Page 25 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

Her drowsy eyelashes fluttered and she snuggled back into him. ‘I love you,’ she mumbled, and then her eyes opened very wide in dismay and she mentally kicked herself for letting relaxation control her.

‘No, you don’t,’ Sebastian contradicted with succinct bite. ‘It’s habit, familiarity, a certain amount of affection but it’s not love. Nobody has ever loved me.’

Bewildered, disconcerted and suddenly propelled into a new state of alertness, Bunny blinked. ‘Your mother…surely?’

‘My most common memory of my mother is of her waving as she went out. She was a jet-setter with a giddy social life. I remember my first nanny better than her.’

‘Your grandmother, then.’

‘Only when I reminded her of the late son she couldn’t mention and not so as you would notice while I was growing up without my parents. I stayed with her twice a year, at Christmas and in the summer.’

‘Why was that?’ she asked with a pained frown.

‘Everyone told her she had messed up my father by spoiling him rotten and she felt very guilty and blamed herself for what my father did. It made her take a hands-off approach with me.’

‘Was she right to feel guilty?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sebastian mused. ‘My grandfather died, leaving her a single parent of five young children. She also had a huge property empire to run. I doubt that a man would be judged so harshly for his parenting flaws.’

‘But you still think that basically you’re…what? Unlovable?’ she pressed.

‘No. I think people’s feelings change on the turn of a dime.’

‘I have parents and grandparents whose long marriages would disprove that. I think you have to work and compromise to sustain a long relationship, but I do think it’s possible,’ she countered.

‘And don’t tell me what I feel. That’s my business.

Only I know how I feel but I’ll keep it to myself in future.

If you’re still around when I’m seventy-five, I’ll be throwing this conversation in your face daily. ’

An involuntary smile of relief softened the tense line of Sebastian’s lean dark features as her last comment lessened the tension. ‘I can imagine that.’

Of course, she didn’t love him, he reasoned.

Why would she? Right now, she was on a high of great sex, affection and happiness because they were together and she liked the house.

And possibly there was even a pregnancy happy hormone?

Was there? But he had to be honest with her about where he stood and keep it real between them.

Better that she understood him from the start than began nourishing hopes he couldn’t fulfil.

At the same time, he was wondering if she truly believed she loved him and, if she did believe it, what did it feel like?

And wasn’t it weird in such circumstances to wonder what falling in love felt like?

Bunny reckoned that she would never tell him she loved him again.

He didn’t want her love because he flat out didn’t believe in it.

There wasn’t much that she could do about that.

An ache stirred in the region of her heart nonetheless because she, of course, wanted him to love her back.

But did love matter if he still wanted her, needed her and treated her well?

Only what would keep him with her in a crisis?

Their child, whom he believed he would love?

That suspicion made her heart sink because naturally she needed to be loved for herself and not only for the little passenger she currently carried.

There was no sleeping for her after that stirring exchange.

He showed her into a massive contemporary bathroom and through a connecting door into a dressing room already packed with garments.

‘You needed clothes. I didn’t order maternity stuff because I had no idea what you would like.

But there should be enough in the new wardrobe to cover most social engagements. ’

Taken aback by yet another giant demonstration of Sebastian’s instinctive generosity, Bunny winced. ‘Sebastian…er, I don’t have social engagements.’

‘Your first is only a week away. Next Saturday, we’re having a party here for you to meet my friends. Dress formal. There should be a selection of evening gowns in the closets. The week after we’re flying to Greece for you to meet my family and won’t that be fun?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Half of them are trying to sue me through the courts at the minute for a share of my grandmother’s wealth.’

‘Your family’s doing that to you?’

‘Money talks louder than blood in the Pagonis tribe,’ he warned her. ‘Even better, my uncles and cousins all work for me now.’

Bunny knew sarcasm when she heard it now and she recognised his bitterness too. She had serious questions to ask about his childhood but decided to leave them until later. ‘So when do I get the full tour of the house?’ she asked instead.

‘As soon as you’re dressed and we’ve had lunch.’ His dazzling smile engulfed her and she was aware that his extra warmth stemmed from her having restrained her uncomfortable curiosity.

She hastened into the shower to freshen up while wondering with a pleasant sense of anticipation about what lay within those closets.

She had never had the money to buy fancy clothes but she loved to dress up.

It would be mortifying though to embarrass Sebastian by looking shabby and she was relieved that he had taken care of the problem.

Forty minutes later, she wore light wool trousers, a rather slinky blue top and a cashmere cardigan teamed with soft leather boots.

Knightsmead Court had all the drawbacks of a historic listed property.

Away from the fireplaces and the background heating provided by a system installed in the twenties, it could be chilly.

Pausing only to admire the magnificent four-poster bed, which was enormous and unbelievably comfortable and hung with gorgeous brocade drapes, she smiled at Sebastian.

