Marked for Marriage

by Jackie Merritt

  Tearing his gaze from hers, he quickly finished up with her hand, then held her jacket up so she could slip into it. Feeling emotionally jarred and confused, Maddie got into her jacket and was almost positive that she felt his hands linger on her shoulders for just a second—a completely unnecessary contact. Frowning, she wound a woolen scarf around her head, another around her injured hand and then fished a ring of keys out of her jacket pocket.

  She held them out. “Maybe you would lock up when we’re outside? It’s a big stretch for me to reach the door lock with the trailer so out of level.”

  Noah plucked the keys from her hand. “Which key do I use?”

  “That gold one with the spot of red fingernail polish on it. Do you see it?”

  He saw that every key bore a spot of a different color. It was a smart and rather adorable way of keeping track of which key was which, and he again felt the urge to hug her.

  Disgusted with urges he wasn’t at all accustomed to feeling, he asked gruffly, “Are we finally ready to leave?”

  Maddie shot him a dirty look and answered in the same nasty-voiced way. “Open the door and get going, for pity’s sake! I’ll be right behind you. I have to turn off the lights or they will drain my batteries dry.”

  Noah realized that there was a lot about trailers he didn’t know, but he certainly wasn’t going to start seeking information on that subject tonight. He reached out to open the door and heard Maddie say, “Be careful. It’s a long way to the ground.”

  “I noticed when I climbed in,” he answered sharply, as though she thought him too dense to recall something that had occurred only minutes ago. “In fact,” he added, “I wondered how you managed to get yourself inside.”

  “Don’t let my size influence your opinion of my capabilities. I usually manage to do whatever I decide to do,” Maddie said coldly.

  Now that was a topic he would like to pursue, Noah thought darkly while translating her egotistical declaration to mean, “I do what I want when I want, and if you or anyone else doesn’t like it, tough!”

  But he was ready to get out of there. Ready to return to his nice warm car and brave the hazards of driving through the blizzard from hell until he reached a safe haven, in this case, Mark Kincaid’s house. Without Maddie on his hands, he would, of course, drive to his own home.

  But he had only himself to blame for having Maddie Kincaid on his hands. He should have said a decisive, “No, sorry, but I’m just too busy,” when Mark asked him to check on his sister. Well, it would be a cold day in hell before he committed himself to another favor for anyone.

  Hitching up his jacket collar around his ears, he turned his back on Maddie and opened the door of her trailer. Wind and snow hit him hard, but he forged on and took that long step to the snow-covered ground.

  The lights went out inside the trailer, and Maddie became a shadowy figure in the doorway. “Here, you’d better let me help you,” he said brusquely, and held up his gloved hand toward her.

  She ignored him completely and neatly swung herself down by hanging on to the assistance bar next to the door with her good hand.

  “You had to prove it, didn’t you?” Noah said disgustedly.

  “Prove what?” The wind was louder than their voices, but she made herself heard, just as Noah had.

  “How independent you are! Come on, let’s get the hell away from here!” Without asking for or waiting for permission, he took her arm and said, “That’s just so we don’t get separated, and don’t think it couldn’t happen.”

  Maddie knew that as well as he did, but arguing about anything in this killer storm was just too ludicrous and she said nothing.

  They began trudging through the ever-deepening drifts, battling the fierce wind and blowing, billowing snow. Noah led her through the trees, and for a time she worried about actually reaching the road. He could be taking them in the wrong direction, after all. The density of the storm disoriented her, so why wouldn’t it do the same to him?

  But then she saw it, something dark up ahead with barely discernible globes of diffused light. It had to be Noah’s car. “Thank God,” she murmured. At this range she could admit to the weakness causing her body to tremble. And she hurt badly—her hand, almost her entire right side and her left knee. That was a new point of pain, and it concerned her. What had she done to make her left knee ache? That climb into the trailer? Just the drive from the house? The bumpy ride over ground and in between trees that had told her she was no longer on the road? The abrupt stop when she’d high-centered the truck on a log?

