The Temptation Test Read online

  ‘And your specialist said two to four weeks—not just two,’ Rhoda reminded him. ‘I know because I was there.’

  Noah had to chuckle. Colin was Rhoda’s nephew but, though she adored him and had gone to Brisbane every day while he’d been hospitalised down there, he wouldn’t get any special treatment in ‘her’ hospital.

  ‘I’ll X-ray you again on Friday,’ he promised Colin. ‘So hang in until then.’

  The young man didn’t look at all appeased, although when an aide appeared with a wheelchair he brightened considerably.

  ‘I’m going to mosey on out to the hall and see the television people come and go,’ he explained.

  ‘Not today, you won’t,’ Noah told him. ‘Some of the crew have come to set up, but the chap who’s narrating the series won’t be here until next week.’

  ‘That won’t worry Colin. What he actually means is he’s going to hang about in the hall to watch Jena here go up and down the stairs,’ Rhoda explained. ‘Most of the male staff are finding an excuse to be in the hall as often as possible.’

  Noah glanced at Jena who’d gone a very fetching shade of pink.

  ‘That’s not true and you shouldn’t tease him,’ Jena objected, then she turned away, crossing the airy room to where Toby was sitting up in bed, watching the proceedings.

  Colin, who’d blushed a fiery red at this defence, watched her go, and Noah realised Rhoda’s comments were probably true.

  ‘Well, at least the lad’s got taste!’ he said, feeling he might relieve the tension with a kind of man-to-man bonding comment.

  Then regretted his flippancy when Rhoda raised her eyebrows and murmured, ‘Not you, too? I thought you were off women for life.’

  Noah ignored her, moving resolutely on to the next patient, an older man who had recently been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Noah was working with a specialist in Brisbane to find a drug regimen which might provide relief for his pain.

  And young Toby, where Jena waited, was next. He, too, was an arthritis sufferer, although hopefully his would only last through childhood. Noah hoped, with the latest treatments, Toby wouldn’t carry too many crippling after-effects into adulthood.

  ‘So, how’s the lad?’ he asked Toby, who managed a wan smile and asked his usual morning question.

  ‘When can I go home?’

  ‘Tomorrow, all being well,’ he promised.

  Toby accepted this verdict. He’d had enough flare-ups of the disease, when the pain became unbearable, to know he had to put up with these hospital stays.

  This time, Noah was trying a different drug, one so new it had just come on the market. As they moved on, he explained to Jena why he’d kept Toby in hospital, wanting to monitor the lad’s kidney and liver function for the first few days he was on it.

  ‘And how’s it going?’ she asked.

  ‘So far, so good,’ he said.

  ‘Will he suffer all his life?’ Jena asked, and he heard very real empathy in her voice.

  ‘Hopefully not,’ he said, then, noticing the way Toby was still watching their visitor, he added, ‘Would you like to sit with him a while? I’m only doing the same thing I’ve done with the others, checking on how they feel and what results we’re getting from treatment. Seen one ward round, you’ve seen them all.’

  He made a joke of it but, in fact, he’d be glad to be free of her presence for a short time. He’d heard of people suffering an instant attraction to someone of the opposite sex, but he wasn’t that kind of person. It was Rhoda’s fault with her sneaky ‘not you, too’ remark!

  ‘Come on!’ he said gruffly to the nurse in question, when Jena had taken his advice and settled into the visitor’s chair by Toby’s bed. ‘Let’s get on with it!’

  By the time he’d finished the round, and discharged Carla with a warning to stay out of fights, Jena was gone and he was running late for Jeff’s meeting. Which would give the man another reason to complain.

  He crossed the foyer and walked into the big office where two typists and a receptionist all pointed to their watches and shook their heads.

  ‘Rhoda’s later than I am!’ he told them.

  ‘Not good enough!’ Peta whispered, but at that moment the door opened and the women all turned away immediately, bending their heads to give an impression of total absorption in whatever they were doing.

