The mention of her father, while he’d been thinking of his, piqued Seb’s interest. “What did your dad do for a living?”
She gave a small laugh and shook her head. “You really don’t want to know.”
That didn’t sound great but Seb let it go. He’d ask another time. Maybe tomorrow. He had the whole day off, and although he hadn’t asked Helen if she had any plans, he hoped they could hang out.
When they reached the dance floor, Seb drew Helen close. She placed one hand in his, the other awkwardly on his shoulder.
“I must warn you,” she said. “I’m not much of a ballroom dancer.”
“Take my lead. When the music is slow like this, we just sway and smile like we’re enjoying ourselves then pray it’ll be over as quickly as possible.”
“Is that what they teach you in finishing school?”
“Of course. All the useful stuff needed to get by in life.”
Her leg brushed his inner thigh. Seb kept his hand on her back, resisting the temptation to slide it lower. In heels, Helen was just a couple inches shorter than him, his nose level with her forehead. He scrambled for something to say, something that would take his attention away from how close her lips were to his. “You never mentioned what products are sold through that website you handle.”
Helen fixed her gaze on his tie as she mumbled something sounding a lot like sex toys and lingerie.
Seb snorted. “If you said what I think you just said, thank you for not mentioning it at dinner.” Then he recalled something Emma had told him last week. “Is web programming all you do?”
Helen stiffened in his arms.Obviously not.
“It’s just that I saw a whole bunch of computing books in your room, so I wondered—”
“I dabble in security software.” She raised her eyes to his. “Firewalls, encryption algorithms. That sort of thing.”
“Wow, that all sounds way over my head.”
“It’s geeky.”
It’s hot.“Where did you learn all this stuff?”
“Well, you’ve seen the books. Then there’s this thing called the internet, on which there are computing forums, and … YouTube.”
“YouTube?” Seb laughed. “Is that how you learned to kickbox too?”
“That, and a punchbag in the old shed at home.”
“So you do like studying, just not conventionally.”
“Yes.” Helen’s fingers relaxed against his chest as she moved her body with his. “I’ve always loved computing, but when we first came to live with Ada, all I wanted to do was earn money. I never had any before. Tom went to college, but I stayed working on the orchards so I could support us. Then a couple of years later, when Tom got his job with the insurance company, he bought me a laptop. We hooked the cottage up with the internet and soon I’d learned enough to get small coding jobs here and there. I was doing okay.” She gave a little shrug. “Then Ada needed care and here we are.”
Here they were, indeed.
Slow dancing just like all the other couples—real couples—swaying with the sultry music, getting to know each other as if they were on a date.
Seb gazed at the top of Helen’s head, her straightened hair bringing to mind her cute fuzzy curls. “You’re a very interesting woman, Helen Hobbs. You surprise me every day.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good thing.” She crinkled her nose and her leg brushed his inner thigh again. “You like everything in neat little boxes, all labeled up and cataloged. You don’t like surprises.”
But he liked being surprised by her.
And those surprises were drawing him ever closer to the complications he wanted—needed—to avoid, drawing him closer to her mouth, her body and the PDA he’d been scouring the room for a reason to deploy.
“Don’t look now,” Helen said, tilting her chin toward his, “but Brenda’s watching us.”
Halle—freaking—lujah!
