Frowning darkly, Noah shut her in and trudged around the back of his SUV. She was up to something, and he couldn’t imagine what it was. Apparently, she could flirt with the best of them, which was definitely a surprise, as she’d done everything but stand on her head to show him how much she resented his very existence.
Except for when he kissed her. She was hot in a clinch, that much was certain. Of course, in her case it wasn’t wise to leave her hanging for even a few minutes because she cooled down fast.
Not that he intended any rematches of last night’s main event.
Climbing into the driver’s seat, Noah groaned silently. Good intentions be damned, that little woman had gotten under his skin and in his blood, and the biology of making love, fitting his body to hers and feeling their commingled heat would not leave his mind, however much he preferred things be as they’d been before meeting Maddie.
He started the engine and was about to put the shifting lever in reverse when Maddie exclaimed, “My purse! I forgot my purse, and I’ll have to have my insurance card for the doctor.”
Noah tried to appear patient and understanding, neither of which he was feeling. Of course she needed her insurance information. She should have thought of that when they were still in the house.
“I’ll get it for you,” he said as calmly as he could manage.
“Where will I find it?”
Maddie didn’t put up an argument about his getting her purse, for the sake of peace. But she also felt that he would be quicker getting her purse while she had a bad—well, slightly bad—knee and an almost useless hand to contend with. Besides, the car was warming up and she was buckled in and ready to go. If he wanted to play knight-in-shining-armor to her damsel-in-distress plight, it was fine with her.
“It’s either in one of the bureau drawers in my bedroom or on the top shelf of my closet,” she told him.
Noah bounded out of the driver’s seat, pushed the door closed behind him and hurried back to the house. Maddie watched him disappear inside, then heaved a big sigh. She didn’t want to see a doctor, she wanted to see her truck and trailer!
In the next instant, thinking of Fanny, Maddie’s heart nearly broke. Noah had told her that Fanny was being kept inside and receiving good care, but some people’s ideas of good care didn’t even come close to hers.
And however nice she was to Noah, would he take her to see either her truck and trailer or Fanny?
“No, he will not,” Maddie mumbled. All he was going to do was drive her to see his doctor friend, and even if she kissed his feet that was still all he would do.
She had an opportunity to do something that was far more urgent than having another doctor look at her hand and knee, and was she going to take it?
Maddie’s heart began pounding with an adrenaline rush. She peered at the house. Noah would be appearing at any moment, and her opportunity would be gone. Quickly she unlatched her seat belt, then climbed over the console separating the passenger and driver seats. Hooking that seat belt, she slammed the shifting lever into Reverse and backed out of the driveway. In seconds she was a block from Mark’s house. Noah would throw a fit, but she didn’t care. She was going to see Fanny and would deal with Noah’s temper when she got back.
Noah walked out of the house with Maddie’s purse in his left hand. He blinked, not believing his eyes. His SUV was gone!
He stood there dumbfounded, then fury erupted within him, and he threw Maddie’s purse into the house and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the windows. Huddling deeper into his jacket and scarf, he set out walking. He was going to report his SUV as stolen if he had to walk all the way to the police station! And he would press charges when the law caught up with her, too, even if she was Mark’s sister. A cop’s sister. She was a damned disgrace. Poor Mark. And poor Darcy for having such a screwball sister-in-law.
Maddie loved Noah’s big SUV, but the seat was much too far away from the floor pedals. A couple of blocks from the house, she pulled over and stopped so she could figure out how to adjust the seat to fit her height.
“Much better,” she murmured and took a look in the large mirror just outside the window to see if the street was clear, so she could get going again. Someone was walking very fast, coming her way. “It’s Noah,” she whispered, and with butterflies tearing up her stomach she pressed on the gas pedal and took off.
