Page 11 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

He knew the effect that he could have on the wrong kind of woman.

He knew that for a reason he would never forget.

Years had passed but the trauma of dealing with Ariana had marked him deep, taught him to be careful around certain women.

But much more important questions beyond the temporary amnesia afflicting him were gradually driving him crazy.

Who was he now ? Ten years on, ten years more mature?

Had he graduated as a doctor? Had he gone on to train as a surgeon?

Or somewhere along the road had he fallen by the wayside, distracted by some other discipline, some other interest?

Why did he yearn for a keyboard? Why did he dream of strings of coding and did that excite him more?

And was his grandmother, Loukia, even still alive well into her eighties?

His stomach churned at the fact that she might not be because she was the only relative he had ever cared about or fully understood.

He knew exactly why Loukia had chosen not to raise her orphaned grandson, of course he did.

She had raised his father, Jason Pagonis, and that had gone badly wrong for all of them.

She had been afraid of it happening again with Sebastian and had stepped back, ultimately failing him by sentencing him to the care of those who despised and resented him because of the blood in his veins and his inheritance.

The blood of the eldest and once favourite son, Loukia’s heir.

Bunny wakened in an empty bed and headed for the shower straight away. Predictably her thoughts had gone straight to Sebastian, but she didn’t censure herself for that truth because she knew that her best chance of surviving being stranded meant relying on him.

After all, she would have let herself almost starve and die before she broke into someone else’s house and by then she might’ve been too weak to do it.

If she had thought of a bonfire, she probably would have run at the first sign of a snake or, worse, got bitten.

She could’ve fished but not at the rate Sebastian was fishing, so she wasn’t at all surprised to go downstairs and find fish already deboned and ready for cooking.

He was very efficient, but he wasn’t telling her the whole story about his current condition.

‘I’d be wearing a wedding ring if I was married.’

A telling choice of words. Did that mean that Sebastian didn’t actually know for sure?

Or that he was relying on his lack of a ring to convince him?

Did Sebastian not actually remember such facts yet?

She recalled him asking what year it was and winced.

Exactly how extensive was his memory loss? And wasn’t it time she found out?

She had two pairs of old, worn jeans on the table when Sebastian reappeared, bringing with him the scent of fresh smoke.

He wore only his boxers and she believed that those were for her benefit because she suspected that without her presence, Sebastian wouldn’t be wearing any clothes at all.

He was perfectly at home in his own skin and he looked amazing, aglow with bronzed vitality, a walking, lean, powerful temptation of a male with wide shoulders, a heavily muscled torso, lean hips and long, strong legs.

In spite of her best intentions, heat surged between her thighs like a betrayal.

His stunning dark eyes gleamed like melted caramel in sunshine.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, indicating the jeans she had spread out.

‘We need clothes. I thought I could cut these jeans down into shorts so that we had a change, at least,’ she said tautly. ‘Could we talk before I grill breakfast?’

His lean, strong features tensed and shadowed. ‘You’ve had second thoughts about us last night,’ he assumed.

‘Yes and no,’ she responded awkwardly, unwilling to get into that difficult conversation without having got her thoughts together. ‘But it was your memory loss I was keen to ask more about. How much have you forgotten?’

‘The past ten years. The last thing I now actively recall I was heading towards my twentieth birthday and on a sailing holiday here,’ he admitted flatly. ‘I was a medical student then.’

‘Oh, my goodness, I slept with someone who was mentally a teenager last night!’ Bunny gasped, taken aback by the amount of time he had lost to amnesia and how carefully he had kept that information to himself.

He might be outspoken but that didn’t mean he would ever be a mine of freely offered information, especially not if he deemed it personal information, she acknowledged.

‘I suspect I must’ve been unconsciously drawing on knowledge I didn’t have at nineteen,’ Sebastian informed her drily of the night before.

Bunny felt hot colour sweep her from throat to brow and looked at the fish instead.

‘A lot of knowledge is still in my head if something jogs my memory,’ he confided. ‘My dreams are full of flashes of imagery that are unfamiliar to me in the present, a sign, I would imagine, that my memory will soon right itself.’

‘And yet you confidently told me that you were single!’ Bunny condemned anxiously, switching on the grill, fumbling with the fish to keep her hands busy.

‘I am confident of that. I’m a loner. I don’t believe in for-ever-and-ever vows. In fact, you could say I was biased against marriage. I don’t believe I could’ve changed that much.’

‘A lot changes in ten years. Ten years ago, I was breaking my heart for a weirdly dressed guy in a boyband!’

Sebastian shrugged. ‘I was never the idolising sort. I was a nerd. I had sex but I didn’t date or have relationships.’

‘You sound emotionally repressed,’ Bunny remarked. With determination, she moved to hold a pair of jeans up against his long legs and mark them with the pen she had found, so that she would know where to use the scissors. ‘Crushes are a healthy step on the way to adult relationships.’

As she straightened up again, the ache between her legs intensified, a reminder of the intimacy she had instigated.

She had yet to get past that shocking fact, that she had practically invited him to have sex with her.

Reckless! Or had it been reckless? Hadn’t it been more a case of her stepping into her future of freedom, unrestrained by other people’s boundaries?

Her decision for once rather than someone else’s choices and beliefs limiting her.

Yesterday’s bread was stale, and she had toasted it because Sebastian had put an embargo on using the flour in an effort to slow down their use of the ready food in the larder.

She set condiments on the table and made coffee.

Black for both of them, sugar in only hers and the sugar was running low.

Soon, she would have to go cold turkey, but for all her protests she really wasn’t sure that she could go cold turkey on Sebastian, who lit up the room with his energy simply by entering it.

His charisma was as unnervingly strong as her own fascination.

‘Do you have five minutes free so that I can shout at you?’ Sebastian enquired quietly.

‘Why would you want to shout at me?’

Sebastian dealt her a grim appraisal. ‘Because I found the distress flares unused in the life raft…why the hell didn’t you send them up during the storm?’