  ‘You’re late,’ Jeff told him, and Noah sighed. He’d told himself he was going to stop arguing with Jeff, which meant he had to stop defending himself.

  ‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting,’ he said, hoping humility might get things off on a better footing.

  ‘Well, Rhoda’s still not here, but I wanted to get through the basics early because I’ve asked Jena Carpenter to join us. I think it’s important we know the television crew’s programme well in advance so we can make our arrangements accordingly.’

  The statement was typical of the meaningless nothings that Jeff often uttered and which irritated Noah unbearably. Bureaucrat-speak, he called it. Hearing it now, he felt a muscle in his cheek begin to twitch, so he closed his eyes and counted silently to ten. Patience—that’s what he needed.

  A double dose if Jena Carpenter was going to be present.

  ‘What have you done to so antagonise that man?’ Jena asked, following Noah, uninvited, into his office at the end of the meeting. ‘And don’t bother telling me it’s none of my business, because if I have to sit through that kind of tension on a weekly basis while I’m here, I think I deserve to have a little background on who’s knifing whom and why.’

  She shut the door and leaned against it, a posture that made much of the breasts he kept trying not to notice.

  ‘We don’t get on,’ he said, more irritated by his inability to control his wandering eyes than by the question.

  ‘Duh!’ she muttered, and smacked her forehead. ‘That much I’d gathered. I may be blonde, Dr Blacklock, but I’m not brain-dead.’

  He had to smile, though he felt more like growling, but Jeff’s meetings always produced a similar reaction.

  Sensing his visitor had no intention of leaving without an explanation, and needing her out of the room before he could possibly think about work, he began a carefully edited version of the problem.

  ‘Jeff didn’t want a doctor here but the Health Department advertised anyway—’

  ‘Hey, back up!’ Jena said, raising her arms so her breasts shifted again—not that he was looking. She loped forward to sit down in his only spare chair. ‘It’s a hospital. Don’t all hospitals have doctors? Can you have a hospital without one? Isn’t there a contradiction there somewhere?’

  He grinned at the perceptions she shared with most lay people.

  ‘A lot of country hospitals no longer have doctors appointed as medical superintendents—that’s the title given to the chief medical officer at a hospital, who is an employee of the state government and paid by them. Nowadays, smaller hospitals have local GPs, either paid as visiting doctors, doing the casualty and outpatient work on a roster system, or not officially connected at all, simply using the hospital for their own private patients.’

  ‘So there’s no doctor like you in these places, but when a GP puts a patient into hospital, he or she is responsible for that person?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Noah replied, though his attention had been distracted again—not by breasts this time but by the intensity of her blue eyes. Was she so interested in learning about this, or was it a trick of the trade?

  ‘But where does Jeff come in? And why did your appointment annoy him? Surely it’s easier to run a hospital if you’ve got a doctor?’

  Noah gave a huff of laughter.

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Actually, in hospitals where there’s no doctor, the administrator, or chief executive officer as they call them these days, is the boss. He controls all the finances, allocates hours to visiting GPs, reports to the board and generally runs the place. The director of nursing, naturally, has a say, but as she usually works full-time
at nursing as well, she’s more than happy to leave a lot of the paperwork to the CEO.’

  ‘And you coming here—having any doctor here—lessens Jeff’s power? Is that what you’re saying? But surely it’s good for the town and the hospital itself.’

  ‘You’d think so,’ Noah said, and Jena heard the dryness in his voice and wondered just how deep the divisions went between the CEO and the doctor.

  ‘But if he’s ambitious—and if he wasn’t he wouldn’t care—wouldn’t he want the hospital to be the best it can be? So he can prove his capabilities? Isn’t he better off working with you rather than antagonising you?’

  She leaned forward as she asked the question, puzzling over this seemingly petty division between the two men. But Noah didn’t reply, merely closing his eyes as if praying for patience.

  Because she was asking stupid questions and he was busy?

