Cracking the Dating Code (7 page)

He hesitated at first, and then he spoke. ‘How do you tell a dead man that you made the wrong call? How do you tell a deaf man you’re sorry?’

He was talking about the drill-rig accident, only he hadn’t told her about that yet. Mal had. ‘There was an accident?’

‘An offshore well blowout. My call to send in a crew.’

‘But surely there were others involved in that decision? Regulatory bodies. AMSA.’ Points to Poppy for remembering names. ‘Did your crew have much experience?’

Seb nodded.

‘Years and years’ worth?’

Another tiny nod.

‘Then surely they knew the risks involved and had chosen to take them. Maybe you should factor that somewhere into the guilt equation and see if that changes the balance of things.’

‘What if it doesn’t?’

‘Then ask yourself this. Would any one of your partners, had he been in your position and had he been in possession of the same information you had to hand… Would he have made the same decision to send them in that you made?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then I suggest you ask. Alternatively, you could always hole up on a deserted island with a bottle of Scotch.’

‘Ouch.’

‘I have a missing brother who’s off doing God only knows what because he feels guilty that my sister got injured while under his command. For what it’s worth, I don’t have much sympathy for him either. I did in the beginning. These days I just want to know where he is so I can tell him what a thoughtless, self-centred ass he’s being.’

‘Again with the ouch.’

‘Would you prefer a hug?’

‘Yes.’ With a gleam in his eye and a tiny smile on his lips. ‘Preferably one that doesn’t involve you being paralysed with fear for the duration. Think you can manage that?’

‘Are we flirting again?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I don’t know. For some people, flirtation
comes easy, as easy as breathing. I’m not one of them.’

‘You don’t say?’

‘Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to be better at it. If the opportunity to practise those particular skills ever arose, I’d take it.’

‘Practice,’ he muttered. ‘Whatever happened to meeting someone and just doing whatever feels right?’

‘You sound like my brothers. The-fall-in-love-first-and-all-will-reveal-itself spiel is one of their favourites. It’s not one they tend to practise, mind, but they’re sure it’s going to work just fine for me.’

‘And it will,’ he said, with an endearing touch of desperation.

‘But it hasn’t,’ she countered evenly. ‘And at this point in time I am quite okay with the notion of love being an optional extra rather than a necessity. I’d like to learn how to flirt properly, or at least flirt a little better than I do now. And I was wondering…’ Dear heaven, she’d been doing more than wondering. ‘I was hoping that you wouldn’t mind letting me practise.’

‘Practise,’ he echoed.

‘On you,’ she clarified. ‘Kind of like last night.’

‘Poppy, last night was a disaster.’

‘Yes, well, I realise I have a long way to go.’

‘A long way to—’ Seb shook his head as if to clear it. ‘What makes you think I can teach you how to flirt?’

‘Well, you just helped me conquer one fear. You’re an excellent teacher. Patient. Calm. Safe.’

‘You’re talking about being in the water with me.’

‘Yes. You did a brilliant job when it came to helping me conquer my fear. You could do the same when it came to helping me overcome my fear of flirting. Tutor me, so to speak.’

Seb just looked at her.

‘I could pay you,’ she offered. ‘Students pay tutors all the time.’

He stared at her in what looked a lot like horrified fascination. ‘Dear God, she thinks I’m a gigolo.’

‘Not a gigolo,’ she corrected hastily. ‘Mentor. There wouldn’t have to be sex. We could set boundaries. No sex. Limited touching. Everything in the mind. Just like last night before the kissing started.’

‘An emasculated gigolo,’ he said and kept right on staring at her in wonder. ‘With a masochistic streak.’

‘Was that a yes?’

‘No!’

‘Would you like me to give you a little more time to think about it?’

‘Again with the
no.
Poppy, at the risk of sounding completely self-centred—which I am—there is
nothing
in this for me besides a headache.’

‘What about the joy of teaching?’ she said. ‘The knowledge that you’d be educating your fellow man, or, in this case, woman? Teach a man to fish and all that?’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you? You really are serious?’

‘More like desperate,’ she confessed.

‘Oh, now,
there’s
a compliment,’ he muttered, and this time the mortification she’d been holding at bay seared into her, hot and burning.

