The Temptation Test
Autor:in
Meredith Webber
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CHAPTER ONE
NOAH BLACKLOCK was cursing all women as he drove along the narrow, deeply rutted sand track from his bush retreat towards the main road to town. Quite how he could pin his lateness this particular morning on the universal female conspiracy to drive him completely insane he wasn’t sure, but he knew it had to be a woman’s doing.
The powerful Jeep engine growled in low gear as it churned the wheels through the soft sand. Not far now! Around the bend, down the hill, and he’d be on the gravel road to town—the main highway only a few hundred metres beyond the little settlement. He’d make that appointment yet.
He took the bend too fast, and the Jeep slid sideways before the tyres gripped again and he regained control.
Then slammed on the brakes as the rear of an old Toyota LandCruiser came closer…and closer…and—
The Jeep stopped inches from the obstruction, and Noah leapt out, a mouthful of colourful words ready for the driver stupid enough to stop on the blind corner.
A woman, of course!
And blonde as well.
One of those curvy, long-legged, white-blonde blondes—the prototype for blonde jokes.
She was standing, jack in one hand and a metal stabilising plate in the other, staring at the sand-encrusted front nearside tyre on her wreck of a vehicle.
He bit back the words he wanted to yell at her, grabbed the plate and the jack, slid them into place beneath the front chassis and was about to lift the front of the vehicle when he remembered the first rule of tyre-changing. Loosen the nuts while the wheel’s on the ground.
He’d noticed the tool kit lying on the sand.
‘I—’ she began, in a soft, slightly husky voice.
‘Just don’t talk. Don’t say a word!’ he growled at this latest member of the female species fate had flung in his path to anger and frustrate him. His body might be registering the flowery perfume she was wearing, but recent events meant his brain was very much in control.
‘But—’
He held up his hand to cut off her protest, and scowled another warning at her, then grabbed the wheel brace and began to loosen the nuts. The cause of this morning’s problems stepped back, as if to admire his skill, and folded her arms beneath breasts he couldn’t help but notice. The male ego he tried to control immediately went into show-off mode, increasing the speed with which he worked.
He jacked up the car, whipped off the nuts, wrestled the wheel from the spokes and turned to the woman.
‘Where’s your spare?’
She smiled at him, and he realised she was more than just a woman, she was a beautiful woman.
Not that he would allow such an incidental observation to distract him.
‘Well?’
The smile grew wider, showing even white teeth. It glimmered in eyes as blue as the evening sky, and pressed a dimple deep into her right cheek.
‘That’s it.’ She pointed a slim, pink-tipped finger towards the tyre he held balanced between his hands.
‘You mean you haven’t got a decent tyre to replace this one?’ The anger he’d held in check earlier came roaring forth, like flames from a flamethrower. ‘And you’re out here, alone, on an isolated road? Women!’
He flung up his arms in disgust and the tyre fell over, clipping his shin and sending him off balance so he stumbled and had to reach out for support.
The woman’s hand caught his arm and steadied him, but the noises coming from her were more like chuckles of delight than soothing murmurs or placating apologies.
‘That is the spare,’ she managed to gasp between gales of unseemly laughter. ‘The flat one’s in the back. I’d just finished changing it when you came along and, being a man, you had to charge in and do your macho thing!’
‘Why didn’t you stop me? Tell me?’ He knew he was yelling because his voice was echoing back to him from the sandhills over by the lake.
She stepped away from him and shrugged, the movement lifting her breasts so he was torn between wanting to kill her and an urge to get a better look at the soft protuberances.
‘After you’d told me to shut up? And scowled so ferociously I was all aquiver? A poor defenceless woman like myself all alone out here in the bush?’
Strangling would be good. He’d take his time about it! Have her begging…
‘Well, are you going to put it back on for me so I can get to work, or do I have to do it myself?’
He reined in wayward thoughts of the beauty begging for something very different to murder and tried to concentrate on the current situation.
‘Put it back on?’ he muttered, wondering what on earth they’d been talking about.
‘The tyre,’ she said helpfully. ‘Now I’ve done a practice run I’ll even give you a hand.’
She bent over, tipped the tyre up on its tread and proceeded to roll it towards the car. By the time she was ready to lift it onto the wheel studs, he realised he should be helping, not watching the length of leg revealed by her bending over in a very short skirt.