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She stood up and backed towards the door. ‘It’s a dreadful habit, this wanting to get to the bottom of things. My entire family complains about it. In fact, “Jena, don’t go on and on” is probably the most commonly heard comment at family gatherings.’

  She reached the door, muttered another apology and slunk out, scolding herself all the way. As if Noah Blacklock didn’t have enough to put up with.

  ‘Hi, there! I’ve been hoping to catch you.’

  Jena reached the foyer and found Carla sitting on the bottom step, chatting to Colin.

  ‘Off you go, Colin,’ Carla told the man. ‘This is going to be a private conversation.’

  ‘In the hall, with people walking past all the time?’ he said, but with a shy smile at Jena he wheeled himself away.

  ‘Did Noah talk to you about this? I mentioned it to him yesterday,’ Carla said.

  Jena remembered Noah’s almost schizophrenic change of attitude from grump to close to friendly the previous morning. Now she had the answer. The man had wanted something.

  Hiding a niggle of annoyance, she said cautiously, ‘I don’t think he mentioned anything specific, but Mrs Nevins said modelling.’

  ‘Not so much modelling as movement. I wondered if you’d teach us some movement. I know fashion parades are choreographed. Do you know any of that stuff? Choreography? Is there a science of movement? Things you do and don’t do?’

  The questions were so unexpected it took a moment for Jena to take it in.

  ‘Who’s “us”?’ she asked, deciding to get down to basics while she thought about the rest.

  ‘Noah’s druggies. I thought you’d have known. You see, we want to give something back to the town, and thought we’d do a float in their Christmas street parade and kind of dance or do movement on it. Although it was Noah who worked out Kareela would be ideal, the town still had to accept us—which they’ve more or less done.’

  ‘I’m sorry I asked,’ Jena muttered. ‘I’m more confused than ever. Start with Noah’s druggies. What a bizarre phrase. Explain it for me.’

  ‘It’s what the town calls us,’ Carla said, stepping forward and rolling up her sleeves to show ridged scars on the inner surface of her arm. ‘Noah set up a halfway house for people who’d been through a drug rehab programme but weren’t quite ready to face the world alone.’

  ‘Here in Kareela? Is there a big enough drug problem in a small country town to warrant rehab and halfway houses?’

  Carla laughed, and indicated the step. They both sat down.

  ‘The rehab place is in Brisbane, and choosing Kareela for a halfway house was Noah’s idea because it’s close enough to the city for us to have friends or family visit—when we’re first in a programme we don’t get to see anyone—and also it’s a big centre for backpackers.’

  ‘I suppose that makes sense to someone,’ Jena said, shaking her head and wondering if, despite her continued protestations, being blonde did alter one’s thought processes.

  ‘Noah’s idea again, the backpackers,’ Carla elaborated. ‘He reckoned if we mixed and worked with people of a similar age who had their lives together, it would be inspiring for us.’

  Light bulbs began to click on in Jena’s head. She could imagine that the excitement generated among travellers from various nations could be inspiring to young people who, for a long time, had had no positive goals.

  ‘And are you working with these people? Has the idea proved successful?’

  Carla nodded.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, it has. I’ve had nothing for so long—no ambition, and no hope. Nothing beyond how to get the next hit. Since we’ve been up here we’ve been picking beans, and it’s dreadful work. You’re bent over all the time and the sun beats down on your neck, but at lunchtime you sit under a shady tree and hear all the different accents, and people talking about the mountains they’ve climbed in South America, the rapids they’ve ridden in India.’

  She paused, then smoothed her shirt over her scarred arms.

  ‘It makes you want to stay alive,’ she said quietly.

  Jena touched her shoulder.

  ‘I’ve got to get back to my real job,’ she said, ‘but I’d be happy to do anything I can to help. Can I visit you when I finish here? After five? Give me your address and a few directions—I don’t know the town at all.’

  ‘I’ll write it all down and leave it at Reception,’ Carla promised, then she leant over and kissed Jena on the cheek. ‘Thank you.’

