Page 19 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

‘I didn’t realise that it would be like this,’ Bunny admitted, shaken by the excitement that their arrival had caused and the heaving desperation of the press to get closer to them.

‘I’ve arranged for an official statement to be made about our rescue, but they want the whole story and they’re not going to get it,’ he responded curtly.

Within an hour they were inside the police station and making their statements, an Indonesian lawyer who apparently worked for Sebastian overseeing every step.

It was shocking to witness how much attention and deference Sebastian received simply by dint of being an extremely wealthy and powerful tycoon.

On the other side of the city, they answered the investigators’ questions about the night of the storm, Reggie’s actions and what the two of them had seen and done.

Soon afterwards they were visiting the older man in hospital, where he was now recuperating from his surgery. Reggie explained that a tiny fracture had been found in the mast, the result of a collision with another boat months earlier. At the time the authorities had judged the catamaran undamaged.

They wished him well and returned to the yacht, where she found her family packing up to leave.

‘We assume that you have to stay another few days to satisfy the officials,’ her father told her ruefully. ‘But, lovely as it is here, we need to get home and your brothers need to get back to work.’

‘You don’t need to stay on in Indonesia and neither do I,’ Sebastian told Bunny stiffly, fighting his own inclinations to retain her to the last ditch. ‘Any further queries will be passed to us or dealt with by my legal reps here. You can travel home with your family today.’

Shock forked through Bunny like lightning and she turned pale. ‘But I haven’t got my stuff back yet,’ she mumbled weakly.

‘It’ll be sent on to you once it’s made available. I did take the liberty of finding you a spare phone,’ Sebastian added, handing her a brand-new mobile phone. ‘I put my number in there so that you can stay in touch.’

‘Thanks…of course,’ she mumbled, pale lips compressed at the prospect of leaving him, of possibly never ever seeing him again. ‘I hope I still have a new job to start but who knows if they’ve held it open for me?’

Her mother wrapped a supportive arm round her. ‘I’m so glad you’re returning with us. The sooner you get back to a normal routine, the better you will feel.’

Bunny couldn’t imagine a normal routine at home because she hadn’t had one of those since childhood. She had only just moved home after completing her degree before she’d set off on her year of travel. Everything changed, nothing stayed the same and she looked up at Sebastian as if in appeal.

‘It will be a welcome break from me,’ he said quietly.

Bunny studied him, tracing those tantalisingly beautiful dark male features and mentally kicking herself.

She dropped her gaze in haste. No doubt he was in need of a break from her and he was right, there was no reason for her to stay on.

She needed to get on with her life and leave him to enjoy his alone, the way he liked it.

No clinging, no sighing, no tears, no excuses.

She went back to the cabin and packed only what she had worn.

At the very last moment, she picked up Sebastian’s discarded Dior sweater, buried her nose in it, drank in the faint lingering scent of him and guiltily shoved it in the flight bag her mother had given her to use.

There it was: the result from the third pregnancy test and it was another positive.

Light-headed, Bunny left the cloakroom and got back to packing the library van with fresh books and special requests.

On one level it annoyed her that Sebastian had been proven right to be convinced that she would be pregnant.

She had thought that an unnecessarily pessimistic outlook, had been tempted to tell him that some women took for ever trying to get pregnant and that the likelihood of her conceiving after just two weeks of sex was slim.

Only now all she could recall was the sheer amount of sex they had had, the barriers that had fallen so fast when they were together all day and alone.

It all flooded back into her memory: the spicy kitchen encounters, the swimming sessions, the times up against the walls, the doors.

Face burning, she reckoned it would be true to say that Sebastian might as well have been chasing an Olympic record and that it would be unjust to blame him when she had been such a willing partner.

The wild freedom of such intimacy had been new and crazily seductive to her and Sebastian’s lack of inhibition had smashed down her boundaries one by one.

And now there was to be a baby. She was going to have a baby.

A split second later she was smiling ear to ear because she mightn’t have Sebastian but she would have his child.

But how would he feel about that reality?

Her smile died, the brief bubbly happiness that had blossomed inside her draining away.

