“Oh, ha ha.” Helen whisked the scrap of lace off his finger. “It may interest you to know that over half the clients who buy on this website are women. And this issoftporn and erotica. There’s a big difference.” Not that she’d get into a discussion over it now. Any talk of a sexual nature with Sebastian had to be off-limits if the mere thought of parading Licks and Laces’ latest range in front of him had the power to make Helen’s breath come choppy. She stuck her chin in the air, grabbed Alexa’s gifts, and scooted out of the kitchen accompanied by Sebastian’s soft chuckles.
Damn the man, damn her crush. And damn the fact she hadn’t had sex in a million years!
In her room, Helen snatched up her nightshirt off the floor, stripped, then caught her naked reflection in the mirror. Night after night, her body went to waste, lying fallow in her bed as she dreamed about Sebastian. The sex goddess inside her stewed in desperate, starving desire.
Frustrated, Helen pulled her nightshirt over her head then, needing to check on the progress of her backup, crept back into the kitchen only to halt when she saw Sebastian standing by the sink, staring out at her moonlit garden. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
When he turned around, his gaze dipped to her bare legs. What would he do if she pulled her nightshirt up, past her bare minnie, stomach, breasts, and off over her head? It was an enticing thought. Too enticing. Her fingers brushed the material.Do it, do it,the sex goddess inside hissed, increasing the tug between her legs. Sebastian slowly raised his gaze.Yearning, wanting.Was his inner sex god hissing at him too?
Nope.
And to prove it, he picked up the kettle. “I’m making tea. Want some?”
The sex goddess retreated. “Yes. Please.”
Tea was safer.
Tea was best.
“I’ll get the cups.” She reached into the cupboard next to his head, feeling his gaze slide down her backside where her nightshirt rode farther up her thighs. “I thought you’d gone upstairs. Aren’t you tired?”
“A little.”
“You take a long time to fall asleep.” Helen placed cups on the worktop. “I hear you moving around most nights. I’m sorry it’s not the most comfortable bed.”
“The bed is fine. I’m sorry I keep you awake.”
“You don’t.”Not in the way you think, anyway.Would she ever be able to stop thinking about Sebastian lying in bed? “So … are we still due to leave here at eleven tomorrow for George Hampton’s house?”
“Yes.” Sebastian poured hot water into mugs. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all. Tom and Em couldn’t believe it when I told them I’d be having lunch at Godham Hall.”
Helen hadn’t believed it either when Sebastian told her the Hamptons lived in one of the largest estates in Somerset. She’d found it on Google Earth as well as on a property site—years out of date—that told her what the Hamptons had paid for it. That family wasminted!
“Tom told me not to touch anything in case I broke it,” she said. “You’d think he was my grandpa, not my younger brother.”
Sebastian smiled. “He cares about you.”
Helen waved this off, as if the bond with her brother wasn't ingrained in every fiber of her being. “I drive him nuts.”
“But still, he’s got your back.”
Helen blew on her tea. “According to Google, you don’t have any siblings.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve always had Tom next to me, like an annoying tick. We were even in the same year at school. My birthday’s on tenth of September, right at the beginning of the school year and Tom’s is twenty-ninth of August, right at the end. Everyone thought we were twins.”
Helen couldn’t imagine not having a sibling. As very young children, before their father had acquired bunk beds for them, they’d even shared the same bed, top to toe. As her and Tom’s messy bedroom came back to mind, Helen pictured Sebastian as a child, all his toys in neat, immaculate rows.
“So who did you play with growing up when you weren’t in school?” Helen asked. “That guy Jimmy?”
“No, we met at university.” Sebastian leaned back against the counter. “When I was a kid, a girl the same age as me lived in the house across the street. She liked holding tea parties with stuffed bears and Barbie dolls. It was pretty wild.”
“I can picture it. Did you ignore each other as teenagers, too embarrassed to face your shared past?”
“Nah, she moved away long before then. Her dad was a TV producer. He got a contract in New York so they packed up. When they left, she gave me one of her bears. We wrote each other a few times. It was short and sweet.”
