The Temptation Test Read online

  “Tangles in my hair I can handle,” she told him. “It’s tangles in my life I have doubts about.”

  “Me, too,” he murmured, but he kissed her anyway, right on the back of her neck where the already sensitized skin burned to his touch.

  She turned in to his arms, felt him reach out to turn off the gas, then met his lips in a kiss that had been so long anticipated, she shuddered with the relief of it.

  “I don’t want to get involved,” he reminded her breathlessly a little later.

  She kissed the words away, although when once again the exploration left lips to savor skin, she did manage a slightly shaky “Nor do I.”

  Dear Reader,

  As a child and through my teenage years, my family spent our long summer holidays—which are over Christmas out here in Australia—at the seaside on the southern Queensland coast. Behind the surf beach were a string of freshwater lakes, very unusual so close to the ocean, and here we picnicked and swam when bored with the surf.

  So, when asked to write a “Christmas” book, I remembered those holidays and decided a couple of those holiday shacks by the lake would provide a great setting for my hero and heroine.

  The popularity of “real” television programs, featuring people going about their daily business as real doctors or firemen or whatever, rather than actors playing at being doctors or firemen, made me think of a television documentary set in a real hospital. But instead of using a large bustling city hospital, I decided on a hospital set in a small regional town.

  Unfortunately, Noah Blacklock, my hero in this book, isn’t nearly as happy about the concept of “real” TV as I as a writer was, so he fights it and the leggy blonde, who’s his liaison person with the TV company, all the way. And Jena Carpenter, who’s trying to prove to her boss that she has the skills to be more than an attractive showpiece in the world of television, fights right back. But in the end she has to decide if winning Noah might not be more important than winning the job she wanted so badly.

  I hope as you read this in your cold and perhaps snowy Christmas setting, some of the heat and bright sunlight of the Aussie Christmas might reach through to warm and brighten your day.

  I would like to wish all readers a safe and happy Christmas, and add my best wishes for the New Year.

  The Temptation Test

  Meredith Webber

  CONTENTS

  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 ONE

  NOAH BLACKLOCK was cursing all women as he drove along the narrow, deeply rutted sand track from his bush retreat towards the main road to town. Quite how he could pin his lateness this particular morning on the universal female conspiracy to drive him completely insane he wasn’t sure, but he knew it had to be a woman’s doing.

  The powerful Jeep engine growled in low gear as it churned the wheels through the soft sand. Not far now! Around the bend, down the hill, and he’d be on the gravel road to town—the main highway only a few hundred metres beyond the little settlement. He’d make that appointment yet.

  He took the bend too fast, and the Jeep slid sideways before the tyres gripped again and he regained control.

  Then slammed on the brakes as the rear of an old Toyota LandCruiser came closer…and closer…and—

  The Jeep stopped inches from the obstruction, and Noah leapt out, a mouthful of colourful words ready for the driver stupid enough to stop on the blind corner.

  A woman, of course!

  And blonde as well.

  One of those curvy, long-legged, white-blonde blondes—the prototype for blonde jokes.

  She was standing, jack in one hand and a metal stabilising plate in the other, staring at the sand-encrusted front nearside tyre on her wreck of a vehicle.

  He bit back the words he wanted to yell at her, grabbed the plate and the jack, slid them into place beneath the front chassis and was about to lift the front of the vehicle when he remembered the first rule of tyre-changing. Loosen the nuts while the wheel’s on the ground.

  He’d noticed the tool kit lying on the sand.

  ‘I—’ she began, in a soft, slightly husky voice.

  ‘Just don’t talk. Don’t say a word!’ he growled at this latest member of the female species fate had flung in his path to anger and frustrate him. His body might be registering the flowery perfume she was wearing, but recent events meant his brain was very much in control.

  ‘But—’

  He held up his hand to cut off her protest, and scowled another warning at her, then grabbed the wheel brace and began to loosen the nuts. The cause of this morning’s problems stepped back, as if to admire his skill, and folded her arms beneath breasts he couldn’t help but notice. The male ego he tried to control immediately went into show-off mode, increasing the speed with which he worked.

  He jacked up the car, whipped off the nuts, wrestled the wheel from the spokes and turned to the woman.

  ‘Where’s your spare?’

  She smiled at him, and he realised she was more than just a woman, she was a beautiful woman.

  Not that he would allow such an incidental observation to distract him.

  ‘Well?’

  The smile grew wider, showing even white teeth. It glimmered in eyes as blue as the evening sky, and pressed a dimple deep into her right cheek.

  ‘That’s it.’ She pointed a slim, pink-tipped finger towards the tyre he held balanced between his hands.

  ‘You mean you haven’t got a decent tyre to replace this one?’ The anger he’d held in check earlier came roaring forth, like flames from a flamethrower. ‘And you’re out here, alone, on an isolated road? Women!’

  He flung up his arms in disgust and the tyre fell over, clipping his shin and sending him off balance so he stumbled and had to reach out for support.

  The woman’s hand caught his arm and steadied him, but the noises coming from her were more like chuckles of delight than soothing murmurs or placating apologies.