‘Let me!’ he grumbled, taking command again—of the tyre and hopefully his thoughts.
He heaved the heavy beast up and turned it until he could slide it into place, aware that the woman was taking some of the weight—but more aware of her as a woman.
It’s a woman who got you stuck out here in the first place, mate, his head reminded his rebellious body. A blonde, remember?
He picked up the nuts and began to fit them.
‘You must be lost if you’re on this road,’ he said, aiming for a little normality in this bizarre situation.
‘No. I’m staying down there a little way,’ she said, waving her hand towards the track down which he’d just travelled.
‘Exactly where down there?’ he demanded. There was nowhere ‘down there’ but his place.
She passed him the wheel brace.
‘Suspicious cuss, aren’t you?’ she teased, blue eyes again alight with laughter. ‘At Matt Ryan’s place, if you must know.’
Now disappointment warred with disbelief. He went with the second reaction as the first didn’t bear thinking about.
‘The old Ryan place? It’s falling down. What’s happened? Matt gone feral, has he? Decided to give up the high life and start living the way he pretends to in his documentaries? I can just see that!’
The cutting edge of sarcasm forced Jena to defend her employer.
‘Matt lives those documentaries! He takes on those challenges!’
‘Yeah, right!’ the stranger growled, releasing the pressure on the jack so the tyre slapped back onto the ground with a jolting thud. ‘Him and his make-up person, and his hairstylist—not to mention a ten-man support crew. Some challenge!’
He was mocking her dream to be the first woman to take on the type of adventure challenges Matt faced, and Jena, who’d already had a particularly tiresome morning, felt the heat of anger burning in her chest.
‘He travels alone on his challenges. OK, there’s a camera crew but they’re not with him in his vehicle, and the rest of the crew go on ahead—’
‘To erect the tents, set up his comfortable bed, cook his meal, cool his wine. Wave the bloody fans above his perspiring head, most probably! Yes, ma’am! That’s a real challenge!’
‘Well, it is,’ she fumed, snatching the jack out of his hand and storming to the back of the vehicle to fling it in. ‘And his documentaries are sold worldwide, watched by millions of people—’
‘Who all end up with the misguided idea that life in Australia is one long bout of wrestling crocodiles, trekking through snake-infested jungles or clinging precariously to precipitous rocks. The man stages his challenges then acts like a hero for carrying them out.’
He paused for breath and Jena, who should have interrupted at that stage, found herself admiring how his chest expanded as it filled with air. He was a tall, solid man, well put together. Dark haired, and with the kind of craggy face which shouldn’t have been handsome but was. She realised she’d missed her opportunity when his harangue continued.
‘Finding a cure for cancer—that’s a challenge. Fixing the problems of homeless youth! Even learning to live on the same planet as women! Take your choice, but let’s not get too carried away about Matt bloody Ryan’s television show. That’s entertainment, Blondie, not a challenge!’
‘Don’t call me Blondie!’ Shamed by her inattention earlier, she snapped the words at him then regretted her outburst when she caught a gleam of satisfaction in his pale eyes.
Grey or pale green?
Unusual whichever they were. With a glint like the sheen of highly polished metal—
‘imagine what Matt’s doing out at the old place.’
‘What Matt’s doing there?’ she said, frowning at him as she tried to recall the words she’d missed while debating his eye colour. ‘Why would Matt be there?’
The eyes—grey, she decided—scanned down her body, then back up again, answering her question with silent insolence.
Jena clenched her hands into fists to stop herself hitting him.
She spun away before the temptation proved too great. Being late for work on the first day of her own personal ‘challenge’ was hardly the way to prove herself to Matt.
‘If he’s not there, who’s with you?’
The stranger had followed her and reached out to hold the door open as she clambered up into the driver’s seat, regretting her decision to cling to her normal ‘work’ clothes as the skirt rode up to reveal even more leg than usual.
‘No one! I’m staying there on my own.’ Dumb, dumb, dumb! ‘Of course, I’ll have friends coming out. Visiting. Staying over.’
‘Of course,’ he agreed smoothly. ‘No doubt any number of people all dying to keep you company in a ruin of a shack on the edge of nowhere. As my grandmother would say, I’m not as green as I’m cabbage-looking, Blondie.’
She was going to protest about the name again when he leaned across her, peering into the cab.
