Marked for Marriage (22 page)

“I comprehend it. You so regretted seducing me that your only recourse was cruelty.”

“You're not really putting all the blame for last night on me, are you? I didn't seduce you. The whole thing was by mutual consent and, uh, participation. Maddie, you were hot to trot. No more so than I was, but then I'm willing to share the responsibility and you're not.”

Maddie's face flamed. “Could you be any cruder? I was
not
hot to trot! I've never been hot to trot in my life.”

“Damn it, don't fly off the handle over semantics. Maddie, any way we look at it, or whatever either of us calls it, you can't deny that we were hot for each other last night.”

She tore her gaze from his. “Let's change the subject. You said you were ready to talk about your past, so I—I'm ready to listen.”

Noah drew a long breath. He'd said it all right, but was he
really ready to talk to anyone about Felicia? But he'd been truthful when he'd said that he would like to know what was happening between him and Maddie, and maybe the place to start that learning process was years in his past.

“All right,” he said in a very low but not completely controlled voice. “I'll talk about myself, but I'd like you to do the same. Will you?”

“I have no deep dark secrets, Noah, but if you'd like to hear all about the adventures of a rodeo queen, I'll bare my soul.”

“You're making fun of me.”

“No, I'm making fun of
me!
Heavens, don't you have a funny bone? Didn't you catch my ‘rodeo queen' reference?”

“Are you a rodeo queen? I mean, I've never even attended a rodeo. I'm not sure what a rodeo queen is.”

Maddie shook her head in exaggerated dismay. “You poor dear. Obviously your education was sorely lacking in fun and excitement. Promise me one thing. There are rodeos all over Montana during good weather. Go and see one this spring. Do you think you can do that?”

“To hear you talk, I might even enjoy it.”

“You will, I guarantee it. Now, let's finish eating while you tell me all about Noah Martin.” Maddie looked across the table and into his eyes once again. “I really am interested, Noah.”

The fact that he honestly believed her—a surprise in itself—loosened Noah's tongue, and he began talking.

N
oah began his narration with a brief reference to having had “loving and affluent parents.” By the time Noah had reached his middle teens, his father had owned a chain of new-car agencies throughout California. “Dad worked himself to death, and Mother lived only two short years longer. She simply had no wish to go on after he died. I was in my senior year of college when I lost her.”

Maddie thought of her own sad past. Losing both parents in a car crash at age thirteen was actually much worse than Noah's loss. At least he'd been an adult. She'd been a child, a frightened little girl that only partially understood the blow she'd received.

But she said nothing about her own sorrow—said nothing at all, in fact—and pushed around the remaining food on her plate with her eyes on the fork in her hand. This was Noah's time to speak, although she couldn't figure out for the life of her why he wanted to. She'd taunted him about that “bad
experience” he'd supposedly suffered, but she hadn't done it maliciously, nor with a serious wish to hear his entire life story.

“I'd chosen medicine for my career when I was still in grade school and never once wavered from that decision,” Noah said, embarking on that particular chapter of his story.

Maddie continued to listen without interruption, but other than losing his parents—indeed a tragedy, but one that everyone has to endure at some point—Noah had lived like a prince! The best schools, the best cars, the best of everything! In fact, the more Maddie heard of Noah's college and medical school days and nights—the long tedious days in classrooms and
so
much reading and studying—the harder became her heart. Compared to her life, Noah's had been a walk in the park.

But then she realized that Noah wasn't telling all. Was he deliberately omitting some of the more interesting details of those years? More precisely, he hadn't mentioned girls even once, and no college or med student with his looks and money to spend had to go without female companionship, to put it nicely.

Maddie held up her hand, and Noah broke off in mid-sentence. “What about girls?” Maddie asked bluntly.

“Well…sure…there were girls,” Noah admitted. “No one important, though.”

“No one important. Not ever?”

Noah's stomach sank. He didn't want to tell Maddie about Felicia, even though he'd been working up to doing exactly that. Now, suddenly, the very thought of committing such emotional suicide nauseated him. What was wrong with him tonight? If a man had any feelings at all for a woman, he didn't talk about
other
women. For certain he didn't go into detail about the one big love of his life and how crushed he'd been when it was over. That kind of story might be told after a man
and woman were solid with each other, trusting in each other's love and unafraid of his or her partner's old memories, but even then it was an iffy subject. He and Maddie Kincaid had hardly reached that golden stage of trust and candor. What's more, did he even
want
to attain that all-inclusive status with Maddie?