‘No offence intended,’ she managed with what little composure she had left. ‘I’m not very good with people—you can probably tell that by now. I thought I saw a way to skill up, that’s all. And I placed you in the role of teacher because you seemed really good at it. No offence to you intended. None.’

‘You’re driving me crazy,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’ve been here two days and I’m
already
half crazy for even
contemplating
humouring you. Tom’ll disown me. Your brothers’ll try
and kill me. Mankind may never recover if I arm you and let you loose on them.’

They stared at one another in silence until Poppy blushed again and looked away.

‘Stop
doing
that,’ he muttered.

‘Doing what?’

‘Blushing. There will be no more blushing on this island. Ever. Got it?’

‘Got it,’ she said meekly, and blushed again. ‘I’m teachable, Sebastian. I know I am. I just need guidance. And that wasn’t a blush.’

‘Then what was it?’

‘Sunburn.’

‘I came here to swim,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to swim. And against all better judgement I will meet you in the billiard room in one hour for your next lesson in male-female relations.’

‘Do you mean it?’

He shot her a mutinous look.

‘I mean, of course you do. You said it, didn’t you? Therefore you meant it. A man of honour is as good as his word. I knew that.’

‘God, my head hurts already.’

‘Swim,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Do whatever you came here to do. I’ll go and have dinner, have a shower, put on some dry clothes. Is there anything I should bring?’

‘If you see my sense of humour anywhere…’

‘I’ll bring it. I’ll bring enough for two. Thank you. Thank you for doing this.’

‘Don’t thank me yet. You have no idea how wrong this has the potential to go.’

‘So we’re in a bar,’ said Sebastian, and took a hefty swig of his whisky-laced cola. He’d swum, he’d showered, he’d even shaved and put on a white T-shirt to go with the desert island cut-offs that finished somewhere mid calf. He didn’t resemble any teacher Poppy had ever known but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and, besides, the castaway look really worked for him. She, on the other hand, was showcasing yet another pair of casual beige trousers and a white three-quarter-sleeve boat-neck tee.

‘Do we have to be in a bar?’ she said as she racked up the balls and rolled them into place. ‘Can’t we be in a hotel foyer or something?’

‘Who’s the teacher here?’ he said, pinning her with a glittering green gaze.

‘You are. No question. Sorry. Continue.’

‘So we’re in a bar in a hotel foyer,’ he said, with exaggerated patience. ‘And it’s busy.’

‘What are you wearing?’ she asked.

‘Trousers. Collared shirt.’

‘Tie?’

‘No.’

‘Jacket?’

‘Too hot.’

‘Shoes?’

‘Yes, shoes. Not that you care. I am your mentor, not your intended victim.’

‘You still look very nice, though,’ she said, ignoring the victim crack, and Sebastian sighed hard.

‘For what it’s worth I’m wearing a sleeveless, A-line, grey-blue mini dress and a pair of black stiletto sandals,’ she offered. ‘The dress is a little on the conservative side but my soon-to-be sister-in-law was with me when I bought the shoes. The shoes are hot.’

‘Is your soon-to-be sister-in-law in on your burning need to become the world’s most accomplished flirt as well?’

‘No, you’re the only one who knows about that particular need.’

‘Lucky me,’ he muttered, and then, ‘How the hell did you get through your teens without learning how to flirt? So you were on the socially inept side, I get that about you. Maybe even the nutty side. I get that too. But look at you. Conservative clothes or not,
you’re gorgeous. Were the boys around you blind?’

‘No, but they were usually a lot older,’ she offered by way of explanation. ‘I finished school at fourteen and started university at fifteen. I never got to do the high-school social thing. Never did much uni socialising either because I was always so much younger than everyone else.’

They lined up two balls and played for the break. Poppy won it but failed to sink a ball.

Seb studied the table and so did Poppy. Both the nine ball and the twelve ball were on cushions. The coloured balls, on the other hand, were beautifully spread. Not surprisingly, Seb chose to play the coloured balls.

‘And when you got older?’

‘By then I’d been seconded to a mathematics think tank,’ she continued. ‘The people there focused on the work and so did I. I worked hard. I didn’t get out much. I missed the boat.’

‘You hate boats.’

