Page 4 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
‘Perhaps I prefer to keep my distance from you.’ Bunny was getting madder and madder behind her set smile.
‘No,’ Sebastian contradicted with crisp bite. ‘If you hadn’t made it so obvious that you found me attractive when I arrived, I would never have reacted as I did. The initial fault wasyours, not mine.’
CHAPTER TWO
BUNNY’S JAW DROPPEDbecause she couldn’t honestly credit that he had said that to her face. Or that he could be so shamelessly confident of his undeniably spectacular dark good looks that he flung it in her teeth full force to shame her.
Stunned green eyes lifted to his face. ‘You’re not a very nice person.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Sebastian agreed in a driven undertone, questioning exactly how, when he had approached her in an attempt to make amends, he had ended up losing his temper with her instead and giving her the facts as he saw them.
Bunny gritted her teeth because lying did not come easily to her. ‘I donotfind you attractive…except to look at,’ she declared with gathering steam. ‘Your personality is seriously wanting on several fronts.’
Sebastian was incensed beyond belief at that condemnation. No woman had ever talked to him like that. She was rude, offensive and…and without warning he was burning for the chance to snatch her off her feet and plonk her down unceremoniously on his cabin bed and prove that personality had nothing whatsoever to do with sexual chemistry.That, they had in spades, he conceded, hooded dark eyes keenly raking her flushed and furious face.
‘Liar,’ he chided softly with his slow-burning rarely seen smile.
Bunny’s small face froze and paled as though he had slapped her. For a split second that dazzling smile of his unleashed butterflies in her stomach. She wanted to tell him that he was a four-letter word of a person but she wasn’t about to start swearing for his benefit. How could he say that? How could he be sosurethat she had momentarily looked at him much as if a famous movie-screen star had unexpectedly stepped onboard? Of course he was sure, an inner voice piped up. He was drop-dead gorgeous and thoroughly aware of the fact. Arrogant, vain and self-satisfied—everything she hated in the opposite sex and she had to get stuck with him on a stupid boat!
‘Excuse me,’ she said stiffly, bending to bundle up the giant pile of laundry. ‘I want to get in a swim before dark.’
Sebastian suppressed a groan. Bunny, it seemed, was not easily placated. ‘Look, before you make your boss suspicious, start joining us for meals,’ he urged with finality before he disappeared into the cabin.
In receipt of that unsought advice, Bunny breathed in, deep and slow, and went down to her own cabin to don her serviceable swimsuit. Minutes later, she was diving into the turquoise crystal-clear water, sunlight dappling the surface and almost blinding her. Soon enough the sun would be sinking and darkness would fold in. Maybe tomorrow she would consider communal meals, she reasoned absently, questioning why she would do that when she knew Reggie well enough to know that he would never question what she did in her free time.
From the far end of the boat, Sebastian watched her slicing through the water with the confidence of a mermaid, the fading light silvering every slender line of her body, accentuating her grace. A breeze whipped across the sea and she turned and headed back to the catamaran. She grabbed up a colourful towel and wrapped it round her, walking past the wheelhouse to say, ‘Anyone want anything? Drinks? Snacks?’
Sebastian stood up and tugged out the spare chair for her. ‘Join us for a drink,’ he urged.
‘Just feeling too sleepy tonight,’ she said with her easy smile, the most natural smile she had ever given him. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’
And something inside Sebastian flipped in reaction to those sparkling green eyes and the oddest feeling of disappointment. That weird sensation shook him and thoroughly alarmed him. He didn’t know what to do with it or even what it was. She was a stranger, she wasn’t his familiar type of glossy, glitzy woman. She was poor and he was rich and he didn’t do Cinderella. He was also never likely to be any woman’s prince.
Wide sensual mouth compressing, Sebastian sank back into his own seat. Reggie trimmed the sails on the mast, muttering about there being nothing on the weather about a storm but that, even if it was the wrong season for one, he felt happier taking precautions because the wind was still getting up. Sebastian rose to help because, when he was a teenager, he had spent two years sailing a catamaran of his own. That was when he had come to terms with who he was, what he was and what he really wanted. He had adjusted to the challenge of being out in the real world, rather than in the monied goldfish bowl of privilege and low family expectations he had been raised in.
