The Temptation Test

by Meredith Webber

Noah had returned with the chairs, and though she knew he was only making conversation—which was good as her own supply seemed to have dried up—she didn’t want to answer the question with the truth, which was ‘go to bed’—which was bad, given the connotation in the words!

  ‘Read a little,’ she managed, knowing he’d think there was something wrong if she maintained a stony silence for the entire evening. ‘Look at the lake and sky and trees.’

  ‘And I’d thought I was the only one out here, communing with nature.’

  His voice had deepened—grown husky—and the tremors along Jena’s spine made her so tense she had to shake herself to ease her muscles.

  ‘Steak and salad—perhaps a sausage?’

  Noah heard the question, but found it difficult to answer. At some stage, Jena had put on a pair of black-rimmed glasses, presumably so she could read the label on the package she was holding.

  And suddenly all he’d ever heard about men not making passes at girls who wore glasses was proven totally erroneous. Jena Carpenter in glasses was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.

  Even sexier, though he didn’t know how it was possible, than Jena Carpenter without them.

  ‘Long-sighted?’ he asked, then realised he was back at quarter-witted again. Why else would she be wearing them?

  She whipped them off and he was conscious of feeling disappointed he hadn’t looked some more while he’d had the chance.

  ‘Very!’ she said, her voice as dry as the sand above the high-water mark.

  ‘But you don’t need them for driving?’

  She shook her head so the blonde hair caught the lamplight and rippled like the reflection of the moon on the lake.

  ‘Only for reading, writing, and computer work.’

  As a conversation, it would win prizes for inanity, Noah decided, but he couldn’t think of anything better—not even a follow-up.

  ‘Do you eat steak?’ she said, saving him the bother, and reminding him she’d already asked the question once.

  ‘Certainly,’ he said, then, to make amends, added, ‘And salad and sausages.’

  He decided he’d give up on conversations and dug around in his hastily packed bag, eventually finding the medical thriller he was currently reading. Discovering occasional medical mistakes in the text hadn’t lessened the impact of the tale and he was anxious to get on with it.

  Or to immerse himself in something less distracting than thoughts of a bespectacled Jena. Any type of Jena.

  He set the book on the table, then realised that as the darkness deepened she’d need the lamp closer to where she was preparing their meal. But there was no way he was going to sit in the corner, even nearer to her. Not even the serial killer within the pages could compete with such proximity.

  Jena tried to concentrate on getting a meal together, although tonight the usually simple task was proving difficult. She found Noah’s presence in the room distracting in an undefinable way—almost as if he’d infected the air with something that turned fingers into thumbs and her brain into mush.

  With a supreme effort of will she forced herself to concentrate, ignoring the bumping noises he was making, though curious as to what might be causing them.

  She discovered the answer when, after a particularly loud bump, curiosity won and she turned.

  ‘You’ve stolen my t-table!’ she stuttered.

  The accused man stood in the doorway, a dim shape in the gathering darkness. He chuckled as he crossed the room towards her.

  ‘Simply shifted it outside—onto the front deck. Why eat indoors when the weather’s so great?’

  He glanced around her makeshift kitchen.

  ‘I didn’t think to bring plates and cutlery. Is there any old stuff here I can wash and use?’

  Jena shook her head, which both answered his question and woke up a couple of brain cells in the mush.

  ‘I brought enough for two,’ she managed, then, as the lamplight revealed a glint of satisfaction in Noah’s eyes, she realised her mistake.

  ‘So you were or are expecting Matt to come!’ he said, moving closer to peer at the steak she’d just dropped on the hot plate. ‘I like mine rare.’

  ‘You’ll get it thrown at you if you don’t stop going on about Matt Ryan!’ Jena warned him. ‘I’ve actually enough plates and so on for four, because rather than pack those things separately I brought my picnic basket.’

  She waved her hand towards the covered basket perched on the far end of the bench, then angled around her companion and flipped the steak over.

