The Temptation Test Read online

  ‘I thought I knew her,’ he muttered defensively, then he swung out from behind the bus and accelerated past it.

  ‘She probably thought she knew you, until you informed her you were both off to the country! What on earth did she say? How did it turn out?’

  Noah knew he couldn’t sigh again. He glanced towards his passenger. If he refused to answer, would she persist?

  Of course she would. She was a woman.

  A particularly persistent one!

  ‘She told me I was mad, then tried to talk me out of it and finally admitted the relationship had grown very stale anyway, so much so she’d had the odd affair with colleagues, and finished by agreeing it would be a good idea if I did come up here. I could get the country thing out of my system and if we spent the year apart, saw other people, maybe we could recapture whatever had drawn us together.’

  ‘Which was probably sex,’ Jena told him bluntly, then she turned towards him, shaking her head and frowning. ‘And you went along with this? What are you going to do when the year’s up? Go meekly back to the city? And if she hasn’t found anyone she likes better, continue with a relationship that wasn’t offering enough for you to understand each other?’

  ‘What human being ever understands another?’ he growled, because the way Jena made it sound, the whole thing was pathetic. And his behaviour, seen through another’s eyes, must be even more pitiable. He should have finished with Lucy right then and there, rather than going along with her suggestion that something special might rise again from the ashes of their relationship.

  He wasn’t a psychologist but he guessed that not finalising things—not ending the relationship cleanly—made the anger he felt over her betrayal worse. What he’d told himself was mature behaviour might simply be avoidance!

  ‘Most people can make a bit of an effort to understand each other!’ Jena pointed out. ‘And you must have some empathy for your fellow man to be giving away houses the way you do.’

  ‘I don’t give away houses!’

  He swung the car off the highway and slowed down as they entered town. Talking about Lucy had reignited all the tension he’d thought he could leave behind him, so his stomach felt knotted and a tightness in his temples suggested a headache wasn’t too far away.

  Then Jena Carpenter patted him on the knee.

  His involuntary reaction caused him to start, but the comfort of the casual touch eased some of the knots. Until she said, ‘Well, I think it’s a very nice house, and your Lucy would have been lucky to get it! Was it decorated when you bought it or did you do the colours yourself?’

  He glanced towards her, wondering if she could be psychic.

  ‘I had a decorator do the colours,’ he said, the words bringing back the first of his post-Lucy disasters.

  Sally had been recommended by a friend, and while she’d been consulting with him over what Lucy might want she’d been friendly but nothing more. Then he’d made the mistake of telling her about Lucy’s reaction to the beautiful home she’d created, and Sally’s offer to comfort him after his split with Lucy had led to a situation which should have taught him the lesson he’d finally learnt with Linda. To keep his professional and personal lives separate!

  And to avoid all relationships, no matter how casual, until he knew for certain it was what he wanted.

  Which meant he had to stop kissing Jena!

  Because even if she turned out to be exactly what he wanted, she’d made it abundantly clear that she wanted this hush-hush job she was after far more than she wanted a man in her life.

  Embarrassed by the impulse that had made her touch him, and the silence that had followed his last reply, Jena turned her attention to Carla’s problems.

  ‘By the way, Carla mentioned a library. Do you know where it is?’

  He didn’t seem to find her question at all unusual, for he merely nodded and said, ‘I’ll drive you past on the way to the hospital.’

  Aware, from the distracted way he spoke, that he was thinking of something else, hopefully not her hand patting his knee, she took the opportunity to study him. In profile, his face had too many angles to be conventionally handsome, but the long nose, slightly bumped in the middle, and high forehead balanced out the determined thrust of his chin.

  Was it always so determined? Or so jutted?

  She didn’t think so, and wondered what was occupying his mind.

  Not what was occupying hers, that was for sure. One glimpse of those lips and back came the memories of how they’d felt when he’d kissed her. Spine-tingling, that’s how it had been—and even now, remembering, faint reverberations trickled down her backbone.

  ‘What are your plans for the day? Apart from following me around?’ He asked the questions as he took the turn before the one they usually used.

  A quick analysis of his voice suggested he was asking out of politeness and wasn’t particularly interested in her reply.

  ‘I might give you a miss,’ she told him—serve him right for assuming! ‘I want to spend time with the nursing staff, following them through their routines. Then the ancillary staff—there’s plenty to do.’

  ‘Yes?’ Noah asked, and Jena had to smile at his patent disbelief.

  ‘Give us a chance!’ she suggested. ‘Relax a little and you might find you actually enjoy having the buzz in the air when a production’s in progress.’

  He turned towards her as if the suggestion he relax—or perhaps it was the idea of enjoyment—was too bizarre to contemplate.

  ‘Fun, remember?’

  ‘That’s the library,’ he said, ignoring Jena’s dig and waving one long-fingered hand towards a small brick building. ‘I think it’s open every day, but one of the women in the office could tell you for sure. Did you want to find something special?’

  ‘Statues!’ she told him, then took pity on his bewilderment and explained.

