Marked for Marriage (16 page)

“What did you write?”

“That I was going to my house to pick up some personal items I would need for the night. You really didn't see it?”

“No, I really didn't see it.”

Noah found it just under the edge of the bed. “I propped it against the lamp. I wonder how it got knocked off the stand.”

“I didn't see it, Noah, so don't sound so accusing!”

“Well, here it is. Do you want to read it now so you will forever know that I'm a man of his word?”

“Is that something you'd
like
me to believe?”

He was standing very close to the head of the bed, and though he felt rather silly wrapped in a blanket, he realized that the situation was not silly, nor were the feelings that Maddie Kincaid had brought back to life after his long period of emotional stagnation.

He acted on impulse, bent over and nuzzled Maddie's face until his lips found hers. It was a soft, tender little kiss that stole Maddie's breath and made her heart pound.

Noah broke the kiss but his lips remained a breath away from hers. “I don't know what I'd like you to believe,” he whispered. “But you're the first woman who's made me feel like a man in a very long time. I wasn't looking for any such thing and I don't think you were, either. But something happened the minute we met, and maybe we…each of us…should try to figure out what it was. What do you say?”

Maddie's mouth was dry as dust. “I…I think it's something that should be thought about in the clear light of day. This darkness conceals a variety of…of pitfalls and hurdles.”

“You're right. Good night.” He grazed her lips with his…a fleeting connection that again took Maddie's breath…then stood up and away from her. He put the flashlight in her hand, and with the second light in
his
hand he left her bedroom.

It was hours before Maddie fell asleep again.

C
hanges were in the air when Maddie got up the next morning. Snow was still falling, but the wind had died down. Without that driving force, yesterday's fierce blizzard was now a rather peaceful snowfall. There were horrendous drifts everywhere, of course, but Maddie knew that without the wind the plows would have a much better chance of clearing the roads today.

The house was silent, and walking from her bedroom, Maddie felt a peculiar pang. It was
too
quiet; Noah must have gone somewhere. He could be just outside, she thought, and hurried to the kitchen to check the driveway. It had been shoveled and was vacant! A chill walked Maddie's spine, though she had no idea why Noah's absence would affect her so adversely. She should be glad that he'd finally decided to resume his own life, instead of living in the middle of hers.

Turning away from the window with a stiff-upper-lip attitude—heavens, she certainly could survive without Noah
Martin's exasperating bossiness—she smelled coffee and saw the almost-full pot in the coffeemaker. She also saw a sheet of white paper in the middle of the kitchen table, held down on each of its four corners by a can of tomato soup. There were also two small packets that Maddie assumed contained pills, the new ones that Noah had given her yesterday and had worked so well.

Maddie eyed the note warily, strongly suspecting that Noah's bossiness hadn't vanished when he had. He'd left a note and made certain that she wouldn't miss seeing it, as she had yesterday.

Accepting her fate, Maddie poured a cup of coffee, added milk and then brought it to the table and sat down. Moving the cans of soup off the paper, she slid it over to reside on the table just in front of her. Then she took a few swallows of coffee and began reading.

Maddie put down the note and picked up her cup. Sipping coffee, she frowned, pondered Noah's apology for kissing her
and
obviously expecting more than a kiss, and realized that she wasn't all that thrilled with his contrition. True, she was the one who'd called a halt to the whole thing, but why did he feel that he had to apologize for something that was no more his fault than hers? And he certainly hadn't seemed apologetic during those tender little good-night kisses, had he? Plus, no one had forced him to sit on the bed and instigate conversation. Obviously, curiosity had gotten the best of him and he'd had to ask her a few questions, but why would a man who kept his inner self in a lock-box be that curious about someone else in the first place?

So, what happened in the night? Had he lain awake and worried that she might read too much into an unexpected interlude that could only be described as passion-gone-wild? Had he then decided at some point that he could eradicate the entire episode with an apology and a half-baked promise about it not happening again?

He's a lowdown coward, that's what he is, writing this…this insulting message instead of telling me to my face that he really doesn't want a personal association with me. Guess I was just too damned handy last night!

