Marked for Marriage by Jackie Merritt

inside, grabbed his medical bag and rushed out again.
    Driving through that heavy, wind-tossed snowfall was as close to driving blind as a man could get, and to think that Maddie, with all of her physical injuries and half-baked grasp on reality, was also out there daring the elements made Noah a little bit crazy.
    He wanted to speed in the worst way, to press the accelerator to the floor and fly, but he knew that even with four-wheel drive he’d end up in a snowbank if he did anything so rash, so he played it safe and kept it under thirty. Less than that in many places. His SUV was powerful, but it wasn’t a snow-plow, and there were drifts across the road, swept smooth as a white tablecloth by the treacherous wind, that brought his speed down to a mere crawl.
    He finally reached the turn onto county road 34 and stopped for oncoming traffic. There wasn’t any, not a car, a pickup or anything else. What’s more, there were no streetlights that far out of town, and from that point on his headlights would be his only guide.
    Remembering his missing cell phone, Noah switched on the overhead light and looked all around the front seat for it. If he’d ever needed a cellular telephone, it was now. But it was nowhere to be found, and with a grim set to his lips and a discomfiting knot in his gut that contained a dozen opposing emotions he put his SUV in motion again.
    He drove even slower on county road 34, because he felt that he should check both sides of the road for ruts or other evidence that someone may have skidded into snow too deep to get through, or into a ditch. Noah recalled that a substantial segment of this road had a man-made drainage ditch on its left side, but it was impossible for him to pinpoint the exact area, so he had to stay alert all the way.
    He was also keeping an eye on the odometer, because the stable housing Fanny was located on that portion of the Braddock ranch that connected with this road, seven miles from town, he’d been told. Two miles passed, then three, and he saw that he was nearing the four-mile point when he thought he saw a light on the right. He stopped the car and peered through the passenger window, then reached over and rolled it down because if there was a light out there he’d lost sight of it. He debated taking a closer look on foot or driving on.
    Scowling and furious that Maddie would cause both him and herself such unnecessary misery, he got out, braving the ferocious elements one more time. He trudged through the snow toward what he thought was a spot of light. He sensed more than saw the trees all around him. In fact, something black suddenly loomed right in front of him, and he halted his stride just in time to prevent a collision with a big pine. It irritated the devil out of him that he’d been so totally focused on Maddie and her shenanigans that he’d left his flashlight in the car. He almost went back for it, but the urge to do so was quickly dispersed by a surge of common sense that told him to get this done fast. He forged on.
    Shortly thereafter Noah spotted the light again. It hadn’t been his imagination after all! Relieved, he noted how the light appeared and disappeared with the fluctuations of wind and snow, and that it looked to be shining through a small square. Was there a cabin out there? A house?
    He nearly ran into the back end of Maddie’s trailer. It wasas white as the snow and damned near invisible in the storm. And to realize that she’d driven a white truck and pulled a white trailer in this deadly blizzard just about did Noah in.
    Well, she hadn’t made it to the Braddock ranch, had she? It almost made him happy that she hadn’t, because she obviously was a selfish nitwit who did what she wanted regardless of the trouble she might cause someone else.
    But how had she gotten so far off the road? Maddie Kincaid was a menace to herself and everyone else in the area, and she shouldn’t be allowed to