Marked For Marriage. Jackie Merritt

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      “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.

      It felt like pure heaven to her aching body, and she went out like a light.

      Sometime in the night she began dreaming about her childhood, about her brother, Mark, the parents she remembered to this day with an ache in her heart and Aunt June. Dear, sweet Aunt June, who had really been a great-aunt and had been the person who had insisted that thirteen-year-old Maddie come and live with her when her parents had been killed in a car crash. Mark had been twenty, and he’d stayed in his parents’ home to sell it, along with other things they’d left their children. When everything had been accomplished about a year later, he had half of all proceeds put into the Whitehorn bank in Maddie’s name.

      Aunt June had been on Maddie’s mother’s side of the family, and some of the Kincaids, her father’s family, had offered their homes to Maddie at the time of the tragic accident. But Aunt June Howard hadn’t merely offered. She’d talked long and hard to Mark about letting Maddie come and live with her because the child would be alone far too much if she remained in the family home with Mark, who, after all, was a man with a job and a life of his own. When he finally agreed—albeit reluctantly—that it would be best for Maddie 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 СКАЧАТЬ