Free Cracking the Dating Code by Kelly Hunter Page B

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, flirtationcomes 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