Cracking the Dating Code (9 page)

‘No. Internet access is the last thing I want. That’s why I’m here.’

‘For the privacy,’ he murmured. ‘Tom says you’re one of the best cryptologists in the world.’

‘He said that?’ asked Poppy. ‘That’s really sweet. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really should get back to the cave. I think one of the cooling fans is glitchy—at least, that’s what I hope it is.’

‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’ He didn’t like that. She could see it in the hard glitter of his eyes. ‘Trust me with your body but not with your secrets. How does that convoluted brain of yours justify that?’

‘Easily,’ she said quietly. ‘They’re not my secrets.’

She wasn’t online hacking government systems, decided Seb grimly as he watched her head along the corridor back towards the bat cave. That was a plus. Chances were she’d done that
before
coming to the island. So what was she
doing
here? Reading files? Trying to read files? Government-encrypted files full of classified information and dangerous little secrets that might lead her to her brother? That was Seb’s best guess, given the information to hand.

Don’t tell her it was illegal or impossible, just give her the tools she needed and stand back.

Seb vacillated between horror at the kind of trouble that would rain down on her if she was caught and admiration that she would dare to attempt such a thing.

The hell with meek and mousy.

Ophelia West had nerves of steel.

He shouldn’t be impressed.

So what if he had a few more words to describe her now? Words like
bold. Courageous. Loyal.
And
utterly captivating.
She’d turned his world upside down in a matter of days. Made him ache for her and fear for her and want her more than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life.

His initial reasons for wanting off the island had been noble. Don’t seduce the defenceless house guest. Stay away from Tomas’s boss.

His reasons for wanting off the island now were a whole lot more complex, and included leaving before he discovered that she possessed every last quality he’d been looking for in a woman and then some.

Seb spent the rest of the afternoon in the shallows around the island. Ostensibly, he was on a seafood-collection run, but if his
eyes scanned the horizon for sign of visitors more often than normal, and if he was on the lookout for any signs of human life on the island, well, blame it on Tom’s not-so-law-abiding house guest and a few too many James Bond movies.

Had
she managed to make off with government files undetected? Was anyone watching her? Just how important
was
her brother to ASIS and the like? Too many questions and not nearly enough answers, and he made his way back to the house in no better mood than he’d left it, and started in on the cooking with a haphazardness the ingredients didn’t deserve.

He went to see if Poppy was still working, and she was. Single-minded, she’d said.

She had that right.

He could probably add it to her list of faults.

‘You coming out for food or do you want it in here?’ he asked from the doorway, and Poppy whirled around at his words, but her mind was elsewhere. He knew that look. His brother wore it often. ‘Food,’ he said again.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll bring it in.’

‘Oh.’ She was still firmly locked in the middle distances. ‘I’m almost… I’ll just…’

‘Keep going,’ he said. ‘With any luck, you’ll have remembered my name by the time I return with your dinner.’

He could add vagueness to her list of faults too. Rack up a few more irritations and he might even have a snowball’s chance of forgetting her and getting on with his life.

‘I already remember your name,’ she murmured, and just like that her connection to the work was broken and her attention focused entirely on him. ‘And your face. And your form. Even
with
a shirt on.’ She shrugged and offered him a rueful half smile. ‘Have a little faith.’

Flirt.

Seb slid the pile of freshly shucked oysters into the pot of simmering, tomato-based sauce.

Tease.

A pile of scallops went into the mix too.

Fast learner. Very fast learner. No more flirting lessons for Poppy West. She didn’t need them.

Feed her, let her do her work, hope to hell she finished it soon and then get her off the island—that was the master plan. She could already hold a man’s attention and leave him
wanting more and if that wasn’t seduction then Seb didn’t know what was.

And then the lights went out because the power had cut out again and Seb heard cursing from the direction of the bat cave that would have done a seasoned rigger proud.

He grabbed a torch from the kitchen cupboard and headed for the door. Poppy met him on the way to the generator and one look at her face and any smart-arse comment he might have made died on his lips. Poppy looked shattered, defeated, and his heart went out to her.

‘Sorry,’ she murmured.

‘It happens.’ Especially around her.

Her eyes lightened for just an instant and then she turned back to the power board and started checking switches. ‘Can I try and bring us back on, this time?’ she asked, and Seb nodded and watched her work through the power board and the generator startup as if she’d done it a thousand times before.

