Undoing #1764 **The Daddy Makeover #1857 **His Second-Chance Family #1874 §A Merger…or Marriage? #1903 **A Soldier’s Secret #1918 ††The Cowboy’s Christmas Miracle #1933 Silhouette Romantic Suspense The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom #960 Saving Grace #995 Renegade Father #1062 *The Valentine Two-Step #1133 *Taming Jesse James #1139 *Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid #1144 The Quiet Storm #1218 Freefall #1239 Nowhere to Hide #1264 †Nothing to Lose #1321 †Never Too Late #1364 The Interpreter #1380 High-Risk Affair #1448 Shelter from the Storm #1467 High-Stakes Honeymoon #1475 *Outlaw Hartes †The Searchers **The Women of Brambleberry House ††The Cowboys of Cold Creek §The Wilder Family RAEANNE THAYNE finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah moun- tains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honors, including two RITA® Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times BOOKreviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com. To all men and women who have made sacrifices for freedom. You have my deepest gratitude. Chapter One F or a doctor dedicated to healing the human body, he certainly knew how to punish his own. Jake Dalton rotated his shoulders and tried to ignore the aches and pains of the adrenaline crash that always hit him once the thrill of delivering a baby passed. He had been running at full speed for twenty-two hours straight. As he drove the last few miles toward home at 2:00 a.m., he was grimly aware that he had a very narrow window of about four hours to try to sleep, if he wanted to drive back to the hospital in Idaho Falls to check on his brand-new patient and the newborn baby girl’s mother and make it back here to Pine Gulch before his clinic opened. The joys of being a rural doctor. He sometimes felt 8 DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT asifhespentmoretimebehindthewheelofhisDurango ontheforty-minutedrivebetweenhishometownandthe nearest hospital than he did with patients. He’d driven this road so many times in the past two yearssincefinishinghisinternshipandopeninghisown practice, he figured his SUV probably knew the way withouthim.Itdidn’tmakeforveryexcitingdriving.To keep himself awake, he drove with the window cracked and the Red Hot Chili Peppers blaring at full blast. Cool, moist air washed in as he reached the outskirts of town, and his headlights gleamed off wet asphalt. The rain had stopped sometime before but the air still smelled sweet, fresh, alive with that seductive scent of springtime in the Rockies. It was his favorite kind of night, a night best suited to sitting by the woodstove with a good book and Miles Davis on the stereo. Or better yet, curled up between silk sheets with a soft, warm woman while the rain hissed and seethed against the window. Now there was a particular pleasure he’d been too damn long without. He sighed, driving past the half- dozen darkened shops that comprised the town’s bustling downtown. The crazy life that came from being the only doctor in a thirty-mile radius didn’t leave him much time for a social life. Most of the time he didn’t let it bother him, but sometimes the solitude of his life struck him with depressing force. No, not solitude. He was around people all day long, from his patients to his nurses to his office staff. But at the end of the day, he returned alone to the RAEANNE THAYNE 9 empty three-bedroom log home he’d bought when he’d moved back to Pine Gulch and taken over the family medicine clinic from Doc Whitaker. On nights like this he wondered what it would be like to have someone to welcome him home, someone sweet and soft and loving. It was a tantalizing thought, a bit- tersweet one, but he refused to dwell on it for long. He had no right to complain. How many men had the chance to live their dreams? Being a family physician in his hometown had been his aspiration forever, from those days he’d worked the ranch beside his father and brothers when he was a kid. Besides, after helping Jenny Cochran through sixteen hours of back labor, even if he had a woman in his life, right now he wouldn’t be good for anything but a PB&J sandwich and the few hours of sleep he could snatch before he would have to climb out of his bed before daybreak and make this drive to Idaho Falls again. He was only a quarter mile from that elusive warm bed when he spotted emergency flashers from a disabled vehicle lighting up the night ahead. He swore under his breath, tempted for half a second to drive on past. Even as the completely selfish urge whispered through his brain, he hit the brakes of his Durango and pulled off the road, his tires spitting mud and gravel on the narrow shoulder. He had to stop. This was Pine Gulch and people just didn’t look the other way when someone was in trouble. Besides, this was a quiet ranch road in a box canyon that dead-ended six miles further on—at the gates of the Cold Creek Land & Cattle Company, his family’s ranch.