Marked For Marriage. Jackie Merritt
to live with Aunt June, she had packed Maddie’s things and taken her home with her.
Aunt June had been a plump, short lady, with graying hair and green eyes, the same color eyes that both Mark and Maddie had been blessed with, and she had loved her niece and nephew as though they’d been her own offspring. Widowed young, June Howard had not had kids of her own. She had never remarried and had explained to Maddie when she’d asked why not one time that there just wasn’t another man on the planet who could replace the one true love of her life.
“And remember this, my sweet girl, if you truly fall in love, and I’m speaking of the real thing here, the kind of love that brings two people so closely together that they start thinking as one, don’t let go of it. You’ll know if and when it happens. You’ll feel it in here.” Aunt June had gently tapped Maddie’s chest. “In your heart, darlin’, in your heart,” she’d added when Maddie had looked rather perplexed.
Mark had visited his baby sister—and Aunt June, of course—often, and one evening when he dropped by he had quietly and a little sadly told Maddie that he was leaving Whitehorn. “I’m not making enough money to even buy a decent car, Maddie. Someday you’ll understand why I have to go.”
She had answered, “I understand now, Mark.”
He’d studied her gamine face with its smattering of freckles and her big solemn green eyes, and then pulled her into a big bear hug. “You really do, don’t you?” he’d said emotionally.
It was true. She had always adored her big brother. Mark was handsome and bright and deserved better than he had in Whitehorn. And when she grew up, she was going to do something else, too. That feeling was in her bones, a deeply embedded part of herself, and it surfaced in all of its glory when, at age fifteen, she won that first rodeo contest using a borrowed horse.
Once she bought Fanny and dedicated herself to training her very own horse, Maddie couldn’t be stopped. Aunt June didn’t quite approve of a young woman being so involved with rodeo, but Maddie’s happiness came first for June Howard, and besides, she hadn’t been feeling well for some time and had become quite involved with doctors and medical tests. Her diagnosis, finally, had been congenital heart failure with severe complications, which, she’d been told, would gradually take its toll.
She deteriorated more rapidly after age sixty-three, and Maddie had taken over more and more of the household duties as time passed. To Maddie’s intense sorrow, dear Aunt June passed away at age sixty-five. Maddie was eighteen and had just recently graduated from high school. Mark came for the funeral, stayed with Maddie for a few days and then returned to New York City and his job as a detective with the NYC police department. He’d wanted Maddie to go with him, but she hadn’t even been able to imagine herself living in the East. She was Western through and through, a country girl at heart, and while she would greatly miss her beloved aunt, Maddie wasn’t even slightly afraid to face the future by herself.
That had been the real beginning of her rodeo career, which through the years had only grown more and more exciting. Of course, she’d never been injured before.
Trying almost desperately to keep the sweetly soothing dream from escaping her awakening mind, Maddie finally opened her eyes. In amazement, she realized that she felt wonderful. Obviously she’d slept through the night—a fabulous night of sound sleep and lovely, heartwarming dreams—because bright morning sunshine was streaming through the tiny openings of her window blinds.
That “wonderful” feeling, however, lasted only until Maddie tried to get up. Falling back to her pillow, Maddie groaned. Every ache and pain was firmly in place; no way was she going to recover this quickly.
But even while feeling despondent over her present physical limitations, something important occurred to her. The pain medication must have completely worn off during the night because her mind was clear and rational. She would be able to drive now!
And so a plan to transport herself and Fanny from Texas to Montana took shape. She would use over-the-counter pain medication during the day, which would certainly help enough to enable her to get around. She would drive until she grew tired—maybe only a few hours a day, maybe much more—then when she went to bed at night she would take a prescription pain pill.
Satisfied with her idea, which seemed sane and sensible, Maddie cautiously got out of bed and began the day.
The trip was long and hard and at times seemed never ending. Maddie phoned Mark twice in the first few days of the journey and, to her relief, got his voice mail each time. She left brief messages about seeing him soon, but never mentioned that she was driving instead of flying. She had flown to Montana only recently to attend Mark and Darcy’s wedding, so it wasn’t as though Fanny hadn’t ever been left behind. But this was a completely different situation. Maddie felt pretty certain that she would be in Montana for a month, and she knew that she wouldn’t relax for a second if Fanny was so far away from her for so long a time.
So each morning she got out of her warm and comfortable bed, bathed, tended her wounds as instructed, ate breakfast, took her antibiotic pill along with an over-the-counter pain medication, and then limped outside to feed and water Fanny before leading her back into the trailer for that day’s drive.
Maddie’s trailer was a marvelous unit for people like her. The back one-third was your basic horse trailer, but the front two-thirds was like a tiny apartment, cozy and convenient. It was long and heavy and required a powerful truck to pull it, which accounted for the big costly truck Maddie drove—and loved.
At any rate, she had all the comforts of home wherever she went. And so did Fanny.
Since she was heading north in February, though, Maddie ran into some really foul weather. There was no way to avoid it and still end up in Montana, and so she took the shortest route, which at least cut down on her mileage. Every day seemed a little colder than the one before, and Maddie had a hard time finding things in her closet that were both warm and loosely fitted. Finally she stopped in a town in Colorado and bought some lined pants and jackets in a large size. Since she wore a size six, her new suits hung on her. But they were warm and didn’t cling to her sore right side.
The biggest inconvenience was her useless right hand, even though she was getting better at using her left. Also, she had started noticing something that struck her as strange. Her left knee had developed a throbbing ache, which made no sense to Maddie when all of her injuries had been to the right side of her body. She would, of course, see a doctor in Whitehorn as soon as was feasible after arriving there.
She felt like weeping with relief when she finally crossed the Wyoming-Montana border and knew that tomorrow she would make it to Whitehorn. The trip had been a terrible ordeal, far worse than she’d thought it would be. She looked and felt like hell, and if Mark got mad when he realized that she’d driven all those miles in her condition, she wouldn’t dare get sassy. If the shoe were on the other foot and it was he nearly killing himself as she was doing, she’d be mad, too.
As it turned out, Maddie overslept the next morning from sheer exhaustion and didn’t arrive in Whitehorn until after dark that evening, the very first time she’d driven after nightfall on this trip. But she had to get there today, even if it was late in the day. She honestly didn’t think that she could go on past today, not when she hurt so badly that she could hardly sit behind the wheel. Mark would take care of her, and God knew that she needed someone’s care.
Traversing the familiar streets of Whitehorn, Maddie felt tears in her eyes. She had made it; she was home.
She pulled her truck and trailer to a stop in front of Mark’s house, turned off the ignition and opened her door. She slowly—the same way she did everything these days—got out and then limped to the front door and rang the bell. From inside came the sound of her brother’s voice calling out, “I’ll get it, honey,” and Darcy responding, “Okay.”
The front porch light came on and the door opened. Maddie tried to smile, but the shocked expression on Mark’s face would not be erased by a sheepish, feeble smile from her.
“Maddie! Good God, you look half-dead!” he cried.