  ‘You could take the salad out to the table, and you’ll find knives and forks in the basket.’

  ‘Make myself useful, in fact,’ Noah said, moving obediently away.

  And get out of my immediate vicinity! Jena added in her mind.

  But she needed him further away. Like on another planet! Not sitting across a table from her, with lamplight brushing gold across his cheekbones and lighting little fires in his usually cool grey eyes.

  They ate in silence, but when the meal was finished the lack of noise seemed to tighten the air between them until the brittle tension forced Jena to break it with speech.

  ‘I visited Carla today.’ She spoke brightly, in the hope the false cheer would disguise her uneasiness. ‘I didn’t meet the others as they were at work, but maybe you can fill me in. How many people are in your programme?’

  He looked up, and she thought she saw a fleeting frown tug at his eyebrows, but all he said was, ‘It isn’t my programme. I merely suggested that a town like Kareela, which has a moving population of young people, would be ideal for a halfway house. It seemed to me that the flexibility of this kind of peer group—with people coming and going from it all the time—would make it easier for those on rehab to fit right in.’

  ‘And mixing with the backpackers, hearing about their lives, might give your group an added incentive to stay clean,’ Jena said. ‘Carla told me that part.’

  Noah grinned at her across the table.

  ‘That’s actually an added bonus. I knew getting them into a different environment made sense. I mean, to come out of rehab and mix with friends still using didn’t seem ideal. But I didn’t think of the influence of the travelling young people until much later, when discussions had gone on for so long I wondered if it would ever happen.’

  ‘And you had to come up with a clincher argument?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No! I’d already done that. My aunt had died and left me her house.’ He hesitated, looking out over the lake, and Jena wondered if he’d been very close to his aunt and was mourning her loss.

  But when he spoke, there was no trace of sadness or nostalgia. More surprise than anything. ‘She seemed to think I’d find a worthy use for it—had some idea that because I was a doctor I was also a humanitarian.’

  Jena had to smile. Here was another house the man had given away—but if she wanted to hear the rest of his explanation she’d better not point it out.

  ‘You say that as if the two are mutually exclusive!’

  ‘They often are!’ Noah grumbled. ‘Why people have this impression of doctors as the next best thing to saints, I don’t know. A lot of the ones I know are your normal, venial, over-ambitious human beings clawing their way to the top of whatever particular ladder they’ve chosen to climb.’

  ‘But not all!’ Jena reminded him, thinking of kind and compassionate medicos she’d known.

  ‘No, not all,’ he said, but his voice lacked conviction.

  ‘Is that why you got off the ladder?’ she asked. ‘Because you didn’t like what doctors, in your estimation, had become?’

  He didn’t answer immediately, but looked at the lamp, as if the bright light might illuminate the question for him.

  ‘I’ve really no right to criticise anyone else and no, it wasn’t because of what others had become, but for fear of what I might become myself. That and other things.’

  Jena waited for Noah to explain this statement, but h
e said nothing more, simply turning his attention from the lamp to the bush and beyond it to where the lake shone silver in the moonlight.

  ‘I think I’ll take a swim,’ he said, then looked doubtfully at her. ‘I don’t suppose you want one.’

  ‘Which, translated, means you’d like to go alone,’ Jena sniped. ‘Well, tough, because I’ve had a long day and a swim is my reward. You don’t have exclusive rights on the lake, so you’ll have to put up with me.’

  She paused, her mind searching back for an elusive scrap of memory.

  ‘In fact,’ she reminded him, ‘not that long ago you invited me to swim with you. Even guaranteed the water free of things that bite.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that!’ he said, standing up, gathering the dirty plates and heading back inside the room.

  Jena let him go. She’d change into her swimsuit when he was safely out of the house. And, in the meantime, she had his irony-laden retort to consider.

  The ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that’ remark!

  Seems it matched the thought she’d had earlier!

  CHAPTER NINE

  EMERGING from the little house some time later, Jena was surprised to find Noah waiting on the steps.

