Marked for Marriage Read online

  Stories of family and romance beneath the Big Sky!

  Was Maddie so desperate that she’d started thinking Noah Martin was interesting?

  Good grief, she thought in abject self-disgust. She could have men by the droves, if she wasn’t always so picky. She insolently lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes right back at Noah. “Thanks for the wrap, Doc. But it looked to me as though you enjoyed opening my robe just a little too much.”

  Noah was thunderstruck. Jumping up, he gathered his things and strode angrily over to his medical bag.

  Maddie’s heart sank. She’d gone too far. “I…I…” she stammered.

  Noah swung around, his face furious and his eyes glowing like live embers. “I won’t demean myself by even attempting to deny your charge.”

  Maddie, who rarely cried, suddenly felt tears drizzling down her cheeks. “I…feel like I’ve lost touch with everything that has been real and good in my life.”

  Noah walked over to Maddie. He cradled her head in his hands and tenderly pressed his lips to hers. He felt her startled reaction, but in the next instant she was kissing him back….

  JACKIE MERRITT

  Marked for Marriage

  JACKIE MERRITT

  is still writing, just not with the speed and constancy of years past. She and her husband are living in southern Nevada again, falling back on old habits of loving the long, warm or slightly cool winters and trying almost desperately to head north for the months of July and August, when the fiery sun bakes people and cacti alike. She has written dozens of novels for Silhouette Books.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Prologue

  Dr. Noah Martin, internal specialist and surgeon extraordinaire, pulled his dark-green SUV to a stop directly in front of Mark Kincaid’s home. Instead of immediately getting out of his vehicle, Noah left the engine and heater running—the outside temperature on this early-February day was hovering in the low twenties. He frowned uneasily at the house, as though the attractive structure—blue-gray siding, red brick trim—contained something ominous. In truth, the only thing it contained—beyond furnishings and personal possessions belonging to Mark and his bride, Darcy—was a young woman named Maddie who happened to be Mark’s sister.

  Noah’s promise to look in on Maddie while Mark and Darcy were on their honeymoon weighed about ten thousand pounds, and at the moment Noah would give almost anything to have stumbled upon some reason for not doing this favor for Mark. It would have to be something feasible, of course. Noah didn’t have a trainload of friends, mostly due to his loner personality and disdain for the human race in general, but he and Mark had hit it off from their first meeting, unusual for Noah.

  Truth was, Mark Kincaid was the closest thing Noah had to a real friend in this little backwater town of Whitehorn, Montana, to which he’d moved to escape the ghosts of a love gone sour. He had learned, of course, that changing one’s residence did not eradicate memory—a painful lesson in the implacability of human emotion. There were moments when the image of beautiful, sophisticated Felicia, his former fiancée and the love of his life, was so real in his mind that it seemed as though he could reach out a hand and touch her. The utter foolishness of that sort of mind game never failed to anger him, and there were many, many days when he did his job without smiling even once.

  Not that he would take Felicia back if she suddenly appeared in Whitehorn and pleaded with him to mend their broken relationship. She’d left him flat, announcing with her regal chin high in the air in a symbolic effort to look down on him—ridiculous when she was five foot five and he was six feet tall—that she was tired of playing second fiddle to his medical career. It was over for her, and nothing he’d said had altered her decision.

  The whole thing—giving a woman everything he had to give, rushing to comply with her slightest whim, worrying that he loved her far more than she loved him, and on and on ad infinitum until the breakup—had created a brand-new Noah Martin. As a snake sheds its skin, Noah shed all ties to the past—or so he’d believed when he traded San Francisco for a small town in Montana.

  He’d found out differently, and while he did his best to combat bitterness, it was an undeniable part of his personality. He angered easily, resented trivial slights that he wouldn’t even have noticed before meeting Felicia and ultimately falling under her spell. And perhaps most unfortunate of all, his former commendable bedside manner had vanished, and other than the medical side of his relationship with patients, he really didn’t like them.

  Now, on this raw February afternoon, staring broodingly at the front of Mark’s house he again regretted a promise he couldn’t get out of keeping. It didn’t alleviate Noah’s bad mood to realize that the main reason he’d agreed to this annoying interruption in his regular routine was Mark’s worried comments about Maddie having had some kind of accident during a rodeo. The details had slid through Noah’s mind, but the gist of the conversation had been that he and Darcy could not leave on their scheduled honeymoon without someone dependable keeping an eye on Maddie.

  “I’ll tell you now,” Mark had said, “Maddie’s a handful. But I think you just might be the one person around who can handle her.”

  Noah narrowed his eyes and wondered exactly what “handling Maddie Kincaid” would entail. He sure as hell didn’t need another woman enforcing her will over his. In fact, since the charade with Felicia, he’d made it a point to stay completely away from the opposite sex. Except in a professional setting, of course.

  Thinking that Mark was going to owe him big-time for this, Noah turned off the ignition and got out. The outside cold, made more penetrating by a gusting north wind, turned his breath to freezing fog. There was a thin layer of snow on the ground—frozen into tiny ice pellets, Noah was certain—and every step he took made a uniquely wintry crunching sound. He walked to the front door and rang the bell. No one came to the door, nor could Noah hear any movement from inside.

