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.
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 legs 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!’