Maybe she had.

‘Feel like taking a break?’ he asked gently as they headed back inside.

‘Yes. I’ll come out and join you for the food. I hadn’t forgotten, I just—I’ll just start the computer up again first and see what blew,’ she said, and he knew it would be useless
to argue with her. ‘I thought I had it.’ She ran a shaky hand through her hair. ‘Just before the power went. I really thought I had it.’

‘Had what?’

‘The key.’

‘Key?’

‘Code.’ She shook her head. ‘Please, Seb. Just don’t ask.’

He didn’t ask.

He went back to the kitchen. He left her alone and went back to the kitchen and it cost him plenty, but he did it for both their sakes, so that Poppy could keep her secrets and he could keep his distance.

Sticking with the master plan, and if he glanced down the hallway far too often in anticipation of her arrival at least no one was there to see him do it.

He’d served up and was about to take the spaghetti to her when finally she arrived.

‘Smells good,’ she said lightly. ‘I need to thank you for feeding me.’

‘What blew?’ he asked.

‘The fan. I swapped it out. The computer’s fine. And we can leave tomorrow.’

‘We can?’ He took in the relaxed set of her shoulders and the sparkle of satisfaction
in her eyes. She smiled, and it was the most joyous smile he’d ever seen. ‘You did it?’

‘I did it.’

‘So you know where your brother is?’

‘Kind of.’

‘So what happens now? You go after him?’

‘That’s really not part of the plan. The main thing is that we know Jared’s alive.’ Her voice wobbled precariously on that last word and Sebastian ignored it for all he was worth. ‘You have to understand that before now, we didn’t even know that. I don’t know what happens now. Family conference. Lena will want to make contact with him somehow. Damon’ll say to leave him be. Chances are I’ll side with Damon.’

‘Finally, some common sense. Who’d have guessed?’ Sebastian headed for the fridge and the white wine chilling in it. He poured for them both and handed her a glass. ‘Here’s to your success. May your brother return safely home soon.’ He waited a beat. ‘Because I’m all for letting
him
tear strips off you for poking around for information in places you shouldn’t.’

Rather than answer him, Poppy decided it was time to sample her wine.

‘God, you’re a piece of work,’ he muttered. ‘I looked at you before and saw the
little girl who almost went under. A timid geek girl with limited real-world experience, only that’s not you, is it, Poppy? You know exactly what you’re doing—how dangerous the knowledge in your head can be—and you probably always have. You know all about caution, and courage and choice. You deal in it every day.’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

‘You had me completely fooled.’

‘Or that,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m just me. And some people get that I’m a sum of many parts and some parts are skilled and knowledgeable and some parts aren’t. A lot of the work I do is confidential. Always has been, always will be. I don’t talk about it. Ever. This latest job was personal, and I
have
talked about it with you—probably unwisely. I haven’t been cautious at all. As for courage, I’ve never had much of that but I’m working on it. I swam in the ocean. I kissed you and didn’t want to stop. If I’m changing before your eyes it’s because I really am changing—right here and now—and I think it’s for the better. Can’t you think
more
of me for fighting my fears rather than less?’

Poppy lapsed into silence and so did Seb. Wine seemed like a good idea. Filling his mouth with food seemed like another one.

Finally, towards the end of the meal, he tried sorting his feelings into words for the benefit of the woman sitting opposite. The one with the bruised blue eyes who in cracking whatever code she’d just cracked had probably just accomplished the impossible. The one who humbled him when it came to fighting fear.

‘I do think more of you,’ he admitted gruffly.

He worried for her too. The recklessness with which she bestowed her kisses. Her next dip in the ocean could well involve swimming a marathon, and as for her work and the trouble she could get into there… he didn’t want to think about it.

‘I’m happy to leave in the morning,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring Mal. See if he can pick me up.’

‘I’ll take you. I’m heading off the island too.’

‘Thank you.’ She looked at him when she spoke this time. ‘I’ve been thinking about how to say sorry to a deaf man. You write him a note. And you stand there and you let him see your face when he reads it.’

‘That easy, huh?’ he said wryly.

‘Yeah.’ Her smile came soft and rueful. ‘No courage or sorrow or determination to lessen the risks for future oil-rig workers required at all. Nothing to it.’

