Page 6 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
‘No, I’m not,’ Sebastian lied without hesitation, spinning on his heel to walk down the beach past the rocks.
‘What about your head?’
‘A bruise and swelling. It’ll be gone in a few days,’ he said dismissively.
Bunny surveyed his bronzed back view with seething frustration. How was she supposed to let him walk off alone? Suppose he collapsed or fell? Wouldn’t she be responsible for not taking better care of him? He wasn’t sensible. How was that a surprise? And how was she supposed to control a man with such a dominant, forceful character? With a whip and a chair?
Snatching up a water bottle and a couple of the energy bars, she ran after him, drawing breathlessly level. ‘Two heads are better than one.’
‘Not in my experience,’ Sebastian said smoothly, thinking of all the times during his education when stupid people had tried to misdirect his projects and derail him. He strode back down the beach to the raft and extracted the knife from the basic supplies. ‘This should be useful.’
‘Yes, I thought that we should stay on the beach and sort out some shelter for tonight.’
‘We can still do that when we return.’
‘But it could be dark by then!’
‘I’ll manage,’ he assured her with complete confidence.
CHAPTER THREE
THEY FOLLOWED THE SHORE, sidestepping rocky outcrops in silence, and nowhere out to sea could she see any sign of other land but there was a misty haze in the distance and it could be blocking a clear view. Her legs got tired and keeping up with Sebastian was no easy task but she refused to ask him to slow down. She supposed he was right about the necessity of checking out their surroundings first.
‘What year is it?’ he shot at her abruptly.
Disconcerted, she told him, and he nodded, pausing to filch the water bottle from her and taking a swig, before passing it back to her and fluidly sinking down on the sand.
‘Why did you ask me what year it was? Don’t you know?’
‘Head injury,’ he reminded her calmly. ‘Time is a bit confused for me right now. So…what’s your name?’
‘Bunny…no comments, please. You already made them once before.’ But that fast she was also wondering why he didn’t remember her name. ‘Do you remember the catamaran? Reggie?’
‘Not yet,’ he admitted flatly. ‘No doubt it’ll all come back in good time.’
The last memory Sebastian had was of eating in a little bar at a harbour with his friends, who had drifted out to join him at different times that summer. Andreas had been there, his sister, Ariana, and a couple of others.
‘Reggie’s the skipper of the boat you hired on a private charter for a week. I’m afraid I don’t even know how you got hurt. You were in a daze by the time I reached the deck in the storm,’ she told him, handing him an energy bar.
Sebastian studied the bar and then accepted the inevitable: for now, it was all they had. He didn’t think he had ever eaten anything that tasted like cardboard with grit before. Well, there was always a first time, but then survival on what he already suspected was a very small island would be a challenge even for him and he had cut his teeth on wilderness camping from an early age. Roughing it came surprisingly naturally to him. The horrors his relatives had heaped on him during his adolescence might actually turn out to be the key to survival. But what about her?
What aboutBunny? Already skinny as a rail, wet clothes, legs trembling with a tiredness she struggled to hide, dark circles below her eyes. She had neither his strength nor, he believed, his high level of physical fitness on her side. Keeping Bunny breathing could be his biggest challenge. And she had givenhimher life belt! How could anyone be that selfless?
They rounded the cliff and then they were out on the far side of the island and Sebastian released a shout that startled her and started running down the beach. Bunny was so exhausted she wanted to fold where she stood but she kept on moving slowly in the same direction until she saw what had excited him. It was a little wooden pier poking out into the sea, an unlikely sign of human involvement in what seemed so far to be a small island wholly abandoned to the jungle and the birds. He disappeared from view, probably in the forlorn hope of finding a boat or a person, she guessed.
Sebastian was already surprising her on every level. He was very controlled and action orientated. He hadn’t unleashed a single moan, the smallest hint of panic or even a word of complaint and yet, physically, he still had to be feeling pretty rough. Nor as a rich man could he be accustomed to moving out of his comfort zone. Their situation was hazardous and scary yet, if anything, danger appeared to fuel Sebastian’s energy, lending a sharper edge to those shrewd dark eyes. And didn’t he just look amazing clad only in a pair of cotton boxers, slung low on his lean hips? Her face burned and she scolded herself for noticing. He was as decent as he would’ve been in swimming trunks, which was, to be honest,notvery decent.
Huffing a little from fatigue, she reached the pier and saw a small track leading through the dense overhanging trees. ‘Sebastian!’ she shouted, suddenly terrified of him vanishing and her being left alone.
‘Over here!’ he shouted back and then there was a deafening grinding, breaking noise that filled her with dismay and she pushed her woolly, heavy legs to move faster along the overgrown path until she arrived, shell-shocked, in a clearing that contained a house, a very fancy house on her terms, with the look of an architect-designed contemporary building and a deck furnished with an array of outdoor seating littered with branches and leaves.
‘Right…’ Sebastian appeared in front of her and dropped down to scoop her off her feet without the smallest warning. ‘Now you can rest and stop quaking with terror.’
‘I am not quaking with terror! What the heck are you doing?’ Bunny gasped in disbelief as he carried her towards the house.
‘Taking care of you,’ Sebastian responded calmly, elbowing open a door and carrying her indoors, past an inner courtyard crammed with jungle plants and a strange indoor pool set in marble.
Without hesitation he settled her down on leopard-print velvet sectional seating in what had to be the most luxurious reception room she had ever seen. ‘Wh-where’s the owner?’
