Marked for Marriage (12 page)

Noah gaped at her incredulously for a second before returning his gaze to the road. “Are you telling me you
didn't
need rescuing?”

“I was perfectly all right,” she said icily.

“You were stuck in a snowbank!” he shouted.

“I most certainly was not! My truck got high-centered!”

“And that's even worse than being stuck, you…you pain in the butt!”

“I'm a pain?
I'm
a pain? You're worse than a pain! You're a…a damned gnat that keeps flitting around a person's head until they're driven crazy!”

“It was a short drive with you, sweetheart!”

“Meaning I was already crazy? Oh, how I pity your patients.
If
you actually have any, that is. It wouldn't surprise me if poor, sick people saw you once and never returned.
With your cold-fish personality, you could evacuate an entire hospital in five minutes flat!”

“Just shut the hell up. I'm trying to keep my mind on the road, and it's not easy with you shrieking in my ears.”

“I wasn't shrieking! Believe me, if and when I ever do shriek, you'll know it!” Maddie turned her face toward the side window and blinked back tears.

Finally, on the outskirts of town, Noah breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He maneuvered the empty roads of Whitehorn—spotting several plows at work as he drove—and at long last pulled into Mark's driveway. It was over. He'd rescued Mark's nitwit sister—however loudly she denied needing rescue—and he would stay the night in Mark's house.

But come tomorrow he was going to find someone else to take care of Maddie Kincaid if he had to haul a stranger in from off the street.

He
had had his fill of her.

T
he house was warm and welcoming. They were both glad to be back, and especially glad to be out of the storm, though neither said so. In fact, they said nothing at all to each other upon entering Mark's home. Each bore his or her own brand of resentment toward the other, even though neither was actually dwelling on it at the time. They had other things to think about and to do, and they frankly ignored each other once in the house.

Noah walked over to the kitchen phone to check for a dial tone, and Maddie immediately went to her bedroom and started undressing. She felt almost too done in to move, but her need for a hot shower was greater than the exhaustion urging her to just crawl into bed and forget this hapless day.

Because Noah had so easily removed the cast from her hand, Maddie undid the straps and took her first shower without it since the accident. It was while she was standing under the deliciously hot spray that she wondered why she found Dr.
Noah Martin so irritating. True, he could hardly be labeled Mr. Personality, but he
was
a doctor and she'd known since leaving the hospital in Austin that she would have to establish a medical relationship with someone in Montana. Why not Noah? Considering the ghastly weather, she should probably take advantage of having medical care under her very own roof. Could anything be more convenient?

That progression of thoughts aroused Maddie's ire. Noah, the big jerk, had destroyed her pain pills, and she hadn't done one single thing to make him think that she was his patient! He had no right to play lord and master with her, certainly not with the medication prescribed by another physician, and neither did he have the right to stick his nose into where she might have gone today. Rescue, indeed! He was probably preening, gloating and patting himself on the back for saving that witless Maddie Kincaid's life!

That image was too much for Maddie to accept without retribution of some sort. She had to show Noah Martin that he and his overbearing methods didn't faze Maddie Kincaid in the least. She'd dealt with much tougher hombres than Dr. Know-It-All Martin, and she had discovered years ago that the best way to put a man in his place was to beat him in his own arena. She'd been on her own for a long time, and a woman alone needed to know how to take care of herself. Noah wanted to play doctor with her? She'd
let
him play doctor.

Turning off the shower spray, Maddie got out and, being careful not to bump her bad hand, she dried off—gently touching the towel to the fading abrasions dotting the right side of her body—and then put on peach silk panties and her peach velour robe. After brushing the wet hair out of her eyes, she moisturized her face and bit her lips for color. Leaning closer to the mirror she inspected the bruises on the right side of her face, which were still visible but not nearly as bad as they'd
been. Actually she was healing quite rapidly, she thought, and in a few weeks she should be able to leave Montana and once again join the rodeo circuit.

“Hmm,” she murmured in a perplexed way when she didn't feel the elation or anticipatory excitement that thought usually brought her. It was odd, but after the day she'd just put in, why wouldn't her emotions be all messed up?

Actually, her left knee was causing her more discomfort than any other part of her body, she realized. Again she wondered why that knee, which the medical people she'd dealt with in Austin hadn't diagnosed as injured in her fall, should start acting up at this late date.