‘Poppy,’ he began, and stopped. He didn’t know what he wanted from this woman but he did know he wanted more of it. ‘I don’t know what your plans are, but I’ll be staying at a resort in Port Douglas tomorrow night. Would you like to have dinner with me?’

‘I’d like that,’ she said quietly. ‘I could practise my new-found flirting skills on you. We wouldn’t be on the island any more. You could be my intended victim as opposed to my mentor. I could stun you with my wit and charm. Dazzle you with my stunning good looks and newly purchased sexy attire.’

She didn’t have to dazzle him with the little things; he’d already been blinded by the heart of her. But he summoned up his flirtiest smile and he played the game the way she wanted it played. ‘Well, you can try.’

T
HEY
were in a bar. One of those tropical beach resort bars that made heaven look insipid. The swimming and wading pools surrounding it seemed to run for ever and the smell of luxury drifted through the air and seeped into the skin of the people who filled the place.

Money had never been an issue for Poppy. Her family had always had it and her own efforts to accumulate it were not insubstantial. Walk-in room rates had been easily paid. A frock for the evening had been easily paid for too and, though it was not of the calibre of the baby-doll dress and trench coat Ruby had bestowed on her at Christmas, it did have lovely lines and a classy casualness about it that matched the tropical location. The colour was a deep, muted pewter—not her usual pastel fare—and the bodice fitted her closely and the skirt floated around her ankles like
sea foam. The shoes were black and strappy and the heels were almost three inches high. The shoes were hot.

The bar was full of confident, beautiful people and Seb was at her side looking more at home and confident than all the rest. Women watched him, their eyes sharply acquisitive.

Men watched him too, some with acquisition in mind and some who just wanted to protect what was theirs.

She’d opened her mouth to make some savvy entertaining remark half a dozen times already, and shut her mouth again without uttering a word. There was a chasm between learning how to flirt with a man and actually doing it and that chasm was never so deep as it was now.

She didn’t belong here. Didn’t feel comfortable or confident or knowing. Give her an almost deserted island and a tiger shark any day. Give her people who knew about the way she shrank in crowds and didn’t care that she wasn’t the life of the party and never would be.

Deep breaths in the hope of finding courage from somewhere. A small casual question to answer as Seb asked her what she wanted to drink.

‘Whisky,’ she said, so he ordered two and she stood beside him wordless, motionless and wishing herself somewhere, anywhere, else.

‘Bartender’s cute,’ he murmured as they waited for their drinks.

The bartender was a woman.

Funny how reality never quite delivered what the imagination could.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she admitted quietly.

‘You could always try and relax. I guarantee it’d help.’

The bartender gave them their drinks. She drained it in one gulp.

‘Not like that,’ he said dryly. ‘I think all this rampant flirting with me’s doing your head in. How about we try something easy?’

‘Like what?’

‘Smile.’

She couldn’t even do that.

Seb couldn’t fault Poppy’s dress sense, her figure or her face. She did gamine beauty to perfection, her presentation was flawless, and it worked on him as it was working on at least half the men in the room.

But her bravado of last night had disappeared completely and Seb was rapidly
coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t just the mechanics of flirting that Poppy had trouble with.

Gorgeous, brainy, introverted Poppy West just didn’t do people.

‘Are you hungry?’ he murmured. ‘I’m hungry. Let’s eat.’

Which was how they found themselves in the open-air restaurant out by the lagoon. Linen tablecloths, flickering candlelight, unobtrusive wait staff and a menu dominated by seafood.

Give Poppy something other than people and their interactions to focus on and she relaxed. Billiards or an electrical circuit, a menu and a wine list.

Seb ordered steak, seafood be damned, and this time Poppy smiled.

‘See?’ he said, pointing a butter-laden knife at her, for he’d been in the process of buttering his crusty fresh bread. Crusty fresh bread being another thing he’d run out of on the island some time ago. ‘Smiling’s not that hard.’

‘Unless it’s on request,’ she countered, but she smiled again and ordered the barbecued duck and turned her attention back to him once the waiter had gone. ‘Tell me about your
work,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s a standard getting-to-know-you question.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Is it really as Wild West as people imagine?’

