Page 21 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

CHAPTER EIGHT

B UNNY HAD NEVER been as shocked or unprepared for a surprise in her life. She leapt upright, wide-eyed and conscience-stricken. ‘Oh, no !’ she exclaimed in dismay. ‘Please don’t say anything more!’

Slanted ebony brows pleating in confusion, Sebastian slowly rose back to his feet and stared down at her in disbelief. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to immediately say yes but I did think you would be pleased. Instead, you’re staring at me as if I asked something untenable!’

‘Please sit down,’ she urged shakily. ‘Can I see the ring? Just out of sheer curiosity?’

Sebastian set the tiny box on the table.

Bunny’s eyes were stinging, pain and guilt and a whole host of other emotions swimming around inside her and threatening to spill over into the tears that were all too ready to assail her in recent times.

She didn’t need a doctor to tell her that her hormones were all roaring into pregnancy hyperdrive.

The ring was a glorious glittering diamond surrounded by emeralds in an art deco geometric shape. ‘It’s gorgeous,’ she whispered admiringly.

‘Did I say something wrong?’ Sebastian demanded in a raw undertone.

‘Sit down,’ Bunny urged. ‘I get dizzy when you stand over me.’

Lean bronzed profile taut, Sebastian sat back down in his seat.

Bunny leant forward and immediately reached for both of his hands. ‘You know that you don’t really want to marry me.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Sebastian challenged, sculpted jaw determined.

She squeezed his hands as if to demand his full attention.

‘Sebastian, I know how you feel about marriage. You don’t believe in it or in relationships or in couples or in love.

Let’s talk plainly here,’ she murmured steadily.

‘You’re asking me to marry you either because you think you should because I’m pregnant or because you think it’s what I want and expect. ’

‘Thank you for clarifying that for me.’ Sebastian spoke with sardonic bite.

‘I never thought you would be so impulsive.’

‘I miss you,’ he framed in a driven undertone. ‘It’s been six blasted weeks. I’m not being impulsive, I’m being practical.’

‘Practical isn’t proposing to a woman you were only with for two weeks.’

‘Two weeks, twenty-four-seven,’ he incised the reminder.

‘Marrying me would be a mistake for you. You don’t want to be trapped into something like that,’ she reasoned uneasily, a warm spot inside her spreading at his admission that he had missed her, had counted their weeks apart.

‘We could end up hating each other by the time this baby’s born, and splitting up always creates bad feelings, so co-parenting would be more difficult after a divorce. ’

‘And to think that I believed you were Little Miss Sunshine and yet you have made only negative assumptions about me and what I could offer.’

‘You said you missed me…’ Bunny hesitated and then bravely pushed herself on to go out on a limb and spell it out. ‘Are you saying that you have feelings for me?’

She was literally hanging by her fingernails in the hope of an encouraging answer because that would have been a game-changer.

Instead, in a frustrated movement, Sebastian yanked his hands free of hers.

‘No, I’m not. I’m not in love with you. I’ve never been in love and I don’t want to be.

Love can be a nasty, twisted thing and I want nothing to do with it.

But I do believe that I can love my child and that my child can love me.

If we’re not together, though, I’ll hardly see that child and that worries me.

I also find the idea of being parted from you while you’re carrying my baby even more worrying.

I feel very strongly that we should be together now . ’

Just for a moment, Bunny allowed herself to imagine how she would have felt if Sebastian had answered her differently, if he’d thrown out a few flattering lies and sprinkled them with stardust. Had he done that, she’d have bitten his hand off with eagerness to accept his proposal, but that wasn’t Sebastian’s way.

He preferred brutal honesty. He didn’t make empty promises or feed her half-truths with a sting in their tail, like Tristram insisting that he loved her even after she found him with another girl and then telling her while she was packing up to leave him that she was boring and dull in bed.

‘You’re not prepared to marry me and take a chance on me, are you?’ Sebastian breathed in an almost savage undertone.

‘Not right now. It’s too soon and I’m not convinced you’ve thought it through in enough depth.

I can imagine nothing worse than becoming your wife and then you changing your mind about wanting to be married.

’ Well, actually she could, she reflected reluctantly.

Sebastian walking away for ever would be the absolute worst scenario.

And he would probably never ask her to marry him again and that was a thought that made her feel a little desperate and fear that she was her own worst enemy.

