Page 15 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
‘Why would you want to shout at me?’
Sebastian dealt her a grim appraisal. ‘Because I found the distress flares unused in the life raft…why the hell didn’t you send them up during the storm?’
CHAPTER FIVE
BUNNY’S SMOOTH BROWfurrowed and then eased again. Sebastian was studying her with frowning annoyance and her tummy turned over sickly. She decided to be honest. ‘I forgot about them.’
‘You…forgot?’ he shot back at her in disbelief, studying her intently. Could anyone possibly be that honest?
Sebastian had little experience of such open behaviour. He was accustomed to lies and half-truths at best. Her candour had blown his anger back on him. He was in a volatile mood and thoroughly unsettled because his memory was returning in snatches. He had recalled being on a surgical rotation at a hospital, so he must have completed his medical degree if he had still been training. But he had also recalled burning the candle at both ends while he struggled to solve a tech security problem. Clearly, his once wholehearted approach to medicine had faltered at some point.
Bunny nodded vigorously. ‘In the storm, the raft was pitching about and I was trying to keep my balance and watch yours as well. I was also throwing up a lot and terrified. Reggie never mentioned the flares or told me how to use them.’
‘It’s simple. You point and fire,’ Sebastian incised curtly, exasperated that they might just have missed their chance of an immediate rescue. ‘There may have been people on land or shipping nearby.’
‘But there just as easily might not have been,’ she pointed out in her own defence as she set out the food. ‘This island was the first land I saw. Reggie only trained me on how to launch the raft. He never showed me the equipment on it.’
His ebony brows lowered. ‘That is as may be but common sense should’ve urged you to—’
‘Well, it didn’t, no point crying over what’s already behind us,’ Bunny said in a deliberately upbeat tone, determined not to have her oversight become the focus for a useless argument. ‘Now you’ve got them to use here at the right moment.’
Sebastian glowered at her. ‘Ithink—’
‘No, I don’t want to hear any more about it,’ Bunny told him with brisk finality. ‘I plead guilty to a mistake. Now sit down and eat your breakfast.’
Sebastian compressed his wide mobile lips like a grump, but he settled down at the table to lift his coffee. ‘You don’t like confrontation. That doesn’t work with me.’
‘We’re both trying the best we can to get through this. Let’s not make mountains out of molehills.’
His eyes glittered like black ice. ‘The homely cliché only sets my teeth on edge.’
‘Sorry.’ She was disconcerted by that sudden chill in the air and she addressed her attention to her plate. She would’ve liked to have screamed at him about that horrendous, terrifying night on the raft during the storm, when she might as well have been alone. So, she hadn’t been perfect but she had kept them both safe long enough to reach land. ‘But you have to accept that I’m not a seawoman or whatever you call it. Reggie gave me my first job on a boat and myonlyexperience of sailing and it would take torture and intimidation to get me onanykind of a boat again!’
He sprang upright and cleared the table. ‘I love being on the water. It relaxes me.’
Bunny said nothing, although she was tempted to remind him that he had been protected from the ordeal by his comatose condition. She wiped down the table before laying down the jeans to cut them.
Sebastian startled her with an intervention because he didn’t like the atmosphere he had created. He didn’t like arguing or eventryingto argue with her. He didn’t like the distance that was threatening to stretch between them and, in reaction, he curved his hands to her hips and carried her into the opulent reception room, dropping down on the sectional with her splayed across his thighs.
‘What are you doing? I was about to cut those jeans down.’
‘They’ll take a rain check… I’m not as forgiving,’ Sebastian contended. ‘Let’s wind back a few minutes. If you’d still been in bed when I returned, I’d have climbed back into bed with you. If you’d been a little more receptive, I’d have stripped you in the kitchen.’
‘Sebastian,’ she argued, mortified because she could fully imagine either scenario. Unlike her, he was very upfront in his attitude to sex.
Without warning, his passionate mouth crushed hers with hungry urgency and her lips parted, instinctively allowing him access. He lifted his head again, dark eyes fiercely intent on her face. ‘You want to stop this? Say so now.’
Small fingers reached up to his stubbled jawline and smoothed, her luminous green eyes wide and troubled because she didn’t want to wind him up. She wanted him to calm down, although she was still wounded by his criticism of her actions during the storm. ‘I don’t know what I want yet. We were in that bed before I registered that anything had started.’
In answer to that response, Sebastian swung her off him to set her down with care beside him. ‘It’s your choice. I’m on fire for you but if you would prefer to call a halt, I won’t put pressure on you to change your mind.’
‘I’ve only ever been in one relationship,’ she admitted unevenly, embarrassed to admit that lack of experience. ‘And you say you don’t do relationships at all. I’m not like that. But I do know that what we’ve got is just for now and is probably only happening because we’re stuck here alone together.’
‘We don’t need to have this discussion. But please don’t start imagining that you’re falling in love with me.’
Her eyes flew wide. ‘Why would you saythatto me? Am I acting like that?’
‘No.’ Sebastian vented his breath in an impatient hiss and then sighed heavily, thinking back to his unfortunate experience with Ariana. ‘But once a girl I looked on like a sister decided she was in love with me and became obsessive about it.’
