Marked for Marriage (18 page)

“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.

M
addie 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. She 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
dis
approval 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?”

“I was referring more to your not having a man in your bed than having one under your feet,” Noah drawled.

“Oh, of course, you probably have a woman in
your
bed every night. How could I ever doubt it? And I'm sure you're a magnificent lover and every female in Whitehorn is waiting in line for her turn to sample the great Dr. Martin's technique.” Maddie curled her lip. “Give me a break. You're just another man, and I don't—”

However she'd intended to finish that sentence Noah would never know, because he'd had enough of her smart-mouthed cracks. Maybe he should have run as fast as he could from Maddie's room and this house, but he grabbed her instead, pulled her up against himself and covered her lips with his in a kiss of utter and total possession.

It seemed to Maddie that her heart dropped clear to her toes. This was not how arguments ended! Arguments ended with vows to never speak to each other again and slammed
doors. She
should
scratch out his eyes, and maybe she would if he ever got done kissing her!

But, oh, my, it did feel so…so… Maddie's thoughts drifted away as passion started sending waves of pleasurable yearning throughout her system. No one had ever kissed her in the same feverish, hungry way that Noah did, neither had she ever responded to another man as she did with Noah. She slid her arms up around his neck and kissed him back with all of the fire contained in her hot little body.

When Maddie's mood changed, Noah lost every connection with the real world. One thing mattered and
only
one, and he held Maddie's face in his hands and kissed her eyelids, her nose, her lips, again and again. Then he again enclosed her in a fiery embrace and concentrated solely on her mouth, which was without a doubt the sexiest, most sinful mouth he'd
ever
kissed.

Needing air, he broke their chain of kisses to grab a breath, and he gasped out, “You're driving me crazy. Do you know that?”

Maddie was breathing hard. “I know that I can say the same about you.”

He looked at her long and hard, then said huskily, “Can you, Maddie, can you really?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and traced the contours of his lips with her fingertips. “What's this power you have over me, Doc?”

“You're kidding around again.”

“Maybe so, but who started this and how should I look at it? You're just fooling around, too, aren't you? I mean, there's nothing serious going on here, is there?”

Noah's jaw clenched for a moment, then he said gruffly, “That's a pretty tough question.”

“Yes, isn't it?” Maddie murmured just before he kissed her again. She sighed and gave in completely. This time she wasn't
going to halt anything. She wanted Dr. Know-It-All to make love to her, and since it was the very first time she'd wanted sex with such fervor, she knew in her soul that it would be a very special event.

So maybe this wasn't remotely serious for either of them, but it
was
imperative. And since nothing had ever seemed so necessary before, Maddie saw no good reason to play coy about it.

“Take me to bed,” she whispered.

Noah was in no condition to refuse. Not that a refusal was lurking anywhere in his overheated brain. He was hard enough to break, and aching was part and parcel of that degree of arousal. Still, he was mindful of her injuries, and instead of swinging her up into his arms, as he would have liked to do, he led her to the bed. His eyes were hot and dark while he untied the sash of her robe and slid it from her shoulders.

“You're beautiful, Maddie,” he said in a hoarse, unnatural voice.

“That's nice to hear, even if it isn't true.”

“You're even going to argue with me about that?” He clasped his hands on each of her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “Do you take umbrage with everything everyone says to you, or am I the unfortunate exception?”

She returned his gaze without blinking. “That's another tough question, Dr. Honey-Bear. Are you sure you want to delve into the answer right now, because I'd just as soon do something else. Later, of course, we can get ourselves into another lather and fight the night away.”

Noah couldn't help laughing. “If I'm a honey bear, then you're my honey.”

“Well, that's debatable. Or let's just agree for the time being that I'm your honey but that label isn't a permanent fixture.” Maddie began unbuttoning his shirt. “You've had the advantage long enough, Dr. Way-Too-Handsome. I'm standing here
stark naked and you've got on layers of clothing. Let's get rid of it.”

Noah felt happiness bubble up within him, a joyful excitement that included the desire racking his body but also encompassed a sense of youthful exuberance, which, he was positive, he hadn't felt in years. He wasn't old—thirty-five wasn't old, was it?—but he'd been living as though anything fun, funny or even slightly enjoyable was ancient history. In spite of her larcenous streak Maddie was fun, and she was funny, even when she wasn't trying to be.