‘Used to be. Not any more. There’s the lure of the strike, if that’s what you mean. But the industry’s also heavily OH and S regulated nowadays—anything-goes is gone. People look at the offshore rigs and want to know how to get on one. They think good times and easy money, but it takes a particular type of person to keep coming back. It’s hard work. Simple mistakes can cost millions, sometimes billions, and they can cost lives. You have to be comfortable with that, and with the ocean and the isolation.’

Seb’s crew had been comfortable with that. They’d been proud of their role as troubleshooters and clean-up specialists, even when the work had been dangerous.

Especially when it had been dangerous.

‘Do you employ any women?’ asked Poppy next.

‘In the Darwin office, yes. I’ve only ever had one as part of a troubleshooting crew, though. A doctor, and she was fantastic. You don’t send a woman out there without unique skills and instant authority. It’s just too hard
a road. It’s hard enough as it is. You going to call me sexist, Poppy?’

‘Wasn’t planning to,’ she murmured. ‘Is that an accusation levelled at you often?’

‘Not to my face.’

A wine waiter came and took Seb’s order, flirting effortlessly with them both as he did so. Poppy watched the man wistfully as he moved on to service another table of guests and repeated the process, easy as breathing.

‘Meaningless banter is not your way,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Move on. Embrace the introvert. Buy an island.’

‘Why
did
you buy an island?’ she asked him.

‘Retreat,’ he said. ‘I wanted solitude and I wanted water. It was either that or a boat. Tom convinced me that an island would be better. Turns out he was right. You, however, introvert extraordinaire, didn’t like it.’

‘Mainly because I thought you didn’t want me there,’ she replied with that curious mixture of openness and reserve. ‘I could have liked it. I
did
like it. The guest house bed was divine and so were the sunrises. I loved the reef and the quad and the walking tracks. I wish I’d had the time to walk the edge of the island all the way round. Take another dip in the shark cove, sharks willing.’

‘Adventurous,’ he said.

‘Not really. You should meet my siblings.’

‘Never compare. Especially if you’re the one falling short.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ she said with a gamine grin. ‘I’ll even stop envying the waiter.’

‘That’d be a start. Besides, you can always do those things next time you visit the island.’

‘Will there be a next time?’ she asked.

‘Do you want there to be?’ he countered.

‘Is this where you tell me to get on with seducing you?’

‘Wasn’t planning to,’ he said. ‘You do a far better job of it when you’re thinking about something else.’

The wine came. Then the meal came. And Poppy West relaxed into the evening. Finding out what made Poppy tick became Sebastian’s newest compulsion. Watching her respond to him, entering into unguarded conversation with him, only made him yearn for more of her subtle wit and warmth. Winning a smile from her became his greatest challenge.

Flirting wasn’t her game this evening, it was his and he rewrote the rules as he went along. Forget the easy compliments and find a connection and then another and then another. Take a spoonful of her dessert and let
her share his. Fall in thrall to a sensuality Poppy didn’t even know she possessed.

‘What are your plans for tomorrow?’ he asked her.

‘Head down the coast to my brother’s beach house. See Lena. Phone Damon and my father. Family conference,’ she murmured. ‘You?’

‘Visit a deaf man. Visit a dead man’s wife and son.’

‘He had a wife and son?’

Seb nodded. ‘Bonnie. The kid’s name is Cal. He’s seven.’

‘You going to tell him his father was a hero?’

‘He was.’

Poppy smiled. ‘What will you say to Bonnie?’

‘That I’m sorry. That I’ve spent the last month going over the events leading up to the explosion in the hope of finding a problem I could fix so that accidents like that one would never happen again.’

‘I like it,’ she murmured. ‘Did you find anything?’

‘No. No apparent human error. No indication from the readouts that the well was about to blow. But there’s got to be a better way of monitoring unstable wells so that we
know what’s going on. I want to put it to the company board of directors that we create an R&D division focused on providing just that. Not just mop-up. Prevention.’

‘Are you going to tell Bonnie that too?’

‘Wasn’t planning to.’

‘You should. Then she gets to have the memory of a husband who’s not just a hero but also a catalyst for change. I think she’d like that.’ Poppy shrugged. ‘I’d like that.’

‘You would? No recriminations? No wishing Cam had been a different kind of man? One who’d chosen a different line of work?’