  ‘I thought you’d gone,’ she muttered.

  ‘And left you to negotiate this overgrown track on your own? I might not be an angel, but I do have some basic gentlemanly traits. I’ll go ahead.’

  He also had a torch, which he shone behind him so she could see where she was putting her feet. But no amount of light could ease the tightness in her chest or the awareness of him which sent heat throughout her body.

  When they reached the sand she dropped her towel, tucked her hair into a cap and raced towards the water. Cooling off might help. While swimming to the other side and back might tire her sufficiently to enable her to sleep in the same room as him again tonight.

  Though she’d probably drown. She could swim well enough to save herself but long-distance swimming wasn’t on her CV.

  Diving in, she felt the water envelop her, its silky caress soothing frayed nerve endings and cooling the tingling hotness in her blood.

  Jena swam about a hundred metres, then rolled over on her back, lazily moving legs and arms to stay afloat while she studied the dark arc of the sky and picked out patterns in the pinpoint brightness of the stars.

  ‘Found the Southern Cross among the stars?’ a deep voice asked, but she didn’t turn towards Noah. Neither was she startled, as her body had already told her he was near.

  ‘That one’s easy,’ she said. ‘I was actually counting them all tonight. I’d reached one million, four hundred and thirty-five thousand and six, and now you’ve made me lose my place.’

  She flipped over and dived beneath the surface, emerging closer to the shore and what she hoped was a safe distance away. But he’d followed, porpoising up right beside her, so they stood, in water to their shoulders, less than an arm’s length apart.

  ‘The last thing I want in my life is a romantic entanglement!’ he said bluntly, and Jena, pleased to have the silent menace out in the open, smiled.

  ‘Entanglement doesn’t begin to describe how devastating a love affair would be for me right now!’ she told him. ‘It would ruin everything!’

  There, it was said—though saying it didn’t stop her moving towards him when he touched her shoulder, didn’t stop her body pressing against his, or her lips answering some silent demand for kisses.

  Eventually they had to stop for breath.

  ‘If this was real, I’d rather be kissing you on dry land so I could see your hair all around your shoulders. So I could touch it and feel it and run my fingers through it. It’s fascinated me, your hair!’

  Jena looked into his face, shadowy but intent.

  ‘If this was real, I’d probably take off the cap, but without power for a hair-dryer, I’d still be wet-haired in the morning. So, as it isn’t real, and it’s not something serious, you’ll have to make do with the cap.’

  She leaned into a second kiss, feeling the smoothness of his lips, thrilling to the explorations of his tongue, wondering why kissing one man should be so exciting when recent kisses she’d experienced had had all the appeal of kissing a dead fish.

  ‘Are you concentrating?’ he demanded, lifting his head to look into her eyes. She had to laugh.

  ‘Not really,’ she told him. ‘I mean, it’s not serious—not something we both want. More like an experiment, isn’t it? But it’s nice. Better by far than kissing a dead fish!’

  His turn to laugh. In fact, he laughed so hard he pulled away, leaving a sense of desolation in Jena’s skin.

  ‘Well, I’m glad I beat the fish!’ he said, reaching out to take her hand and towing her towards the shore.

  It was nice, she decided, being able to laugh with him.

  ‘We could be friends.’ She spoke aloud because the revelation was overwhelming.

  ‘Do you think so?’ he said, with the same cynicism she’d heard in his voice when he’d spoken of doctors’ ambition.

  ‘There’s no reason why not!’ she said stoutly. ‘After all, we’ll be working together for the next few weeks and living together for a few days. Wouldn’t it be easier if we were friends instead of arguing all the time?’

  ‘Friends don’t kiss the way we just did,’ he reminded her, turning towards her now they’d reached water’s edge. ‘Like this, remember?’

  He slipped the cap off her head then tangled his fingers in her hair to draw her head towards him.

  With a soft sigh of something she didn’t want to think about, she kissed him back, revelling in the firmness of his body against her curves, the cool dampness of his skin against her heat.

