Marked for Marriage (13 page)

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 Mad
die 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.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “And…thanks.”

Seated again, he said, “I only asked how your wrapped hand was feeling. I didn't expect you to jump out of your skin over a simple question.”

“Well, I didn't
expect
your simple question!”

“Obviously,” Noah said drily. “So, how is it?”

“It feels fine. Better than before. I suppose I should thank you, so…thanks.”

“You're welcome. You're not eating very much. Don't you like it?'

“It's very good, and I
am
eating. I just eat more slowly than you do.”

“Yes, I know I eat too fast. Comes from eating on the run too often, I guess.”

“During training?”

“Actually, it happens a lot right here in Whitehorn, which I didn't expect from a small town. A waiting room full of patients, an emergency situation at the hospital and zap, there goes a decent lunch or dinner break.”

Maddie marveled that he was actually talking to her like a grown-up, but she didn't trust it to last. He'd made it much too plain today that he considered her to be a pain in the neck, an annoyance he didn't need, and that his promise to Mark was the only thing binding him to a troublesome situation he would never have gotten close to on his own.

But could she blame him? The day had been a nightmare for her—a rather vague nightmare at times, to be sure—so what must it have been for Noah? Since she'd done such a good job of convincing Mark and Darcy that she was well enough for them to be left alone, Noah couldn't possibly have anticipated the kind of mess he would run into when he dropped in to keep his promise.

“Your face,” Noah said then.

Maddie blinked. “What about it?”