  ‘I suppose you’re aware you’re making more work for yourself,’ he said. ‘All for nothing when you consider the reason the council has a parade in Kareela. I bet it’s to get people into the main street, near the shops, where doubtless they’ll spend money. I think Christmas is grossly over-commercialised as it is.’

  Jena let him grumble, though her mind was gnawing at the problem of the strange personality of the man.

  He was generous, evidenced by this giving away of houses to all and sundry, yet, as she’d pointed out to him already, he seemed to get no pleasure from the act of giving. In fact, in spite of a few glimpses she’d had of a softer Noah Blacklock, he was the most uptight man she’d ever met.

  Was the generosity a penance of some kind?

  Then there was the financial inducement from the television company, yet there was no way she could see him as a greedy man—

  They were turning into the big car park at the rear of the hospital, but Jena asked the question anyway.

  ‘The extra money offered by the film company,’ she began. ‘Did you want it for the drug rehabilitation project? Does it cost money? I know the young people are living in your house at present, but didn’t you say there was another house? Will they have to rent? Won’t they earn money with their fruit-picking? Shouldn’t they be aiming towards financial independence as well as being drug-free?’

  He steered the Jeep neatly into a parking space and turned off the engine. Half smiled as he turned towards her.

  ‘So many questions and so little time,’ he said, nodding towards where the crew were gathered near the back door, apparently waiting for her. ‘Did you save them up for the last minute or have they just occurred to you?’

  But Jena didn’t answer, too busy thinking of the consequences of the crew seeing her getting out of Noah Blacklock’s vehicle.

  Damn!

  They wouldn’t necessarily tell Matt because she doubted whether he had much to do with underlings this far down the chain of command, but they’d certainly think the worst and give her some grief.

  ‘Damn!’

  She said it out loud this ti
me, then realised Noah had been talking to her and she’d ignored him.

  ‘I’m sorry, can we talk about it tonight? Right now, I’d better find work for this lot to be doing to keep their smutty minds off what they’ll be thinking about you and me. I thought by now they’d have been upstairs, hammering the walls of your mock office.’

  She pushed open the car door and was surprised when Noah appeared to hold it for her. For a big man, he could move with remarkable speed.

  ‘I’ll see you some time during the day?’ he asked.

  She looked into his eyes and saw a gleam that made answering impossible.

  Well, nearly impossible.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she managed to croak, then the gleam turned mischievous and before she could move away he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

  ‘If they’re going to talk anyway, we might as well give them some ammunition.’

  The murmured words felt warm against her skin, and a kind of glow started in her blood.

  ‘Oh, hell!’ she muttered, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, then she ducked past him and hurried towards the winking, nudging, chiacking members of the crew.

  Noah entered the building through Outpatients, glad it was the film crew, not hospital staff members, who’d seen them arrive together. Though would the staff have cared? He’d been here five months and although he knew everyone, and all of them were very polite, he couldn’t say he’d made any friends.

  Perhaps Rhoda…

  She appeared on cue, meeting up with him in the hall outside the men’s ward.

  ‘Linda Carthew’s looking for you. She’s in the foyer,’ the nursing sister said. ‘I’d say she wants to talk to you about the parade. Says she meant to bring it up at yesterday’s meeting but you sidetracked her with something else.’

  Rhoda paused and Noah realised there was worse to come.

  ‘Apparently the board wants the hospital to participate and all staff members to be involved.’

  Noah gaped at her.

  ‘Participate how?’ he demanded, and Rhoda chuckled.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll tell you,’ she said, then she ducked away, still laughing to herself.

  ‘We thought a float. You could do it like a hospital ward but make it fun,’ Linda told him. ‘I’ve already discussed it with Jeff and he thinks it’s a great idea.’

  Noah clamped his teeth together and again resisted the temptation to roll his eyes. He could just imagine it! People in white coats pretending to be doctors, wearing glasses with big noses and bushy eyebrows attached, chasing patients with huge hypodermic needles while nurses in short uniforms bent over beds and revealed plenty of leg.

  ‘I don’t know that I’ll have time to be involved,’ he said, then he remembered Jena telling him of Carla’s plan to do something and seized on it as an excuse. ‘I’ve promised I’d help the young people at my house put something together. They want to give something back to the town.’

  Linda’s polite smile faded and a spark of anger flickered in her eyes.

  ‘Surely the hospital should have first call on your availability, Noah.’ She spoke calmly but he could hear the menace underneath.

  ‘During working hours, of course,’ he agreed, speaking carefully to avoid exacerbating the problems between them. ‘But this will be an after-hours project, and the parade is on a Saturday. I’ll probably be on call, but not on duty, Linda.’

  She spun around and strode away, every step she took indicating just how angry she was.

  ‘She really does hate you, doesn’t she?’

  Jena had appeared behind him, and Noah wondered if her arrival had been an added aggravation for Linda.

  ‘It could be partly my fault,’ he said, speaking his thoughts aloud because he found the level of Linda’s anger disturbing. ‘When I first arrived in town, she invited me to dinner, and I assumed she was doing it on behalf of the board. In return, I took her to dinner. There’s a wonderful restaurant out by the river and we went there. Then the local theatre group was putting on a play and she had tickets—’

  ‘You went out with her and then you dumped her.’ Jena said, correctly interpreting Linda’s view of the events. ‘And you say it’s only partly your fault!’

