Marked for Marriage

by Jackie Merritt

  Noah gaped then. “You’ve removed the supporter from your hand. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why not? You did it. Look, I wanted a shower without it. Is that such a terrible crime?”

  “Give it to me and sit over there.”

  She wanted to tell him to go to hell, that she wasn’t taking orders from him under any circumstances. But as grating as it was, she needed his help, and she moved to the chair he’d indicated and sat.

  Noah went into his medical bag and brought out an array of items that he placed on the table. After getting a glass of water from the kitchen sink, he moved a chair close to Maddie’s and sat down.

  “I’m going to wrap your hand with an elasticized bandage and support it with a sling,” he said sternly. “You’ll be a lot more comfortable. Probably more mobile, as well. That type of stiff supporter you’ve been wearing is very constricting. But before I see to your hand, take one of these.” He picked up a small packet, shook out a pill in her hand and gave her the glass of water.

  “What is this?” Maddie asked with her eyebrow cocked at a suspicious angle.

  “It will take the edge off your pain without raising hell with your mind. You’ll start feeling very relaxed in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Is this a muscle relaxant?”

  “It’s primarily a painkiller. Take it.” Noah picked up another packet. “These are the antibiotics I want you to take. Two each day, one after breakfast, one after dinner. There are enough tablets in here for two days, which, from what I’ve seen of your abrasions, are all you need.”

  “You haven’t seen everything, you know.” Maddie swallowed the pain pill.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “How? When?”

  “When you fainted.”

  Maddie’s mouth dropped open. “You examined me without my knowledge? That’s a breach of medical ethics!”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of being on the attack? Good God, you’re enough to make a doctor tear up his license to practice and look for another profession.”

  “Try cowboying,” she retorted drily. “I’d love to see you thrown from the back of a bucking bronc.”

  “As you were?”

  “I wasn’t thrown! Fanny tripped…or something. I fell, but I wasn’t thrown! For your information, I’ve never been thrown.”

  “In that case you must’ve been riding sawhorses,” Noah drawled. “For your information, I’m a good rider and have no intention of getting thrown for your amusement. Now, shut up, sit still and let me wrap your hand.”

  Maddie fumed over his orders—over the superior way in which he issued orders was more like it—and she had all she could do to stop herself from belting him a good one. Not that she went around socking men, but had she ever before met one that made the prospect of slapping him silly actually seem fair and just? And deserved. Oh, yes, if anyone deserved a clout to the jaw, it was Noah Martin. Could he possibly be as rude and overbearing with his regular patients as he was with her?

  Maddie kept a close and wary eye on him while he once again inspected her injured hand, and when he turned it over for a look at her palm, she winced.

  Noah caught her reaction, lifted his gaze to meet hers and said, “Turning your hand is so painful?”

  Maddie took a breath and nodded without breaking eye contact. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen, and along with their glorious color, his eyes were bright with intelligence and something she could only describe as supreme masculinity.

  Noah, who was again admiring the deep-green color of Maddie Kincaid’s eyes, was having similar thoughts about her femaleness. He told himself that he wasn’t thrilled with the electricity suddenly dancing around the two of them, and yet there was that tingle deep in his body that was clearly a thrill of some sort. Something flashed in his brain, then, a huge red neon sign repeated the word Danger… Danger, as though every heartbreak he’d suffered over Felicia was poised and panting to attack him again.

  He tore his gaze free of Maddie’s and reached for the roll of bandage he’d placed on the table. Unaware that his lips had become tense and his facial expression hard as rock, he set to work wrapping her hand.

  Maddie blinked as though she’d just stepped out of a trance. She felt hot and cold and prickly and on edge, one very weird combination of feelings and emotions, and in a dazed sort of way she questioned what had just occurred. Noah had been looking at her not as a doctor but as a man! And what had she done in return? She’d sat there like some mindless ninny who simpered whenever any attractive man looked her way! She didn’t simper, dammit, she didn’t, so what really had just taken place? What force had kept their gazes locked for…for how long? A second? An eternity?

