Page 39 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
‘Over-the-top possessive and not liking being without you. That’s why I believed that, after our rescue, we should both spend some time apart,’ he admitted.
‘You spent our time apart organising this house for me,’ she reminded him. ‘How did that fit in?’
‘It made me feel better to be making plans for us. I was miserable without you,’ he confessed grudgingly.
‘I was miserable too,’ she whispered. ‘And you’re not the slightest bit obsessive or possessive. I like being with you too. It’s normal when you’re in love.’
‘You always say the right thing,’ Sebastian murmured, replete in his contentment.
In reality, it took Sebastian a whole month to get Bunny to the altar in her family’s local church. Her wedding gown, hot off the fashion designer of the year’s runway, made the front of many newspapers and several glossy magazines. Her dress was silk scattered with what were rumoured to be real diamonds. The hand-embroidered lace bodice defined her slender curves and then flowed down like some medieval princess gown. Her family surrounded her with Sebastian and it was the happiest day of her life. Andhis.
EPILOGUE
Five years later
‘NO, THREE CHILDRENis quite enough,’ Bunny told her husband, eying four-year-old Argo, two-year-old Sofia and baby Will, named after Bunny’s father.
Argo and Sofia were fighting over a toy and Sebastian was separating them while Will was crawling under the table in the great hall while Bunny completed the Christmas decorations for their party. ‘Mum had five children only because she was desperate for a girl and I’m not a baby machine.’
‘Won’t mention it again,’ Sebastian told her cheerfully, because Bunny was the broody one of the two of them and he was convinced that, once Will started running around, Bunny would decide on another.
Bunny grinned at him because she knew something he didn’t as yet. And he would be over the moon because nobody loved kids more than Sebastian. Being on a high around Sebastian was anything but new to her. She felt like that most days, scrutinising his gorgeous face and tall, superb physique, still barely able to credit that he was hers. All hers, heart and soul and body, she thought fondly while a little skip of heat burned between her thighs.
Had it really been five years since their wedding? So much had changed since then but not the basics. They were still based at Knightsmead Court, although they enjoyed regular trips to other properties abroad. The house’s library had quietly become famed among academics, who regularly called to request access to the ancient books and manuscripts that composed the original collection. It was a collection as well that was now being added to on a regular basis since Sebastian had come to appreciate how much his wife delighted in virtually running her own little academic library.
The year before, they had sailed in the yacht to Indonesia and had had a fabulous holiday. Andreas and Zoe and their children and Bunny’s family had joined them. Now that the Greek couple were based in the UK again, Zoe had become Bunny’s best friend. Andreas and Zoe also accompanied them to those chilly Pagonis gatherings, which Sebastian insisted should continue, and Bunny was beginning to see a definite defrosting of attitude from the younger generation of Sebastian’s relatives. Old scandals and resentments had less of a hold on them than they had on his father’s contemporaries in the family.
Her own family members were regular visitors. Indeed, Bunny had loved her husband even more when he’d begun to treat her family as if they werehisown family, finding in them that warmth and affection and interest that he had long been denied by Loukia Pagonis’s younger sons.
The children’s nanny appeared to take the little ones up to bed and bath. Sebastian cornered his wife against the table. ‘So what does that little secretive smile hide?’ he asked, both arms firmly closed round her slender body.
Bunny ran her hands up over his splendid torso and slowly up to his shoulders, trying not to smile when she felt the quickening of his body against hers. Sebastian was always ready for de-stressing the natural way. ‘Your super swimmers have already done it again. The shower last month when you…’ her hands lifted to do little air quotes ‘…forgot. Our fourth is due in the autumn, by which time Will will be a toddler, so it’s not a disaster except for my stretch marks.’
‘What stretch marks?’ he asked, because he only ever looked at her and saw his perfect woman, whom he adored, and as far as he was concerned she had no imperfections. She was the woman who had brought him alive, taught him to feel again and given him so much in the process: a true home, three fabulous children, endless loyalty and love.
‘I love you,’ she confided, kissing a path up his neck while dragging in the scent of his skin and the burn of her own arousal.
‘I love you even more. You’re the sun I revolve around,’ he told her passionately as he lifted her onto the table, skilled fingers pushing her skirt out of the way.
The silence was slowly broken by little gasps and groans until finally they made themselves respectable again and he carried her over to an armchair to cradle her in possessive arms. ‘I bet we have a girl next time.’
He was right but he was also wrong. The fourth pregnancy gave them twins, a boy called Christos and a girl called Annette after her maternal grandmother.
And they all lived happily ever after, in love, and positively boastful about their good fortune.