  ‘I didn’t dump her!’ Noah protested. ‘Dumping someone—and that’s an awful word, by the way—assumes there was a relationship in the first place, which there wasn’t. In fact, just as soon as I realised what was happening, I told her I wasn’t interested in a relationship right then.’

  Jena smiled at him.

  ‘Well, at least you learnt from the experience. You made sure I had that information almost as soon as we met—or, at least, as soon as we started living together! Though I thought that’s what your year apart from Lucy was all about—seeing other people, having other relationships!’

  She gave him a saucy smile and went lightly up the steps, her long legs flashing as she took them in her usual energetic fashion, two at a time.

  She’d disappeared around the corner before he realised he hadn’t told her he’d volunteered himself to help his ‘druggies’, as the town called them, with their parade preparations.

  Not for any worthy reason, he reminded himself, though Jena wasn’t to know it.

  Noah poked his head into the office to check there was nothing urgent needing his attention and, once reassured, began his ward round. Mrs Burns’s throat infection was finally responding to the drugs—or so he assumed when his patient informed him she was feeling a lot better.

  He took another swab to be sure and moved on. Mrs Nevins, not technically his patient but still his responsibility while in hospital, was reacting well to the new blood-pressure medication her GP was trying, and young Toby had stabilised and now wanted to finish the chess game they’d been playing in snatched moments and then go home.

  All the other patients were doing well, and the realisation that they could possibly be doing equally well without him made him consider Jeff Finch’s contention that Kareela hospital didn’t need a full-time medico.

  The wail of a siren, growing louder and seemingly more urgent as the vehicle drew near, put a stop to such negative thoughts. He walked through to the emergency room, met Marion and a wardsman and all three of them walked out to meet the ambulance.

  ‘Pregnant woman gone into premature labour,’ the ambulance driver told them as he got out of the vehicle and came around to the back door.

  His coworker was crouched in the back, his head bent over the woman as he reassured her.

  ‘Her name’s Minnie Cooke, and all she seems to know is that the baby isn’t due until February. She kept telling us it couldn’t come because destiny had decreed she have an Aquarian.’

  The man looked as puzzled as Noah felt as he tried to make sense of this information, but the stretcher had been rolled from the ambulance by now, so he forgot about destiny to concentrate on the here and now.

  ‘We put her on a drip and attached an external electronic foetal monitor,’ the second attendant told Noah, who was introducing himself to the young woman.

  She grasped his hand and held on tightly.

  ‘Don’t let me lose the baby,’ she begged, her dark eyes so full of pain Noah felt his heart contract. He walked beside her as she was wheeled into the emergency room. As if by osmosis, Jena had appeared, and was again doing her unobtrusive thing in the background.

  ‘We’ll do whatever we can,’ he promised Minnie. ‘But you’ll have to help me. Do you know how many weeks pregnant you are, or when the baby’s due? And who’s your usual doctor?’

  The young woman sighed.

  ‘I don’t know the weeks and we don’t have a doctor, but the baby is due in early February.’

  Quick mental arithmetic suggested the labour was dangerously early. A second assessment of his patient explained the ‘don’t have a doctor’ statement. The wild, dishevelled hair and colourful sari-style attire suggested she was part of a small self-sufficient community of young peopl
e who lived in the hills not far from the town. Hippie-folk, the town called them, using an expression left over from the sixties.

  As he read the information on the ambulance’s treatment sheet—strong uterine contractions lasting forty seconds, occurring every ten minutes though the interval was reducing, but the foetal heartbeat was good—he worked out the likely background. Then he turned his attention back to the patient.

  ‘Did you have any inkling this might happen? Any recent discomfort, loss of fluid, backache, cramps, other pain?’

  ‘I’ve been tireder than I was and I’ve been feeling uncomfortable, kind of bloated, but didn’t think anything of it until the pains started in the night.’

  Which meant they’d been going for some time before she’d reached out for help, Noah realised.

  ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ he told her. ‘For a start, we’ll examine you and make sure it is pre-term labour, then we’ll try to stop it with fluids and drugs.’

  He saw her flinch from the word ‘drugs’ but she didn’t argue.

  ‘And at the same time, in case we can’t stop it, we’ll give you a steroid treatment which will help the baby’s lungs and possibly prevent some of the complications of prematurity.’

  ‘I don’t want to have the baby now!’

  ‘We don’t want you to either,’ Noah assured her, then he nodded to Marion to take over as comforter while he began his examination.

  The cervix was dilated but the membranes were intact—one big bonus.

  ‘We’ll do an ultrasound, make sure there’s plenty of fluid around the baby, check on its gestational age and how it’s lying,’ Noah told Minnie, but kept back the information that the ultrasound would also show up any congenital abnormality which might have brought on the premature labour.

  No need for her to worry about that yet.

  ‘Perhaps we should send her straight to the city,’ Marion suggested. ‘The helicopter could be here in half an hour and have her in Brisbane in less than two hours.’