‘I assume you have a mobile. Here, I’ll give you my number. Although you can’t see my place from where you are it’s only about a hundred yards away. If you need anything…’
He drew back and she took a breath, though why a stranger leaning close to her should affect her breathing, she had no idea.
Perhaps because he was a stranger!
He handed her a card and she held the stiff white rectangle between her fingers and squinted at the black marks. She’d have given her second-best pair of shoes to know his name but no way was she going to reach over for her handbag and scrabble through it for her reading glasses.
‘Do you know the emergency services number?’ he continued in his overbearing way. ‘It might be a good idea to phone the exchange and get the local police station number as well. Let someone know you’re staying out there. The lads in town would love an opportunity to rescue a damsel in distress. Or even check on you occasionally.’
Again his gaze did its scanning thing, but before she could protest he’d shut the door and walked away, leaving Jena with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Murderers don’t suggest you check in with the local cops, she told herself as she drove off.
The uneasiness persisted.
More to do with the man than being murdered?
OK, he’d been arresting, in a dark, saturnine kind of way. Not cabbage-looking at all, in fact. But she’d been in the company of attractive men so often that good looks no longer impressed her. It was the inner man that counted—and, as far as she could tell, the stranger’s inner man was a dark and angry being.
Not attractive at all.
Noah memorised the number plate as he followed the LandCruiser down the track. What was Matt thinking to let a woman like that—any woman, in fact—stay out at his tumbledown old shack on her own? The place had no power, no phone and probably no water, if the rust holes he’d seen in the tank last time he’d walked past were any indication.
Not that it was any of his business, he reminded himself. In fact, the policy he’d adopted in his childhood to keep out of Matt Ryan’s way still held. It had been bad enough having Matt held up to him as the ideal of boyhood all through his youth, but these days Noah’s mother spoke Matt’s name with something approaching awe—obviously more impressed by television stars than hard-working doctors.
Then there was his determination to avoid all women for a considerable period of time. Especially blondes, given the disastrous way they’d featured in his life lately—like some recurring nightmare—and even more especially, one of Matt Ryan’s blondes!
He had avoided Matt assiduously for years, but no one could have avoided hearing of his exploits. The man got better press coverage than all but the most vital of sports games, more publicity than the entire government. And rarely did he appear, in the press or on TV, without a blonde draped across him like a fashion accessory.
According to the tabloids, they were bimbos, every one of them.
Airheads.
Actually, when you considered it, nature might have got it right. Having endowed the woman like the one driving steadfastly down the road in front of him with more than her share of physical beauty, adding brains would have been overkill.
Sexist! his better self muttered, while his more basic side remembered the length of leg Blondie had revealed as she’d stepped up into the cab of the decrepit old vehicle.
And the flash of anger in her eyes as she’d reacted to the name.
Hmm, his baser self whispered. Might be fun having one of Matt’s blondes as a neighbour for a while. Hadn’t Matt stolen Bridget Somerton from him? Back when they were teenagers and the surge of adolescent testosterone had combined with long summer days and hot summer nights to make the group who’d holidayed at the lake as randy as young stallions.
No way! he told himself.
No women!
And especially, no blondes.
If this time apart didn’t resolve things between Lucy and himself, then when he was ready for another close relationship—which might not be for twenty or so years—he would choose a cool brunette. A career woman. Possibly a lawyer—or perhaps a business executive.
Nuclear physicist? the base self mocked, flashing images of the leggy blonde on an inner screen in his brain.
Jena drove slowly past the shop and three houses which made up the closest habitation to Matt’s old shack, then accelerated when she reached the highway. Hard to believe a place as seemingly isolated as Lake Caratha was only fifteen minutes’ drive from a bustling town. Kareela served as a regional centre for the tourist areas along the coast, as well as the thriving market gardens which covered the fertile, gently rolling hills behind the coastal strip.
She lifted one hand from the steering wheel to press it against the nerves fluttering in her stomach. Stupid to be nervous. She’d worked as an assistant on similar productions to this, been the general dogsbody who’d caught the blame for everything that had gone wrong, from the star being sick to an untimely thunderstorm. Being a liaison person should be a piece of cake.
Maybe the flutters were a reaction to the angry man. She grinned to herself. Tall, dark and angry: a perfect description of him. Although the more usual ‘handsome’ would also have fitted—if you liked looks which went beyond the conventional standards of good looks. She slowed as she entered the town’s lower speed zone.