  Suddenly despondent—she’d only wanted to make sure that Fanny was all right, and instead she’d caused a big fat mess— Maddie’s eyes got teary. It could have been from the bitter cold, and God knew she could make that claim should Noah catch on to her emotional upheaval, but he couldn’t possibly give a whit if she laughed or cried at this point. Obviously, he disapproved of everything she said and did, and why wouldn’t he? He’d never seen any evidence of her usually dominant sane and sensible side, and Maddie’s hunch was that he didn’t give people too many chances. If ever a man lived with anger as a constant companion, she thought, it was Dr. Noah Martin.

  Upon reaching the SUV, Noah quickly opened the passenger door and helped Maddie to get in. Giving the door a push to close it, he hurried around the front of the vehicle and got in himself. They both hooked their seat belts. The heater was throwing hot air, and the snow on Noah’s face immediately began melting. He yanked off his gloves and wiped his eyes. He could see that Maddie was doing the same.

  “Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

  “Yes.” What else could she say? Getting back home was their biggest problem at the moment, not how she felt. Anyhow, her guilt over being the cause of this fiasco was worse than all of her aches and pains combined. She could tell that he thought of her as completely brainless. She really didn’t like anyone thinking of her that way, but there was precious little she could do tonight to alter his opinion.

  Noah turned on the windshield wipers and cleared away some of the snow that was totally covering the glass. He’d left the defrosters off so he wouldn’t have windshield ice to contend with, but now he switched them on. He got the SUV moving—very slowly, Maddie noted—and in a minute or so he turned it around and they were headed back to town.

  “Apparently you know how to drive in snow,” she said.

  He sent her a somewhat withering glance. “If you’re going to live in this area, you’d better know how to drive in snow.”

  His resentful expression and tone of voice spoke volumes for Maddie. It said clearly that he would rather not be drawn into any small talk. Maddie put her head back and shut her eyes. He was a good driver and would get them home safely. That didn’t concern her, but there were other facets to her life besides the bad weather to give her pause. For instance, his confession about having destroyed her pain pills. That really was too damned nervy. Had she so much as hinted that she would like him to be her doctor in Whitehorn? Even Mark hadn’t suggested that, for heaven’s sake. All he’d done—according to Noah himself—was to ask Noah to drop in occasionally and check on her. So yes, Dr. Noah Martin was nervy beyond belief. And once she was home, she was going to tell him exactly what she thought of such outrageous tactics.

  Noah was trying to remain relaxed behind the wheel. Gripping the wheel too tightly or overdriving was dangerous business in weather like this. The road was icy under snow that was several feet deep in drifted areas. He paid very little attention to Maddie, because all of his attention was focused on the road or rather on making sure they stayed on the road. He understood how Maddie could have driven a straight line into those trees as there were stretches of nothing but white when he couldn’t make out the road at all. Obviously, she hadn’t taken the curve she’d missed because she simply hadn’t seen it.

  But she shouldn’t have been out at all! he thought with a resurgence of resentment. She had risked her life for what? To visit a horse. Good Lor
d. Noah’s lips thinned from the massive disapproval gripping his vitals, disapproval that was wholly aimed at Maddie Kincaid. He didn’t like thinking that she might be a little light in the upper story, but what woman in her right mind would put a horse before her own safety, especially when she wasn’t physically sound to begin with?

  He heaved a long, drawn-out, put-upon sigh. It was loud enough that Maddie heard it, and she raised her head and gave Noah Martin a blistering look. She was the one who should be doing the melodramatic sighing!

  “What a jerk,” she mumbled under her breath, and when she saw his head snap around so he could see her, she added in a louder voice, “What made you think I needed rescuing?”

  Noah gaped at her incredulously for a second before returning his gaze to the road. “Are you telling me you didn’t need rescuing?”

