Marked for Marriage

by Jackie Merritt

  There was a telephone on the bedstand, and she tried not to jostle her sore and aching body while reaching for it. She needed a pain pill badly and knew that she should have taken the one offered by the nurse this morning, even though her own sheer bravado had convinced everyone that she was ready to go home. Truth was, if she knew for a fact that Fanny was being properly cared for, she would gladly stay in this bed for another night.

  After dialing Mark’s home and getting no answer, Maddie looked up his work number in the little address book she carried in her purse. Mark was a detective for the Whitehorn police department, and Maddie doubted that he’d be sitting at a desk hoping the phone would ring. To her surprise—which was accompanied by a sudden attack of nerves—the man who answered her call asked for her name and then told her to hang on a minute. Raising his voice, he said, “Hey, Mark, your sister’s on line three.”

  Almost at once Mark’s voice was in Maddie’s ear. “Hey, this is a nice surprise. Where’re you calling from?”

  “Austin, Texas. How are you?”

  “Couldn’t be better.”

  “Marriage agrees with you then.” Mark could still measure his marriage to Darcy Montague in weeks, and Maddie was extremely happy that he’d fallen head over heels for a woman who seemed so perfect for him.

  “More than I ever thought possible. So, what’s up with you?”

  “Uh, I had a little accident,” Maddie stammered, suddenly very uncertain about the wisdom of this call. “In the arena.”

  The tenor of Mark’s voice instantly changed, from that of a glad-you-called-just-to-say-hi brother to that of the protector he’d been to his baby sister all her life. Mark was thirty, seven years older than Maddie, and from the day of her birth he’d watched over her. That protective side of him was undoubtedly the reason he didn’t like her driving her truck all over the country, pulling her trailer and happily heading for the next rodeo.

  “How little is ‘little’?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Um…no major bone breaks…just a couple of tiny bones in my right hand.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “No,” she said weakly. “I’m pretty badly bruised. The doctor wants me to take it easy and to stay away from rodeo for a month, which is rather extreme, I believe, and—”

  “And nothing! Maddie, you do exactly as that doctor says, do you hear me? In fact, if you have to take it easy for a whole month, I want you to come home and do your recuperating in Darcy’s and my guest room.”

  “Well, of course,” Maddie drawled. “That’s exactly what newlyweds need, to share their little love nest with the groom’s sister. Mark—”

  “Stop right there! You’re at least fifteen hundred miles away and alone. Damn it, Maddie, if it were the other way around and it was me laid up and alone, you’d be here so fast my head would spin. Hey, I just thought of something. Are you calling on your cell phone from your trailer? We’ve got a really clear connection, which doesn’t usually happen when you call on your cell.”

  Maddie rolled her eyes. Mark was a natural born detective. She should have known he’d recognize the difference between her cellular calls and this one. She’d had no intention of telling him everything, but now she had no choice.

  “I’m not using my cellular phone,” she said quietly. “I’m…calling from the hospital.”

  “You’re in the hospital! Maddie, you said a ‘little’ accident. What really happened?”

  After a heavy sigh, Maddie related the fall she and Fanny had taken. “I have no idea what caused it, but there it is. Apparently Fanny wasn’t injured, but the medics took me to the hospital. I can’t be too bad off because I’m being discharged sometime today. That’s the whole truth.”

  “Except for what the doctor told you to do.”

  “Mark, I can’t do nothing for a whole month!”

  “You could if you were under my roof. Look, why don’t you put Fanny in a good stable, leave your truck and trailer in a safe place—I’m sure a city the size of Austin has rental spaces available for RVs and such—and fly home? I hate the thought of you limping around that little trailer you live in and trying to fix yourself something to eat. With one hand yet. And surely you’re not thinking of taking care of Fanny yourself. Maddie, it’s just not sensible for you to stay in Texas.”