The hospital was on a hill overlooking the town—third turn on the left if the map she had was accurate.
She looked around her with interest, not having seen much the previous day when she’d driven through. It was less than a month until Christmas, and the local council had already begun to install street decorations. Pregnant-bellied bells were tied to lampposts and workers were stringing coloured lights across the street.
By Christmas she’d be out of here—hopefully, with a guarantee from Matt that she’d be part of the new challenge series he was planning.
Though she’d have to succeed with the job at the hospital, as well as stick out the three weeks in his terrible old shack.
Before making the turn, she glanced in her rear-view mirror and saw the Jeep, its indicator light blinking as if he intended following her.
So he could yell at her again?
She battled the heavy steering, negotiating the turn and heading up the hill.
If he called her Blondie again, she’d yell a little herself. In fact, yelling at him might be good. It might release a little of the tension she was feeling over this job.
Another glance in the rear-view mirror again, and she realised there’d be no yelling by or at anyone. The Jeep had disappeared. Presumably down one of the side streets—although he’d appeared so suddenly he might have the ability to materialise and dematerialise.
She drew into the hospital parking lot and stopped, her eyes taking in the gracious old building. It was a solid brick and stone structure, rising two storeys in its central core, but with the lower storey spread wider, like a skirt, around it.
A shiver of what could have been either excitement or apprehension skittered through her, but she decided not to analyse it. Better to spend the time tidying her hair.
‘Is he here yet?’ Noah asked as he stalked through the big room which housed a receptionist and the hospital’s two general office staff.
Peta Clarke, the more senior of the two secretaries, shook her head.
‘Mr Finch’s in, though, if you want to see him.’
Noah resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. No sense in embroiling the secretarial staff in personal battles. He should probably be trying to appease the hospital’s chief executive officer rather than fighting with him, but the man had no guts—no willingness to go beyond the bounds and try something new, even if it wasn’t in the ‘how to run a hospital’ manual.
It was frustration that was making him angry—first the delay in getting the kids settled in their house, then Jeff Finch’s insistence that any plan must be submitted to the Health Department for approval, following ‘correct procedure’.
He opened the door to his office, then turned back to have another look at the three women.
Grinned at them.
‘Sunday best, although this is only the preliminary skirmish?’
Peta chuckled, and dusted an imaginary thread off her navy skirt.
‘Stupid, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve already been told filming won’t start for another week, but here we are, all dolled up to the nines.’ She grinned as she waved a hand towards her colleagues. ‘We’ve already had a laugh about it.’
Noah returned her smile, and felt slightly better for the moment’s amusement, although he doubted whether there’d be much to amuse him during the next few weeks. The first thing he’d have to do would be to explain to this liaison person that Kareela was still a working hospital and no way would he tolerate any interruption to patient services or interference in the staff’s performance of their duties. He’d lay down some ground rules.
He checked his watch. And if the man wasn’t on time, he’d do a ward round. That’d show him!
The phone buzzed as he was justifying this decision to himself. Patsy, the receptionist, advised him that the representative of the production company was here.
‘Have Peta show him in,’ he said, deciding it might be advantageous to be sitting behind his desk, looking desperately busy, so that this liaison fellow would know from the beginning that Noah had no time to waste on frivolities.
He settled into his worn leather chair, put on his glasses and pulled a pile of papers towards him. Looking busy wasn’t hard for a man who hated paperwork as much as he did.
He heard the door open, then Peta’s voice murmuring a name and the door closing again. Judging that his pretence had gone on long enough, he sighed and raised his head, reaching up to remove his reading glasses as he did so.
The image was blurred, but readily identifiable, though the cascade of silvery hair was now swept up on top of her head in some kind of simple but very elegant knot.
‘Blondie? What the hell do you want? Going to sue me for changing your car tyre?’
One wing of the glasses hooked behind his ear, so he was now peering lopsidedly in her direction and trying to maintain a modicum of aplomb while feeling like a total idiot.
Which didn’t faze his visitor one jot! She stepped calmly forward, held out her hand, and said, ‘Perhaps we should have introduced ourselves earlier. I’m Jena Carpenter, liaison person for Showcase Productions.’
She paused and he managed to detach the glasses from his ear. He stretched out his own hand and somehow sent the pile of papers he’d pulled forward sliding across the desk and cascading in a flurry of white towards the floor.
