Page 2 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

‘No, just lead the way. I’ll retain my luggage,’ Sebastian retorted curtly.

Charming, she thought grimly as she showed him to his cabin.

It was the largest on board and benefited from private facilities but it was still pretty small and he was so very tall; he’d be lucky if he could stand upright any place but in the open air.

Richie Rich, she labelled him, just dripping with condescension and gilded expectations that were unlikely to be met on a forty-odd-foot catamaran with a crew of two.

‘We usually have dinner at seven. I’ll bring it to you. Would you like a drink now or anything else?’

‘Water, please,’ he said flatly. ‘ And …don’t speak to me unless you have to.’

Bunny nodded in tight-mouthed silence, spun on her heel and left him to it while she went to fetch the cold water.

She was a minion, she realised wryly, and minions were not supposed to have a voice that was heard.

Returning with the bottle of chilled water, she knocked on the door.

He answered with a towel wrapped round his impressively lean waist and she stepped back immediately from that intimacy.

Confronted by a masculine torso that was undeniably centrefold material, she was uncomfortable and she extended the bottle in silence, not bothering to speak since he had already told her that speech from her corner was undesirable.

She went back down to the galley to make a start on dinner.

She heard male voices, registering that Reggie had emerged from his nap and was getting acquainted with his passenger.

Steps moved overhead as the catamaran moved sleekly through the water.

Reggie came down and took a couple of beers out of the fridge.

‘Sebastian’s okay,’ he told her cheerfully.

‘Very down to earth, no front to him. We’re getting on like a house on fire.

Oh, remind me to post the change to our route.

You’ll enjoy it. We’re heading somewhere rather remote and I haven’t been there in a few years.

There’s a great fishing spot waiting for us.

We’ll definitely have the barbecue up on deck that night. ’

Bunny kept on smiling. No front to him? Sebastian?

She gritted her teeth and when it was time she took the men’s meals up on deck and left them there to eat, discreetly ignoring Reggie’s suggestion that she join them.

As she ate alone, she listened to the distant chatter and the laughter and thought that possibly Sebastian just didn’t like female crew members.

Or maybe it was just her , her face, her personality, whatever, she thought, irritated that she was even thinking about such a thing.

Life was too short for her to be that sensitive.

What did it matter what a guy she would never see again thought of her?

Everybody got on with Reggie though. Maybe she personally needed to work a little harder on that score, she thought next.

As usual she was up at dawn the next morning, taking care of all the little jobs that were hers before making breakfast. By seven she was knocking on Sebastian’s door with a tray.

‘Come in!’ he called.

One arm balancing the tray, with difficulty she got the door open and saw him sitting up bare-chested in the bed.

Moving closer, her face hot at that amount of exposure to male nudity, she extended the tray to him.

He grasped it one-handed, being better balanced and stronger than she was and then frowned down at the plate. ‘What is this gloop?’ he demanded.

‘It’s a Spanish omelette,’ she told him curtly on the way back out. ‘Reggie’s favourite. It’s always eggs for breakfast. If you prefer them prepared another way, let me know.’

‘Scrambled, plain,’ he specified.

In silence, Bunny nodded, her heart-shaped face flushed with annoyance, Sebastian noticed with growing amusement.

‘How did you get a nickname like Bunny?’ he asked out of sheer badness.

‘My family thought it was cute when I was a baby. It’s on my birth certificate,’ Bunny admitted with a stiff and decidedly grudging smile before she withdrew.

Sebastian grinned. She hated him and she couldn’t hide it…

Mission accomplished: she would be staying out of his way all week.

This was not the right moment to acknowledge that she had fabulous legs and a mouth made for, well, what a man usually hoped a woman’s mouth was made for.

There was just something surprisingly sexy about her modest curves and prim, quiet movements.

That had to be why he had a hard-on. Determined not to think about that weird glitch in his libido, he tucked into his first Spanish omelette and was surprised by how good it was. Possibly he owed her an apology.

