The Temptation Test Read online

  Surely he could do those little things to make life easier for her without treading on her independent toes.

  He found matches and lit the gas, thinking now of the ten pink toes he’d seen as she’d floated in the moonlight. Wondering how they’d taste.

  Enough! Noah told his wayward mind, but at that stage his sensory perception told him she was back and he glanced towards the door and decided it would have been easier to watch her change her clothes than see her like this, in a long white gown of material so fine that, with the moon behind her, it hid none of the contours of her body.

  Though he’d seen quite a bit of them already. The swimsuit had clung so lovingly she might as well have been naked.

  But this garment was torment, plain and simple. It suggested, it hinted and it teased.

  ‘What?’ she demanded, obviously picking up on his reaction for she glanced down at herself. ‘It covers me from neck to well below the knee, it’s cotton so it doesn’t cling. What’s to look at?’

  ‘It’s…’ he began, then had to stop and find some moisture for his mouth so he could start again. ‘N-nothing, n-nothing at all!’ he stammered, deciding that the old saying about discretion being the better part of valour might hold true right now. ‘You came in so quietly I was surprised.’

  ‘Thought I was a ghost, did you?’ Jena joked, coming closer and fortunately moving into the shadows so he could no longer see right through the material.

  As long as she didn’t stand between him and the lamp. He’d have to be aware of the danger. Be careful. He couldn’t afford too many glimpses of filmily draped contours if he wanted to avoid kissing her again.

  ‘So, are you going to answer my question?’ she demanded as he prepared her coffee, black and unsweetened as he’d watched her drink it the previous day. He set it on the bench, then suggested they sit outside and led the way so he didn’t have to watch her body move as he followed her.

  ‘Or continue to avoid it?’ she persisted.

  ‘You’re like one of those sticky flies. No matter how many times you brush it away, it always seems to come back.’

  Jena chuckled softly.

  ‘I guess I can’t complain about animal—or insect—comparisons, having already mentioned dead fish!’

  ‘Definitely not,’ he said, ‘though I’m intrigued to know more about the fish. Presumably you must have found something you liked about the man to have kissed him.’

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t any man in particular, just a generalisation about the effect of some kisses.’

  ‘On which subject you’re, no doubt, an expert!’ Noah said, and heard a hint of his gut-tightening reaction in the terseness of the words.

  ‘Definitely!’ she said, as cheerfully as if kissing were an everyday occurrence for the entire world. ‘I’ve had the wet-fish ones, the tight-lipped pressure-mashers that leave the inner lining of your lips in tatters, the tongue thrust down to tangle in your tonsils type. In fact, I’ve often wondered why more research hasn’t been done. You know how someone’s always telling you something about yourself from the way you sit, or hold your hands, or the colours you wear? What about kiss analysis?’

  Noah found himself wanting to ask if he was a lip-masher or a tonsil-tangler but knew he mightn’t like the answer so he refrained. But the talk of kissing was getting to him—and the way she spoke, so offhand about her experience, made things even worse.

  ‘It might be handy, then, this forced proximity,’ he said, hoping he sounded less nervous about this suggestion than he felt. ‘Perhaps, as you’re obviously an expert on the subject, you can give me some tips on what women like in the way of kisses. Just as a friend, of course.’

  The silence that greeted this suggestion seemed to thunder in his ears, though he wasn’t so confused that he didn’t know silence couldn’t possibly be heard!

  He sneaked a look across the table to see if he could guess at her reaction, but her chair was drawn back into the dark shadow of the eaves and all he could discern was the pale oval of her face and the shimmering beauty of the cascading hair.

  She reached out to pick up her coffee, took a sip, then cradled the mug in her hands.

  ‘I don’t know!’ she finally replied. ‘As a teacher I’d probably be a dunce, and most of what I know is hearsay, anyway. I imagine really good kisses have to start deep in the soul and grow with feelings, not just mechanical skill.’

