Cracking the Dating Code

That was the sum of Poppy’s experience of a man consumed by guilt, and if she hadn’t been able to help her brother deal with his pain how the hell was she supposed to help Sebastian Reyne shoulder his?

Unless he wanted to use her as a distraction?

Flirt with her, get naked with her.

Humour her.

No real emotional connection beyond blind desire for sexual satisfaction. Would that really be so bad?

Because she had the blind desire part of the equation well and truly covered.

Time to raid the kitchen cupboards and nab a couple of biscuits from the biscuit tin. Not making herself at home in Sebastian’s home, just ensuring she didn’t crash from a mixture of hunger and nerves.

And then came the rumble of the quad bike outside, followed by unhurried footsteps, and Sebastian strode through the door, dominating the space and making it his own.

Which it was.

‘I made more coffee,’ she said, barely resisting the urge to tuck her hands behind her back, guilty-villain style. ‘Stole some biscuits.’

She tried not to get lost in those eyes and that face. Tried very hard to ignore that hard, muscled body so carelessly showcased in castaway clothes.

Tried very hard to play it cool, never mind that her core temperature had just soared.

‘You finished for the day?’ he asked.

‘I can be.’

He came closer, bringing the scent of the sea with him. ‘The guest house is ready for you.’

‘Thank you. But you’re going to have to give me directions.’

‘Why don’t I just show you where it is? Where’s your bag?’

‘By the door.’ She gulped down her coffee, refilled the cup with water and set it in the sink. ‘Can you give me five minutes with the computers?’

‘Are we talking a regular five minutes or the five minutes that magically turns into five hours the minute a computer tragic gets in that room?’

‘I’m talking five regular, round-the-clock minutes,’ she said. ‘Ten at the most.’

‘We’ll see.’ Sebastian headed for the coffee pot and the assessing glance he shot her did absolutely nothing to cool her down.

Resisting the urge to run, Poppy headed for the cave.

She found him ten minutes later, in the garage beneath the house, and followed him back to the quad.

‘How far away is the guest house?’ Colour her ignorant, but she’d assumed that guest house and main house would be within shouting distance of each other as opposed to, say, opposite ends of the island.

‘It’s a twenty-minute walk back down the hill. Half that by quad. The guest house sits halfway between here and the boatshed if it’s orientation you’re after. There’s another quad there that you can use to get around the island. It’s fuelled up and the same as this one. Get on.’

Poppy got on. Left room for him up front, and the ghost of a smile crossed his lips.

‘You’re driving. Move up.’

She moved up, tentatively tucking her coat between her legs. Ladylike not.

But he didn’t seem to notice.

‘Key,’ he said, his forearm brushing her shoulder as he showed her where it was and she turned it as instructed. ‘Foot on the brake.’ She did that too, no brushing against him required. ‘Kill switch on.’ He showed her where it was. ‘Now press the start button.’

The engine roared to life and Sebastian slid onto the quad behind her, no carryall in between them this time, for it was slung over his shoulder and, from the looks of it, that was where it would stay. Poppy glanced at him, glanced down at the seat and Seb’s strong, long thighs, and swallowed hard. She scooted forward to give him more space. He wasn’t a small man, he needed more space.

She needed more space.

She took it slowly down that first rocky, steep bit of track, and she tried to pretend, when his thighs brushed her buttocks, that she’d felt such thighs before and that her heart wasn’t about to burst through her ribcage every time a bump in the track slid her into him just that little bit more.

Five minutes down the track he leaned forward, put his lips to her ear and told her to take the fork to the right.

The guest house they came upon a couple of minutes later was a far friendlier version of the big steel-and-glass house. There was still steel, and there was plenty of glass, but the dimensions were smaller and more inviting, and the steepled roof and the generous front deck filled with an assortment of mesh chairs and a hammock had a simple island charm to it that the sophisticated, sparsely furnished main house lacked.

If Poppy’s legs wobbled ever so slightly as she got off the quad it was his fault not hers, and if she took one look at his back and stumbled and bit her lip as she followed him up the steps, that was undoubtedly his fault too.

The interior of the guest house was dust free and fully furnished. A king-sized bed dressed in delicate white linens. A white gauze mosquito net hanging from a ring screwed into the ceiling. The netting tucked in behind the pillows for now, ready for sorting out later.

It could be whatever you wanted it to be, a bed like that. A pirate ship or a kingdom ruled by a benevolent princess. A kid would have a ball in that bed, and as for an adult, well…

‘What happened to your lip?’ asked Seb abruptly and Poppy stopped staring at the bed and touched her fingers to her bottom lip and then stared at them instead.

‘Nothing,’ she said, for her fingers had come away clean, but his narrowed green gaze seemed fixated on something so she gave her upper lip a once over with her fingers too. ‘Biscuit crumbs?’

‘You’ve bitten it,’ he said gruffly. ‘On the way down.’

‘Oh.’ Well, yes. ‘Only a little.’

Time to cut the tension that whipped through her, and turn away and study the rest of her surroundings rather than him. Poppy didn’t know how to play this game of hyper-awareness between man and woman. She had absolutely no idea what to do next.

There were no curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows and every window was currently open. Fortunately, the windows were screened. A sucker-footed gecko watched her from his place on the whitewashed wall.

‘They’re harmless,’ said Seb, noting the direction of her gaze. ‘Bathroom and kitchenette are to the rear, your quad’s in the shed out the back and the key’s in it.’ He set her bag down beside the bed. ‘There’s fish curry in the fridge and a microwave to heat it up in. Other food too. Hopefully you’ll find something you like.’

‘Thank you.’ Thank-yous she knew how to do. Polite smiles too. Nervousness—she had that one well and truly covered.

‘There’s no phone in here,’ he said next. ‘But there is a two-way that’ll get you through to the boatshed or the house. If you need to call home, you’ll have to come up to the house and use the sat phone. It works most of the time, but not all of the time.’

‘You really are quite isolated here, aren’t you?’

‘Tom didn’t tell you?’

‘Tom did tell me,’ she murmured wryly. ‘The reality of isolation just didn’t quite sink in.’