  He was making sense, and Maddie’s resolve to take care of herself was weakening. But fly to Montana and leave Fanny in Texas? No way, Maddie thought, and avoided that topic entirely by asking, “Mark, are you sure Darcy wouldn’t mind? You have to think of her first now, you know.”

  “I know Darcy wouldn’t mind. She’s a very special lady, Maddie. So, have I convinced you? Are you coming home?”

  “I…guess so.”

  “Great! Phone me with your flight schedule.”

  “It’ll probably be a few days before you hear from me. It will take, uh, some time to do everything here that will need, uh, doing before I can leave.” She wasn’t exactly lying to the brother she adored, she told herself. She simply wasn’t telling him everything she was thinking and planning.

  “That’s fine. Just call when you know something.”

  “Bye, Mark.”

  “Bye, Maddie. Take care.”

  Maddie hung up and, completely done in, she closed her eyes and wished with all her heart that she would fall asleep in spite of the pain racking her body.

  She really shouldn’t have phoned Mark, she thought hazily, because now she had to go home to Montana, and she was not going by herself. She wouldn’t leave Fanny behind for all the oil in Texas, which Mark would have thought of if he hadn’t immediately started worrying about Maddie’s condition instead of looking at the whole picture.

  “The hits just keep on coming,” Maddie whispered while wondering how on earth she was going to manage to drive fifteen hundred miles when she could just barely move without pain medication, which she certainly couldn’t take and then do any driving.

  Chapter Two

  Checking out of the hospital took hours, most of that time spent in waiting. Maddie waited for someone from administration to do the paperwork, then waited for her prescriptions to be filled by the hospital pharmacy. Her final wait was for a nurse to come to her room to instruct her on home care of her abrasions.

  By then Maddie was hurting so much that when a runner delivered her prescriptions in the middle of the nurse’s instructions, Maddie immediately tried to get a pain pill from its container. She couldn’t use her right hand, of course, and she simply wasn’t adept with her left, especially when it was trembling from the burning, stinging pain raging all along her right side.

  The nurse took the bottle from her, opened it and shook out one pill into Maddie’s outstretched hand. “Let me tell you something about pain,” the woman said while Maddie swallowed the pill with a drink of water.

  “You refused pain medication much too soon and you are suffering unnecessarily. I know many people do not like some of the side effects of painkillers, but believe me, Maddie, it’s far better for you to rest and recover than to spend your time gritting your teeth in a futile attempt to will yourself well. Take these as prescribed, properly tend to your scrapes and abrasions, drink at least eight glasses of water a day to keep your system flushed and, while you must do some walking to keep your muscles toned and supple, you also should rest as much as possible. Finally, of course, be sure to make that appointment with Dr. Upton.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Maddie said softly. She was only going to follow some of this pleasant woman’s advice, and she truly hated deceiving her. But she had no choice. It wasn’t as though she was going home to a family that would cook her food and pamper her, after all; she was all she had in Texas. When she got hungry, she’d have to order in or cook. Thank God for cell phones, she thought, because it would be her one connection with the world beyond her trailer, once she got there.

  In truth, she couldn’t even pamper herself when she got home. At least, she couldn’t until she checked o
n Fanny. Maddie didn’t dare let herself wonder if she could manage to do what needed doing because there simply was no one to do it for her. She had to take care of Fanny, and she had to take care of herself. Last but far from least, she had to drive fifteen hundred miles.

  Thinking of that long, long drive caused Maddie’s breath to stop in her throat, but only for a second. The pain pill was beginning to work its magic, and along with the sharp edges of her physical anguish floating away, she felt light-headed and much less stressed. She listened to the nurse repeat instructions about applying antibiotic ointment to her abrasions—apparently a crucial step in the healing process—and then talk about tub baths versus showers, and how Maddie mustn’t let her soft cast get wet whichever way she bathed.