  Frowning, he left the small front porch and walked around the house to the side door. From there he could see a long white trailer and a strikingly handsome white one-ton pickup truck residing in the extra parking space Mark had behind his garage. The truck sparked Noah’s interest. It had chrome running boards and tail pipes, chrome rooftop lights, and probably every other conceivable add-on, Noah decided. It was an obviously costly vehicle, and when he gave the trailer another look, he thought the same about it. Apparently Mark’s sister was not here because of a lack of funds, but then no one had said she was. She was here to recuperate from an accident. A rodeo accident, Noah thought, puzzling about something that he probably should already know, given Mark’s concern for his baby sister.

  Certain that he’d get the lowdown from Maddie Kincaid herself, he knocked. After a few seconds he knocked again, and then again. Muttering several choice curse words under his breath about “some women’s lack of consideration for a man’s time,” he impatiently yanked off his glove and dug through his pockets for the key Mark had given him.

  Unlocking the door, he stepped into the house—more precisely, into the messiest kitchen he’d ever seen. “Good Lord,” he mumbled. Mark and Darcy had only been gone one day and Maddie had done this much damage? How injured could she be? There were pans covered with dregs of food on the stove and counters, dirty dishes and cutlery in the sink and on th
e counters, and empty soup cans spilling out of a full trash container.

  One thing wasn’t in the kitchen—Maddie Kincaid. Shaking his head disgustedly at the unwashed dishes scattered around the room, Noah went looking for her. He spotted a lump under a big soft comforter on the sofa in the living room and decided that he’d found her.

  Maddie had awakened just enough to know that someone was in the house. Groggy from the pain pills she’d been taking as prescribed, she nonetheless felt suddenly frightened. Mark and Darcy had left for their honeymoon. Had that happened this morning? Yesterday morning? Well, whatever morning it had been, they weren’t back already. And the doors were locked! Mark had locked everything up nice and tight before his and Darcy’s departure, and Maddie had had no cause to unlock anything.

  With her heart pounding hard enough to hear, Maddie moved the comforter a fraction so she could at least get a glimpse of the intruder. She’d been sleeping with the soft down-filled blanket over her head, because she hadn’t been really warm since she’d arrived, even with the gas furnace going full blast. She’d actually forgotten how cold February could get in Montana, which was odd when she’d grown up with blustery north winds and temperatures that could bring tears to the eyes of the most stalwart—and warmly dressed—outdoorsman. But apparently she’d spent too many winters in the southern states to expect instant acclimation.

  Peering through the tiny gap she’d created within the folds of the comforter encapsulating her, Maddie saw a man. A tall man with broad shoulders in winter garb, who appeared to be looking in her direction, although she couldn’t be sure that he realized the bulky comforter contained a person. If she didn’t move again—maybe he hadn’t seen her cautiously create the viewing gap she was looking through—would he eventually go away without harming her?

  Dear God, why had he broken into this particular house? Did he know that Mark and Darcy had gone away and was planning to take everything they owned in their absence? Even if he wasn’t aware that she was staying there and, in fact, lying on the sofa and watching him this very second, could she do nothing and let him steal Mark and Darcy blind? What she should do was to leap up, grab a poker from the stand by the fireplace and whack him over his thieving head.

  She could see herself doing it, maybe even knocking him silly without the poker. She could leap up, whirl around and kick him in the chin, do another whirl and give him a good one in the chest with her heel. Another kick to the groin should just about finish him off.

  It was pure fantasy. She was in no condition to do a super-heroine leap off the sofa, let alone any dramatic whirls and high kicks. As for using the poker for a weapon, it was too far away. This villainous cretin certainly wasn’t going to stand still and wait for her to limp over to the fireplace, for Pete’s sake.

  Moving just her eyes, Maddie searched for something closer with which to defend her honor—and possibly her life—along with her brother’s possessions. The paperweight on the end table would have to do, she decided, and sucking in a big breath for courage, she threw back the comforter, stumbled to her feet and lunged for the paperweight.

  Noah could hardly believe his eyes. A tiny little woman wearing what looked to be a set of her brother’s two-piece long johns and huge woolen stockings was assuming an attack position, with her weapon being a paperweight! Her short, light-brown hair was spiky, totally disarrayed, and the right side of her face was every color of the rainbow, obviously in varying stages of the healing process. A soft cast was on her right hand and halfway up her forearm, and besides all of that, the paperweight she was threatening him with in her left hand was one with artificial snow in it. The “snow” kept swirling within the globe because Maddie—she must be Maddie—was so unsteady on her feet that her hand couldn’t stop her weapon from wavering.

  Maddie Kincaid was truly the most hilarious sight Noah had ever seen, and he started laughing. He laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks. He laughed so hard that he could just barely stand erect and so he fell into an overstuffed chair. He laughed until his sides ached, and all the while Maddie stood there weaving back and forth trying very hard to look vicious and dangerous, which kept feeding Noah’s laughter.