  ‘We won’t keep kissing,’ she told him, when once again they paused to regain control of their breathing and suck in some much-needed air. ‘I mean, we don’t have to, do we? Neither of us wants a relationship right now, so probably it’s best if we don’t.’

  She felt his hand on her hair again, only gently this time, smoothing through the tangles.

  ‘Definitely best if we don’t,’ he agreed, but for the first time since she’d met him she heard an echo of uncertainty in his voice.

  Definitely best if we don’t, she repeated to herself as that faint echo weakened her resolve. She stepped away, found her towel and rubbed it hard across her body.

  ‘Why are you so against romantic entanglements?’ she asked, wanting to know but also wanting to start a conversation, any conversation, to bring some sanity back into her life. ‘A bad experience? A life plan it would wreck?’

  She heard Noah’s feet crunch in the sand but he didn’t stop beside her although his footsteps slowed.

  ‘Are you asking out of idle curiosity or do you really want to know?’

  Jena thought about it for a moment.

  ‘I was making conversation when I asked, but I would like to know. I mean, if we’re going to be friends, it’s the kind of thing we could talk about.’

  ‘Fair enough!’ he said, but he told her nothing, merely shining the torch behind him as he picked his way back up the track. She followed, wondering if he intended talking later. Wondering what she’d got herself into, and how she’d reply if he happened to ask her the same thing.

  Noah let his feet find their own way along the path. His brain was too bemused to be giving orders.

  Why the hell, when a woman had stated very bluntly the last thing on earth she wanted was a love affair, had he gone ahead and kissed her?

  And why, after she’d compared him, favourably as it happened, to a dead fish, had he done it again?

  Now she was wanting to talk about things—didn’t all women?

  As for being friends…

  He reached the bottom of the steps.

  ‘I’ll make coffee,’ he told her, then remembered that the food supplies he’d taken from his place were still in the back of the Jeep.

  ‘When I’ve got the rest of my stuff out,’ he added
, and walked around the little building instead of entering it.

  He knew she’d followed him because his body had become attuned to her presence. Even at the hospital he could make a good guess as to where she was from some kind of supersensitivity meter he’d recently developed in his skin.

  ‘I’ll help you carry things,’ she said, as if he’d asked why.

  He didn’t argue. Though he’d only known her for two days, he’d learnt the futility of that exercise!

  ‘You can take the box, I’ll take the fridge,’ he said, when he’d opened the rear of the Jeep and an interior light came on to reveal his hastily packed stores. ‘The McDonalds had their own stuff and insisted they didn’t want any of mine,’ he added, as she leaned past him, inadvertently giving him a tantalising glimpse of the deep shadow between her full breasts.

  Friends?

  But she was right, they could hardly remain at war with each other when they had to share such cramped quarters by night and see each other at work every day.

  He’d had women friends before, he reminded himself as she walked away, the moonlight revealing the rhythm of her gliding elegance, not in the least marred by the burden she was carrying.

  Not women friends he’d kept wanting to kiss!

  He hefted the straps of his swag across one shoulder, then picked up the small refrigerator and stalked towards the house. All he had to do was stop kissing her, he told himself. He didn’t have to promise to be friends, or even try very hard to achieve that. He just had to stop the kissing.

  He yelled this last order in his head, but doubted if the added intensity would make any difference. She was so entirely kissable.

  And kissing someone didn’t necessarily lead to complications like relationships.

  Did it?

  He carried his burdens up the steps, across the verandah and into the house, dropping the swag by one of the camp stretchers and continuing on to the kitchen corner with the fridge. The box Jena had carried was sitting on the bench, but there was no sign of his hostess.

  Probably in the bathroom! He breathed easier as the thought of Jena changing into night attire in front of him had been only one of the tormenting images flashing through his head. He filled the kettle from one of the drums of water she had stacked beneath the bench and made a mental note to take the empty one to town the following day and refill it.