  ‘But surely there has to be some mechanics involved,’ Noah protested, as the hope of kissing her again in the immediate future was dashed to the ground. ‘We could practise that part.’

  ‘We already did,’ she reminded him. ‘And got it right. Which should be enough of a warning for anyone who doesn’t want to get involved to back right off.’

  She stood up, still cradling the coffee mug as if she needed to draw warmth from its heat.

  ‘I think I’ll take this to bed,’ she said. ‘I’ve a small battery lamp I read by, so you can have the gas light.’

  He watched her disappear into the interior, the lamp, still on the kitchen bench, throwing shadows across the room as she moved about. Bedclothes rustled, old canvas creaked, and he knew she was settling onto the uncomfortable camp stretcher.

  By the time he followed her into the room she had a small lamp lit and was sitting up in bed, long slim fingers moving through her hair as she plaited the silky tresses into a loose braid.

  ‘Pity this castle hasn’t a tower,’ he murmured. ‘We could have played Rapunzel and the Prince.’

  ‘My hair isn’t long enough for Rapunzel,’ she told him, snuffing out his little fantasy. ‘And while I’ve not quite given up on the quixotic angel theory, I’m pretty sure you’re no prince.’

  He had to laugh, then he carried his bag over closer to the lamp, found what he’d need for his pre-bed ablutions and left the room, determined to pull himself together before he re-entered it. The way things were going at the moment, with his imagination overheated to boiling point, he’d never get to sleep.

  Jena woke to daylight, and an awareness she wasn’t alone. It didn’t take long for all the pieces to click into place and she raised her head cautiously from her pillow and looked across the room.

  Noah slept, but quietly, not even the sound of his breathing carrying across the space.

  She studied him, or what she could see of him. His dark hair was rumpled, his strong features relaxed, but still well defined by a bone structure which would withstand the ravages of time and keep him handsome well into old age.

  Shoulders, broad and strong—she’d noticed them the first day when he’d changed her tyre. Swimmer’s shoulders. She’d guessed from the ease with which he’d cut through the water that he’d probably trained at some time.

  He lay on his side so she could see one arm bent forward, a mist of silky dark hair on his forearm lying flat against his skin.

  All in all, an extremely good-looking man, but with intelligence as well. So why had he forsaken a good position in the city? And what had happened to make him so adamant he didn’t want a relationship?

  He opened his eyes as if her scrutiny had wakened him, and looked directly at her, neither blinking nor, apparently, confused.

  ‘You tell me first,’ he said, and she knew exactly what he was talking about. ‘Then I’ll tell you.’

  It was a dare and she guessed he thought she’d back away. Instead, she sat up and swung her legs out of bed.

  ‘My reason’s easy. I’ve a new challenge ahead of me—well, I hope I have, this job should prove it—one that will take me away for months at a time. I believe all relationships, especially at the beginning, need a lot of nurturing. They’re like little seedlings which require more attention than established plants. Being away for long periods of time puts them at risk. That’s why, right now, I don’t need any complications in my life, particularly personal ones.’

  ‘You don’t have a very high opinion of men, do you?’ he murmured, mirroring her movements by sitting up and swinging his own l
egs out of bed. ‘Dead fish, mouth-mashers and now lumped together as “complications”. I find it hard to believe so much cynicism could be contained in such a beautiful package.’

  Jena grinned at him as she stood up and crossed to the door to look out at the lake in the early morning light.

  ‘It’s the beautiful packaging, if you care to call it that—which I don’t—that’s one of the causes of the problem.’ She threw the words over her shoulder as she stretched the kinks out of her spine. ‘A lot of people don’t bother looking beyond the ribbons and wrapping.’

  ‘When you’re standing in the doorway, I can see way past the wrapping,’ Noah growled, and Jena felt a rush of heat as she realised exactly what he meant.

  She turned and fled back to the bed, grabbed a sheet and wrapped it around her body, then hurried out the back door to the bathroom where a good splash of cold water from the drum she kept out there cooled her flushed face and restored a little of her equilibrium.