Below deck, Bunny settled into her bed, achingly tired but for that moment unable to sleep. She saw Sebastian’s beautiful lean dark face afresh. Until him, she hadn’t realised that a man could be beautiful or even that that single fact could be such a relentless draw for her. That was all that was the matter with her, she decided. It was just a stupid, physical thing. Nothing she need worry about. She didn’t like him and that wasn’t likely to change because he couldn’t help himself and would probably screw up their next encounter. He had that rich, entitled vibe and she knew how a guy like that operated. Tristram had had the same vibe, same kind of fancy, aristocratic name, only she had been a very naïve teenager when she’d met him her first year of university. Shaking off those annoying memories, Bunny fell asleep.
When she wakened, she didn’t at first realise why she was awake because it was still dark, only now the boat was rocking violently, and the wind was roaring. A storm, she registered in surprise, jumping out of bed fast and grabbing up her life jacket, throwing on her shoes and hurtling up topside to see if she could help.
A strange scene greeted her. The waves were terrifyingly high. Sebastian was nonetheless standing fully dressed like a statue while Reggie struggled frantically to tie down the mast. The mast had snapped and broken off low down, falling with sails still blowing madly. She was shocked, marvelling that such a thing could’ve happened, and she hastened over to Reggie, touching his back to let him know of her presence because the noise of the wind and the churned-up water made communication difficult. Why wasn’t Sebastian helping? she wanted to ask and, since she couldn’t, as Reggie whirled round she gestured at him and mouthed it.
Reggie yelled an answer but she didn’t catch most of it, apart from, ‘He’s…stupid!’
He leant closer to her to make himself audible. ‘Freak storm. Get him into the life raft with you. You’ve both got to get offnow. She’s heading for the reef and could capsize.’
‘But what about you?’ she shouted back in dismay.
‘Staying with my boat. No arguments! Get on theraft!’ Reggie framed rawly, his urgency and attitude cutting through her anxieties, sending her straight into crisis mode.
The first day she had started work with Reggie he had taught her what to do in an emergency. She sped with care through every step exactly as he had shown her and all the while the catamaran was being pitched through the water like a child’s toy. It was the most terrifying experience she had ever had and she could not understand why the only other able-bodied male on board was doing nothing. Or why Reggie was taking her very firmly by the elbow and ensuring that she got off the boat onto the raft safely, although she stumbled and lost one of her shoes in the water. She watched while Reggie sped back in the teeth of the wind to escort Sebastian as if he were a child needing guidance to join her. She supposed some people just froze in an emergency and he was one of them, seemingly quite impervious to the need to protect himself. Reggie thrust Sebastian down to collapse his legs. He had all the self-determination of a zombie.
Reggie tapped his head and looked at Sebastian. She wasn’t sure quite what he meant but she nodded and then her skipper cut the line to release the raft and she was crawling under the canopy, so scared she didn’t want to even see the rolling height of the waves sending the raft spinning across the water in a manner that put new meaning into the concept of being seasick. Her tummy heaved and she tried every calming method of breathing that she knew, fighting to keep a hold of her brain and not panic. When she finally glanced in Sebastian’s direction again, she saw the rain washing away the blood on his neck and she crawled forward in even greater dismay, finally registering that he could be acting strangely because he had been injured before she’d joined him and Reggie on deck.
Guilt filled her because she had judged him for his silent inactivity, sheknewshe had. Dazed dark eyes gazed past her rather than at her. Was he concussed? Where was the blood coming from? Steadying herself on a lean powerful thigh, she used her other hand to reach up but he was too tall and it was too much of a stretch for her in a moving life raft that didn’t feel steady or safe. She yanked off her life belt and tossed it over Sebastian’s head, tying it, aware that just then he needed it more than she did. She gave up on the immediate need to locate his injury and caught his hand instead, yanking at it to try and get him under the canopy with her and out of the rain and wind. He was in some kind of daze, unable to do what was best for himself, which meant that that role fell on her. And she only had emergency first-aid training.
‘Sebastian!’ she shouted to him, as loud as she could, and yanked at his hand again with emphasis and, after a pronounced pause, he shifted his hips and edged painfully slowly under the shelter of the canopy with her.
And then just when she thought that she was getting somewhere with him, he slumped down flat as a pancake and closed his eyes. So, it didn’t matter when she had to repeatedly throw up over the side of the raft when it went careening across the waves again as if it were a roller coaster. It didn’t matter either when nature called because there was nobody to see once Sebastian had passed out.