  Noah’s head was bent over her hand, only inches from her chin, actually, and it was almost impossible to avoid looking at his hair. It was thick and shiny and smelled wonderfully clean. At the same time that she was breathing in the scent that was uniquely Noah Martin’s, Maddie realized how gentle was his touch as he wrapped her hand. He might talk and act like a grump, and even put on a grump’s face while speaking with a patient—or, at least, with her—but he couldn’t disguise his naturally gentle touch in tending an injury. He was, obviously, a physician through and through, although the fact that he’d said that he liked riding horses was rather interesting.

  Face it, she told herself, he’s interesting! All of him, his looks, his profession and yes, even his forbidding personality. And don’t forget that he has a sense of humor even if the only proof you’ve seen of it was when he laughed at you. Actually, you’ve never met a more challenging man, and maybe a challenge matters. It mattered in your career choice, so why wouldn’t it matter in a personal relationship?

  A personal relationship with Noah Martin, the man who could hands down take the intruder-of-the-year award, if there was such a thing? Maddie nearly choked on that totally nonsensical idea. The man didn’t like her, for God’s sake. So what if he’d looked into her eyes? He’d probably been seeking signs of fever or fatigue or whatever doctors thought might be lurking in the depths of a patient’s eyes.

  “There, all done,” Noah said after applying the last clip to secure the bandage. “How does it feel?”

  Maddie looked down at her hand. “It feels fine. Better than it did in that…that thing.”

  Noah couldn’t help smiling a bit, although he was still somewhat stunned over the impact of their extended eye contact. Intimacy was a word with a hundred subtitles, and an interlocked gaze definitely made the top ten on the list. Talk about giving a man something to think about! Even when he didn’t want something to think about. For sure he didn’t want erotic images cluttering his mind, but they were there, a wild assortment of them, already seemingly permanently imbedded! Now, just what was he supposed to do about that?

  He cleared his throat and mumbled, “Now for the sling.” He slipped a loop of corded fabric around her neck and then laid her wrapped hand within its confines. “Try not to move your hand. The bandage can be removed for bathing and I’ll replace it while I’m here, but you should learn how to put it on yourself.”

  “How long do you think I’ll have to keep it wrapped?”

  “Another week, at the very least. If this storm ever passes, I’d like you to see a bone specialist. We have one in Whitehorn and he’s a good man.”

  “Fine. Maybe he can tell me what’s wrong with my left knee.”

  Noah frowned. “I didn’t know you were having trouble with that knee.”

  “I wasn’t…until very recently.”

  “Let me see it.” Noah didn’t wait for approval, he simply opened the lower portion of her robe and began examining her left knee. “You have some swelling under the patella…the kneecap. You noticed nothing before this?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty certain this was not caused by my fall. So, what else would cause swelling under the kneecap?”

  “Any number of things. Twisting it in an unnatural position could
do it, or—” he narrowed his eyes on Maddie because in spite of that “intimate” moment of eye contact between them, he was still ticked off at her foolhardy behavior today “—maybe driving a truck around in a blizzard and then if that wasn’t enough, driving completely off the road and into a field of snow that obviously concealed little things like downed trees.”

  Maddie gaped wide-eyed at him. Was she a woman so desperate for a man that she would start thinking a jerk like Noah Martin was interesting? And challenging? Good grief, she thought in abject self-disgust. She could have men by the droves, if she wasn’t always so picky. But her dream—her completely private dream—had been shaped by Aunt June’s stories of love and romance, and Maddie had been contented to wait for that one perfect mate. He was out there somewhere and someday they would meet. They would know at once…at once…

  Her adolescent fantasies were showing, she told herself.

  She insolently lifted her chin and narrowed her own eyes right back at Noah. “Thanks for the wrap, Doc. As for your advice about my knee, I’ll have another doctor treat that. It looked to me as though you enjoyed opening my robe just a little too much…opening it without my permission, I should add…and then groping my leg like a…a…pervert.”

