Dangerous
Dance
Matt pulled her gently against him as the song built to its soulful crescendo, and felt the most incredible sense of lightness and peace. It felt so good, it ached inside him. He brushed his lips against Sarah's temple, his breath stirring the baby-fine tendrils of hair that curled there like wisps of silk.
As the last strains of the melody drifted away Sarah stepped back and looked up at him, her eyes so dark a blue, they looked the color of pansies. She stared up at him for a long moment, saying nothing, her expression carefully blank.
“Sarah.” He didn't know what he meant to say. All that came out was her name as soft as a secret.
“I … I'd best say good night,” she whispered, backing slowly away from him.
He stayed where he was, watching her go, saying nothing. Then she was in the comforting dark of the hall. She curbed the uqje to run. By the time she got to the stairs, she stopped altogether, her hands clutching the polished oak newel post.
“Oh, dear heaven,” she whispered, her voice trembling with emotion. “Please don't let this happen. Please don't let me fall in love with him.”
But as she climbed the stairs to her room, she had the terrible feeling it was already too late for prayers.
BANTAM BOOKS BY TAMI HOAG
GUILTY AS SIN
NIGHT SINS
DARK PARADISE
CRY WOLF
STILL WATERS
MAGIC
LUCKY'S LADY
SARAH'S SIN
A THIN DARK LINE
ASHES TO ASHES
DUST TO DUST
and soon in hardcover
DARK HORSE
AUTHOR'S NOTE
While the town of Jesse, Minnesota, is purely a figment of my own overactive imagination, there is indeed a fair-sized Amish population in Minnesota's southeastern corner based around the towns of Harmony and Canton. It is in this area that I grew up.
The influx of Amish did not come until the mid-seventies, but they are now a firmly established community and have played a vital role in the area's economic recovery from the agricultural depression of the early eighties by attracting tourists to this very lovely part of the state.
So if you ever have the yearning for rolling countryside and the sound of buggy wheels clattering along the shoulder of the road, for the slower pace of small-town life and a place where everybody knows everybody else by name, I've got just the place for you.
He looked dead.
Sarah Troyer sat beside the bed, her eyes wide and unblinking as she stared at the man whose care she had been charged with. He lay motionless, only his head visible above the black-and-purple quilt that covered the bed. He was perhaps thirty-two or thirty-three, but he seemed older in his unconscious state. Even in the amber glow of the bedside lamp, his skin was the color of parchment. His left eye was swollen along the brow and discolored like a peach gone bad. A neat line of stitches embroidered his chin at an angle. In spite of his injuries, his face was strong and handsome, with a high, broad forehead and bold black brows, a stubborn-looking chin and a wide, well-defined mouth that kept drawing her gaze like a magnet.
“Melanie, Melanie,” he mumbled, a hint of a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. “Kiss me where it hurts.”
A warm sensation wriggled through Sarah from the top of her head down, prickling her scalp beneath the fine white mesh fabric of her Amish
Automatically her mind spun out the words like a gossamer thread to weave a story with….
“Oh, man, I've died and gone to
At the sound of the masculine voice Sarah jerked awake, her body snapping to attention faster than her foggy mind. The jolt of all her muscles coming to life at once sent her shooting off the edge of her chair. She landed with a thud, her bottom connecting solidly with the hard braided oval rug beside the bed.
While the idea of helping a lovely lady up appealed to him enormously, Matt Thorne didn't move an inch. He couldn't; he ached in so many places, the electrical impulses his brain sent to his muscles kept shorting out en
