Kelly Hunter - Cracking the Dating Code

‘Hunter’s emotionally rich tale will make readers laugh and cry along with the characters. A truly fantastic read.’

—RT Book Reviews on

Revealed: A Prince and a Pregnancy

‘This is a dynamite story of a once-forbidden relationship, featuring two terrific characters who have to deal with the past before they can finally be together.’

—RT Book Reviews on

Exposed: Misbehaving with the Magnate

‘This story starts out on a light, fun and flirty note and spins into an emotional and heartfelt tale about coming to terms with the past and embracing the future.’

—RT Book Reviews on

Playboy Boss, Live-In Mistress

The Man She Loves To Hate

With This Fling…

Red-Hot Renegade

Untameable Rogue

Revealed: A Prince and a Pregnancy

Exposed: Misbehaving with the Magnate

Playboy Boss, Live-In Mistress

The Maverick’s Greek Island Mistress

Sleeping Partner

Accidentally educated in the sciences, KELLY HUNTERhas always had a weakness for fairytales, fantasy worlds and losing herself in a good book. Husband…yes. Children…two boys. Cooking and cleaning…sigh. Sports… no, not really—in spite of the best efforts of her family. Gardening…yes. Roses, of course. Kelly was born in Australia and has travelled extensively. Although she enjoys living and working in different parts of the world, she still calls Australia home.

Kelly’s novels Sleeping Partner and Revealed: A Prince and a Pregnancy were both finalists for the Romance Writers of America RITA ®Award, in the Best Contemporary Series Romance category!

Visit Kelly online at www.kellyhunter.net

Cracking the Dating Code

Kelly Hunter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TIMIDITY was not an absolute measurement but a relative one. And therein lay the problem. Second youngest of the four West siblings, Poppy had never measured up to any of her nearest and dearest when it came to confidence and the conquering of fear. Didn’t mean she was a mouse. Didn’t mean she wasn’t perfectly functional—just that she preferred book-reading to skydiving and murmured agreement to heated argument. Nothing wrong with that.

Some might even call it sane.

Of course, there were also those who believed she was too shy for her own good and that she needed to step away from her work and get out more and make new friends. As if her admittedly small circle of friends wasn’t enough. As if new friends just happened by on a daily basis.

Tomas was a friend. Cryptology mathematician and co-project manager, Tomas brimmed with confidence enough for both of them and he understood the language Poppy spoke best. Namely, code.

Tomas had also offered her the use of his private island on which to do some code breaking, with very few questions asked and only one small favour required in return.

Which had been good of him, she told herself over and over as she stepped aboard the Marlin III fishing cruiser and politely asked the skipper for a life jacket.

Very, very good of him.

So here she was, back in Australia, her country of birth, with only a boat ride across the open waters of the Pacific separating Poppy from her destination.

Poppy’s spray jacket came off and the life jacket went on and then her jacket went back on over the top of that, never mind the skipper’s silent amusement. The ocean was not her friend. They were about to travel across it. Nothing wrong with taking a few precautions.

Sunshine. Blue sky. Calm sea. Shiny big boat, manned by the best skipper the bustling Cairns marina had to offer. A boat fully outfitted with GPS and radar and whose skipper had filled out a travel plan sheet in his tiny office, right there in front of her eyes, and handed it to the office manager, who’d pinned it to a board behind her desk. A careful man who took precautions—nothing less would do.

So the journey had started out well, but the clouds moved in fast and so did the wind, and it was against them, making the trip longer, rougher and altogether more unpleasant as the minutes crashed on.

Not that skipper Mal seemed to mind. The lanky, blue-eyed sports-fishing operator proclaimed it an excellent day for a boat ride, and he should know, seeing as he’d worked the Marlin-fishing arm of the family’s charter-boat business for the past twenty years. The only issue to concern Captain Mal was their destination.

‘Seb knows you’re coming, right?’ he asked for the umpteenth time.

‘Yes,’ said Poppy for the umpteenth time. ‘He knows.’

‘Because I can’t get him on the radio.’

‘I know.’ Mal had been trying to contact Sebastian Reyne every ten minutes for the past hour. Way to lessen anxiety there, Mal.

Fisherman Mal had also wanted to put a couple of Marlin lines out and strap Poppy into the fighting-fish chair on the way across, seeing as Poppy was already paying him top dollar for the run, but Poppy had disabused him of that notion fast.

‘No, thank you,’ she’d told him politely. ‘I’m not big on game fishing.’ Or any other fishing that required one to actually be on the water. ‘I’ve read The Old Man and the Sea. I know how it goes.’

Mal had laughed and told her that the fishing process had moved on somewhat since then, but he hadn’t pushed her, and around half an hour into their journey he’d finally twigged that Poppy had a quiet case of rapidly escalating terror on her hands.

‘Problems with Seb?’ he’d asked, eyeing her sharply as she stood behind him, as close as she could get to the man without assaulting her personal space limits or his.

‘Not yet,’ she’d said. ‘Not that I know of. You know how some people have a fear of heights? I have one of open water. I look at the ocean and it’s bottomless and the only way is down. I don’t usually travel by boat if I can help it. Unfortunately, it’s the only way to get to the island.’

‘Couldn’t Seb have come to you?’ the skipper had asked, and Poppy had smiled at the man through her fear and edged a little closer.

‘I’m not going there to see Seb. I don’t even know the man.’

Poppy had lapsed into uncertain silence after that, and skipper Mal had ordered her up into the seat next to him and made her pour him a mug of coffee from a thermos, and one for her, too. He had sugar cubes on hand, the old-fashioned kind that horses loved, and he hadn’t waited to see if she’d wanted any, just plopped three in her mug and told her to drink up.

He tried conversation, but she didn’t have any to spare.

He tried putting music on, but his taste ran to heavy metal, the kind used to rev up the troops right before they opened fire or, conversely, went down in a blaze of glory.

‘So what do you do for a living?’ he asked. Casual conversation attempt number thirty-eight.

‘I write mathematical code,’ said Poppy. ‘It comes in handy for securing online interactions and the like.’

‘You mean cryptology,’ said Mal and grinned when Poppy blinked. ‘Same as what Tom does.’

‘Yes.’ Poppy nodded. ‘Tomas and I work together—we’re in business together. Hence the loan of the island.’

‘You’re sure Seb knows you’re coming,’ said Mal again.

‘I’m sure.’ But given that Mal wasn’t sure, it probably wouldn’t hurt to know a little more about Tomas’s reclusive brother. ‘Is there something you know about Tomas’s brother that I should know?’