Seared by humiliation and anger, Maddie finished her coffee, then forced herself to read what Noah had written on each of the little packets. One contained an antibiotic, the other a painkiller and each bore instructions that she should take one after breakfast and one after dinner.

Sullenly Maddie tossed the packets back on the table. She'd
take his damn pills because he was right about her overall improvement yesterday, plus the fact that she felt so much better this morning than she had on any other morning since the accident.

Well, there was little to be gained by sitting there fuming and fussing over something she could do nothing about, so she might as well busy herself with making some breakfast. After that she would find something else to do. She wasn't used to being cooped up like this, and now that she was feeling human again she was also feeling imprisoned. She needed fresh air and a hearty walk, and she needed to see Fanny.

A glance outside dashed those thoughts. Her truck was stuck miles from town, and she was stuck in this house! She might as well face facts, frustrating though they were—she wasn't going anywhere today!

With a heavily weighted, put-upon sigh, Maddie rose and left the table to scare up some breakfast.

 

Noah's work schedule had huge gaps. His patients were not braving the elements to keep their appointments, and could he blame them? His drive from Mark's house had been precarious and just plain dangerous. Without four-wheel drive, a vehicle stood no chance at all of getting around, and even with it Noah hadn't felt completely in control of his SUV. He'd been grateful for the exceptionally light traffic, for he'd skidded around more than one corner during that short trip.

With so much spare time on his hands, he drank too much coffee and stared out windows at the ongoing snowfall too often. He walked through the hospital twice, talked briefly with other physicians about nothing important, and then, on his second tour, ran into Dr. Herrera, the orthopedic specialist he'd mentioned to Maddie.

After explaining Maddie's hand injury, he said, “But I'm more concerned with her knee, which she claims was not
impaired by her fall but only recently began bothering her. I want her to see you.”

“Fine,” Dr. Herrera agreed. “With so many people staying home in this weather, as the highway patrol suggested they do, I have free time today. Does she have a way to get to my office?”

Noah frowned. Maddie didn't have a way to get
anywhere!
Without her truck, she was left high and dry, which was a good thing considering her tendency to act on impulse. Hopefully she was calm and resting, but somehow Noah doubted it.

“Yes, she has a way,” he told Dr. Herrera. “Any particular time?”

“Anytime after four. I know for a fact that my appointment book is clear after four.”

“Thanks. She'll be there.”

Noah returned to his own office and tried the phone again. No luck, the line was still dead. His receptionist hadn't come in, and Noah didn't need to be told why she hadn't. She and her husband lived five miles out of town on an isolated dirt road that would be one of the last to be plowed, and without phone service there was no way she could have let him know. It was the same story all over Whitehorn, Noah knew, because he'd heard complaints on that score from everyone with whom he'd come in contact.

He still hadn't found his cell phone, but it wouldn't have done much good, anyhow. Some area residents carried cell phones, but that form of telecommunication was still spotty in Whitehorn. Besides, with so much turbulence in the air from the seemingly never-ending snowfall, Noah suspected that reception between two cell phones would be clogged with static.

Checking his appointment schedule once again, Noah saw that he was booked all afternoon. He'd been booked all morning, too, and one person had made it in. He decided that he
would hang around until three, just in case a patient did keep his appointment, then he would put a Closed sign on his door and hope no one did come in.

 

The day dragged for Maddie. With her mind clear and her aches and pains minimized to practically nothing by Noah's miracle pain pill—which she'd taken after breakfast, as instructed—she felt much too good to sit and do nothing. For a while she walked around with a soft cloth and dusted the furniture. She thought of running the vacuum over the carpets, but it was a heavy old thing and she didn't want to test her newly found and much appreciated strength quite that much. Besides, the carpets weren't soiled. Before leaving on their honeymoon, Darcy and Mark had made sure that everything had been thoroughly cleaned.

Making her bed with one hand wasn't easy, but Maddie managed to put it in a reasonable semblance of good order. She looked in on Mark and Darcy's room, the one Noah had used last night, and saw the bed
neatly
made. Apparently Noah Martin understood household duties, because he could cook and make a bed as well as any woman. Oddly, that smooth, perfectly made bed annoyed Maddie, and she walked back down the hall toward the living room with her lips drawn into a peeved line.