He didn’t want a family. She had guessed that.

On his terms, it would be the worst possible news.

‘Aren’t you away yet, Bunny dear? Been daydreaming again?’ her middle-aged boss enquired, popping her head into the van. ‘If you don’t watch out you’ll be late for the stop at Little Moseby and there’ll be complaints and then you’ll be running behind all day.’

‘I’m leaving right now,’ Bunny asserted, deciding to text Sebastian at her first stop before she got into any more trouble.

She worked with two very nice ladies but saw little of them because she was always out with the library van touring rural areas, a service that those without transport very much appreciated.

Her job had been held open and her late arrival forgiven because nobody had fancied the hassle of readvertising her position, although she was well aware that her colleagues felt that a man would have been a better fit for the post. It wasn’t that anyone was being sexist, merely that they had assumed a man would be safer in lonely places and better able to handle the van when it broke down.

They had yet to meet men like her brothers, who struggled even to change a tyre.

Once the rush of customers had tailed off in Little Moseby, Bunny pulled out her phone.

It was six weeks since she had seen Sebastian.

She had received her rucksack back and had texted him with her thanks, only it had not been the start of much of a conversation.

He had asked how she was, the polite stuff, and, of course, she hadn’t told him the truth because he wouldn’t want to hear it.

She was miserable, but she couldn’t tell him that, couldn’t tell him that her much-wanted job wasn’t at all what she had imagined it would be and that living back at home was stifling.

He had also sent her flowers every week, which had raised hopes that went unfulfilled because he had neither phoned to speak to her nor suggested that they should meet up.

‘You fell for him,’ her mother had sighed on that very long flight back home. ‘Of course you did. He’s very handsome and successful and all that stuff, but I expect it’s not likely to go any further with him living in such a different world.’

She texted him, deciding to keep it bald and honest.

I’m pregnant.

She was on her third stop of the day by the time she got a response.

What did the doctor say?

I haven’t seen a doctor. I did THREE tests.

Sebastian remained unimpressed.

Biting her lip, she typed that it would take days for her to get a doctor’s appointment and that her brother worked in the surgery and that everyone would be put in an awkward, embarrassing position.

Sebastian wondered if she hadn’t seen a doctor because she preferred to conceal her pregnancy and her past intimacy with him.

Are you ashamed of your condition?

He was clearly furious at that suspicion.

And that was it.

She almost threw her phone, the one he had bought her, through the windscreen in her rage with him.

She didn’t respond. Her phone kept on beeping with incoming texts and she ignored it.

Sebastian was so particular about the details of absolutely everything.

Every P and Q had to be minded and every T crossed.

Sometimes he infuriated her and she wasn’t dealing with that when she was supposed to be working.

She just didn’t want to let her family know that she was expecting until she had talked to Sebastian.

As if she didn’t already know that she was pregnant even before she did those stupid tests, she thought wearily as she drove home in her mother’s ancient car.

Her menstrual cycle had stopped dead. Her breasts were sore.

She was unbelievably tired and nauseous, and her sister-in-law, John’s wife, Betsy, had experienced all those symptoms only months earlier.

Unfortunately, however, the much-anticipated event of the first Woods grandchild had come to nothing when Betsy had had an early miscarriage.

Currently pregnancy was a topic best avoided in the family.

As she parked her mother’s car, she checked her texts, noting Sebastian’s increasing frustration with her until the final text when he announced that he would be visiting her the next day.

She phoned him for the first time. ‘You can’t . I’m working all day.’

‘I’ll track down the library van and ambush you,’ Sebastian said with remarkable good cheer.

‘You’re not…furious?’ she prompted.

‘No. I was expecting this development.’

Whoa, baby, don’t get excited but you’re a development . She rested her hand against her flat stomach and a feeling of warmth filled her.

‘I’ll organise lunch somewhere,’ Sebastian told her briskly.

‘I don’t get very long…oh, it’s a Friday,’ she recalled abstractedly. ‘I get longer for lunch on Fridays because it fits the itinerary better.’

‘Wonderful. I’ll see you around noon tomorrow.’