Marked for Marriage (21 page)

And still she was glad to see him. She wilted internally when she realized that she just might be starting to understand both of them, and it was always scary when a woman realized that she could be falling for a man whose only feelings for her were below his belt.

“How about it?” Noah asked, wondering what in devil was happening behind her gorgeous green eyes. Obviously, she was doing some heavy-duty thinking, but how much mental mauling did a simple invitation to eat Chinese food require?

“The China House puts out great food,” he added, hoping to whet her appetite.

Maddie delayed giving him an answer for another few moments, during which she lamented his stunning good looks. Along with that, did he have to
exude
sex appeal? Put simply, Dr. Noah Martin was a lot for her to cope with, especially when she recalled how easily he'd seduced her last night. Was she dimwitted enough to play with fire again after getting burned once? Lord above, she wasn't hoping for a rematch, was she?

No way! In fact, she would just love for him to make another pass so she could put him in his place once and for all.

Oh, yeah. That possibility and its accompanying imagery were just too inviting to pass up. There was that ambiguity again, she realized. She was glad to see him and would still love the chance to slap him down to size! Noah wasn't the only complicated person in this part of the world, obviously.

In the next instant Maddie felt drained. She couldn't think of anything worse than another mean-minded fight with Noah Martin or anyone else. As for slapping him down to size, or putting him in his place, she simply didn't have the heart or the energy for either. And so she gathered all of her best emotional components and became the grown-up that she'd been before meeting Dr. Noah Martin.

“I love Chinese food. Come on in,” she said with such cool self-confidence that she mentally patted herself on the back.

Noah was both surprised by and appreciative of her poise, and he climbed the two steps into the trailer, noting that Maddie squeezed herself against the wall so he wouldn't brush against her on his way in. Her behavior was fine with him, for he wasn't there to pressure, lure or sweet-talk her into anything. While she pulled the door closed, he set the sack on the dinette table.

“There are chopsticks in the sack, but I'd rather have a fork,” he said, speaking casually so she would understand that he was in exactly the same place that she was, as far as anything even remotely personal went between them. There remained a question in his mind about whether he'd done any pressuring last night—it seemed to him as though the responsibility for last night's affair should be divided equally—but Maddie could think he'd come back for more lovemaking and
that simply wasn't the case. “Would you happen to have a fork or two out here?”

Maddie gave him an incredulous look. “What do you think I eat with, ice cream or swizzle sticks? I
live
in this trailer.”

Noah frowned slightly. “You told me that before, didn't you?”

“I believe I did. Do you doubt it?” Maddie went into a drawer for some cutlery and paper napkins. “You're ordinarily so positive about everything that I find it hard to believe you would ever doubt your own memory.”

Noah tried to study her on the sly while taking the cartons of food from the sack. He'd admired Maddie's aplomb only moments ago, but had it all been an act? Was she as angry with him tonight as she'd been last night and pretending—or trying to pretend—that everything was forgotten and fine?

“Actually, Maddie, I'm not positive about much of anything where you're concerned.”

Maddie was laying out the napkins and forks. She looked up from the table and straight into Noah's eyes. “Now why on earth would you be positive about everything else and uncertain about me?” she asked with a slightly disdainful toss of her head as she returned to her cabinets for two plates and some large spoons.

“You don't quite believe me, do you?” Noah took off his jacket and then didn't know what to do with it in this small place.

“Put it on the bed,” Maddie told him. “It's through that door.”

Noah walked through the door and found himself in an efficiently planned bathroom. That small room opened onto the bedroom, and he saw a good-size bed bearing a soft-looking blue comforter with matching pillowcases and what appeared to be a long closet behind mirrored doors. Laying his jacket on the bed, he hurried back to the kitchen area of the trailer.

“This is really nice,” he said sincerely. “It has everything.”

“Yes, I'm very comfortable traveling and calling this home. Sit down. Everything's ready.”

Noah slid into one side of the dining booth, and Maddie took the other side. They both took servings from the cartons, then began eating.

“Oh!” Maddie exclaimed. “Would you like something to drink? I shopped today, so there's milk, iced tea and soft drinks. And water, of course.”

“I'll have the tea, thanks,” Noah said.

Maddie got up for the tea and two glasses. Seated again, she began eating. “This
is
good Chinese,” she said. “You called the restaurant the China House?”

“Yes. It's over on Third Street, near the bowling alley. Apparently it wasn't there when you lived here.”

“No, it wasn't.”

They ate without speaking a while, then Noah said, “You didn't answer my question, Maddie.”

“What question?”

“I asked if you believed that I wasn't positive about anything where you're concerned.”

She shrugged. “It shouldn't matter if I do or do not believe that.”

“No, I guess it shouldn't.” Noah gave her a long look. “I say things to you that sometimes don't make a whole lot of sense.”

“You do things that don't make much sense, either.”

“If you're talking about last night, you did everything I did.”

“Except treat you like Typhoid Mary after it was over,” she said flatly.

Noah was appalled. “Maddie, if I did that I'm more sorry than I can say!”

“You did worse than that, Noah. You said you'd made love to a child and you weren't talking about age!”

He looked regretful and rather helpless. “You're so young.”

“You're hardly ancient,” she retorted.

“I'm thirty-five.”

“Okay, so you're twelve years older than I am, but that wasn't at the heart of what you said last night. I know I'm not educated the way you are, and I have no doubt at all that you've lived a much different life than I have. But I don't deserve any slams over our differences.”

“You're right, you don't, and I swear I didn't mean what I said the way you took it. Maddie, you convey the kind of innocence that vanishes with time. Hell, I sure don't have that quality anymore, and neither do most people my age. Every year takes its toll on a person, and so does every bad experience.”