She had to admit that she was nervous about this—taking a person’s car without permission was a serious offense—but no one, least of all Noah Martin, understood what Fanny meant to her. She’d take her lumps like a grown-up when she got back, but once she saw Fanny her heart and soul would be at peace. If Fanny was in a clean, dry stall with hay in a food trough and all the water she needed, that is. If the mare wasn’t being cared for in that manner, Maddie knew that she would shriek so loudly that Mark would hear her in Europe.
“Concentrate on your driving,” she told herself out loud.
“You know how to find the Braddock ranch, and the roads are much better tonight than they were last night. You’ll make it without a speck of trouble if you keep your mind on driving instead of on Fanny.”
She was right. Maddie reached a large sign announcing the turnoff to the Braddock ranch without a bit of trouble. In fact, it looked to her as though it wasn’t snowing nearly as hard as it had for two days now. The storm was passing, in its final throes, Maddie realized, positive of her analysis from having grown up with this kind of winter weather.
It took about five minutes after the turn for Maddie to reach some buildings. One was a very nice house constructed of heavy wood beams and redwood siding, quite modern in architectural design and not an inexpensive dwelling. The other buildings appeared to be stables and storage barns.
Maddie parked, left the engine running and got out. A bright light came on when she approached the front door, which made it a simple matter for Maddie to locate the doorbell. She pushed it and heard reverberating chimes from within the house.
A pretty, thirty-something woman opened the door and smiled. “Hello.”
“Hello,” Maddie replied. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I believe my brother, Mark Kincaid, brought my horse out here. Are you boarding a gray quarter horse mare with the name of Fanchon or Fanny?”
“Yes, I am. Would you like to see her?”
Maddie breathed a sigh of relief. “Very much, thank you.”
“Step inside while I get my coat and boots,” the woman said. Maddie did so, and the woman went into the foyer closet and took out snow boots and a long woolen coat. “I’m Denise Hunter.”
“I’m Maddie Kincaid. I thought you might be a Braddock.”
“No, I just work for them.” Bundled up, she led Maddie outside and together they strode toward the outbuildings. “We have an excellent stable and training center,” Denise said, then gave a small laugh. “Most of which is under snow right now. But you’ll have to come out and see the place when the snow melts.”
“I’d love to,” Maddie replied earnestly, for she was beginning to believe that Fanny was truly in good hands. Maddie’s knee gave her a twinge with every step she took, but she never let on. “This is all new to me. I grew up in Whitehorn, but I’ve been mostly gone for five years now. My visits have been pretty short, so I haven’t kept up with the area’s growth.”
“This is the stable,” Denise said as they approached a long building with lights spaced all along its front.
Maddie followed Denise inside and felt all of her worries about Fanny’s care totally vanish. It was a beautifully designed home for horses, and it was warmer than outside by at least thirty degrees. Hearing Fanny’s whinny, Maddie laughed. “She knows I’m here,” she told Denise.
“She’s in stall number ten.”
Maddie ignored her protesting knee and hurried along to number ten. Fanny stuck her head over the door, and Maddie threw her arms around the mare’s neck.
“Oh, Fanny…Fanny,” she said softly. She petted her beloved Fanchon’s
neck and nose and even kissed her.
“I can tell you don’t like Fanchon at all,” Denise said with a laugh.
“She means the world to me.”
“Well, none of the horses have been getting enough exercise, but they will when the weather permits. This storm has everyone on edge. I hate being cooped up in the house, and having no phone service has been a real hardship.”
“Yes, if I could have called, I would have,” Maddie agreed.
“You and about ten other people who have horses stabled here.”
“Well, she’s warm, dry, fat and sassy,” Maddie said with a big smile. “I had to find out for myself.”
“I understand,” Denise said.
Maddie positively glowed all the way back to town. She didn’t even try to find the spot where her truck and trailer were stuck, although she had a pretty good idea of the location. But once she’d seen Fanny, she’d decided that she had better return Noah’s vehicle before he called the police.
Hopefully his anger—which Maddie knew must be nearly eating him alive—wouldn’t have taken him that far.
