Cracking the Dating Code. Kelly Hunter

near her again, and eventually she heard the quad rumble to life. A glance through the window confirmed that Sebastian was indeed heading back down the rough dirt track on the quad, his destination unknown.

      He’d changed into cut-off canvas trousers in beige and he’d added a black T-shirt, but it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to her reaction to him. She still looked, and she sure as hell still wanted. She tried to count how many other men she’d wanted with the intensity that she wanted this one. The counting didn’t take long.

      None.

      Poppy retrieved her carryall from the living room and hauled it to the computer room. She dug out her hard drives and plugged them in and then settled down to see what security measures Tomas had put in place. No internet signal was the biggest gift that kept on giving, but there were other safeguards in place and Poppy approved of them all. No way for anyone outside this room to know what went on in here, and as for leaving a mess behind for Tomas to clean up, that wouldn’t be happening either. Before she left she’d strip this computer back to this time today, with no record whatsoever of her use of it.

      It took a while, but eventually Poppy stopped thinking about her host and let herself sink into the work. No looking over her shoulder required. For the first time in weeks she could truly concentrate on the task at hand. It was time to find out where her older brother was—as in what the hell he was doing and for whom.

      ‘Okay, Jared,’ she murmured coaxingly. ‘I’m here, I’m fearless and failure is not an option. Where are you?’

      The afternoon stretched into evening before Poppy managed to break free of the code in her head and go to the kitchen in search of that coffee. The unpredictable Sebastian still hadn’t returned from wherever it was he’d been going and for that Poppy was surprisingly grateful.

      She needed the caffeine and she needed some time alone to think about what she was going to do about her interest in him, and, more to the point, what to do should he continue to display a decided interest in her.

      The man was grieving, and probably bored. Looking for a distraction, any distraction would do. A bottle. A woman. Something to take his mind off an explosion that had cost him one friend and injured another. Poppy didn’t know what to do with the information Mal had given her. Didn’t know what kind of guilt Seb was dealing with or what it was doing to him.

      Didn’t know whether to act on her instant attraction or leave the poor man alone.

      Guilt had been Jared’s constant companion too, as they’d sat in plastic chairs in the hospital, waiting for their sister to come out of surgery. Jared’s anguish over Lena’s injuries had been wordless and all powerful. He’d waited for word that Lena would survive. He’d seen her and spoken to her and told her everything would be all right. He’d sworn vengeance on those who’d betrayed them and then he’d left.

      Seven months and twenty-eight days ago.

      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