Page 25 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
‘Aren’t you away yet, Bunny dear? Been daydreaming again?’ her middle-aged boss enquired, popping her head into the van. ‘If you don’t watch out you’ll be late for the stop at Little Moseby and there’ll be complaints and then you’ll be running behind all day.’
‘I’m leaving right now,’ Bunny asserted, deciding to text Sebastian at her first stop before she got into any more trouble.
She worked with two very nice ladies but saw little of them because she was always out with the library van touring rural areas, a service that those without transport very much appreciated. Her job had been held open and her late arrival forgiven because nobody had fancied the hassle of readvertising her position, although she was well aware that her colleagues felt that a man would have been a better fit for the post. It wasn’t that anyone was being sexist, merely that they had assumed a man would be safer in lonely places and better able to handle the van when it broke down. They had yet to meet men like her brothers, who struggled even to change a tyre.
Once the rush of customers had tailed off in Little Moseby, Bunny pulled out her phone. It was six weeks since she had seen Sebastian. She had received her rucksack back and had texted him with her thanks, only it had not been the start of much of a conversation. He had asked how she was, the polite stuff, and, of course, she hadn’t told him the truth because he wouldn’t want to hear it. She was miserable, but she couldn’t tell him that, couldn’t tell him that her much-wanted job wasn’t at all what she had imagined it would be and that living back at home was stifling. He had also sent her flowers every week, which had raised hopes that went unfulfilled because he had neither phoned to speak to her nor suggested that they should meet up.
‘You fell for him,’ her mother had sighed on that very long flight back home. ‘Of course you did. He’s very handsome and successful and all that stuff, but I expect it’s not likely to go any further with him living in such a different world.’
She texted him, deciding to keep it bald and honest.
I’m pregnant.
She was on her third stop of the day by the time she got a response.
What did the doctor say?
I haven’t seen a doctor. I did THREE tests.
Sebastian remained unimpressed.
Biting her lip, she typed that it would take days for her to get a doctor’s appointment and that her brother worked in the surgery and that everyone would be put in an awkward, embarrassing position.
Sebastian wondered if she hadn’t seen a doctor because she preferred to conceal her pregnancy and her past intimacy with him.
Are you ashamed of your condition?
He was clearly furious at that suspicion.
And that was it.
She almost threw her phone, the one he had bought her, through the windscreen in her rage with him. She didn’t respond. Her phone kept on beeping with incoming texts and she ignored it. Sebastian was so particular about the details of absolutely everything. Every P and Q had to be minded and every T crossed. Sometimes he infuriated her and she wasn’t dealing with that when she was supposed to be working. She just didn’t want to let her family know that she was expecting until she had talked to Sebastian.
As if she didn’t already know that she was pregnant even before she did those stupid tests, she thought wearily as she drove home in her mother’s ancient car. Her menstrual cycle had stopped dead. Her breasts were sore. She was unbelievably tired and nauseous, and her sister-in-law, John’s wife, Betsy, had experienced all those symptoms only months earlier. Unfortunately, however, the much-anticipated event of the first Woods grandchild had come to nothing when Betsy had had an early miscarriage. Currently pregnancy was a topic best avoided in the family.
As she parked her mother’s car, she checked her texts, noting Sebastian’s increasing frustration with her until the final text when he announced that he would be visiting her the next day.
She phoned him for the first time. ‘Youcan’t. I’m working all day.’
‘I’ll track down the library van and ambush you,’ Sebastian said with remarkable good cheer.
‘You’re not…furious?’ she prompted.
‘No. I was expecting this development.’
Whoa, baby, don’t get excited but you’re adevelopment. She rested her hand against her flat stomach and a feeling of warmth filled her.
‘I’ll organise lunch somewhere,’ Sebastian told her briskly.
‘I don’t get very long…oh, it’s a Friday,’ she recalled abstractedly. ‘I get longer for lunch on Fridays because it fits the itinerary better.’
‘Wonderful. I’ll see you around noon tomorrow.’
Right, well, that got the necessity of telling Sebastian out of the way. She screened a yawn in the hallway of the comfortable, cluttered bungalow where her parents lived. As she wandered into the kitchen to help her mother make dinner, she was wondering what she would wear the next day. Her last chance to impress before she lost her normal shape and started sprouting curves.
‘Sebastian’s coming down tomorrow to take me for lunch,’ she revealed, looking on that admission as required footwork in advance of the more shocking revelation that she had conceived by a man who would have not the smallest intention or interest in putting a ring on her finger.
‘Has something happened?’ her mother enquired. ‘I thought you weren’t planning to see him again.’