He bent to retrieve them, but Blondie’s voice pulled him upright again.
‘And you may call me, Jena, or Miss Carpenter, or even “hey, you”,’ she added, taking the hand which now hovered uncertainly above the desk and allowing a very perfunctory skin contact between their fingers before dropping it cold. ‘But if you call me Blondie again I’ll sue you for workplace harassment.’
The steely resolution in her indigo eyes told him she meant precisely what she’d said, and he found himself looking away, peering at his hand as if the cool, slim fingers might have stung him.
He looked up at her again.
‘Matt Ryan’s idea, I assume?’ he muttered. ‘Did he really think sending a good-looking woman would magically smooth the way for his underlings to do exactly as they please in my hospital?’
‘Your hospital?’ Blondie murmured. What had she said her name was—Jena?
‘I’m the senior medical officer,’ Noah growled, ‘and the patients’ comfort and general well-being are my responsibility. And my primary concern. I thought I’d explained all this to the first underling Matt sent along.’
Jena took a deep breath, then mentally squared up to the man she was supposed to be appeasing.
‘Let’s begin again, shall we?’ she suggested. ‘To start with, although Showcase Productions is a division of the company owned by Matt and his associates, he has no day-to-day control over the running of it, nor does he interfere in the production of the Showcase television programmes. He had nothing to do with the choice of Kareela as a location, or with my appointment as liaison person.’
She wasn’t entirely sure the last statement was true and could see the doctor’s disbelief in his face, even before he countered with, ‘And you staying out at his old place is pure coincidence?’
‘Me staying out at his place has nothing to do with this production,’ Jena retorted. Which was the truth as far as it went. Though the necessity of living in or near the town for the three weeks had provided her with a fortuitous opportunity to prove a point to Matt.
Her thoughts were brought up short by a scoffing laugh, and a derisive, ‘I bet!’
Jena scowled at him.
‘Where I live is none of your business, Dr Blacklock,’ she snapped. ‘So do you think we could get past it, and whatever old history you have with Matt Ryan which makes you so defensive, and discuss the filming?’
He returned her scowl, but added more ferocity, while Jena debated whether Matt had influenced the decision to appoint her as liaison. If so, the idea had backfired spectacularly.
Thinking of this reminded her why a liaison person had been appointed. She could score a point here.
‘Particularly as it was you who insisted on having one person to deal with throughout the filming,’ she added. ‘I was appointed because I was the only person within the company who had both production and nursing experience.’
‘You’re a nurse?’
Noah regretted the words the instant they were out of his mouth, but the blonde—Jena—must have heard such incredulity before. She shrugged her dismissal of the words.
‘If you’d read the information package we sent you some weeks ago, you’d know I’m not a nurse but did two years nursing studies with some practical work, which at least qualifies me to tell a bedpan from a thermometer. And as my job here doesn’t entail actual nursing, my level of experience isn’t important. I think the first priority is to lay down some ground rules.’
He frowned at her, irrationally irritated because she’d used the expression first. He should have said ‘Exactly!’ and launched into his prepared speech, but she sat down at that moment and her skirt slid up, revealing a not unseemly amount of lightly tanned thigh, enough to make him wonder how celibates managed their libidos.
He also wondered where in the muddle of papers on his desk—and on the floor—the information package was. As she’d said, there’d be background information on her in it somewhere, and it would be interesting…
‘I understand that this is a working hospital and although emergency cases are transferred to Brisbane, you still have patients requiring ongoing care. That’s why Kareela was chosen. Showcase specialises in “real-life” television which is very popular at the moment. I’m here to see the film crew causes the least possible disruption to the running of the hospital.’
Noah again refrained from rolling his eyes, but when his gaze wandered back towards the legs he was distracted.
‘Fat chance!’ he muttered, then shook his head and reminded himself of his sister’s favourite warning—a closed mouth gathers no foot!
Maybe Blondie hadn’t heard…
From the fine pleating of her brow, he saw she had.
‘You can either help us be as unobtrusive as possible, Dr Blacklock, or you can hinder the process by being obstructive. I understand you didn’t want the documentary filmed here, but were won over by an increase in the financial inducement.’
She paused and looked him straight in the eye.