What he was was a damned mess, he decided, not knowing what he wanted from anyone or anything. So what if he wasn't happy? What was so great about walking around with a silly grin on your face? Well, this confession session had certainly come to a screeching halt, and thank God it had.

“Not ever,” he said with such stoic sincerity that Maddie knew he was lying.

She sighed. Noah's body language revealed the truth, even if he'd changed his mind about relating it to her. She was disappointed enough to cry, because his “bad experience” was only a woman, and who gave a damn how many women he'd romanced through the years? She already knew that he was the love-'em-and-leave-'em kind of guy, so this was no revelation.

Actually, she would have enjoyed telling him to get out of her trailer and her life, but she'd been there and done that quite a few times already, and he hadn't paid the slightest attention to her demands.

But she was not going to sit there and listen to any more of his self-pitying version of a past that most people would give their eyeteeth to have lived. And if there was any way to accomplish it, she was going to put him on the spot about his so-called “bad experience” and not feel guilty about doing it, either.

“Please. Go on with your story,” she said softly, hoping to lead him into the trap he so richly deserved, the big liar.

Noah's mind raced. Without the Felicia segment, how
would he explain leaving San Francisco and moving to Whitehorn?

“Are you having trouble sifting through your memories to exclude the parts you don't want me to know?” Maddie asked in the most sickeningly sweet voice she could devise. Her phony smile was equally as saccharine.

Noah's face became crimson, and he mumbled, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Maddie widened her eyes. “You really don't? Well, I suppose I might have misjudged you. Very well, why don't you just skip to that bad experience, which was actually the only thing I had any curiosity about, if you'd care to remember the beginning of this conversation. I mean, your hell-raising college days aren't of much interest to me, and why would they be? Oh, wait, I forgot. All you did in college and med school was study, study, study and put up with dull and boring classes all day every day. I'm such a ninny, but you probably knew that before now.”

Noah knew when he was the butt of someone's joke, and Maddie was sitting across the dinette table and making fun of him right to his face.

“You're especially good at making a man feel like a fool, aren't you?” he said.

“If I am, that's the first I heard of it,” Maddie replied drily. “Are you going to finish your story or not?”

“It's finished,” Noah said flatly, and started to slide from the center of the bench seat to the open end to get up, but then he changed his mind. “Maybe it's your turn.”

Maddie shrugged. “Fine with me. I believe I said before that I have nothing to hide, so is there anything in particular you'd like to know?”

Noah looked at her for a long time while wondering what he was really doing in Maddie's face tonight. Did he want to know about the men who'd preceded him in her bed? She
hadn't been a virgin last night, so there had definitely been at least one guy, and with her career and independent attitude, the list could be long. No, he didn't want to know anything about that, not one damned thing.

Shaking his head, he got up from the booth. “No more conversation tonight, okay? I'm tired and it's time I went home.”

Though surprised by his abrupt change of pace, Maddie turned her thoughts back to the mundane. “There's a lot of food left in these cartons. Take it with you.”

“No, thanks. If you don't want it, just throw it out.”

Maddie slid from the booth and stood, as well. “By the way, I called Dr. Herrera's office and made an appointment to see him.”

“Glad to hear it. I should have asked sooner, but how are you feeling?”

“Other than the painful twinges in my left knee, I feel fully recovered. Can I stop wrapping my hand?”

“Wait and see what Dr. Herrera says about that.” Noah took a step toward the door, then stopped for another question. “How did you get your truck and trailer back so soon?”

Maddie explained what had occurred in brief terms and then remarked, “If this Chinook blows all night, there'll hardly be any snow left by morning.”

“I won't miss it.” He gave her a hard look. “Are you really feeling all right?”

“Do you think I'm lying?”

“You've lied before.”

Her eyes suddenly blazed. “And you haven't?”

It was the challenge in her voice that caused Noah to do what happened next. Taking the one long step separating them in that small space, he wrapped his arm completely around her neck and then bent forward a little to press his lips to hers. It was a long kiss that went from simple to complex in two
seconds, and after that got both of them so worked up and breathless that they clung to each other for support.

It finally ended because they had to have air. Maddie gasped, “Why did you do that?”

“Good question,” Noah said. Much taller than she, he had to look down to probe the depths of her eyes. “I don't have all the answers…yet…but a few things are beginning to add up. For one, the time between med school and the present was a meaningless void, and strange as it might seem to you, I just now realized it. You opened my eyes, Maddie, and what I'd like to know is how someone I didn't know a week ago…less than that…could alter my outlook on life and on a few specifics that seemed earthshaking and weren't. What did you do to cause such a transformation?”

