Free Cracking the Dating Code by Kelly Hunter Page A

predatory. ‘C’mon, Ophelia. Loosen up the stronghold and let’s get you back to shore. You want a tow or are you going to swim?’
    Tempting, so tempting just to say
get me out of here
and leave him to take care of the details, but Poppy could swim, she swam quite well when fear wasn’t paralysing her. Lap after lap in friendly gym pools. She could do this.
    ‘Swim,’ she said faintly.
    ‘Good girl.’ He lifted his hands to her wrists and gently drew her hands from around his neck and put them on his shoulders instead. His hands to her waist after that, sliding down over her bottom and around to her thighs, gentle but firm as he urged her to unwrap her legs from around him too.
    He kicked off with an easy side stroke, so smooth and obviously comfortable in the water. Side stroke for him and breaststroke for her, first with one hand on his shoulder and then both hands in the water and her gaze fixed on the shore.
    They reached it soon enough and Poppy emerged, dripping wet and trembling, not meeting Seb’s gaze until he shoved a towel under her nose and forced the issue.
    ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘For everything.’
    ‘You swim well, Poppy. Very well. Want to tell me what the panic attack was all about?’ he asked quietly, and his eyes weren’t condemning, just curious.
    Poppy buried her face in the towel and wiped it dry and then handed it back to him. He took it but he didn’t use it. Just wrapped it round her shoulders, dripping wet clothes and all.
    ‘I got caught in a rip once when I was a kid,’ she began with a shrug. ‘My brother too. We got free of it eventually but by then we were a long way out to sea.’ She glanced towards the open ocean. Been there, feared it. ‘A long way out.’
    ‘Your brother still here?’
    ‘What?’ And then it twigged that he thought this story had a tragic ending rather than a happy one. ‘Yes. Damon’s still here, and unlike me he still loves the ocean. Dares it to swallow him every chance he gets. Me, I’ve just stayed scared of it. Scared of drowning. Scared of being so tired and disorientedout there that it becomes easier all around to just…’ She let a gently sloping hand finish the sentence for her.
    ‘Just what?’
    He was going to make her say it.
    She’d lain face up in the water that day and felt the call of the deep seep inexorably into her bones. Its siren song and its restfulness; just sink, sink and you’ll be fine. You’ll be mine.
    ‘Just give up,’ she said quietly.
    ‘But you didn’t.’
    ‘No. It was a win, I guess. It just didn’t feel like one at the time.’
    ‘How old were you?’ he murmured.
    ‘Eight. My brother was seven. You’d like him, I suspect. I dare say he’d like you.’
    Seb’s eyebrows rose a fraction and Poppy summoned a faint smile. ‘In a strictly platonic, adrenaline-junkies-of-the-world-unite kind of way.’ She glanced towards the water once more. ‘I haven’t swum in the ocean for years. I guess I could call swimming and snorkelling with you just now another victory. Of sorts.’
    Sebastian said nothing, just stood there watching her, with eyes full of shadows.
    ‘Everyone has their demons, Ophelia.
    Some people never get around to facing them the way you just faced yours.’
    ‘You have demons?’ she asked.
    ‘Never doubt it. They’re just different from yours, that’s all.’
    ‘Will you tell me one of them? A confidence for a confidence in order to make a woman feel a little less exposed?’
    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