Marked for Marriage

by Jackie Merritt

  “There are chopsticks in the sack, but I’d rather have a fork,” he said, speaking casually so she would understand that he was in exactly the same place that she was, as far as anything even remotely personal went between them. There remained a question in his mind about whether he’d done any pressuring last night—it seemed to him as though the responsibility for last night’s affair should be divided equally—but Maddie could think he’d come back for more lovemaking and that simply wasn’t the case. “Would you happen to have a fork or two out here?”

  Maddie gave him an incredulous look. “What do you think I eat with, ice cream or swizzle sticks? I live in this trailer.”

  Noah frowned slightly. “You told me that before, didn’t you?”

  “I believe I did. Do you doubt it?” Maddie went into a drawer for some cutlery and paper napkins. “You’re ordinarily so positive about everything that I find it hard to believe you would ever doubt your own memory.”

  Noah tried to study her on the sly while taking the cartons of food from the sack. He’d admired Maddie’s aplomb only moments ago, but had it all been an act? Was she as angry with him tonight as she’d been last night and pretending—or trying to pretend—that everything was forgotten and fine?

  “Actually, Maddie, I’m not positive about much of anything where you’re concerned.”

  Maddie was laying out the napkins and forks. She looked up from the table and straight into Noah’s eyes. “Now why on earth would you be positive about everything else and uncertain about me?” she asked with a slightly disdainful toss of her head as she returned to her cabinets for two plates and some large spoons.

  “You don’t quite believe me, do you?” Noah took off his jacket and then didn’t know what to do with it in this small place.

  “Put it on the bed,” Maddie told him. “It’s through that door.”

  Noah walked through the door and found himself in an efficiently planned bathroom. That small room opened onto the bedroom, and he saw a good-size bed bearing a soft-looking blue comforter with matching pillowcases and what appeared to be a long closet behind mirrored doors. Laying his jacket on the bed, he hurried back to the kitchen area of the trailer.

  “This is really nice,” he said sincerely. “It has everything.”

  “Yes, I’m very comfortable traveling and calling this home. Sit down. Everything’s ready.”

  Noah slid into one side of the dining booth, and Maddie took the other side. They both took servings from the cartons, then began eating.

  “Oh!” Maddie exclaimed. “Would you like something to drink? I shopped today, so there’s milk, iced tea and soft drinks. And water, of course.”

  “I’ll have the tea, thanks,” Noah said.

  Maddie got up for the tea and two glasses. Seated again, she began eating. “This is good Chinese,” she said. “You called the restaurant the China House?”

  “Yes. It’s over on Third Street, near the bowling alley. Apparently it wasn’t there when you lived here.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  They ate without speaking a while, then Noah said, “You didn’t answer my question, Maddie.”

  “What question?”

  “I asked if you believed that I wasn’t positive about anything where you’re concerned.”

  She shrugged. “It shouldn’t matter if I do or do not believe that.”

  “No, I guess it shouldn’t.” Noah gave her a long look. “I say things to you that sometimes don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  “You do things that don’t make much sense, either.”

  “If you’re talking about last night, you did everything I did.”

  “Except treat you like Typhoid Mary after it was over,” she said flatly.

  Noah was appalled. “Maddie, if I did that I’m more sorry than I can say!”

  “You did worse than that, Noah. You said you’d made love to a child and you weren’t talking about age!”

  He looked regretful and rather helpless. “You’re so young.”

  “You’re hardly ancient,” she retorted.

  “I’m thirty-five.”

  “Okay, so you’re twelve years older than I am, but that wasn’t at the heart of what you said last night. I know I’m not educated the way you are, and I have no doubt at all that you’ve lived a much different life than I have. But I don’t deserve any slams over our differences.”

  “You’re right, you don’t, and I swear I didn’t mean what I said the way you took it. Maddie, you convey the kind of innocence that vanishes with time. Hell, I sure don’t have that quality anymore, and neither do most people my age. Every year takes its toll on a person, and so does every bad experience.”

  Maddie laid down her fork and took a drink of tea before saying, “You’ve hinted at having had a bad experience before.”

  Noah looked surprised because he truly believed that he’d never given anyone in Whitehorn so much as a dram of personal information. “I have?” he asked doubtfully. “Are you sure?”

  “I didn’t make it up, Doc.”

  Noah grinned. “See? A comeback like that is exactly what I meant when I said you possessed a charming innocence.”

  “You said the word charming? No, I don’t think you did.”

  “All right, I’m saying it now.”

  “Let’s put my ‘charming innocence’ on hold for a few minutes while you tell me about your bad experience,” Maddie said. “Only a suggestion, of course, but I’m naturally nosy, and I would love to hear what caused that sourpuss expression you usually walk around with.”

  “Thanks for sharing that complimentary opinion,” he retorted drily. “Does my heart good to be put down every so often.”

  “Was that a put-down?” Maddie deliberately shaped a thoughtful, speculative expression on her face, then said, “Maybe it made you feel sort of the way I felt last night when you told me I wasn’t good enough for you.”

  “My God, I never said that!”

  “I’ll forget you did say it if you tell me about your bad experience.”