Would he admit that? Probably not. A woman who couldn’t even give him a first glance without revealing her every reaction to him was not the kind of woman he bedded.

Too young, too na?ve, too… soft . And he didn’t ever do soft.

As he had once learned to his cost, he reflected grimly, decent and honest intentions didn’t always win the best results.

He had got burned, badly enough burned by Ariana to ensure that he never went near that type of woman again.

If he was the kind of guy who believed in love, he might have felt differently, but Sebastian had never believed in love outside familial love.

A parent could love a child, and a child could love a parent.

While that might not have been his experience, he had seen enough of the world to accept that he had got the birth parents from hell.

Love between a man and a woman? Just no .

He almost shuddered in disgust at the thought of being caught up in such a lie, such a cruel fabrication, coined to cover greed, lust, infidelity and ambition, all of which he had witnessed within his own un -family circles.

He wasn’t likely to ever be the kind of idiot who fell for that love fantasy with a woman.

He was stronger than that, he knew better.

He would be alone on his deathbed. Alone, he functioned better.

Alone, he was happiest, hence his current solo voyage.

When a woman asked him if he was a commitment-phobe, he just laughed because he was something worse than that.

He had never needed anyone else in his life, not even as a child, and he could not imagine ever wanting a woman beside him for anything other than occasional sex.

Having eaten and set the world to rights inside his head, Sebastian sprang out of bed and went for a shower.

True, the boat was tiny, there was a woman on it and he kept on bashing his head on ceilings and in doorways not intended for anyone of his height, but Reggie had promised to share his favourite fishing spot with him today and Sebastian was looking forward to kicking back with a beer, a rod and good company.

Something that reminded him of a long-lost past, something so far removed from his usual daily schedule that it beckoned like an idyllic dream…

Bunny cleaned the galley, wondering how that oversized jerk on deck could imagine it was possible for her to provide more elaborate meals or choices in the minuscule space.

When they took out a party of tourists, there was one basic lunch and that was that.

She was no cordon bleu cook anyway. Gloop?

And just assuming that Bunny was a nickname?

Even though loads of people before Sebastian had assumed the same, she had got more than the drift of his meaning.

It was a horribly silly name and she had always been aware of it, even though her wretched family still rejoiced in it to the extent that it hadn’t seemed worth the hassle of renaming herself for university as she had once intended.

How would she ever have brought friends home who knew her by another name?

And, of course, she had brought friends home, even though she hadn’t wanted to, even though she would have loved to keep her new student life separate from her family.

Finally, something for her and a little privacy, she had fondly believed.

But parents and big brothers who loved you interfered, needed to know, needed to be assured you were safe and she had gradually appreciated that that was the trade-off for all that love.

And her family was always going to be like that, up there to their armpits in her business.

At uni, however, she had met enough other people from less stable and caring families and had slowly learned the lesson that she had been lucky, luckier than she had ever realised with her nearest and dearest. Those from dysfunctional backgrounds could take out their pain on you if you weren’t careful to avoid them, she conceded, her flushed face shadowing with bad memories she rarely took out.

And she betted there was a bucketful of bad stuff behind Richie Rich with his Viking good looks and cold arrogance.

He and she were complete opposites. Bunny liked everybody until they gave her reason to doubt them.

Sebastian, it seemed, disliked them on sight.

Only not, clearly, Reggie, she acknowledged later that day, topping up the cool box with beers while the two men laughed and yarned over lazily dangling fishing rods.

She was disconcerted, not having expected their passenger to be quite so relaxed with her boss.

After all, there was nothing the least refined about Reggie, a hardworking seaman on the brink of retirement and at least twice Sebastian’s age.

Had she misjudged him? Was it a clash of personalities?

Had she said some triggering word that had set him off to be unpleasant?

And why was it still bothering her? He was some foreign rich guy, whom she would never see again after his week onboard ended.