Chapter Nine
Maddie pulled into the driveway of her brother’s home and saw that most of the windows of the house gleamed with warm, yellowish light. Her high spirits over seeing Fanny and finally knowing for certain that the mare was in good hands deflated like a pricked balloon. Noah was inside, of course, furiously awaiting her return with an arsenal of invective.
She turned off the ignition, removed Noah’s ring of keys and sat there wondering if she really was going to take her lumps, as she’d previously told herself. Taking guff from anyone, even if she was in the wrong, went so against her grain that the mere thought of meekly accepting a dressing down created what felt like a tension-filled ball of burning fire in her stomach.
But Noah had a right to some anger, she reasoned, striving for rationale. After all, she’d blithely driven his car right from under his nose, and she could probably never convince him that she hadn’t deliberately left her purse in the house, figuring that he would offer to go back inside and get it. What she’d done had been completely spontaneous, and in all honesty she wasn’t a bit sorry about it.
If she went in with that attitude, though, Noah would probably explode and maybe, just maybe, he had a right to unmitigated fury. On the other hand…
Maddie’s heart sank. There was no other hand. If someone had done to her what she’d done to Noah, she would have notified the sheriff’s department, the state patrol and the National Guard to chase down and arrest the wretch!
Releasing a suddenly anxious breath, Maddie opened the door and got out. She would do her best to stay cool, no matter what Noah said to her. She held her chin high while walking from the driveway to the house. One thing she wouldn’t do was act cowed. Nor would she go in reeking of remorse or looking timid or cowardly.
She opened the outside door and there was Noah, eating at the kitchen table. He turned a hard, steady gaze on her, and she widened her eyes at him, letting him know that she was no cupcake to be taken apart piece by piece.
“Having dinner?” she asked merely to break the ice, at the same time dropping his keys on the table.
“Such as it is.”
He sounded colder than the snow outside, and a definite chill went up Maddie’s spine. This could be worse than she’d expected, which had been an instant attack the second she walked in. Noah obviously wasn’t one of those people who expressed anger by shouting, cussing and calling names. Oh no, he simmered internally, which wasn’t to say that he wouldn’t let her have it in his own controlled and calculated way.
With her head still held high, Maddie left the kitchen and went to her bedroom, where she took off her outdoor gear and put it in her closet. Her stomach was fluttering so wildly that it felt invaded by butterflies. She could have handled some verbal abuse from Noah better than that granite-like silence. Actually, she sort of felt as though her head was on the chopping block and she was waiting for the ax to fall.
Shaping a sickly smile at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she brushed her hair and realized that she looked pretty awful. She needed a hot shower and a shampoo, and since she would rather not join Noah at the dinner table, she would bathe, put on something clean and eat later.
Noah finished his plate of warmed-up stir-fry, left over from last night, and his salad. He’d made a large salad, far too much for one person, so obviously he’d made enough for Maddie’s dinner, too. He hadn’t done it consciously, and it irked the hell out of him now that he would do something nice for her. She didn’t deserve anything even remotely nice from him. With her self-centered personality, she probably didn’t deserve anything nice from anyone!
He heard the faint but unmistakable sound of the shower and decided angrily that Maddie was planning to hide out in her room for the rest of the evening. If she thought she was going to avoid him that easily, she’d better think again.
Wearing a smoldering, tight-lipped expression, Noah cleared the table, rinsed the dishes he’d used and placed them in the dishwasher. When the kitchen was clean, he took himself to the living room, sat down and waited for the shower to stop running. In minutes it did stop and then he could hear little rustling noises—Maddie drying off, obviously, and moving around the bathroom.
The images those tiny sounds evoked in Noah’s brain actually stunned him. He didn’t want to picture her naked, pink and dewy from the shower, and he scowled because he couldn’t think of anything else.