  Noah was thunderstruck. “Like a what? Are you deranged?” Jumping up, he gathered the few things he hadn’t used in treating Maddie and strode angrily over to his medical bag to stuff them into it.

  Maddie’s heart sank. She’d gone too far. My Lord, how can I undo something so horrible?

  “I…I…” she stammered.

  Noah swung around, his face furious and his eyes glowing like live embers. “I won’t demean myself by even attempting to deny your charge.”

  “It wasn’t a charge! I mean, I…spoke without…without thinking! You hurt me by insinuating that I was stupid for driving around today, and maybe I was, but all I wanted to do was to make sure that Fanny was all right. So I guess I wanted to hurt you back, and that…that awful word just came out of my mouth without conscious intent.”

  Maddie, who rarely cried about anything, suddenly felt tears drizzling down her cheeks. “And it was all for nothing,” she said hoarsely. “Because I still don’t know if Fanny’s warm and dry, and now my truck and trailer are stuck miles from town, and I…I feel like I’ve lost touch with everything that’s been real and good in my life.”

  Noah studied her in silent reproach for a long moment, then sighed and relented. “Your horse is fine. I talked to the woman running the stables at the Braddock ranch, and Fanny is inside and being very well cared for. Now stop crying. Things might look bleak to you right now, but everyone in western Montana is probably feeling the same depressing effects of such a severe storm. I know I am.” With a wry, ironic twist to his lips, Noah walked over to the stove. “Some hot food might make both of us feel better.”

  To Maddie’s chagrin, her tears got worse instead of better. Fanny was fine and Maddie knew she should be feeling incredibly relieved, and instead she sat there bawling and trying to keep it quiet. Praying that Noah wouldn’t turn around and look at her, she kept wiping away tears that were immediately replaced by more tears. Finally a huge sob escaped her throat, and Noah heard it and did turn around.

  “You’re still crying?” he asked. “Why?” Grabbing a handful of tissues from a box on a counter, he walked over to Maddie and put them in her hand. She held them to her eyes and cried even harder. “Hey,” Noah said. “What’s going on?”

  Maddie was so embarrassed that she wished she could evaporate. “I…never…cry,” she gasped between sobs, her voice muffled by the mass of tissues held to her face by her good hand.

  “Uh, sorry, but I think you do,” Noah said drily.

  She kept right on blubbering and humiliating herself, thinking within the despair gripping her mind that she would never be able to look Noah Martin in the eyes again.

  “Okay, let’s take a look here.” Kneeling just in front of her knees, Noah took hold of her hand and pulled it away from her face. “It’s a flood, all right,” he said while removing the damp tissues from her hand. “Just as I suspected.”

  “Give me those.” Maddie snatched back the tissues and used them on her wet cheeks.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s so bad that it rates this degree of emotional turmoil?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what isn’t that bad?” she retorted, looking down at the ball of damp tissues in her hand.

  “Maddie, no matter how bad things get, life is still worth living.”

  She did what she was positive she would never be able to do again: she looked into his eyes. “Now you’re a psychologist?”

  “I’m speaking from personal experience, not from training.”

  “Oh? You’ve been where I am?”

  “Yeah, I have been. Still am at times.” He couldn’t help it, he felt damned sorry for her, probably because he’d had such painful reasons to feel sorry for himself since Felicia’s crushing desertion. Gently he pushed some wet strands of hair back from her forehead and temples. “This will pass, Maddie. The emotional pain, I mean. We carry memories forever, but time dulls the pain. I swear it.”

  Still on his knees, he cradled her head in his hands and tenderly pressed his lips to hers. He felt her startled reaction, but in the next instant her lips had parted and she was kissing him back.

  His heartbeat went wild, and he tried desperately to keep the kiss sane and minus the desire suddenly running rampant in his body, but Maddie’s response was making that impossible. His only salvation was to break this up now, and he did it by getting to his feet and leaving her dazed and staring while he returned to the stove and turned on the burner.