Looking into her own eyes in the mirror, Maddie said, “That's a good question for Dr. Intrude-Where-You're-Not-Wanted, I would say.” Then she took her tube of antibiotic ointment and her blue cast and left the room.

The house seemed quiet—maybe only in comparison to the raging snarls of the blizzard outside—but it was possible that Noah had left her alone again, and she stopped in the hall to listen. It gave her a peculiar feeling to think he might have deserted her for good this time. She'd harangued him on and off all day because of his intrusiveness, but now she wasn't all that comfortable with the idea of being alone.

No, he was still here, she realized with relief flooding her system when she heard sounds from the kitchen. Should she analyze that unmistakable sense of relief? she wondered uneasily. She certainly didn't like the man, and yet she was less tense because of his presence in the house.

There was just no understanding some things, she decided with a slight tossing of her head. The only thing she could possibly want from Noah Martin was medical attention. Anything else was unthinkable!

Reaching the kitchen doorway, Maddie stopped and surveyed the surprising scene before her. Noah, wearing house
slippers and a white dishtowel for an apron, was cooking! Glancing around, she spied his boots parked next to the outside door. It was understandable that he didn't like wearing heavy outside boots in the house, but wasn't it rather forward of him to help himself to a pair of Mark's slippers?

Everything about that man is forward, Maddie thought with a fresh supply of resentment. In truth, even though she'd suffered that strange pang of anxiety when thinking that Noah had gone and left her alone, was she comfortable with the idea of his staying the night? He was certainly making himself at home, cooking and using Mark's things as though he had a right to do anything he pleased.

She cleared her throat to get his notice, and he turned partly so he could see her. He blinked twice, then stared, because she was a vision in that very pretty, very feminine robe.

“Uh…are you, uh, feeling all right?” he asked, surprised that he would mangle simple words over a pretty peach bathrobe.

She couldn't be nice, she just couldn't be, and
that
surprised her. But out of her mouth came an icy comment. “I don't see a sign on your forehead giving you the right to destroy other people's medications.
Prescribed
medications, I might add.”

Noah shook his head in disgust and turned back to the stove. “If you've come in here looking for a fight, just trot your nasty little self back to whichever room you prefer pouting in. I happen to be making some dinner, which you're welcome to share. But I will not put up with your bad humor while we eat it, do you understand?”

Maddie felt stabbed, wounded, even bleeding. No one talked that way to her and got away with it, no one!

“I didn't come in here looking for a fight, you quack! But I need some pain medicine and I don't have any!”

“What you were taking was too damned strong!” Noah turned off the burner and pushed the pan he was using to the
back of the stove. Then he walked over to Maddie and glared right into her eyes. “How much pain are you in right now? On a scale of one to ten.”

She glared as coldly as he was doing. “I'm not writhing in agony, as you can well see,” she snapped. “But I'm far from…”

“Give me a number.”

“Oh, for Pete's sake! Fine. I'm probably a four or a five. Does that satisfy your perverse need for numerical precision?”

His face grew harder, colder. “If ten is the worst pain one could endure, a five is pretty severe. Are you sure you're feeling that bad?”

“How would I know what number I am? I've never heard of anything so dumb! Call me a two if it makes you happy. I'm not in agony and I've never taken anything in my life that wasn't prescribed by a doctor. What do you think I'm hoping to do here, convince you to give me drugs I don't need? And stop scowling at me! You're not my doctor and you're sure as hell not my boss!”

Noah gaped then. “You've removed the supporter from your hand. You shouldn't have done that.”

“Why not? You did it. Look, I wanted a shower without it. Is that such a terrible crime?”

“Give it to me and sit over there.”

She wanted to tell him to go to hell, that she wasn't taking orders from him under any circumstances. But as grating as it was, she needed his help, and she moved to the chair he'd indicated and sat.

Noah went into his medical bag and brought out an array of items that he placed on the table. After getting a glass of water from the kitchen sink, he moved a chair close to Maddie's and sat down.

“I'm going to wrap your hand with an elasticized bandage and support it with a sling,” he said sternly. “You'll be a lot
more comfortable. Probably more mobile, as well. That type of stiff supporter you've been wearing is very constricting. But before I see to your hand, take one of these.” He picked up a small packet, shook out a pill in her hand and gave her the glass of water.

“What is this?” Maddie asked with her eyebrow cocked at a suspicious angle.