‘We’re not only paying to be here, but we’re paying top dollar, and I believe part of the money is to go to some pet project you’re running in the town so, whether you like it or not, you’re expected to cooperate. Today, I need to get to know the layout of the place and organise the crew. From tomorrow, you’re stuck with me. A shadow, however unwelcome.’
Jena watched the silvery grey eyes narrow and guessed he was contemplating another yell. Inwardly, she was regretting the foolish whim that had urged her to allow him to change the car tyre. He’d already been angry, and she’d made him angrier. Not the best of possible starts for someone who had hoped to win him over—or, at least, gain his cooperation.
Though how was she to know the doctor who’d been so against the filming would live at the end of nowhere?
Or be so good-looking?
Mentally scolding herself for the momentary distraction, she launched into her prepared speech.
‘As the contract explained, this office isn’t suitable so we’ll be building a similar set-up—purely for the shots of you doing paperwork—in the space upstairs. Also a mock-up of the operating theatre, again for long shots.’
‘And this is “real-life” television?’
She ignored his sniping comment, remembering instead the question that had puzzled her since the location scouts had come up with a list of five possible hospitals within a day’s drive of the city. All with space to build, if necessary, some extra sets.
‘Why have hospitals shrunk so much you have an entire floor unoccupied? Are fewer people getting sick?’
If he was startled by the conversational switch he didn’t show it, merely studying her for an instant before replying, ‘Regional hospitals have altered their focus from primary care to providing a wider spread of services to more of the population, but they offer less specialised services.’
He paused, his fingers reaching for a pen which he then flipped from hand to hand as he continued, ‘Which means that, as well as the trauma emergencies, cancer and major surgery patients also go to the city. Many of the surgery patients return here for post-surgical nursing, and we provide the facilities for follow-up testing for the cancer patients.’
Jena was mesmerised by his long fingers, carelessly playing with the pen. Better than being mesmerised by gleaming grey eyes, she decided, then reminded herself to listen to what he was saying. After all, she’d asked the question.
‘To fully understand the changes in demographics, you have to realise that hospital stays are also much shorter these days,’ he continued, his velvety voice making the words sound less like a lecture, the edge of anger she’d heard earlier fading as he talked about something he’d obviously considered himself.
‘Fifty years ago, when hospitals like this were built, a patient lay in bed for three weeks after an appendix operation. Today a person is mobile within twenty-four hours and usually discharged from hospital within a couple of days. A hip injury which might have required three months in traction is now pinned or plated, perhaps both, and the patient can be weight-bearing within a few days, walking on a frame within a week.’
Despite a surprising fascination with lean fingers and a velvety voice, Jena absorbed what he was saying, but also recalled what she’d read in Noah Blacklock’s biographical information, put together by someone in the research department.
‘Then why would someone like yourself, with all your experience in emergency care, take a job in a country town where the medical needs of the patients are more of a nursing nature? Did you suffer burn-out in the city?’
He frowned, making her regret the question. And why should she care anyway? Her job was to establish a good working relationship with the man, and do a preliminary plan for the filming, not analyse him.
‘I doubt that’s your concern,’ he said, and in case she’d missed the frown he underlined the words with a grimness she couldn’t mistake. ‘You were saying you’ll only be using the top floor for your mock office and theatre, but your crew will need access to it, so unless they can levitate, they’ll be passing through the foyer and up the stairs. Can I ask them to use the back entrance, and not make too much noise as they come and go?’
Jena had felt her muscles tighten at the sarcasm in his ‘levitate’ remark, but hoped her reaction hadn’t shown. This was not a man to whom one could safely reveal any weakness.
The puzzle of why he’d come to Kareela remained, though that was, as he’d succinctly told her, none of her business.
‘Our staff will all be briefed on moving quietly and not chattering on the stairs, minimising noise as much as possible,’ she assured him. ‘The set designer and carpenters will check out the top floor later today. I’ll speak to them as soon as they arrive. It’s possible that any heavy equipment and the bulk of the props they’ll need can be hoisted up and lifted through windows rather than carried up the stairs.’
He didn’t exactly look pleased—perhaps he didn’t have a pleased look he could use—but he nodded, which was as close as she was likely to get to acceptance.
She was about to explain the other measures she’d put in place to ensure minimum disruption to the hospital when there was a brisk tap on the door, and it opened to admit a trim young man and an anorexic-looking but gym-toned blonde.