‘Which hasn’t helped,’ she said with a reluctant smile. ‘I get out a bit more these days. I’m trying to redress the balance. I go to the ballet. I take a few ballet classes.’

Seb winced.

‘I love a good Hollywood revenge movie.’

‘Better,’ he said.

‘I have my plane pilot’s licence and I’m working on my helicopter licence. I love to fly.’

Sebastian’s eyebrows rose a fraction. ‘All right, I’ll play that one.’ He sank his first ball.

And proceeded to run the table.

‘Ouch,’ said Poppy. ‘That hurt. You could have at least humoured me and dropped a shot.’

‘You’re a helicopter pilot and a genius. I’m taking my wins wherever I can get them.’

‘Fair enough.’ They started setting up for another game.

‘What else do you do in your down time?’ he asked.

‘Well, I like to travel. And if Tom and I expand the business and put someone else on—which we’re looking into—we can probably both skive a bit more time away from the work. There could be lots of travel. I could go to Cartahegna. There could be treasure maps involved. Riches beyond my wildest imagination. There could be romance.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Which does bring me to yet another pertinent question. How do you envisage your impressive IQ fitting in with your seduction plans?’

‘Well, it would help if he could keep up.’

‘Yeah, good luck with that.’ Sebastian’s voice was dry, very dry.

‘Or I could just not mention it,’ she said. ‘I usually don’t mention it.’

‘I pity him already,’ said Seb, and played the break and sank a striped ball. But he’d be hard-pressed to run the table this time, decided Poppy.

‘So we’re in this bar,’ he said again. ‘You’re drinking your beverage of choice. There’s a man in a red shirt, shoes, trousers, jacket
and
a tie, and he’s been watching you for a while. He’s part of a larger mixed group of about a dozen people. The women seem to like him, although none of them are with him. What do you do?’

‘I smile at him.’

‘He’s smiling back. He’s raising an eyebrow and looking at me. I don’t notice. He’s cutting back to you.’

‘I shake my head in the negative in the hope that he will interpret this as a signal that you and I are not together. You don’t notice that either. You’re being particularly inattentive tonight.’

‘That’s because I’m scoping the blonde in the corner
and
I’m still winning at billiards.

I can’t be doing everything.’ Seb lined up to sink the nine ball…and missed.

‘Shame,’ said Poppy and opted for the wide-eyed look when Sebastian glared at her. But she couldn’t run the table given the spread of the balls either, and, with one ball left to sink, handed the play back to him.

Might as well have conceded the game then and there.

‘You gave it your best shot,’ he said consolingly, and finished the game. ‘Game three, coming up. We need a wager.’

‘Not from where I’m standing,’ she said.

‘Why
are
you still standing next to me?’ he said. ‘You need to be cutting out from the herd and taking the man in red with you. Take a walk over to the window to admire the view of the pool and the outdoor restaurant. Check out the menu or something. It’s sitting there on a stand.’

‘All right, I’m going,’ she said. ‘What do you want to play for?’

‘How about who gets to cook dinner tomorrow night?’

‘How do you know I can cook?’

‘If you can’t, you can learn. Isn’t that your new motto?’

‘Dinner it is. I’ve just said this to the man in red as well. The odds of this ever playing
out in real life are a million to one. I’d have missed every one of my cues, for starters. I’d have smiled at wall art rather than the man and you’d have had to separate me from the herd with a cattle prod. But thank you for the tips.’

The break was Seb’s. But after that the game was all hers, and she cleaned up without missing another shot.

‘Con artist,’ he said. ‘New scenario in the here and now.’

‘Why does it have to be in the here and now? Why can’t we go back to the bar?’

‘Because as you’ve so blithely demonstrated, you are now too comfortable in the bar. You’re not feeling the terror of actually presenting yourself as available and willing to explore a connection. It’s all in your head.’

There was that.

There was also the small matter of not being able to envision another man worth flirting with when Seb was in the room. Something to do with him being the finest-looking, -sounding and -smelling man she’d ever encountered. And then there were the mind games.

‘Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, there is a solution.’

‘I knew a man of your experience would
have a solution,’ she said, somewhat warily. ‘What is it?’

‘From now on you’ll be practising directly on me.’