  Finally Maddie merely looked disgusted, which was exactly how she felt. What kind of lunatic moron was this guy? Breaking into a house and then laughing himself sick because there was someone home to defend it and he’d believed it to be vacant had to indicate some sort of mental problem. He probably belonged in a padded cell! Somehow she needed to get to one of the phones in the house and call the police, but…but…to Maddie’s chagrin, she started blacking out.

  She looked suddenly pale, Noah saw and, recognizing the signs of an impending faint, he stopped laughing and made a dive for this oddball little woman. The paperweight dropped from her lifeless hand and thudded on the carpet. Noah got to her before she ended up next to the little globe and swung her up into his arms to lay her back on the sofa.

  She couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds, he decided while tucking the comforter around her shoulders. Then he gently shook her and said, “Maddie? Come on, wake up. You only fainted.”

  Her eyelids fluttered open, and she found herself looking into the dark blue eyes of…of… She couldn’t give him a label, though heaven knew she was scared to death of the many horrible things he might be. Actually he didn’t look like an ax murderer or even a burglar—he was very good-looking, in fact—but then how many truly sinister people had she met in her twenty-three years?

  Then something clicked in her brain and she asked nervously, “Did you, uh, say my name?”

  “Yes. You’re Maddie, Mark Kincaid’s kid sister. I’m Noah Martin. Mark asked me to keep an eye on you while he and Darcy honeymoon in Europe.”

  “You’re a babysitter? My babysitter? No way, buster! And get your butt off of this sofa! In fact, get your butt out of this house!”

  Noah stood up. He understood now why Mark had described his sister as a “handful.” What he didn’t quite comprehend was why Mark thought he was the one person in Whitehorn who could deal with her!

  Chapter One

  Ten Days Earlier

  Maddie Kincaid loved the rodeo atmosphere. Sitting on her horse, Fanchon, because they would be performing in the barrel racing event in a few minutes, Maddie basked in the noise from the stands, the sounds of the horses and bulls in the holding pens and the mixture of odors, from hot popcorn to the sweat of nervous animals. Even Fanchon, or Fanny, as the mare was more commonly called, evidenced excitement.

  With her gloved hand Maddie stroked Fanny’s neck and murmured, “Hold on, girl. We’re up next. Stay calm.”

  Her touch always soothed the beautiful gray quarter horse mare, and Maddie let her gaze drift around to the men and women in jeans, boots and big hats awaiting their events. She could hear snatches of conversations and recognized the same thrill of competition in their voices that she felt in the pit of her stomach.

  A roar went up in the stands, and Maddie heard over the loudspeaker that Janie Weston had knocked over a barrel during her race, which meant that if Maddie made a good ride, she would again win the trophy and the purse. Barrel racing was Maddie’s specialty, and she could fill a small room with trophies, if she had a room. But her home was a long trailer that she pulled with a one-ton pickup truck. And so whenever she was in Austin, Texas, as she was now, she would go to her rented storage space and unload the trophies that she’d picked up since her last visit.

  Maddie never let herself get overly confident, nor did she ever even think hallelujah when her toughest competitor knocked herself out of the race. It could happen so easily, and it had happened to Maddie a time or two. Besides, rodeo contestants were, for the most part, good sports and great people. Maddie knew a lot of them by name, especially those that followed the rodeo circuit, as she did.

  Janie rode from the arena with a downcast expression, but when Maddie’s name was announced as the next contestant, she sent Maddie a thumbs-up.
r />   Maddie acknowledged Janie’s courtesy with a smile and a nod and urged Fanny forward. At the starting post, she again touched Fanny and spoke quietly. In seconds the blare of the starting horn put both Fanchon and Maddie into action. At lightning speed Fanny circled the first barrel and then the second. Every movement made by Fanny and Maddie was smooth and necessary. Maddie’s mind was totally focused on her race against the clock, and she barely heard the crowd now.

  Then something happened. Fanchon took a sudden nose dive and Maddie went flying. She landed hard on her right side and blacked out.

  The crowd fell silent, and the announcer didn’t have to shout to be heard. “Folks, Miss Maddie Kincaid ran into a bit of trouble. As you can see, the medics are putting her on a stretcher. They’ll see to it that Maddie is well cared for. I’ll keep y’all posted.”

  The rodeo continued, but Maddie knew nothing for a good ten minutes. When she came to she was in an ambulance with a wailing siren, lying on her back with an IV needle in her arm and an attendant watching her vital signs.

  “Fanchon,” she said weakly.

  “Your horse? She’s fine. Not even a scratch.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure.”

  Maddie closed her eyes. She couldn’t find a spot on her body that didn’t hurt and finally whispered, “Pain.”

  “Yes, I know,” the attendant said. “There’s a mild sedative in your IV drip, but we can’t give you anything stronger until you’re checked for concussion. Try to relax.”

  The rest of Maddie’s trip to the hospital was spent in “trying to relax.” But her body hurt like hell and her mind was clouded just enough to make sudden, clear thoughts jump out at her—especially any thought pertaining to Fanny. After all, when the man in the white suit didn’t know if she had a concussion or not, would he tell her the truth if Fanny had been seriously injured in their fall?