Marked for Marriage (28 page)

“I won't know anything about tomorrow
until
tomorrow,” she said with a sudden mist of tears in her eyes.

Emotional with compassion for her troubles, he took her glass from her hand and set it with his on the table. Then he put his arms around her and held her for a very long time.

Both of them knew they could not be any closer to each other than they were during those lovely minutes, though neither said so. The time wasn't yet perfect for saying what was in their minds, but it would be. Soon, very soon.

E
arly the following morning Noah drove Maddie to her truck. After a tender parting kiss, he asked, “Will you call me after you talk to Dr. Herrera?”

“I…guess so.”

Noah was insistent. “Better still, would you give
me
permission to talk to him?” He playfully touched the tip of Maddie's nose and smiled. “I am your primary physician, you know.”

“Completely your decision, I could remind you at this point,” she replied pertly.

“You needed someone to look out for you, sweetheart. I just happened to be that someone and I just happened to be a doctor. That was good luck for both of us, I'd have to say.”

“Oh, you would. Your life must have been terribly boring before I came along if you think our meeting brought you any good luck.”

“My life was boring beyond belief.”

Maddie still didn't know for certain why Noah had labeled
so many years of his life a “void.” She suspected a woman had brought him a lot of misery, but that theory was strictly guesswork. Be that as it may, it was difficult for her to look at Noah, see him for the handsome, intelligent man that he was, and accept that he'd lived a boring-beyond-belief existence. His work couldn't possibly be that uninteresting to him, so he obviously was referring to his personal life.

Well, had hers been so great that she could doubt anyone else's portrayal of life in the slow lane? The truth of the matter, of course, was that interaction with people you liked, admired, were drawn to by personality or hormones was perhaps the most profound distinction between “boring” and “exciting.” Obviously Noah hadn't been doing much interacting.

It moved Maddie that he'd found her interesting enough to change his loner ways, and she laid her hand on Noah's cheek and wished she could say everything that was in her heart. She couldn't, though. Last night had been wonderful. They had made love, laughed together over silly things and talked and talked. But Maddie knew they'd both been holding back, because neither of them had really opened up about feelings or hopes for the future.

Maybe they were both hopeless misfits, but there was no way she could ignore her very serious problems, and it was entirely possible that neither could Noah ignore them. After all, what did she have to bring to a permanent relationship besides problems?

“Gotta go,” she said, striving to sound upbeat instead of as sad as she suddenly felt inside.

“Wait and let me help you out.” Noah stepped to the ground, hurried around to her side of his vehicle and opened the passenger door.

“Thanks, Doc,” Maddie quipped, still making that effort to appear unruffled and certainly in control of herself. But she couldn't hide everything behind a bright facade. For instance,
her old response to offers of unneeded assistance from a guy had usually been a clearly stated, “Thanks, but I can do it myself.” However, considering her bad knee and the fact that Noah's SUV was so high off the ground—he didn't have the extra little step that she'd had installed on her truck—she genuinely appreciated his assistance.

“See you later?” he said, putting what he apparently wanted to happen in the form of a question.

Maddie nodded. “I'm sure you will.” She crossed the street to reach her truck, unlocked it and got into the driver's seat. Looking out the side window, she waved and he waved back. Then they each drove away, going in opposite directions. The symbolism did not escape Maddie's notice. Their individual paths through life could very well have crossed this one time, never to be repeated again.

Aren't you getting a bit melodramatic?

Well, hell's bells! If I'm fine and Fanny's fine, what excuse could I possibly come up with to hang around Whitehorn? If I'm so darned interesting that he's no longer bored, why not come right out and say that he doesn't want me to go anywhere?

He did.

Uh, guess he did say something to that effect, didn't he?

Truth was, they'd both hinted and beaten around the bush way too much.

But did she have the nerve to do anything else?

“Not really,” she whispered just as she drove into Mark's driveway. Sighing heavily, she got out of her truck and went into the house.

 

Noah received a surprise that morning. While making his rounds at the hospital, he ran into Dr. Clark, chief of hospital administration. The older man fell into step with Noah, and they discussed various patients and diagnoses until they
reached a fork in the corridor, where they stopped to chat further.