  ‘Still friends?’ he asked, when she came tentatively back inside.

  ‘You might have told me you could see right through my nightdress,’ she complained.

  His answering smile was totally unrepentant.

  ‘Oh, but I did!’ he reminded her, and Jena had to content herself with a growly, mumbled threat that made her sound like a school kid.

  Crossing to the bed, she pulled the elastic band off her plait and unwound the braid, then picked up her brush and began her usual morning task of dragging out all the tangles.

  Noah carried his breakfast of cereal and fruit onto the verandah. At least out there he wouldn’t have to watch the curiously intimate routine of hair-brushing. And if images of himself wielding the brush, pulling the bristles through the shining fall, were running riot in his head, they might be more easily controlled when he wasn’t watching her.

  By the time Jena joined him, dressed for work, but with her hair still loose, he’d regained enough equilibrium to remember her opening statement of the morning.

  ‘What kind of a challenge would be ruined by a man?’

  She looked surprised, then seemed to realise what he was referring to.

  ‘By any complication, not necessarily a man!’ she told him, setting down a breakfast similar to his own. ‘And I can’t tell you because it’s all still hush-hush. New television projects are always wrapped in cloaks of secrecy for fear some other channel will pinch the idea first.’

  He suspected she was laughing inwardly at this concept, so pursued his questioning.

  ‘And this kind of paranoia doesn’t put you off?’

  She laughed out loud now, the delightful notes ringing out, frightening a small blue tit which had been perched in a banksia just beyond the verandah.

  ‘It’s nothing to the paranoia among designers. Most of them would like to cut the tongues from all models so the secrets of their new season’s collections remain safe until the showing.’ She paused to spoon cereal into her delectable mouth. ‘In fact, I was so inured to it I took it as normal when I entered the world of television.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Noah murmured. Hardly the most intelligent of responses but all he could manage after watching the way the tip of her pink tongue, fortunately not removed for secrecy, had emerged to swipe a tiny crumb of wheat flake from her lower lip.

  ‘Now it’s your turn,’ she said, as cheerful as the sunshine reflecting brightly off the lake.

  ‘Maybe later,’ he said, when he realised explaining would mean telling her about Lucy, and right now he didn’t want to bring another woman into the conversation.

  Though he could tell her about Amy—do it that way.

  He was still considering this when an unfamiliar noise broke the silence.

  ‘Damn! My phone. That’ll be Matt. I’m supposed to phone him every morning to assure him I’ve made it safely through another night, and I always forget!’

  Jena left the table, her long legs carrying her effortlessly away from Noah towards another man—even if he was only on the phone.

  Brightness faded from the day and the sense of well-being that had settled, with breakfast, in his body disappeared, to be replaced by a scrungy feeling he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—identify.

  Of course there must be something going on between her and Matt. Maybe he was the project she was keeping so secret. Had she targeted the womanising television star and executive as husband material?

  Noah felt regret sidle into his heart and had to remind himself it was none of his business. In fact, given the kissability of the woman and his own determination to stay free of attachments for a while, it was probably a very good thing if Matt was the project.

  Perhaps he could help her reach her goal.

  Noah grinned to himself.

  Knowing Matt’s legendary determination to not get married, helping Jena catch him might be fun—as well as sweet revenge for Bridget Somerton.

  And for all those years of having him held up as the paragon of all virtues.

  ‘You’re looking very cheerful for someone who’s going to be late for work if he doesn’t get dressed within the next two minutes.’

  The remark made him forget the puzzle of why the anticipated revenge wasn’t tasting as sweet as he’d expected, and he clambered hurriedly to his feet, mumbled something about being right back and disappeared into the house.

  Of course, his clothes were still in a suit bag in the car, so he had to dash out there, then have a quick shave in cold water, splash himself more or less clean, and dress so hurriedly his clothes kept sticking to his barely dry body.