  “Maddie, I never said you weren’t good enough for me. Do you think I run around the country sleeping with women whom I truly believe don’t come up to my standards?”

  Maddie put her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand and then batted her eyelashes at him. “Goodness, but I do like your gentlemanly manner of turning a phrase, I really do.” Again her eyelashes fluttered.

  “You’re being silly.”

  “That’s my charming innocence at play, Doc.” Maddie dropped the act and picked up her fork. “Apparently you’re not going to tell me anything about yourself, which is fine. After all, I don’t really want anything from you, and it’s a dead certainty that you don’t want anything from me. Except for, maybe, another roll in the sack.”

  Shocked, Noah stared across the dinette table at her. “That’s not fair, Maddie.”

  “Not very ladylike, either, right? Well, put this in your pipe and smoke it, Doc. I know a word that I would bet almost anything has never entered your mind.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “No, it’s commitment.”

  “You’re saying I don’t know the meaning of the word commitment? Maddie, the little you know about me wouldn’t cover the head of a pin.”

  She regarded him calmly. “I agree. Fix it, Doctor. Make it all better.”

  “Yeah, by telling you things about myself that no one in Montana knows. I happen to like my privacy, which I wouldn’t have for five minutes if I told my history to even one person in this gossipy little town.”

  “Don’t put me in that category, Noah. I may be a lot of things, but a gossip isn’t one of them. Besides, I won’t be around Whitehorn for very much longer.”

  Noah felt as though he’d just received an electrical shock. He’d known all along that her time in Whitehorn was limited—been glad of it in several memorable instances, to be honest. But at the present startling moment, envisioning the town, his work and every other fac
et of his life without Maddie, her problems, her brass and sass and her big green eyes caused a bleak and empty sensation in his gut. When he added the memory of last night’s steamy lovemaking and then Maddie’s ability to make him laugh to the mix, that empty feeling became so huge that Noah’s gentler emotions—the ones that governed his tear ducts—threatened to overcome him. Deeply shaken over something so unexpected and rare as an urge to shed tears, he blinked several times and then stared numbly across the table at Maddie.

  She felt the massive change in the way he was looking at her. It was as though he’d suddenly taken on a different personality and become a man she’d never met!

  “Uh,” she stammered. “Did I suddenly sprout horns or something? I mean, you’re looking at me in a very strange way.”

  Noah was battling the worst emotional upheaval he’d suffered in years and asking himself what had brought on so much distress. Maddie’s mentioning something he already knew seemed like a pretty lame excuse to get maudlin and self-pitying. Life would go on after Maddie Kincaid left town, after all.

  But he realized that was the crux of this whole thing—life would go on. Exactly as it had been before Maddie’s rather tornado-like explosion into his humdrum existence. When she was no longer around he would get up early every morning and go to work. He’d return home at night, read or watch a little TV and go to bed. When time and scheduling permitted, he would drive to the gym at the high school and work himself into a sweat with the facility’s state-of-the-art exercise equipment or by taking a good long run around its indoor track.

  And the really stressful part of examining his daily routine at this particular moment was that there was nothing wrong with it, other than its incompleteness. It was like a fishing line without a hook, a bow without an arrow, a road with no destination. Granted, he could blame no one but himself for what he knew now was an imperfect, inadequate way of life, but that didn’t make this sudden spate of knowledge any less painful.

  He cleared his throat. “You don’t have the horns, I do.”

  Maddie’s eyes widened. “Invisible horns?”

  “Internal horns, Maddie. Look, if you’re still interested in my past, I’m prepared to fill you in.”

  She regretted pushing him into this and reached across the table to touch his wrist, a simple gesture that, from her point of view, indicated remorse. “Noah, you don’t have to tell me anything,” she said quietly. To her intense surprise, he covered her hand with his own.

  “Touching you wasn’t a pass,” she said.

  “Neither is my touching you at this moment,” Noah said.

  “I don’t know how you did it…or maybe I just don’t know the whys and what-fors of the whole thing…but you’ve changed me.”

  Their gazes locked. “And just how did I do that?” she asked softly.

  “By being you, I suppose.”

  “Just by being my own charming, innocent self, I changed you into…into what, Noah?”

  “You’re not taking me seriously.”

  Maddie pulled her hand back and sat up straighter. “Do you want me to take you seriously?” There was intensity in his eyes that shook her foundation. “I…I guess I don’t know what’s going on here.” Her voice wasn’t altogether steady, but she’d not seen this side of Noah before, and it unnerved her.

  Noah’s gaze never strayed from her face. “Would you like to know? I think I would. Maddie, it’s obvious that neither of us really understands why we did what we did last night. And I sure as hell don’t comprehend my behavior—” Noah paused to clear his throat again, proving to Maddie that he was as unnerved as she was by this discussion “—after it was over.”

  “I comprehend it. You so regretted seducing me that your only recourse was cruelty.”

  “You’re not really putting all the blame for last night on me, are you? I didn’t seduce you. The whole thing was by mutual consent and, uh, participation. Maddie, you were hot to trot. No more so than I was, but then I’m willing to share the responsibility and you’re not.”