“It will take the edge off your pain without raising hell with your mind. You'll start feeling very relaxed in about fifteen minutes.”

“Is this a muscle relaxant?”

“It's primarily a painkiller. Take it.” Noah picked up another packet. “These are the antibiotics I want you to take. Two each day, one after breakfast, one after dinner. There are enough tablets in here for two days, which, from what I've seen of your abrasions, are all you need.”

“You haven't seen everything, you know.” Maddie swallowed the pain pill.

“Yes, I have.”

“How? When?”

“When you fainted.”

Maddie's mouth dropped open. “You examined me without my knowledge? That's a breach of medical ethics!”

“Don't you ever get tired of being on the attack? Good God, you're enough to make a doctor tear up his license to practice and look for another profession.”

“Try cowboying,” she retorted drily. “I'd love to see you thrown from the back of a bucking bronc.”

“As you were?”

“I wasn't thrown! Fanny tripped…or something. I fell, but I wasn't thrown! For your information, I've
never
been thrown.”

“In that case you must've been riding sawhorses,” Noah drawled. “For
your
information, I'm a good rider and have no
intention of getting thrown for your amusement. Now, shut up, sit still and let me wrap your hand.”

Maddie fumed over his orders—over the superior way in which he issued orders was more like it—and she had all she could do to stop herself from belting him a good one. Not that she went around socking men, but had she ever before met one that made the prospect of slapping him silly actually seem fair and just? And deserved. Oh, yes, if anyone deserved a clout to the jaw, it was Noah Martin. Could he possibly be as rude and overbearing with his regular patients as he was with her?

Maddie kept a close and wary eye on him while he once again inspected her injured hand, and when he turned it over for a look at her palm, she winced.

Noah caught her reaction, lifted his gaze to meet hers and said, “Turning your hand is so painful?”

Maddie took a breath and nodded without breaking eye contact. He had the bluest eyes she'd ever seen, and along with their glorious color, his eyes were bright with intelligence and something she could only describe as supreme masculinity.

Noah, who was again admiring the deep-green color of Maddie Kincaid's eyes, was having similar thoughts about her femaleness. He told himself that he wasn't thrilled with the electricity suddenly dancing around the two of them, and yet there was that tingle deep in his body that was clearly a thrill of some sort. Something flashed in his brain, then, a huge red neon sign repeated the word Danger… Danger, as though every heartbreak he'd suffered over Felicia was poised and panting to attack him again.

He tore his gaze free of Maddie's and reached for the roll of bandage he'd placed on the table. Unaware that his lips had become tense and his facial expression hard as rock, he set to work wrapping her hand.

Maddie blinked as though she'd just stepped out of a trance.
She felt hot and cold and prickly and on edge, one very weird combination of feelings and emotions, and in a dazed sort of way she questioned what had just occurred. Noah had been looking at her not as a doctor but as a man! And what had she done in return? She'd sat there like some mindless ninny who simpered whenever
any
attractive man looked her way! She didn't simper, dammit, she didn't, so what really had just taken place? What force had kept their gazes locked for…for how long? A second? An eternity?

Noah's head was bent over her hand, only inches from her chin, actually, and it was almost impossible to avoid looking at his hair. It was thick and shiny and smelled wonderfully clean. At the same time that she was breathing in the scent that was uniquely Noah Martin's, Maddie realized how gentle was his touch as he wrapped her hand. He might talk and act like a grump, and even put on a grump's face while speaking with a patient—or, at least, with her—but he couldn't disguise his naturally gentle touch in tending an injury. He was, obviously, a physician through and through, although the fact that he'd said that he liked riding horses was rather interesting.

Face it, she told herself,
he's
interesting! All of him, his looks, his profession and yes, even his forbidding personality. And don't forget that he has a sense of humor even if the only proof you've seen of it was when he laughed at you. Actually, you've never met a more challenging man, and maybe a challenge matters. It mattered in your career choice, so why wouldn't it matter in a personal relationship?

A personal relationship with Noah Martin, the man who could hands down take the intruder-of-the-year award, if there was such a thing? Maddie nearly choked on that totally nonsensical idea. The man didn't like her, for God's sake. So what if he'd looked into her eyes? He'd probably been seeking signs of fever or fatigue or whatever doctors thought might be lurking in the depths of a patient's eyes.

“There, all done,” Noah said after applying the last clip to secure the bandage. “How does it feel?”