Page 5 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
Dawn was moving in and the sea was no longer so rough when Bunny managed finally to ease his head up and examine what she could with her fingers. A massive bump and swelling, she registered in horror. He was injured and Reggie had known it. Stupid, she had caught that one word, but he could have been saying ‘half-stupid’, which meant an entirely different thing. She smoothed his long black hair off his brow because his usual man bun had bitten the dust on deck at some stage.
She scrabbled for the emergency rations, tugging out the water with relief, not even caring about the brackish stale taste, only grateful that it was there. She shook Sebastian’s shoulder but there was no rousing him. She rested a nervous hand on his chest, breathing again when she felt a strong, steady heartbeat. Somehow, she had to get water into him as well. She looked around. There was no land in sight, which was quite worrying when Indonesia rejoiced in almost eighteen thousand islands. Where were they anyway? Reggie had veered off his usual tried-and-trusted course, probably at Sebastian’s behest, so when he came around, they would have a better idea of where they were, she thought hopefully.
The hours crawled past. She munched through a granola bar slowly and carefully. There were thirty days of rations on the raft. What had happened to Reggie? His wife would raise the alarm but not until the week’s trip was officially past. Maybe he had managed to radio or call for help and survive. Her eyes stung. She was fond of Reggie, her father’s old army mate. They would be found quickly, she assured herself, although the raft had been flung many miles from whereMerry Dayshad lost her mast twelve hours earlier.
Sebastian stirred and instantly she was trying to get water into him. He grunted something and his eyes flew wide, finally focusing on her. He blinked. Still it seemed something of a blank slate.
‘You need water,’ she told him and his hand came up to grasp the bottle. ‘You hit your head. You have concussion.’
He tried and failed to sit up and she guided the flow of water for him, not wanting any wasted. He wouldn’t eat the granola bar she showed him. He was as stubborn as a pig, which wasn’t a surprise. His eyes eased shut again but she chose to be cheered by the reality that he was more aware than he had been the night before. And then some hours later finally she saw what she had been waiting for, what she had expected much sooner: the sight of land. She dug out one of the little oars that was more for steering than passage in readiness and then they were coming in closer and, before the current could control them again, she was frantically paddling towards that distant beach.
She felt the raft catch below on the reef. There wasn’t much choice, she thought. She hadn’t planned to land over a coral reef with sharp points that tore at the raft in shallow water but getting onto dry land was the objective, especially with Sebastian comatose beside her. She yanked at the life belt to waken him and he half lifted, muttering something in some foreign language, belatedly reminding her that although he spoke perfect English, it was not his native tongue.
‘Sebastian, we’ve got to get onto the beach!’ she yelled, that having become her natural way of addressing him.
‘Why are you shouting?’ he asked.
Bunny grinned, delighted that he was that much closer to the real world inside his head. ‘We have to get out of the raft onto the beach.’
Sebastian peered over the side and, presumably having estimated the depth, vaulted upright to immediately vacate the raft, which took her aback. For a split second she simply sat there disconcerted by that instant action before paddling more urgently towards the shore because Bunny was in survivalist mode and she wanted what remained of the raft as part of a shelter, reluctant to let it drift off before she had used it to the utmost. Her arms were ready to fall off by the time she beached the raft, aching like the very devil, and, by then, Sebastian had already stalked up the white-sand beach and headed for the shade provided by an outcrop of rocks. She clambered out into the water on the soft sand and thought, as she leant back to pull the raft up onto the shore, Yeah, he’s every man for himself in an emergency, just what you would’ve expected, just what you would’ve feared.
In shock she watched as Sebastian began to undress, arranging his fancy sweater, a tee shirt and chinos over the rocks to dry in the sun. Nice to be wearing underwear, she reflected, stuck in her soaked pyjamas. But Sebastian sported boxers and even though they were perfectly respectable, she supposed, there was an enormous amount of Sebastian exposed. Her feet faltered in face of all that semi-nude male. The sheer expanse of bronzed, darkly shadowed torso, the big biceps, the map of eight-pack abs and the elusive vee of sheer muscle disappearing into the boxers, along with the long, powerful, hair-roughened thighs, were a traffic-stopping sight. Colour burned her face. If you didn’t have boundaries, Sebastian was the guy to be stuck on a desert island with. And if she had the gumption, she would just be stripping off as well, ignoring the fact she’d be naked, simply concentrating on the fact that her clothing was wet.
Who the hell was she? Sebastian was wondering. Was she a girlfriend, or a stranger? She knew his name so she had to know him buthowdid she know him? After all,hedidn’t know him, didn’t know what he had been doing on a life raft, didn’t seem to know what day it was, never mind where he was and what he was doing. He lifted his hand to his long loose black hair and that didn’t feel right either. When had he grown his hair so long? He traced the swelling at the back of his head and he knew he’d had medical training at that point because a stream of innate diagnoses was filtering into his thoughts. He had concussion, likely severe concussion, a post-traumatic brain injury including some degree of amnesia. Why else couldn’t he recall what he had been doingbeforehe got injured? And why wouldn’t he just instantly come clean with his companion about what had happened to him? Why did he have an instinctive belief that he couldn’t trust anybody?
‘Why are you not wearing a life belt?’ Sebastian asked as she drew close.
‘I put mine on you…you weren’t in any fit state to be without one. How’s your head?’
Just his luck to be shipwrecked with a saint, he thought and then was dismayed by that cynical thought. She had done a kind thing, careless of her own safety, and why the hell would he be judging her for it? No, he wasn’t himself, the self he had been the last time he had been in Indonesia, and yes, he was convinced that that was where he was. The smell of the air, the incredible coral reef below the clear water, the jungle landscape behind him. It was all achingly familiar but he also knew that he wasn’t the lanky teenaged boy he had been on his last trip. No, he was a fully grown adult male with a big blank inside his head as if a wall had been built the year he reached twenty, shutting him out from his full self.
‘Aching,’ he admitted.
‘You should rest,’ Bunny told him anxiously. ‘You were unconscious on the raft and you need to take care of yourself.’
‘Of course,’ Sebastian agreed, scrutinising her in minute detail. She was wearing what he reckoned had to be pyjamas because they had rainbow-coloured little ponies all over them. And she was almost unbearably cute, very small, dainty, bedraggled blonde hair loose nearly to her waist, luminescent green eyes, so frank and open against bare natural, freckled skin. ‘But first, I intend to check out this place.’
Bunny stiffened. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Is this an island or a peninsula? We need to work out where we are—unless you know?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Bunny admitted, taken aback to be faced with full-force Sebastian again, switched back on after being a zombie without self-determination. All that large personality and domineering nature confronting her? It was almost frightening and she took an actual step back from him. ‘We were off course and the storm blew us for miles over a lot of hours.’
‘Where were we last you knew?’
Bunny winced. ‘Reggie didn’t discuss the trip with me. It wasn’t his usual. As far as I’m aware it was in the directionyouwanted to go and it was more remote,’ she said uncomfortably.
‘And Reggie?’ Sebastian prompted.
‘Reggie opted to stay with the catamaran, which he believed was about to drift onto the reef because the mast had snapped,’ she explained dry-mouthed, wondering how many details he could recall, suspecting it would be few of the emergency that had landed them in unknown territory.
‘So, you’re crew and I was a passenger?’
‘Not while we’rehere,’ Bunny argued in a sudden urgent outburst. ‘Here, wherever here is, we’reequals!’
His ebony brows pleated. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was considering anything else. As I said, I’m off for a walk to explore this place.’
‘Aren’t you dizzy and weak?’ Bunny pressed in growing astonishment.