  Jena carried the thanks and impulsive gesture up the stairs with her. She had no idea what she could do to help the group with their ‘giving something back’ to the town, but she’d do her best to make their effort special. Though she’d have to make sure her car was drivable. She didn’t want Noah to have to hang around waiting to give her a lift.

  Thinking of Noah, she realised this was another ‘angel’ thing on his part. Not that she believed in angels, but as a man he’d risen in her estimation. Though why he’d allied himself with such a controversial group as drug addicts, or risked contention by introducing a number of them into a country town, she had no idea.

  Perhaps a family problem—a close encounter of a personal kind?

  The thoughts intrigued her, but she had no time to pursue them. Andrew was waiting at the top of the stairs, and the look on his face suggested more trouble.

  ‘The hoist’s not working. We’ve got the mock office and theatre all chalked out on the floor and the timber and furniture will be here tomorrow, but we can’t get the darned thing going.’

  ‘It’s the ghost,’ Kate said, and Jena frowned at her.

  ‘Mention the ghost once more, especially to the rest of the crew when they arrive, and you’ll be going straight back to Brisbane.’ She turned to Andrew.

  ‘Is it a hire hoist or one of our own? If it’s hired, get onto the firm and get them to deliver another one. If it belongs to the company and they can’t replace it, hire one.’

  Andrew looked relieved and Jena realised it wasn’t so much the hoist bothering him as taking responsibility for decisions. He went off to phone someone, herding the others downstairs to check on the props they hadn’t lifted, leaving Jena on her own.

  She crossed the open space that had once been a ward to where chalk marks and small red pegs showed where the ‘office’ would be built.

  ‘Is this it?’

  Noah’s voice startled her. She’d heard footsteps but had assumed one of the crew was returning.

  ‘Would that my real office was so big.’

  ‘They need space to get the cameras in—one set up in front and one behind you, probably. I don’t understand all the technicalities of it, but they seem to need any number of different angles to make things look real.’

  Jena watched him pace within the chalk marks.

  ‘Hard to know what’s real sometimes. Do you find that?’

  The question puzzled her because she sensed he meant something beyond the actual words, but second-guessing what Noah Blacklock might be thinking was impossible so she went with the literal interpretation.

  ‘I
n this crazy entertainment business, so little is real it’s best not to believe any of it.’

  She waited for a reply, a comment, but he continued to pace, and when the silence began to fidget along her nerves she added, ‘Did you want me?’

  There was the slightest of hesitations—long enough to make her regret the phrasing of the question—but when Noah spoke he gave no indication he’d taken it any way but the way she’d meant it.

  ‘I wondered if you’d spoken to the mechanic about your car. As I’ve forced my presence on you at Matt’s place, the least I can do is provide transport, but I have a meeting with one of the therapists after work tonight and won’t be heading out to the lake until late, possibly not until after seven.’

  ‘After seven would suit me,’ Jena told him, remembering her promise to Carla. ‘Though I’ll probably have my car back. You don’t have to drive me.’

  ‘Seems silly to be taking two cars back and forth over the track,’ he said, but once again she sensed something more behind the words.

  Moving in with her, wanting to drive her—was Noah keeping an eye on her for some reason? She studied him as he stopped pacing to peer out of the window. Straight-backed. Intense.

  Attractive.

  She felt a shiver beneath her skin and glanced around—wondering if perhaps the ghost had passed by her.

  Though she didn’t believe in ghosts any more than she believed in angels!

  Or instant attraction.

  ‘But if you have a late meeting,’ she began, then felt the words falter on her lips as he turned towards her. He was silhouetted against the glass, a shadowy figure.

  A stranger.

  Yet somehow familiar.

  ‘I’ll let you know about the car,’ she said, and he walked away, his tread heavy on the steps.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  NOAH was nowhere in sight when Jena, satisfied that a new hoist had been found and work could continue the following day, was finally ready to leave the hospital. The receptionist had gone, but an older woman was manning the front desk.