‘Not if I loved him for what he was,’ she said in that mild-mannered way of hers that nonetheless cut straight to the heart of things. ‘It seems to me that of all people, Bonnie would have known the type of man her husband was. She’d have known that some people simply aren’t content unless they’re pitting themselves against the odds. Doesn’t mean they’re not careful. Doesn’t mean they want to die. It’s just the way they live.’

‘You going to count yourself amongst us, Poppy?’ he asked. ‘Because some of the calculated risks you’ve been taking with your work lately sure as hell qualify.’

‘They do, don’t they?’ She sounded quietly pleased with herself. ‘I’ve always thought of
myself as the careful one. The cautious one. Life in the background. That’s what people expect from me. It’s what I’ve always done. Thing is, people change, inside and out, and these days I want more. I want to make love and embrace the experience. Swim naked in the Pacific at midnight and fear nothing. I want to live
one
day as if there’s no tomorrow. And then another. And then another. And I might not want to live every day that way but I do want to live some of them like that.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Will you make love with me tonight, Sebastian? As if there’s no tomorrow?’

The hell she didn’t know how to seduce a man.

‘Get up,’ he said gruffly, and she stood and so did he. They walked towards the exit without touching. Sebastian signed for the meal in silence and tried to remember important things like his suite number and how they might conceivably get there without him hauling her up against him and slaking his hunger for her there and then.

They made it to his rooms, they made it inside and he shut the door behind them. He asked her if she wanted anything to drink and she said water, so he poured her some, and some for himself.

She looked around the room, much as she’d done the first time she’d stepped inside the house on the island. Keeping her thoughts to herself. Not bothering with small talk.

He was a fair way past small talk himself.

‘If I wanted to touch you right now,’ she asked, ‘where might I start?’

‘Hands.’ His were currently holding up the bench separating living area from bedroom. ‘Arms. Chest. Anywhere.’

She walked forward and stood in front of him. Put a hand to his waist and slid the other up his chest. Her eyes were questioning and it took an age before her lips were poised to slide beneath his. ‘Like this?’ she whispered and touched her lips to his, soft and fleeting. ‘You’ll let me know if I do something you don’t like?’ The downward sweep of her lashes as she touched the tip of her tongue to the corner of his lips and then withdrew. She sent him a smile that spoke of woodland things and fairies, shy and curious all at once.

He caught her hand and slid it around his neck. Curved his own hands around the ledge at his back. And gently claimed her mouth.

Poppy knew better this time, what to expect. The taste of him, and the things his lips could do. Like drag gently along hers
and plant kisses along her lower lip while she closed her eyes and waited for him to give her more. Fitting his mouth to hers and drinking deeply now, outwardly still but on the inside an erotic mix of warmth and texture and taste.

She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She didn’t dare voice her moan of boneless pleasure for fear he would take it as protest.

Seb’s mouth left hers to trail across her cheek and jaw and play havoc with the skin just behind her ear.

‘Why aren’t you touching me?’ she whispered and he smiled against her skin and bent his head lower to graze her collarbone with lips and teeth.

‘Because I’m taking my time,’ he murmured and slid his lips lower as Poppy closed her eyes, threaded both hands in his hair and tried to remember how to breathe.

‘Sebastian, please.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Slow and easy,’ she whispered with laughter in her voice. ‘Only faster.’

‘Not this time,’ he muttered, but he picked her up and carried her to the bed and settled down on the edge of it, bringing Poppy’s knees either side of him and her butt to rest high on his hard thighs.

‘Better?’ he whispered, with his lips
against her neck and then lower still, to where her collarbone met the silk of her dress. His hands were at her waist now, fingers to her back while his thumbs drew lazy circles upwards towards her breasts.

Poppy’s breasts felt heavy and her nipples grew tight as Sebastian continued his leisurely approach from both above and below. Her thighs started trembling and she gave up all pretence of trying not to saddle him with the whole of her weight. Just how long did a man
need
to get to the point?

And then Seb closed his mouth over her pebbled nipple through the fabric of her dress and Poppy gasped and watched as Sebastian pushed her breast up with his hand and flicked his tongue over her before taking another bite, bigger than before.

‘My dress,’ she whimpered and his hands moved knowingly to the zip at her back, and his lips abandoned her breasts to nibble once more on her jaw.

‘It’s a very nice dress,’ he murmured agreeably.

‘I want it off.’