  “I was perfectly all right,” she said icily.

  “You were stuck in a snowbank!” he shouted.

  “I most certainly was not! My truck got high-centered!”

  “And that’s even worse than being stuck, you…you pain in the butt!”

  “I’m a pain? I’m a pain? You’re worse than a pain! You’re a…a damned gnat that keeps flitting around a person’s head until they’re driven crazy!”

  “It was a short drive with you, sweetheart!”

  “Meaning I was already crazy? Oh, how I pity your patients. If you actually have any, that is. It wouldn’t surprise me if poor, sick people saw you once and never returned. With your cold-fish personality, you could evacuate an entire hospital in five minutes flat!”

  “Just shut the hell up. I’m trying to keep my mind on the road, and it’s not easy with you shrieking in my ears.”

  “I wasn’t shrieking! Believe me, if and when I ever do shriek, you’ll know it!” Maddie turned her face toward the side window and blinked back tears.

  Finally, on the outskirts of town, Noah breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He maneuvered the empty roads of Whitehorn—spotting several plows at work as he drove—and at long last pulled into Mark’s driveway. It was over. He’d rescued Mark’s nitwit sister—however loudly she denied needing rescue—and he would stay the night in Mark’s house.

  But come tomorrow he was going to find someone else to take care of Maddie Kincaid if he had to haul a stranger in from off the street.

  He had had his fill of her.

  Chapter Six

  The house was warm and welcoming. They were both glad to be back, and especially glad to be out of the storm, though neither said so. In fact, they said nothing at all to each other upon entering Mark’s home. Each bore his or her own brand of resentment toward the other, even though neither was actually dwelling on it at the time. They had other things to think about and to do, and they frankly ignored each other once in the house.

  Noah walked over to the kitchen phone to check for a dial tone, and Maddie immediately went to her bedroom and started undressing. She felt almost too done in to move, but her need for a hot shower was greater than the exhaustion urging her to just crawl into bed and forget this hapless day.

  Because Noah had so easily removed the cast from her hand, Maddie undid the straps and took her first shower without it since the accident. It was while she was standing under the deliciously hot spray that she wondered why she found Dr. Noah Martin so irritating. True, he could hardly be labeled Mr. Personality, but he was a doctor and she’d known since leaving the hospital in Austin that she would have to establish a medical relationship with someone in Montana. Why not Noah? Considering the ghastly weather, she should probably take advantage of having medical care under her very own roof. Could anything be more convenient?

  That progression of thoughts aroused Maddie’s ire. Noah, the big jerk, had destroyed her pain pills, and she hadn’t done one single thing to make him think that she was his patient! He had no right to play lord and master with her, certainly not with the medication prescribed by another physician, and neither did he have the right to stick his nose into where she might have gone today. Rescue, indeed! He was probably preening, gloating and patting himself on the back for saving that witless Maddie Kincaid’s life!

  That image was too much for Maddie to accept without retribution of some sort. She had to show Noah Martin that he and his overbearing methods didn’t faze Maddie Kincaid in the least. She’d dealt with much tougher hombres than Dr. Know-It-All Martin, and she had discovered years ago that the best way to put a man in his place was to beat him in his own arena. She’d been on her own for a long time, and a woman alone needed to know how to take care of herself. Noah wanted to play doctor with her? She’d let him play doctor.

  Turning off the shower spray, Maddie got out and, being careful not to bump her bad hand, she dried off—gently touching the towel to the fading abrasions dotting the right side of her body—and then put on peach silk panties and her peach velour robe. After brushing the wet hair out of her eyes, she moisturized her face and bit her lips for color. Leaning closer to the mirror she inspected the bruises on the right side of her face, which were still visible but not nearly as bad as they’d been. Actually she was healing quite rapidly, she thought, and in a few weeks she should be able to leave Montana and once again join the rodeo circuit.