Maddie laid down her fork and took a drink of tea before saying, “You've hinted at having had a bad experience before.”

Noah looked surprised because he truly believed that he'd never given anyone in Whitehorn so much as a dram of personal information. “I have?” he asked doubtfully. “Are you sure?”

“I didn't make it up, Doc.”

Noah grinned. “See? A comeback like that is exactly what I meant when I said you possessed a charming innocence.”

“You said the word
charming?
No, I don't think you did.”

“All right, I'm saying it now.”

“Let's put my ‘charming innocence' on hold for a few minutes while you tell me about your bad experience,” Maddie said. “Only a suggestion, of course, but I'm naturally nosy,
and I would love to hear what caused that sourpuss expression you usually walk around with.”

“Thanks for sharing that complimentary opinion,” he retorted drily. “Does my heart good to be put down every so often.”

“Was that a put-down?” Maddie deliberately shaped a thoughtful, speculative expression on her face, then said, “Maybe it made you feel sort of the way I felt last night when you told me I wasn't good enough for you.”

“My God, I never said that!”

“I'll forget you
did
say it if you tell me about your bad experience.”

“Maddie, I never said you weren't good enough for me. Do you think I run around the country sleeping with women whom I truly believe don't come up to my standards?”

Maddie put her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand and then batted her eyelashes at him. “Goodness, but I do like your gentlemanly manner of turning a phrase, I really do.” Again her eyelashes fluttered.

“You're being silly.”

“That's my charming innocence at play, Doc.” Maddie dropped the act and picked up her fork. “Apparently you're not going to tell me anything about yourself, which is fine. After all, I don't really want anything from you, and it's a dead certainty that you don't want anything from me. Except for, maybe, another roll in the sack.”

Shocked, Noah stared across the dinette table at her. “That's not fair, Maddie.”

“Not very ladylike, either, right? Well, put this in your pipe and smoke it, Doc. I know a word that I would bet almost anything has never entered your mind.”

“That's absurd.”

“No, it's commitment.”

“You're saying I don't know the meaning of the word
commitment?
Maddie, the little you know about me wouldn't cover the head of a pin.”

She regarded him calmly. “I agree. Fix it, Doctor. Make it all better.”

“Yeah, by telling you things about myself that no one in Montana knows. I happen to like my privacy, which I wouldn't have for five minutes if I told my history to even one person in this gossipy little town.”

“Don't put me in that category, Noah. I may be a lot of things, but a gossip isn't one of them. Besides, I won't be around Whitehorn for very much longer.”

Noah felt as though he'd just received an electrical shock. He'd known all along that her time in Whitehorn was limited—been glad of it in several memorable instances, to be honest. But at the present startling moment, envisioning the town, his work and every other facet of his life without Maddie, her problems, her brass and sass and her big green eyes caused a bleak and empty sensation in his gut. When he added the memory of last night's steamy lovemaking and then Maddie's ability to make him laugh to the mix, that empty feeling became so huge that Noah's gentler emotions—the ones that governed his tear ducts—threatened to overcome him. Deeply shaken over something so unexpected and rare as an urge to shed tears, he blinked several times and then stared numbly across the table at Maddie.

She felt the massive change in the way he was looking at her. It was as though he'd suddenly taken on a different personality and become a man she'd never met!

“Uh,” she stammered. “Did I suddenly sprout horns or something? I mean, you're looking at me in a very strange way.”

Noah was battling the worst emotional upheaval he'd suffered in years and asking himself what had brought on so much distress. Maddie's mentioning something he already
knew seemed like a pretty lame excuse to get maudlin and self-pitying. Life would go on after Maddie Kincaid left town, after all.

But he realized that was the crux of this whole thing—life would go on. Exactly as it had been before Maddie's rather tornado-like explosion into his humdrum existence. When she was no longer around he would get up early every morning and go to work. He'd return home at night, read or watch a little TV and go to bed. When time and scheduling permitted, he would drive to the gym at the high school and work himself into a sweat with the facility's state-of-the-art exercise equipment or by taking a good long run around its indoor track.

And the really stressful part of examining his daily routine at this particular moment was that there was nothing wrong with it, other than its incompleteness. It was like a fishing line without a hook, a bow without an arrow, a road with no destination. Granted, he could blame no one but himself for what he knew now was an imperfect, inadequate way of life, but that didn't make this sudden spate of knowledge any less painful.

He cleared his throat. “You don't have the horns, I do.”

Maddie's eyes widened. “Invisible horns?”

“Internal horns, Maddie. Look, if you're still interested in my past, I'm prepared to fill you in.”

She regretted pushing him into this and reached across the table to touch his wrist, a simple gesture that, from her point of view, indicated remorse. “Noah, you don't have to tell me anything,” she said quietly. To her intense surprise, he covered her hand with his own.

“Touching you wasn't a pass,” she said.

“Neither is my touching you at this moment,” Noah said.

“I don't know how you did it…or maybe I just don't know the whys and what-fors of the whole thing…but you've changed me.”

Their gazes locked. “And just how did I do that?” she asked softly.

“By being you, I suppose.”

“Just by being my own charming, innocent self, I changed you into…into what, Noah?”

“You're not taking me seriously.”

Maddie pulled her hand back and sat up straighter. “Do you
want
me to take you seriously?” There was intensity in his eyes that shook her foundation. “I…I guess I don't know what's going on here.” Her voice wasn't altogether steady, but she'd not seen this side of Noah before, and it unnerved her.

Noah's gaze never strayed from her face. “Would you like to know? I think I would. Maddie, it's obvious that neither of us really understands why we did what we did last night. And I sure as hell don't comprehend my behavior—” Noah paused to clear his throat again, proving to Maddie that he was as unnerved as she was by this discussion “—after it was over.”