  ‘That is the spare,’ she managed to gasp between gales of unseemly laughter. ‘The flat one’s in the back. I’d just finished changing it when you came along and, being a man, you had to charge in and do your macho thing!’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop me? Tell me?’ He knew he was yelling because his voice was echoing back to him from the sandhills over by the lake.

  She stepped away from him and shrugged, the movement lifting her breasts so he was torn between wanting to kill her and an urge to get a better look at the soft protuberances.

  ‘After you’d told me to shut up? And scowled so ferociously I was all aquiver? A poor defenceless woman like myself all alone out here in the bush?’

  Strangling would be good. He’d take his time about it! Have her begging…

  ‘Well, are you going to put it back on for me so I can get to work, or do I have to do it myself?’

  He reined in wayward thoughts of the beauty begging for something very different to murder and tried to concentrate on the current situation.

  ‘Put it back on?’ he muttered, wondering what on earth they’d been talking about.

  ‘The tyre,’ she said helpfully. ‘Now I’ve done a practice run I’ll even give you a hand.’

  She bent over, tipped the tyre up on its tread and proceeded to roll it towards the car. By the time she was ready to lift it onto the wheel studs, he realised he should be helping, not watching the length of leg revealed by her bending over in a
very short skirt.

  ‘Let me!’ he grumbled, taking command again—of the tyre and hopefully his thoughts.

  He heaved the heavy beast up and turned it until he could slide it into place, aware that the woman was taking some of the weight—but more aware of her as a woman.

  It’s a woman who got you stuck out here in the first place, mate, his head reminded his rebellious body. A blonde, remember?

  He picked up the nuts and began to fit them.

  ‘You must be lost if you’re on this road,’ he said, aiming for a little normality in this bizarre situation.

  ‘No. I’m staying down there a little way,’ she said, waving her hand towards the track down which he’d just travelled.

  ‘Exactly where down there?’ he demanded. There was nowhere ‘down there’ but his place.

  She passed him the wheel brace.

  ‘Suspicious cuss, aren’t you?’ she teased, blue eyes again alight with laughter. ‘At Matt Ryan’s place, if you must know.’

  Now disappointment warred with disbelief. He went with the second reaction as the first didn’t bear thinking about.

  ‘The old Ryan place? It’s falling down. What’s happened? Matt gone feral, has he? Decided to give up the high life and start living the way he pretends to in his documentaries? I can just see that!’

  The cutting edge of sarcasm forced Jena to defend her employer.

  ‘Matt lives those documentaries! He takes on those challenges!’

  ‘Yeah, right!’ the stranger growled, releasing the pressure on the jack so the tyre slapped back onto the ground with a jolting thud. ‘Him and his make-up person, and his hairstylist—not to mention a ten-man support crew. Some challenge!’

  He was mocking her dream to be the first woman to take on the type of adventure challenges Matt faced, and Jena, who’d already had a particularly tiresome morning, felt the heat of anger burning in her chest.

  ‘He travels alone on his challenges. OK, there’s a camera crew but they’re not with him in his vehicle, and the rest of the crew go on ahead—’

  ‘To erect the tents, set up his comfortable bed, cook his meal, cool his wine. Wave the bloody fans above his perspiring head, most probably! Yes, ma’am! That’s a real challenge!’

  ‘Well, it is,’ she fumed, snatching the jack out of his hand and storming to the back of the vehicle to fling it in. ‘And his documentaries are sold worldwide, watched by millions of people—’

  ‘Who all end up with the misguided idea that life in Australia is one long bout of wrestling crocodiles, trekking through snake-infested jungles or clinging precariously to precipitous rocks. The man stages his challenges then acts like a hero for carrying them out.’

  He paused for breath and Jena, who should have interrupted at that stage, found herself admiring how his chest expanded as it filled with air. He was a tall, solid man, well put together. Dark haired, and with the kind of craggy face which shouldn’t have been handsome but was. She realised she’d missed her opportunity when his harangue continued.

  ‘Finding a cure for cancer—that’s a challenge. Fixing the problems of homeless youth! Even learning to live on the same planet as women! Take your choice, but let’s not get too carried away about Matt bloody Ryan’s television show. That’s entertainment, Blondie, not a challenge!’

  ‘Don’t call me Blondie!’ Shamed by her inattention earlier, she snapped the words at him then regretted her outburst when she caught a gleam of satisfaction in his pale eyes.

  Grey or pale green?

  Unusual whichever they were. With a glint like the sheen of highly polished metal—

  ‘imagine what Matt’s doing out at the old place.’

  ‘What Matt’s doing there?’ she said, frowning at him as she tried to recall the words she’d missed while debating his eye colour. ‘Why would Matt be there?’

  The eyes—grey, she decided—scanned down her body, then back up again, answering her question with silent insolence.

  Jena clenched her hands into fists to stop herself hitting him.

  She spun away before the temptation proved too great. Being late for work on the first day of her own personal ‘challenge’ was hardly the way to prove herself to Matt.

  ‘If he’s not there, who’s with you?’