  “Hmm,” she murmured in a perplexed way when she didn’t feel the elation or anticipatory excitement that thought usually brought her. It was odd, but after the day she’d just put in, why wouldn’t her emotions be all messed up?

  Actually, her left knee was causing her more discomfort than any other part of her body, she realized. Again she wondered why that knee, which the medical people she’d dealt with in Austin hadn’t diagnosed as injured in her fall, should start acting up at this late date.

  Looking into her own eyes in the mirror, Maddie said, “That’s a good question for Dr. Intrude-Where-You’re-Not-Wanted, I would say.” Then she took her tube of antibiotic ointment and her blue cast and left the room.

  The house seemed quiet—maybe only in comparison to the raging snarls of the blizzard outside—but it was possible that Noah had left her alone again, and she stopped in the hall to listen. It gave her a peculiar feeling to think he might have deserted her for good this time. She’d harangued him on and off all day because of his intrusiveness, but now she wasn’t all that comfortable with the idea of being alone.

  No, he was still here, she realized with relief flooding her system when she heard sounds from the kitchen. Should she analyze that unmistakable sense of relief? she wondered uneasily. She certainly didn’t like the man, and yet she was less tense because of his presence in the house.

  There was just no understanding some things, she decided with a slight tossing of her head. The only thing she could possibly want from Noah Martin was medical attention. Anything else was unthinkable!

  Reaching the kitchen doorway, Maddie stopped and surveyed the surprising scene before her. Noah, wearing house slippers and a white dishtowel for an apron, was cooking! Glancing around, she spied his boots parked next to the outside door. It was understandable that he didn’t like wearing heavy outside boots in the house, but wasn’t it rather forward of him to help himself to a pair of Mark’s slippers?

  Everything about that man is forward, Maddie thought with a fresh supply of resentment. In truth, even though she’d suffered that strange pang of anxiety when thinking that Noah had gone and left her alone, was she comfortable with the idea of his staying the night? He was certainly making himself at home, cooking and using Mark’s things as though he had a right to do anything he pleased.

  She cleared her throat to get his notice, and he turned partly so he could see her. He blinked twice, then stared, because she was a vision in that very pretty, very feminine robe.

  “Uh…are you, uh, feeling all right?” he asked, surprised that he would mangle simple words over a pretty peach bathrobe.

  She couldn’t be nice, she just couldn’t be, and that surprised her. But out of her mouth came an icy comment. “I don’t see a
sign on your forehead giving you the right to destroy other people’s medications. Prescribed medications, I might add.”

  Noah shook his head in disgust and turned back to the stove. “If you’ve come in here looking for a fight, just trot your nasty little self back to whichever room you prefer pouting in. I happen to be making some dinner, which you’re welcome to share. But I will not put up with your bad humor while we eat it, do you understand?”

  Maddie felt stabbed, wounded, even bleeding. No one talked that way to her and got away with it, no one!

  “I didn’t come in here looking for a fight, you quack! But I need some pain medicine and I don’t have any!”

  “What you were taking was too damned strong!” Noah turned off the burner and pushed the pan he was using to the back of the stove. Then he walked over to Maddie and glared right into her eyes. “How much pain are you in right now? On a scale of one to ten.”

  She glared as coldly as he was doing. “I’m not writhing in agony, as you can well see,” she snapped. “But I’m far from…”

  “Give me a number.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake! Fine. I’m probably a four or a five. Does that satisfy your perverse need for numerical precision?”

  His face grew harder, colder. “If ten is the worst pain one could endure, a five is pretty severe. Are you sure you’re feeling that bad?”

  “How would I know what number I am? I’ve never heard of anything so dumb! Call me a two if it makes you happy. I’m not in agony and I’ve never taken anything in my life that wasn’t prescribed by a doctor. What do you think I’m hoping to do here, convince you to give me drugs I don’t need? And stop scowling at me! You’re not my doctor and you’re sure as hell not my boss!”