  Maddie was no longer crying. Instead, she was bewildered and questioning. Had he really kissed her? Had she really kissed him? My God, how does something like that happen between two people who’ve done nothing but irritate each other from the second they met?

  “I…I think I’ll go to bed now,” she said in a weak, whispery little voice.

  “Stay put,” Noah said gruffly. “You need some hot food.”

  “But I’m not hungry.” Maddie got up and realized that her legs were shaky and unsteady. He’d done that to her, she thought. Noah Martin’s kiss had turned her into a helpless female who would probably start simpering any second. Maybe she would even bat her eyelashes the next time he looked at her, a flirtatious practice she’d seen other women do and which had never failed to nauseate her.

  “No, you will eat dinner and then go to bed.” Turning only slightly, Noah saw that she was standing. “Sit down!”

  Hanging on to the table with her good hand, Maddie snapped, “I don’t have to take orders from you!”

  “Yes, you do. Either sit down on your own, or I’ll put you in that chair. You are going to eat some dinner, and then the rest of the night is yours to do with as you please. I promise not to bother you for any reason.”

  “The rest of the night? You’re staying here tonight?”

  “Don’t worry, your virtue will not be under siege.”

  “Don’t you worry! Believe me, I know how to take care of myself.”

  “Yeah, you’ve proved that all day!” Noah turned back to the stove and gave his pan of chicken and vegetables a stir.

  Maddie felt like crying again. She couldn’t get the last word with Noah no matter what the topic, and she should have slapped his surly face instead of kissing him back when he’d dared to make that pass!

  Swallowing hard, she lowered herself to the chair again. She would eat—but only because she was hungry, not because Noah had demanded it—and then she would retire for the night, and if she was lucky he would rise early, leave and get completely out of her life before she woke up in the morning.

  Not a word was spoken while Noah finished cooking his stir-fry and washed down the table very thoroughly, Maddie noted. He then set the table, took two small bowls of salad from the refrigerator, placed one at Maddie’s setting and one at his
own, poured two glasses of milk and finally dished up the chicken and vegetables straight from the pan to their plates. She didn’t tell him thank you or object to the much-too-large portion he spooned onto her plate. Noah sat down and they began eating.

  The silence in the room was not a pleasant, peaceful quiet but rather it felt heavy and burdensome. It felt, Maddie thought, as though the air she was breathing was thick and weighted with something terribly gloomy. Along with the blizzard from hell raging outside that showed no signs of slowing down, let alone of stopping, the entire atmosphere felt stifling.

  After a few bites of her very tasty dinner Maddie was surprised that Noah could cook so well. She stole a quick glance across the table and saw him eating, with his eyes on his plate and an expression on his face that she’d come to know quite well—it was one of pure granite.

  The phrase heartless vermin entered her mind, and it sort of fitted Noah, but it would have fitted much better if he weren’t a doctor. Maddie realized then that she had a special respect for men and women who worked in the field of medicine. It wasn’t anything she’d thought about before, and she wasn’t positive she could apply that seemingly ingrained respect to Dr. Noah Martin. The doctors and nurses she’d dealt with so far in her life had been much nicer people than Noah, after all. Oh, some of them had been all business and even a bit stern, but it seemed to Maddie that Noah went miles out of his way to avoid being nice.

  She took another bite and chewed slowly, thinking about their kiss. She would bet anything that he was being eaten alive by regret for giving in to that impulse. That’s all it had been, of course, a stupid impulse, and of course he was regretting it. Her big regret was that she’d sat in this very chair and let him kiss her. No, worse than that, she’d kissed him back! What on earth had possessed her?

  “How is your hand feeling?” Noah asked.

  His voice startled Maddie so much that she dropped her fork. It clattered on the floor, and Noah got up from his chair, walked around the table to pick it up and take it to the sink. He returned with a clean fork, which he placed in her hand.