Finally she switched on the TV, sat in a comfortable chair and began flipping channels. Nothing looked good and in mere minutes, she turned it off again. Sighing from utter misery, as though the weight of the world rested on her shoulders, Maddie reflected on last night's events.

She'd behaved so uncharacteristically—feverishly kissing and cuddling with Noah—and the memories caused her to wince. But the memories also delivered a sensual wallop to those areas of her body that had actually quivered with passion
last night, and her imagination took flight without a dram of conscious effort from her brain.

If she'd waited breathlessly for Noah instead of getting all rueful and righteous… If she'd welcomed him back with opened arms… If she wasn't such a damned prude about personal relationships… If…if…if. Closing her eyes, Maddie licked her dry lips and visualized the wonders she
might
have experienced last night.

“Darn,” she whispered, not exactly wishing things had turned out differently last night but certainly wishing for something.
Yearning
for something was more like it, she realized. There was a deep pocket of yearning in the pit of her stomach that certainly had not nagged at her before Noah Martin barged into her life!

It dawned on her then that she could have an affair with Dr. Sweet-Lips Martin. Regardless of his nonsensical apology and promise that he wouldn't make another pass—or words to that effect—she could easily lead him down the garden path, should she choose to do so.

Maddie stirred uneasily in her chair. She'd never knowingly led a man on. Why was she even contemplating something so shocking? As surely as grass was green, her imagination was creating the perfect setting for heartbreak, and since her libido responded so hungrily to Noah's call of the wild, so to speak,
she
was the most likely candidate to suffer that awful torment. In truth, she couldn't picture Noah in the throes of broken-heart syndrome at all, and it was very easy for her to see herself with that particular malady.

No, she most definitely would not lead Noah anywhere, or flirtatiously if subtly coax him into an affair. All she wanted was to get through her healing process, load Fanny into the trailer and get the heck out of Montana. Get far away from bad weather and…and yes, she might as well admit it—getting away from a man who could kiss her breathless and still
give her absolutely nothing of his inner self only made good sense.

And thus Maddie whiled away the long, dreary day.

 

Noah scowled at the snow that had again piled up in Mark's driveway. Parking in the street, he went into the garage for the snow shovel and set to work. He flung snow right and left, moving fast and eventually breathing hard from the exertion. But he cleared the driveway in about ten minutes, then put away the shovel and drove his SUV off the street.

Inside the house, Maddie thought she heard something going on outside and she went to the kitchen window to see what it was. She sucked in a big breath when she saw Noah, and she had absolutely no control over the totally female palpitations of her heart and pulse. Nor could she stop herself from being overwhelmingly impressed by his size and strength. He was dressed in a woolen sheepskin-lined jacket, dark pants and boots. There was a forest-green scarf wound around his neck and black gloves on his hands, and he was so handsome and so graceful with that shovel that Maddie just stood there and stared at him as though she'd lost all of her normal connections with reality.

The bottom line, she knew in her soul, was that she was glad he'd come back. The long day alone had been horrible. If Noah had come to spend the night again and if something happened between them—no, she wasn't going to
cause
something to happen—but if it did, all on its own as it had last night, maybe, just maybe she wouldn't allow her common sense to interfere this time.

Oh, you silly fool!
The voice in Maddie's head was smarter than the rest of her, and she knew it, too, but still she couldn't help the rush of elation she felt over Noah's return.

He finally finished up outside and headed for the kitchen door to go in. Maddie's heart skipped a beat, and she twisted
around to make a dash for the living room so he wouldn't know she'd been watching him. Her left knee gave out, and she moaned in pain as she plopped down on the floor, seat first.

Noah walked in at that exact moment and, with a look of alarm on his face, ran over to her. Kneeling, he asked rather anxiously, “What happened?”

Maddie could hardly look into his vivid-blue eyes, which seemed even bluer than usual, probably because he'd been working outdoors. There were snowflakes in his hair and on his clothing, and he even smelled of snow.

“I guess I turned around wrong…or something,” she mumbled. “My knee gave out.”