“Dammit!” he cried explosively, and jumped up from the chair. Striding straight to the bathroom door, he pounded on it with his fist. “I want to talk to you, so don’t think you’re going to tiptoe from room to room and ignore me!”
Maddie’s jaw dropped. Now he was really mad! Why? Because she hadn’t stayed in the kitchen and taken her licks like a good little girl? Holding the towel in front of her, as though he could see through the door, she yelled back, “Cool down, sport! I don’t plan on doing any tiptoeing because of you. I certainly hope you’re not thinking that I’m afraid to face you!”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot that you’re not afraid of anything!”
“You’ve got that right, buster. Now move away from the door and let me finish up in here. I’ll be out to continue this exhilarating discussion in about ten minutes.”
“See that you are!” Walking away, Noah felt good about having had the last word.
Maddie was steamed, and not just from the shower. “You arrogant jackass,” she muttered toward the door. “You just declared war, and if war is what you want, war is what you’re going to get. I guarantee you’ll say uncle before I do.” Quickly she finished drying off, then brushed her wet hair back from her face and applied moisturizer. However furious a woman was, there were some things she couldn’t ignore, things like moisturizer. And, in Maddie’s case, antibiotic ointment.
She also took the time to hang up her wet towels, then, wrapped in the terry robe she kept on the bathroom door, she picked up the clothes she’d worn all day and left the bathroom. She nearly stumbled when she saw Noah standing in the hall near her bedroom door, with his back to the wall and his arms folded belligerently across his chest.
“Oh, honestly,” she spat, and gave him the most disgusted look she could muster as she went past him and into her room. It gave her great pleasure to slam the door really hard, and, in fact, she hoped the blast set his head to ringing.
“You child!” Noah yelled.
“You jerk!” she yelled back.
“At least I’m not a car thief!”
Maddie was wounded through and through, and her only defense was fury. She went to the door, yanked it open so she could kill him with a look and said acridly, “No, you’re worse. You’re a damned buttinsky! Did you ever hear me ask you to butt into my life and business?”
“I heard your brother ask me, you…you thieving ingrate!”
“I’m not a thief!” Maddie screeched so loudly that her throat hurt. Sh
e tried to give the door another killer slam but Noah caught it and held it open. “Take your hands off my door,” she shrieked.
“Good Lord, the good citizens of Billings are probably covering their ears,” Noah said disgustedly.
Ruffled and somewhat embarrassed over screeching like a fishwife, Maddie drew a breath and spoke with more dignity. “Take your hands off my door, please.”
“That’s much better,” Noah said with so much male superiority that Maddie had to physically stop herself from scratching out his eyes. His blue, blue eyes that she’d admired far too many times, even during moments of intense resentment for his overbearing tactics.
She tossed her head instead and said with stinging sarcasm, “Believe me, your approval or disapproval of anything I might do or say means zip to me, so why don’t you save your breath and my time and go do something for someone who gives a damn. Interfere in someone else’s life, for a change.”
“You don’t give a damn? And you’re proud of that? What in hell kind of person are you? Dr. Herrera was expecting us at four. I happen to value my reputation as a man of his word, although you probably don’t even know the meaning of that concept. It’s damned apparent you don’t live by it, in any case.”
Maddie’s face flamed. It was always the truth that hurt the most, and the truth as Noah had just spelled it out was a sorry state of affairs. She’d never considered herself a thoughtless, selfish person, but that was precisely how she’d behaved today. What she’d done was terrible! She really was a thief and…and she was untrustworthy and ungrateful.
Maddie felt so awful about the whole thing that she was about to apologize with genuine sincerity when Noah said, with his eyes piercing holes in her, “Maybe you’re totally self-centered because you live without a man.”
Instead of the lovely apology she’d been about to deliver, she coldly asked, “Are you mentally deranged or merely obtuse? My God, you’re a doctor! Did some moronic professor during your training actually lead you to believe that a woman can’t function normally without having a man under her feet?”
Marked for Marriage Page 14