  By the time the woman left, Maddie was pain-free and woozy. She closed her eyes and dozed off thinking of Montana and home. It was where she truly wanted to be, and it would happen. She would make it happen, the same way she had made everything else that was good and productive in her life happen since she’d been old enough to understand that a teenage marriage, babies and tying herself to Whitehorn, Montana, would, at the very least, stifle the best part of her. At fifteen she’d won her first rodeo-queen crown and barrel-racing trophy. It had been a small local event, but it had been big for her, big enough that she’d felt refreshingly reborn, and the new Maddie Kincaid was determined to make a splash in the world of rodeo. Shortly after that contest she had acquired Fanny, and all of her spare time had gone into working with the young mare. Now, years later and drifting off with loving thoughts of Fanny, Maddie decided, without too much concern, that Mark might yell at her for driving home instead of flying, but Fanny went where she did, and in the end he would be glad to see her.

  She was sleeping soundly when a cheerful young male aide with a wheelchair sailed into the room and said, “Wake up, princess. It’s time to move out.”

  Maddie opened her eyes. “Wha-what?”

  The young man grinned. “Don’t you want to go home?”

  “Yes…yes, of course. But my clothes…I haven’t gotten dressed.”

  “You are one of the privileged few who get to go home in a hospital gown, robe and slippers.” The young man sobered some. “Your clothes were pretty much ruined in the accident, Maddie, but even if they weren’t, you couldn’t be pulling close-fitting garments over your—” he grinned again and said “—ouchies.”

  Maddie appreciated his sense of humor and smiled. “You’re right. My ouchies would scream bloody murder if I put on something tight.”

  The aide went to the closet and took out a bag. “Everything you had on is in this bag.”

  “Great. I’m sure my boots are still all right.”

  “Probably are.” A nurse came in and helped Maddie into the robe and slippers she would wear home. Together then, they assisted Maddie from the bed to the wheelchair. The aide carried two bags while he pushed the chair, the one with Maddie’s clothes and another containing her prescriptions, and she held her purse on her lap with her uninjured left hand.

  The upbeat young man told jokes and talked incessantly during the trip from Maddie’s room to the hospital’s front door. A taxi was waiting, and in about one minute Maddie found herself on the backseat of the cab with her baggage beside her and saying “Thanks” and “Goodbye” to the aide.

  “Where to, miss?” the driver asked.

  Maddie told him the rodeo grounds, which was where both her trailer and truck were parked, although in different locations. “One more problem to deal with,” she said under her breath, which was the God’s truth. Certainly she couldn’t have the taxi driver drop her off at the site of her truck, because she could just barely focus her eyes and didn’t dare attempt to drive it anywhere.

  Then there was Fanny, who Maddie absolutely had to see with her own eyes the minute she got to the rodeo grounds. The stables were about a mile from where her trailer was parked—another problem. She tried to work it out systematically, attempting to picture the triangle of trailer, truck and stables in her brain, which seemed to be stuffed with cotton candy and thus wasn’t working very well.

  She was lucid enough, however, when they arrived at the rodeo grounds, to realize that she couldn’t wander around in a nightgown and bathrobe. Not with hundreds of vehicles parked in the lot and the huge reader board above the whole affair stating in bold letters that there was a meet of the Young Equestrians of Texas going on.

  Another hit, damn it! “My trailer is way over there to the right,” she said to the driver. “It’s over thirty feet long and white. Do you see it?”

  “Yeah, I see it,” he told her, and turned the cab in that direction.

  Then, quite unexpectedly, a surge of relief relaxed Maddie’s tension, because even with her stuffy brain she suddenly knew how to proceed. When the cab stopped next to her trailer, she laid out her plan for the driver. He agreed, and she got out—moving slower than molasses, she thought, feeling impatience with her own infirmities—unlocked the door of her trailer and managed to climb the two steps to get inside.

  It was far from a mansion, but it felt good to Maddie to be in her own special little place, and she wished that all she had to do right now were to crawl into her familiar and comfortable bed. Instead she entered the tiny bedroom, shed her hospital clothes as fast as she could manage and then stood before her closet and wondered what to put on. A dozen pair of jeans hung neatly on hangers, her favored apparel, but she also had some slacks and skirts.