With her head tilted back against his arm, Maddie returned his penetrating gaze. “You're giving me too much credit…or too much blame. I'm not sure which,” she said in a low and husky voice. Her insides felt liquid and soft, a sensual sensation caused by his ongoing embrace, from which she could have freed herself and didn't. “But believe this. I never set out to do anything to you. If you've lost emotional contact with events that directed the course of your life, such as the reason you moved to Whitehorn, that's rather sad, but I didn't cause it.”

“Don't take this wrong but I'm afraid you did. I was a starving man before meeting you.”

Maddie frowned. “You're speaking Greek.”

Noah smiled just a little. “It sort of sounds like Greek to me, too, and I'm not sure how to translate it.” His smile faded. “I wasn't going physically hungry, Maddie, I was on an emotionally barren plateau. You brought me down to earth again.”

“And exactly how did I do that?”

“You're not buying into a word I'm saying, are you?”

“Obviously I sounded dubious.”

“Very. Okay, let's drop it for now.” Noah gave her a quick but sweet kiss on the mouth, then backed away from her.

“When is your appointment with Herrera?”

Though she was reeling a bit from kisses and conversation she didn't understand, along with emotionally perturbing feelings, Maddie managed a reasonably intelligent reply. “Day after tomorrow. In the morning.”

“Good.” Noah again started for the door, and again he turned around before opening it. “May I drop in tomorrow night?”

“You're asking?”

“And your eyes are big as saucers because I did. Guess it's best for me to stay in character and just barge in,” Noah said drily. He started to leave for a third time, and stopped himself again. “Do you know that you left the house unlocked?”

“I have the key with me, so I must have thought I'd locked it. I was only going to do a few things out here and that was hours and hours ago. I guess time got away from me. You know, I love it when the wind rocks the trailer at night, so I think I'll sleep out here. Would you mind locking the house on the way to your car?”

“You'd rather stay out here than in the house?” Noah looked rather incredulous.

“I just keep throwing you curves, don't I? Well, relax and chalk that one up to another of Maddie Kincaid's quirky personality traits.”

She looked so damned cute that Noah almost went back for another kiss. He stayed where he was, though, because this time a kiss might not be enough. “I'm kind of quirky, too, you know,” he said. “Right now I'm quirky as hell over you.”

Maddie sucked in a sudden breath, because that was a flirtatiously cute pass if she'd ever heard one, and if he really pressed her to make love with him again, she'd probably do
it. She spoke pertly but firmly, as though her stomach hadn't just taken a drop and her thoughts weren't in the bedroom.

“Good night, Dr. Half-and-Half.”

Noah cocked his head. “And that means?”

“Half-forthright, half-evasive. Don't worry, it's not a fatal disease or a sin. My diagnosis is that you'll be back to your normal unsmiling self by morning.”

“My
unsmiling
self?” He looked wounded.

“Oh, for pity sake, don't try that con on me, Doc. You hardly ever smile and you know it.”

His rebuttal was a big, bright smile that showed off his perfect teeth and lit up his incredible blue eyes. “What d'ya call this?” he asked.

“It's a smile, but you really should check your face for cracks, 'cause it's sure not the norm.”

“You're the sassiest little chick I've ever known.”

“
Chick!
Now there's a shock. If anyone had ever asked me if you used such a juvenile term for the fairer sex, I would have denied it to the death.”

Chuckling—surprising Maddie again—Noah finally left. Maddie returned to the dinette and resumed the seat she'd used during dinner. She was overloaded with questions that she maybe
should
have asked, but she could only pry so much, which, of course, left her perplexed and uneasily mystified about Noah Martin. He'd been emotionally starved before meeting her? What in heaven's name was
that
supposed to mean?

 

The wind rocked the trailer most of the night just as Maddie had looked forward to, but it didn't lull her into the lovely sleep it always had before. Rather, she slept restlessly, waking up over and over and then lying there for what seemed ages before drifting off again. The problem, she finally decided, was that she had far too much on her mind to sleep soundly.

For one thing, she'd rarely had to see a doctor during her twenty-three years, and since the accident, that was practically all she did. Not that she'd invited Noah to stick his nose into her medical problems, but however innocent his initial involvement had been, there he was. She really had to see Dr. Herrera as her knee worried her more than had all of her other injuries combined, so she wasn't through with medical professionals yet.