  ‘I’m going to put in a hand-held shower of some kind,’ he growled when he found Jena waiting with an exaggerated air of impatience by the Jeep.

  ‘That’d be good,’ she agreed. ‘Will you organise a new tank and speak to God about some rain to fill it, or do some showers come with their own water supply?’

  ‘OK, I know it won’t be easy!’ he told her, climbing into the car and slamming the door.

  ‘And it will be cold unless you also work out heating,’ she reminded him, then her lips tilted into a smile so teasingly delightful he forgot how to breathe. ‘Don’t tell me you’re regretting the generous but erratic impulse that made you lend your place to Greg and Rose?’

  The answer should have been a shouted ‘yes’ because, if nothing more, staying in his own place would have meant less contact with this beautiful witch!

  ‘No!’ he said, when the ability to form words finally returned. Then, in case she didn’t get the message, he repeated it more firmly.

  ‘No!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE drive to the highway began in silence, but Jena couldn’t let it hang between them.

  ‘It’s your turn,’ she reminded Noah. ‘I told you, now you tell me.’

  He glanced her way and grinned.

  ‘And if I said, “Jena, don’t go on and on”, would you stop?’

  She had to smile—perhaps there was a fun gene buried somewhere in his psyche.

  ‘No!’ she told him. ‘Fair’s fair.’

  His sigh was strong enough to bounce off the windscreen but he didn’t speak.

  ‘Who did you buy the house for?’

  He started as if she’d bitten him.

  ‘What house? What do you mean, who did I buy it for?’

  ‘You know what house—the one where Carla and co. are temporarily living. It’s not the kind of house a man intending to live alone would buy for himself, so there’s a woman in the story somewhere.’

  Another sigh riffled through the air between them.

  ‘Sticky flies have nothing on you,’ he muttered. ‘I have a friend—a close friend—actually, we’ve had something going for a few years now—more than a few…’

  ‘Boy! That sounds like a great relationship!’ Jena snorted. ‘Something going? More than a few years? Is this a love affair or an occasionally convenient bit of sex? How does she describe it? Does she use the same words or might she use the dreaded “love�
�� word?’

  ‘It’s really none of your business, but you asked. If you don’t like the answer, that’s too bad!’

  His scowl had returned and tension whitened his knuckles on the steering wheel.

  ‘OK, I’ll accept that whatever it was between you, it suited both of you—or you, anyway. But if it was OK, why the avoidance now? Why the remarks about no relationships this century?’

  Noah laughed instead of sighing this time.

  ‘You do go on and on, don’t you? Actually, I guess your reaction irritated me because it put into words what Lucy tried to tell me—about something missing in our relationship. I took it she wanted marriage, commitment, a mapped-out future—together. So I bought the house up here, did the whole proposal thing—bended knee, ring, the lot—and she roared with laughter.’

  And though he’d laughed before he’d spoken, there was no mirth in the words of explanation. Jena felt her heart grow heavy with sympathy for him.

  ‘What did she want?’ she asked, not needing to know any more but feeling, now he’d started talking, it might help him to finish.

  He shrugged.

  ‘None of the things I wanted, apparently. I’d often talked about shifting to a large country town eventually, because I believe it’s a better environment for bringing up children. She’d never said it wouldn’t suit her, never even hinted at it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Apparently she’d thought I wasn’t serious—that it was all just hot air. She’s ambitious—another doctor—and she’d assumed I was just as keen to climb the ladder. In fact, she’d assumed that after my years in Emergency I’d specialise in critical care. When I told her I’d given notice to the hospital and had been appointed at Kareela, she told me I must be mad.’

  They were on the highway now, caught in the slow lane behind a school bus.

  ‘You resigned, got a new job and bought a house, all without telling the woman to whom you were about to propose?’ Jena couldn’t hide her incredulity. ‘I can understand the limpness of the “something going” phrase now. For two people who’d presumably had a lengthy relationship, you didn’t know each other too well. How could you both be so totally wrong about each other?’