  The stranger had followed her and reached out to hold the door open as she clambered up into the driver’s seat, regretting her decision to cling to her normal ‘work’ clothes as the skirt rode up to reveal even more leg than usual.

  ‘No one! I’m staying there on my own.’ Dumb, dumb, dumb! ‘Of course, I’ll have friends coming out. Visiting. Staying over.’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed smoothly. ‘No doubt any number of people all dying to keep you company in a ruin of a shack on the edge of nowhere. As my grandmother would say, I’m not as green as I’m cabbage-looking, Blondie.’

  She was going to protest about the name again when he leaned across her, peering into the cab.

  ‘I assume you have a mobile. Here, I’ll give you my number. Although you can’t see my place from where you are it’s only about a hundred yards away. If you need anything…’

  He drew back and she took a breath, though why a stranger leaning close to her should affect her breathing, she had no idea.

  Perhaps because he was a stranger!

  He handed her a card and she held the stiff white rectangle between her fingers and squinted at the black marks. She’d have given her second-best pair of shoes to know his name but no way was she going to reach over for her handbag and scrabble through it for her reading glasses.

  ‘Do you know the emergency services number?’ he continued in his overbearing way. ‘It might be a good idea to phone the exchange and get the local police station number as well. Let someone know you’re staying out there. The lads in town would love an opportunity to rescue a damsel in distress. Or even check on you occasionally.’

  Again his gaze did its scanning thing, but before she could protest he’d shut the door and walked away, leaving Jena with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Murderers don’t suggest you check in with the local cops, she told herself as she drove off.

  The uneasiness persisted.

  More to do with the man than being murdered?

  OK, he’d been arresting, in a dark, saturnine kind of way. Not cabbage-looking at all, in fact. But she’d been in the company of attractive men so often that good looks no longer impressed her. It was the inner man that counted—and, as far as she could tell, the stranger’s inner man was a dark and angry being.

  Not attractive at all.

  Noah memorised the number plate as he followed the LandCruiser down the track. What was Matt thinking to let a woman like that—any woman, in fact—stay out at his tumbledown old shack on her own? The place had no power, no phone and probably no water, if the rust holes he’d seen in the tank last time he’d walked past were any indication.

  Not that it was any of his business, he reminded himself. In fact, the policy he’d adopted in his childhood to keep out of Matt Ryan’s way still held. It had been bad enough having Matt held up to him as the ideal of boyhood all through his youth, but these days Noah’s mother spoke Matt’s name with something approaching awe—obviously more impressed by television stars than hard-working doctors.

  Then there was his determination to avoid all women for a considerable period of time. Especially blondes, given the disastrous way they’d featured in his life lately—like some recurring nightmare—and even more especially, one of Matt Ryan’s blondes!

  He had avoided Matt assiduously for years, but no one could have avoided hearing of his exploits. The man got better press coverage than all but the most vital of sports games, more publicity than the entire government. And rarely did he appear, in the press or on TV, without a blonde draped across him like a fashion accessory.

  According to the tabloids, they were bimbos, every one of them.

  Airheads.

  Actual
ly, when you considered it, nature might have got it right. Having endowed the woman like the one driving steadfastly down the road in front of him with more than her share of physical beauty, adding brains would have been overkill.

  Sexist! his better self muttered, while his more basic side remembered the length of leg Blondie had revealed as she’d stepped up into the cab of the decrepit old vehicle.

  And the flash of anger in her eyes as she’d reacted to the name.

  Hmm, his baser self whispered. Might be fun having one of Matt’s blondes as a neighbour for a while. Hadn’t Matt stolen Bridget Somerton from him? Back when they were teenagers and the surge of adolescent testosterone had combined with long summer days and hot summer nights to make the group who’d holidayed at the lake as randy as young stallions.

  No way! he told himself.

  No women!

  And especially, no blondes.

  If this time apart didn’t resolve things between Lucy and himself, then when he was ready for another close relationship—which might not be for twenty or so years—he would choose a cool brunette. A career woman. Possibly a lawyer—or perhaps a business executive.

  Nuclear physicist? the base self mocked, flashing images of the leggy blonde on an inner screen in his brain.

  Jena drove slowly past the shop and three houses which made up the closest habitation to Matt’s old shack, then accelerated when she reached the highway. Hard to believe a place as seemingly isolated as Lake Caratha was only fifteen minutes’ drive from a bustling town. Kareela served as a regional centre for the tourist areas along the coast, as well as the thriving market gardens which covered the fertile, gently rolling hills behind the coastal strip.

  She lifted one hand from the steering wheel to press it against the nerves fluttering in her stomach. Stupid to be nervous. She’d worked as an assistant on similar productions to this, been the general dogsbody who’d caught the blame for everything that had gone wrong, from the star being sick to an untimely thunderstorm. Being a liaison person should be a piece of cake.

  Maybe the flutters were a reaction to the angry man. She grinned to herself. Tall, dark and angry: a perfect description of him. Although the more usual ‘handsome’ would also have fitted—if you liked looks which went beyond the conventional standards of good looks. She slowed as she entered the town’s lower speed zone.