  “Something loose,” Maddie mumbled, and reached for a long, flowered skirt. But then she spied something better—a cream-colored cotton dress that flowed softly from shoulder seams to hem line.

  Getting dressed wasn’t easy, but she finally was ready to leave again. Taking only her purse, she carefully exited her trailer and got back into the cab.

  “Thanks,” she said to the driver. “My truck is parked near the stadium, the second row, middle section, I believe. I’ll direct you.”

  They found her truck amongst the many parked vehicles without too much trouble, but Maddie made no attempt to get out. All she’d wanted was to make sure it was still there, and it was. She was satisfied.

  “You’ve got some things on the windshield,” the cab driver told her. “Held down by the windshield wiper. Want me to get ’em.”

  “Would you please?”

  The driver returned with two pieces of paper, one warning her to remove her vehicle at once and the other threatening a fine and impoundment if she didn’t comply with the first notice.

  She sighed heavily and told the driver where to find the stables. Once there, he asked if she’d like him to help her find her horse.

  “You’re a kind man,” she replied. “Yes, I would appreciate your help very much. Thank you.”

  As they slowly walked to the stables, with her hanging on to his arm, he asked how she’d gotten so banged up.

  “My horse and I took a fall in the arena. I have no idea how it happened, but I hit the ground pretty hard. I’m just thankful that my horse wasn’t injured.”

  “I have a couple of daughters about your age…and three other kids…and we’re all riders. I think every one of us has taken a spill at one time or another, but none of us was ever hurt as bad as you.”

  “It could’ve been worse,” Maddie said with a little smile at the cabby. “A lot worse.”

  “You’re taking it well.”

  “I’m not one to sit around and mope over something I can’t do anything about.”

  “Looks that way, all right. You’ve got spunk, little lady.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I do have spunk, but probably no more than most of us who are so drawn and loyal to rodeo. You don’t last very long in this field without spunk.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  They were finally inside one of the long stock barns. Maddie’s strength had been fading during the walk, and she knew she was on the verge of collapsing. “There’s a bench. Let me sit for just
a minute.”

  “You sit right there and let me find your horse. What’s its name.”

  “Fanny. Fanchon, actually, but I call her Fanny. What’s your name? I truly appreciate your help.”

  “I’m Joe. Now, you stay here and rest. I’m sure I won’t be long.”

  Maddie leaned her spinning head back against the wood wall and closed her eyes. She needed to be in bed, and she would be, just as soon as she made sure Fanny was all right.

  Joe, the dear man, was back in minutes. “Okay, Fanny is in the next barn, stall twenty-two. Can you make it that far?”

  “I have to make it. There’s no way I can really rest until I see her.” Maddie got to her feet and gladly took Joe’s arm again. Not everything is a “hit,” she thought, realizing that her taxi driver could have been some grump who wouldn’t help another person to save his soul.

  The second they entered the other barn Maddie heard Fanny whinny. “She knows I’m here,” Maddie told her companion. And then, at long last, she was hugging Fanny’s neck and wishing she’d brought some apples or carrots with her. The mare was visibly happy to see her mistress. Maddie believed it, anyway, whether it was true or not, and she told Fanny in quiet words that she was relieved to find her in good shape and that she would be back tomorrow.

  “Okay, we can leave now,” she said to Joe.

  They returned to the cab, and Joe took her back to her trailer. Maddie paid the fare, tipped him very well and expressed her heartfelt thanks. He did one last thing for her. He assisted her from the cab to the door of her trailer.

  Again Maddie climbed the two stairs that had never been a problem and now seemed to be a mile high, and went inside. Taking off her clothes, she donned the hospital gown again, as it was handy and she really didn’t care what she wore to bed, as long as it wasn’t tight. After checking the timing of her prescribed doses for each of her medications, she swallowed another pain pill, pulled back the blankets on her bed and crawled in.