Page 7 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
Sebastian squatted down in front of her, brilliant dark eyes level. ‘How would I know? I broke in.’
‘You…what?’ she yelped in horror.
‘This isn’t a game, Bunny, this is survival. Here we will…hopefully…have water and shelter.’
Bunny gaped at him with frank incredulity. ‘But you can’t just break into someone else’s house!’
‘If it comes to a choice between living or dying I can.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ Bunny slung back at him in a temper. ‘We’ll be arrested and thrown in a cell!’
Sebastian chuckled. ‘Someone has to rescue us first. I think I’ll take that risk over being stuck here without shelter and the necessities of life. Now wait here until I can hopefully find you something to change into. Right now, in those wet pyjamas, you’re asking for pneumonia and there’s not enough flesh on your bones to stave it off.’
‘Wecan’tstay here, Sebastian,’ Bunny moaned and with considerable personal regret on her own account. ‘It’s somebody’s home.’
But Sebastian had already disappeared again. She blinked and literally felt herself zone out for a timeless period and it wasn’t until Sebastian reappeared and tossed a man’s shirt on her lap that she returned to the present.
‘Can’t stay here,’ she mumbled afresh like a vinyl record stuck in a groove.
‘Take off the damp clothing and put on the shirt,’ Sebastian instructed impatiently. ‘Because if you don’t, I’m going to do it for you.’
‘Like you would dare!’
‘I would dare,’ Sebastian assured her.
‘Well, go away so as I can change.’
‘Modesty in this situation is ridiculous,’ Sebastian said very drily.
‘Give me a break,’ she muttered, and he strode over to the windows and slowly and rather ostentatiously turned his back on her. Unconcerned by that display, Bunny ripped off her pyjamas at speed and put on the plaid cotton shirt, shivering as she clumsily did up the buttons to cover her cold, clammy skin. Until that moment, she hadn’t realised how cold she actually was.
‘Now go for a sleep,’ Sebastian told her.
‘But—’
‘You’re dead on your feet and I don’t want you getting sick.’
Bunny tugged a cushion under her head and curled up, too tired to deal with Sebastian, in truth too tired to deal with anything at all. The storm, the frightening sleepless night on the raft and the long hours that had followed were just a tangled jumble of shocking imagery inside her head. Something soft landed on top of her and she snaked her icy toes into the warmth it offered, her eyes sliding shut.
Sebastian was tired too, but he wanted to get the solar power on and the water running before he went to sleep and then had to waken in the dark. That achieved, he placed a lamp beside Bunny so that she wouldn’t panic when she awoke and then he folded himself down on the opposite leg of the sectional. The more he looked at her, the more beautiful she seemed to be. There was just something about her face, that particular arrangement of features, the delicate arch of her brows, the clarity of her big eyes, the smooth line of her nose and the natural pink of her lips, he reasoned absently, lost in a sense of fascination new to him. At least, itfeltnew.
Why was he so eager to look after her? Was there something crucial that he had forgotten? Had they been intimate on that boat? And what had he been doing on what sounded like a small boat in any case? It didn’t make sense…none of it made sense and, on that edge of frustration, Sebastian finally slept.
Bunny opened her eyes and just lay there, listening to the incredibly noisy chatter of birds at dawn and, beyond that, the most glorious quiet, empty of other people’s noises and traffic. Just about there she remembered that her student days were finished, and her eyes flew wide on an unfamiliar ceiling before lowering to take in the oil paintings of birds on the wall, the antique-looking bronze statues, carved mask faces and other paraphernalia displayed across a sleek, sealed glass display unit. It was someone’s collection of Indonesian artefacts and a sobering reminder that she had spent the night in someone else’s home without their permission. She was startled into sitting straight up and standing. There was no sign of Sebastian.
There was no reasonable explanation for why she panicked when he was out of view. Maybe it was because being marooned on a rather small island with few, if any, edible resources was scary, but Sebastian seemed to have survivalist instincts that beat hers hands down. A more pressing need to find facilities, if there even were any indoors, gripped her and she went off to explore and found a door into a cloakroom behind that inside pond thing in the foyer. An ancient, battered man’s jacket hung on the single peg. Not an owner with many visitors, she reckoned. In truth, a working facility with running water interested her much more just then. She studied the pond, empty of water, fish or greenery, and shrugged before heading down the corridor to find a staircase, which she climbed.
The whole time she was snooping, she was telling herself that Sebastian was right and they had to make the best of whatever fate had dealt them. There were only two doors, one of which led into a massive bedroom and en-suite bathroom. A door still hung open on a sparsely filled built-in closet, which Sebastian must’ve rifled through the night before to give her a shirt. The bathroom had a separate shower and bath, the appointments as opulent in finish as the huge four-poster steel bed, festooned with thin silky drapes to keep out insects at night. Giant windows overlooked the island interior and one set opened out onto a balcony with a single seat. The view over the palm trees and exotic jungle vegetation was magnificent and yet, even in the sunlight, it made her shiver and withdraw indoors again, painfully aware of their isolation and disconnection from the modern world.
Wouldn’t the owner of such a fantastic house have an Internet connection and a computer? Heart hammering, she opened the second door into a home office with a desk but there was no tech in there of any kind and she left the room again with a grimace. Before she went downstairs again, she couldn’t resist switching on the bathroom shower just to see if it worked and when it did, she was out of her borrowed shirt within seconds and stepping beneath that warm, rather than hot, flow. She didn’t take her time. She washed and shampooed fast, unsure how much water she dared use. Emerging, she grabbed a towel and dried herself in guilty haste before donning the shirt, which was at least relatively clean even if she had slept in it.
She trod back down the stairs, embarrassed at having used the unknown owner’s comb to untangle her long, knotty hair. When she walked through the last downstairs door, she found the kitchen: a gleaming state-of-the-art installation with stainless-steel utilities that looked as if it had never been used. A man’s apron hung incongruously on another single peg. It was the cupboards that she was keenest to investigate in her search for food and just when she feared she’d drawn a blank she opened a large larder cupboard and found it packed with dry goods. Flour, coffee, sugar, salt, rice, pasta, quinoa and, below that, shelves of tins. Relief swept her in a wild rolling wave because with water, food and shelter they could manage for weeks, and surely it wouldn’tbeweeks before they were found?
Reggie would’ve called for help…but had he had time in the midst of that terrifying storm? And if hehadn’tsurvived there would be no one alerted to their plight until his absence was noted. So, nothing certain, nothing sure as far as rescue went, she conceded reluctantly. Right now, they were stuck on this island in this house for the foreseeable future. The hungry growl in her stomach reminded her that she had more important things to concentrate on: food, because she was starving.
Sebastian returned from a busy morning on the beach, having gathered up his dry clothes from the rocks on his way, checked out the ripped remains of the life raft and set up a marker bonfire at the foot of the island. He walked back into the house and heaved a sigh, knowing that he had to eat. He was stunned into initial silence when he saw Bunny busily moving round the kitchen, covered in a giant navy apron.
‘Who turned you into a Stepford wife?’ he quipped.