  Maddie’s face flamed. “Could you be any cruder? I was not hot to trot! I’ve never been hot to trot in my life.”

  “Damn it, don’t fly off the handle over semantics. Maddie, any way we look at it, or whatever either of us calls it, you can’t deny that we were hot for each other last night.”

  She tore her gaze from his. “Let’s change the subject. You said you were ready to talk about your past, so I—I’m ready to listen.”

  Noah drew a long breath. He’d said it all right, but was he really ready to talk to anyone about Felicia? But he’d been truthful when he’d said that he would like to know what was happening between him and Maddie, and maybe the place to start that learning process was years in his past.

  “All right,” he said in a very low but not completely controlled voice. “I’ll talk about myself, but I’d like you to do the same. Will you?”

  “I have no deep dark secrets, Noah, but if you’d like to hear all about the adventures of a rodeo queen, I’ll bare my soul.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, I’m making fun of me! Heavens, don’t you have a funny bone? Didn’t you catch my ‘rodeo queen’ reference?”

  “Are you a rodeo queen? I mean, I’ve never even attended a rodeo. I’m not sure what a rodeo queen is.”

  Maddie shook her head in exaggerated dismay. “You poor dear. Obviously your education was sorely lacking in fun and excitement. Promise me one thing. There are rodeos all over Montana during good weather. Go and see one this spring. Do you think you can do that?”

  “To hear you talk, I might even enjoy it.”

  “You will, I guarantee it. Now, let’s finish eating while you tell me all about Noah Martin.” Maddie looked across the table and into his eyes once again. “I really am interested, Noah.”

  The fact that he honestly believed her—a surprise in itself—loosened Noah’s tongue, and he began talking.

  Chapter Eleven

  Noah began his narration with a brief reference to having had “loving and affluent parents.” By the time Noah had reached his middle teens, his father had owned a chain of new-car agencies throughout California. “Dad worked himself to death, and Mother lived only two short years longer. She simply had no wish to go on after he died. I was in my senior year of college when I lost her.”

  Maddie thought of her own sad past. Losing both parents in a car crash at age thirteen was actually much worse than Noah’s loss. At least he’d been an adult. She’d been a child, a frightened little girl that only partially understood the blow she’d received.

  But she said nothing about her own sorrow—said nothing at all, in fact—and pushed around the remaining food on her plate with her eyes on the fork in her hand. This was Noah’s time to speak, although she couldn’t figure out for the life of her why he wanted to. She’d taunted him about that “bad experience” he’d supposedly suffered, but she hadn’t done it maliciously, nor with a serious wish to hear his entire life story.

  “I’d chosen medicine for my career when I was still in grade school and never once wavered from that decision,” Noah said, embarking on that particular chapter of his story.

  Maddie continued to listen without interruption, but other than losing his parents—indeed a tragedy, but one that everyone has to endure at some point—Noah had lived like a prince! The best schools, the best cars, the best of everything! In fact, the more Maddie heard of Noah’s college and medical school days and nights—the long tedious days in classrooms and so much reading and studying—the harder became her heart. Compared to her life, Noah’s had been a walk in the park.

  But then she realized that Noah wasn’t telling all. Was he deliberately omitting some of the more interesting details of those years? More precisely, he hadn’t mentioned girls even once, and no college or med student with his looks and money to spend had to go without female companionship, to put it nicely.

  Maddie held up her hand, and Noah broke
off in mid-sentence. “What about girls?” Maddie asked bluntly.

  “Well…sure…there were girls,” Noah admitted. “No one important, though.”

  “No one important. Not ever?”

  Noah’s stomach sank. He didn’t want to tell Maddie about Felicia, even though he’d been working up to doing exactly that. Now, suddenly, the very thought of committing such emotional suicide nauseated him. What was wrong with him tonight? If a man had any feelings at all for a woman, he didn’t talk about other women. For certain he didn’t go into detail about the one big love of his life and how crushed he’d been when it was over. That kind of story might be told after a man and woman were solid with each other, trusting in each other’s love and unafraid of his or her partner’s old memories, but even then it was an iffy subject. He and Maddie Kincaid had hardly reached that golden stage of trust and candor. What’s more, did he even want to attain that all-inclusive status with Maddie?

  What he was was a damned mess, he decided, not knowing what he wanted from anyone or anything. So what if he wasn’t happy? What was so great about walking around with a silly grin on your face? Well, this confession session had certainly come to a screeching halt, and thank God it had.

  “Not ever,” he said with such stoic sincerity that Maddie knew he was lying.

  She sighed. Noah’s body language revealed the truth, even if he’d changed his mind about relating it to her. She was disappointed enough to cry, because his “bad experience” was only a woman, and who gave a damn how many women he’d romanced through the years? She already knew that he was the love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy, so this was no revelation.

  Actually, she would have enjoyed telling him to get out of her trailer and her life, but she’d been there and done that quite a few times already, and he hadn’t paid the slightest attention to her demands.

  But she was not going to sit there and listen to any more of his self-pitying version of a past that most people would give their eyeteeth to have lived. And if there was any way to accomplish it, she was going to put him on the spot about his so-called “bad experience” and not feel guilty about doing it, either.