‘We could get engaged,’ she suggested in a sudden rush. ‘Try that for size first.’

Sebastian was too restive to stay still and he was pacing the small room, swinging back abruptly to her to say, ‘You’d agree to that option?’

‘Why not?’

‘We’d have to live together,’ he told her without hesitation. ‘I want you with me. That’s a priority. Becoming a father starts with looking after you.’

Disconcerted by how strongly he stressed that reality, Bunny was relieved when the server entered with their meals.

If they lived together, he would soon find out whether he wanted that kind of relationship or whether he preferred his loner lifestyle.

If he walked away, she got hurt. If she had him and then lost him again, she would be hurt.

It didn’t seem to her that she had any true choice.

She sipped her water and then stuck out her left hand. ‘You can put the ring on now.’

Sebastian vented a pained groan. ‘All sentimental and soppy with bells on, right?’

‘Well, you’re the one who said he wanted to sign up for this,’ she dared.

‘Only because it’s the only way I get you and the baby. I’m basic. I don’t need frills.’

‘I like frills…in the right place at the right time,’ she countered as he slid the ring onto her wedding finger, where it glittered in the firelight. It fitted her very well, which she chose to take as a positive sign. ‘It’s an antique ring, isn’t it?’

‘It belonged to my Pagonis grandmother, Loukia.’

‘She raised you, didn’t she?’ Bunny gathered while they ate.

‘No, I was passed like a parcel nobody wanted to keep around the Pagonis tribe. Six months to a year with each set. Let’s not talk about that now.’

Bunny had paled in dismay at the explanation but she smiled and his brilliant dark gaze lingered on her with approval.

‘We’ll have to find somewhere to live. I assume you’ll prefer to be within reach of your family?’

‘If it were possible, yes,’ she agreed.

‘And your current employment isn’t very suitable now that you’re pregnant,’ Sebastian pointed out. ‘I don’t want you out alone in some van at the back end of nowhere dealing with strangers.’

‘The budget wouldn’t stretch to an assistant. It’s not what I imagined I’d be doing but you have to start at the bottom and work your way up the ladder.’

‘Unless you’re a Pagonis or attached to one,’ Sebastian slotted in with amusement.

Considering that he already had everything fully planned for their immediate future, he was relieved that he had very little left to do.

‘I believe I can come up with a library for you to work in. Thee mou … I own an enormous amount of property. I suppose you want to go home to your family tonight.’

Bunny went pink and flashed her ring. ‘Yes.’

‘All I want is a bed and you and no interruptions.’ That was a catchphrase for Sebastian, a mere soundbite. Everything was already organised, everything that would allow him to be the decent parent he himself had never had.

Bunny brushed her hair behind her ear and straightened her spine, a self-conscious smile playing with the corners of her mouth. ‘Basic, well, you did warn me.’

His wide sensual lips settled into a smile, the last remnants of his tension evaporating.

He had got more or less what he wanted, he conceded, and the bottom line was that he wanted her .

Engaged, married, what was the difference?

As long as she was with him, those frills she mentioned didn’t matter.

And possibly she was right. Maybe he would wake up in a few weeks and want his freedom back.

He was as afraid of letting her down as he was of developing feelings for her.

He wanted no part of the kind of dangerously possessive feelings his father had had for his mother.

‘We’ll wait until we’ve moved in together,’ Sebastian decreed, on a roll now that he had achieved his goal. ‘I want to take my time. When we get back together it won’t be a temporary thing that reminds me of a one-night stand.’

‘I want to take my time too,’ Bunny sighed as they left the table and headed back outside. No hurried, stolen moments of passion for Sebastian, she thought ruefully. He wanted it all . He wanted perfection.

‘You’ll need to resign from your job,’ he pointed out as he walked her back towards the car.

‘Right now… I mean, immediately ?’ Bunny frowned in dismay and stopped dead in her tracks. ‘I’ll still have to work a month’s notice. I won’t let people down.’

‘The longer you wait to leave, the longer it will be until we’re living together.’

‘You’re the most shameless blackmailer!’ Bunny snapped furiously, ignoring the turned heads of his hovering security team as she stalked after him. ‘But it doesn’t mean I’ll abandon my principles.’

‘Principles have a cost,’ Sebastian informed her without hesitation. ‘I’m due in Germany to speak at an international conference next week and I also have a lengthy trip to Switzerland lined up.’