Page 20 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
It was cool and damp when she heard the helicopter overhead. The late summer weather was definitely on the turn. Although the days remained hot the evenings were getting cooler. As she stepped out of the house, she carried a small bundle and when she reached the beach, she tossed Sebastian’s sweater at him.
Frowning, he turned to her.
‘You forgot it!’ she yelled above the racket of the helicopter settling down on the beach. It had a very sleek paint job in purple and silver and some sort of logo on it.
He strode back towards her. ‘I left it for you…it’s cold.’
‘I’m fine.’
He ignored her assurance and instead ran a reproving finger over the goosebumps on her arm. He dropped his sweater over her head, feeding her hands carefully into the sleeves before stooping to lift her off her feet into his arms to carry her.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded in astonishment.
‘You don’t have any shoes!’ he vented in surprise at her reaction as they were approached by the two men who had jumped out of the helicopter. Both were staring and one of them was her eldest brother, John. Her face burned with self-consciousness.
‘I’ll take her from here,’ John asserted, extending his arms to remove her from Sebastian’s hold.
Sebastian, however, stood his ground and lifted an arrogant black brow. ‘And you are?’
‘This is my brother John,’ Bunny proclaimed hurriedly.
Sebastian relaxed his hold and handed her over like a parcel. ‘Sebastian Pagonis.’
‘John Woods.’
‘Where’s Mum and Dad?’ Bunny asked as John moved her into the helicopter.
‘There wasn’t enough space for more than two of us to fly out here and Mum and Dad are a bit overcome by all this and Mum didn’t want to cry over you in front of people.’
‘Oh,’ Bunny mumbled as the other man leant back over the seat in front and introduced himself as Andreas Zervas. Sebastian’s friend, she recalled, and then they were all donning headphones to drown out the noise of the helicopter and there was no further opportunity for conversation. Bunny gazed numbly out of the window as the craft swung in a turn above the island to head back out across the sea. And from that vantage point, the island looked absolutely tiny, the roof of the house only momentarily visible below the trees.
John grasped her hand and squeezed it. Tears prickled behind her lowered eyelids and her throat thickened. What a storm of drama and stress she had created for her family! John would have come without his wife and had probably travelled out to Indonesia with her middle brother, Luke, a corporate lawyer and the highest earner in the family.
It was a longer flight than she was expecting and she couldn’t wait to see her parents and reassure them that she was perfectly all right. When the heavy craft finally set down again, she peered out of the window but she could see only technical equipment. She whipped off the headphones and John hissed in her ear, ‘Wait until you see this boat…’
They had landed on the yacht? She was hugely relieved that no further travel was required to reach their destination and she moved down the steps onto the helipad, following Sebastian, who told her to watch her feet when she stubbed her toe and then, in exasperation, he lifted her up again. ‘You need shoes!’ he censured.
‘If I hadn’t been trying to help you onto the raft, I wouldn’t have lost my shoe in the first place!’ she snapped back with spirit, colouring when she noticed her brother’s surprised glance.
Sebastian stalked through a door and lowered her to a rug. It was a huge reception area and at the very foot of it she saw her parents standing taut and somehow seeming very small against their imposing glass and opulently elegant surroundings. Bunny hurtled down the length of the room into her parents’ arms. There was frantic speech and a lot of tears, questions that weren’t answered and some harried answers that weren’t entirely true. In the midst of it, Sebastian walked up to join them.
‘She saved my life,’ he told her parents and her brother Luke. ‘She got me on the raft and looked after me until I’d recovered my wits.’
‘And then he looked after me. He fished and built bonfires and dealt with snakes,’ she recalled with a shudder.
Her mother wrapped her arms round Sebastian before Bunny could intercept her and gave him a huge, enthusiastic hug, only separating from him when Bunny’s father insisted on shaking his hand while Bunny introduced everybody.
‘Let me show you to your cabin,’ Sebastian interposed. ‘You’ll want to get changed and catch up with your parents. I had Andreas organise some clothing basics for you.’
‘Oh…er, thanks,’ she muttered in a rush as he guided her across a companionway and into an utterly breath-stealing space before stepping out again, leaving her with her family. The cabin was almost as large as the reception area with a very opulent bed on a shallow dais, a snazzy separate seating area and doors out onto a deck. Another door stood ajar on a luxury bathroom that rejoiced in a copper tub, fleecy towels and glorious marble tiles.
‘Wow…’ Bunny whispered, impressed to death by her surroundings.
‘The rest of us are on the deck below,’ Luke imparted, frowning at her. ‘He’s put you next door tohiscabin.’
Bunny investigated through the third door and rifled through a wardrobe packed with fluttering garments and drawers full of silky underwear. ‘Well, I’m not about to complain about being spoiled after the last two weeks,’ she confided, lifting her chin. Rather more than ‘clothing basics’ had been provided, she acknowledged, but she would take that up with Sebastian later in private.
‘Of course she’s not,’ her mother piped up, shooting Luke a reproachful glance. ‘Your sister’s had a rough time.’