“Noah, we're losing Dr. Franklin to retirement. As you know, he's been an important member of the hospital's board for a long time. We must replace him, of course, and I would like to submit your name to the remaining board members for consideration. How does that strike you? It's quite an honor, you know.”

Noah didn't want to appear ungrateful, because many physicians
did
consider board membership at a fine hospital an honor, but did he want to take on the additional work? Also, he'd always done his best to avoid hospital politics, and with an appointment to the board, he would be diving headfirst into the fray.

“May I think about it for a day or so, Dr. Clark?” he asked politely.

“Of course, but I would like an answer as soon as possible.”

“I understand.”

 

By two that afternoon numerous telephone calls had taken place: Maddie and Dr. Herrera, Maddie and Dr. Pierce, Noah and Dr. Herrera, and Maddie and Denise Hunter. Notably absent was a call between Maddie and Noah, because that was going to be one very difficult conversation for her.

A weak sun was shining, the temperature was mild, and Maddie left the house wearing jeans, boots and a heavily ribbed, hand-knitted, green wool sweater. She tossed a jacket into the cab of her truck, just in case, but her sweater was warm and probably all she would need. She drove straight to the Braddock stable, got out and went inside the building to hug and stroke Fanny. Try as she might, she could no longer hold back the tears that had stung her eyes and nose all the way from town.

After a few minutes of crying on Fanny's warm neck, Maddie began consoling herself by speaking softly to her beloved horse. “I will always take care of you. You're my darling, and after you're well you'll take me for long rides and we'll explore together. You'll always have a good home, I promise you. Oh, Fanny…Fanny.” Emotion overcame her.

“Maddie?”

She wiped her eyes and turned to look at Denise. “I'm all right.”

“I'm so sorry. I really wish Dr. Pierce had been as frank with me that day as he was with you on the telephone today.”

“He couldn't be. I understand his code of ethics. The things he wrote down for you to tell me were the bare-bones medical facts of Fanny's injuries. The rest of it…his opinion that she should not compete again…could only be said to me, Fanny's owner. Before he said that, he let me know that I
could
race her, it was really up to me. Some people would, he said, even though another fall and further injury to her legs could cripple her.” Maddie stroked Fanny's neck. “I'll never race her again. I wouldn't put her in that kind of jeopardy.”

“Oh, Maddie,” Denise said with a saddened sigh. “I'll leave you alone again. I just wanted to let you know how badly I feel about this. If you'd like to talk later on, come to the house and I'll make some tea…or coffee.”

“Thank you, Denise.” Maddie stayed with Fanny for a long time, petting her, stroking her soft nose and talking to her as though the mare could comprehend the promises she made to always care for her, to never let anything bad happen to her again.

When she finally left, Maddie went directly to her truck. She needed to be alone, and she was certain that Denise would understand why she didn't stop by the house. Driving away from the ranch, Maddie felt as burdened as she would have with a ton of bricks on her shoulders.

Noah probably had talked to Dr. Herrera by now and knew that she would be just fine after approximately six weeks of physical therapy. But he didn't know about Fanny, and to Maddie, Fanny's forced retirement from competition was the end of an era. It was the end of her career in rodeo, which she'd truly loved, and while she had begun worrying about that very thing the second she'd realized something was wrong with Fanny's legs, deep down she really hadn't believed it would happen.

Well, it
had
happened, and she was now floating in the wind like a piece of dandelion fuzz, or a solitary leaf struggling to cling to a limb that wasn't offering even a tiny bit of help. What should she do?
What should she do?

The really terrible thing was that all of her promises to Fanny were completely groundless, because she couldn't afford to board Fanny at the Braddock ranch indefinitely. She would have to find a job that paid enough to support herself
and
Fanny, but what kind of job? What did she know besides rodeo? Who would be stupid enough to hire her?

Realizing that she was approaching the curve in the road that bordered the big field where she'd gotten her truck stuck during that record-breaking blizzard, Maddie wondered if she had lost her cell phone somewhere out there. She needed that phone, and the field was pretty with so many huge old trees. She could walk around and look for her phone while she did some more thinking, she decided. There was no oncoming traffic and she made a left turn onto the field.

 

Just about the time that Maddie was caressing and talking to Fanny in the Braddock stable, Noah's concern about Maddie became serious. She wasn't answering the phone again, and he'd left numerous messages on Mark's voice mail for her to call him at his office. He had anticipated a call from her all day, especially after he'd talked to Dr. Herrera and heard
what Noah considered to be good news about her knee. Six weeks of physical therapy wasn't a cakewalk, but it was a long way from a complicated diagnosis that could result in a wide variety of treatments, some of them not exactly pleasant.

At 3:00 p.m., Noah packed it in and did something he
never
did. He told his nurse a lie about not feeling at all well and that he had to go home and get off his feet. Feeling guilty as hell about it, but too worried about Maddie to let anything—even a guilty conscience—stop him, he left Norma and the receptionist to deal with the patients still in the waiting room.

By the time he reached his car he had devised a plan of action. He would drive by Mark's house first, because that was the logical place to start looking for Maddie. But deep down he suspected that she'd again gone out to the Braddock ranch to see Fanny. He felt an urgency to talk to Maddie and wasn't sure what was behind it, except for one niggling concern that she might not have completely grasped Dr. Herrera's diagnosis and thought it was worse than it was.

Then, too, he couldn't deny the possibility of his feeling another form of guilt over being glad that she would be tied to Whitehorn for the next six weeks for her physical therapy. Not to say that she couldn't receive the same treatment elsewhere, but it made sense to Noah that she would stay right where she was for the duration. That would be more than enough time for the two of them to figure out the true nature of their relationship and agree on an outcome.

Whatever was behind the persistent ache in his gut that demanded he find Maddie and see for himself that she was all right with Herrera's diagnosis, Noah couldn't overcome or ignore it. Something was wrong and it involved Maddie; he knew it as surely as he knew his name, and so help him Hannah he was going to find out what it was and help her get past it.

 

Maddie took the ruts and bumps in the field very slowly and still her truck rolled right and left as she drove toward the grove of trees where she'd gotten so stuck during that storm. Looking around, she realized how different the area looked without a two-foot blanket of snow on everything. For one thing there were huge patches of winter-bare brush that would be quite beautiful when leafed out, but made it impossible to see the entire field. In fact, one could have concealed a herd of elephants in all that tall brush, Maddie thought wryly, if a person was so inclined, of course.

Thinking something so silly alleviated some of Maddie's emotional pain, and she parked within the grove of trees and got out to look for her phone, feeling a little better.

Walking around, Maddie breathed deeply of the clean, fresh air and listened to the songs of the hardy little birds that resided in Montana during the winter months. And suddenly, right before her own very next footstep, was her telephone!

“Well, I'll be darned,” she murmured, and bent down to pick it up. It was dirty and the battery was dead, but Maddie had hopes of reviving it. Carrying it with her, she found a pretty patch of grass next to a big tree and sat down. Putting her head back, she pondered the twists and turns of her life since that day in the arena in Austin when she had sat on Fanny and waited for Janie Weston to run her race. A person never knew when disaster was going to strike, and even Maddie hadn't realized how truly disastrous that accident had been.

Troubled again, Maddie tried to make sense of her relationship with Noah. She was in love with him and maybe he loved her, too, but were his feelings for her as deeply everlasting as hers were for him?

“Aunt June,” Maddie whispered, “I know now what's in my
heart, but how does a woman know what's in a man's heart? We never talked about that, did we?”

The sound of an angry, shrill voice shattered Maddie's reverie, and she leaped to her feet with such speed that she hurt her bad knee. “Oh, damn,” she mumbled, then put her discomfort aside to listen again. The shouting was easily heard, but Maddie couldn't see a soul.

Finally, however, she pinpointed its direction. It was a woman's voice, and she was clearly shrieking at someone who wasn't fighting back, or if they were, they were speaking too quietly for Maddie to hear.