‘How did you know I love four-poster beds?’

‘An extensive amount of online snooping. Your footprint is very heavy on four-poster beds. This one is brand new and made to order. I’m too big for an antique bed and I expect a decent mattress,’ he told her.

Bunny blinked and went pink at the thought of him going to that much trouble to establish her likes and dislikes.

Did it bother her that he admitted to snooping?

Not particularly because she had nothing to hide from him.

It said much more about him, she reckoned, that he had put her preferences above his own.

Pleased, she allowed him to lead her on a tour.

There was so much for her to admire. The airy long gallery where the ladies had once taken their exercise in adverse weather, the carved chimneypieces and wainscoted walls, the great hall with its minstrels’ gallery and walls hung with shields, medieval weapons and faded flags.

‘The perfect backdrop for a party…or a wedding reception,’ Sebastian remarked. ‘That is assuming we don’t go for a guest list of thousands.’

‘We’re not talking weddings yet,’ she reminded him. ‘But I would only have friends and family. I should imagine your list would have hundreds of possibilities, business and social.’

‘My wedding wouldn’t be a business event,’ he murmured, opening a door at the end of the hall to usher her into a more reasonably sized dining room where there were a polished table, fine bone china and candelabra, and yet another fire glowed in a giant grate.

‘Who’s keeping all these fires going?’ she exclaimed in wonderment.

‘We have a large staff here.’

‘Is there an estate with the house?’

‘No, there’s a home farm and woods and sufficient land to preserve privacy but the majority of the original estate was sold off long before my grandfather met his first wife.’

‘Tragic her dying in childbirth and the baby dying as well,’ she sighed.

‘It’s not going to happen with you. You will have every medical exam available and, by the way,’ Sebastian continued, ‘I organised an appointment for you on Monday to see an obstetrician for the usual checks. I’ll go with you before I leave for Germany.’

‘I was going to get around to it eventually, but then I don’t really need to think for myself any more with you so happy to do all my thinking for me,’ she said drily.

‘Touché,’ he responded without heat. ‘I always think ahead. Occasionally it irritates people.’

Their lunch arrived, brought in by an elderly man with a stately manner.

‘This is Parker, Bunny. Our butler, who has always worked here and knows everything there is to know about this house,’ Sebastian advanced.

‘Madam…sir.’ Parker executed a slight bow. ‘I am happy to still be here.’

‘I’m glad you kept him on,’ Bunny whispered when he had left them alone again. ‘But he must be at least—’

‘Seventy-eight, but he doesn’t want to retire.

He’s Maybelle’s father,’ Sebastian supplied as she shed her cardigan in the heat flowing from the fire.

‘And, in what he terms the twilight of his life, presiding over a large staff with an enhanced salary and a large household budget suits him very well.’

Bunny laughed and then her heart-shaped face turned serious. ‘It’s time you told me about what happened to you after your parents passed away…’

Sebastian flinched. ‘The Pagonis family were devastated by the scandal and the shame of what my father did. As the survivor, I was a huge embarrassment and a disappointment. They put out a story that my father had mental health issues, which was untrue. They refused to admit his addiction. They made me see a psychiatrist every week for years and sent me to boarding school in England where I could be forgotten about.’ Sebastian toasted her with his wine glass and lounged back in his seat, his lean, darkly handsome features taut.

‘Vacation times? They sent me off to wilderness survival camps and places for troubled adolescents because nobody wanted me around.’

‘But why was it like that?’ she demanded with a frown.

‘If I’d died that night, the family wealth would have gone to my four uncles, who had all fiercely resented my father.

My grandfather tied everything up in a trust which leaves everything to the firstborn son and Loukia didn’t challenge her husband’s trust arrangements while she was alive.

The family thought they would come into her property empire but it had originally been my grandfather’s, so it also came to me.

I’m already rich beyond avarice. Her will was the last straw, which is why they’re dragging me through the courts…

and destined to lose. The trust as it currently stands is virtually unbreakable. ’

‘So what do you plan to do?’

‘In the interests of fairness, offer them a decent settlement, continue to employ them and revise that trust for my child’s sake and ensure that a daughter will not be discounted.

I’m determined to prevent the bitterness revisiting the next generation if we have more than one child,’ he proffered calmly.

Bunny nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s sensible.’

But she wasn’t thinking about the money, she was thinking about a little boy sent abroad for his education because he was an uber-wealthy child and resented for it by those who might instead have shown him love and understanding.

And she understood so much more about Sebastian in that moment.

He had been forced to be a loner, forced into his general attitude of distrust with the rest of the world because his family had failed him and if family didn’t step up to help and care, why would you expect anyone else to do so?

He didn’t believe in love because he hadn’t had love but perhaps that outlook could be softened by time.

And was she prepared to give him that time?

The longer she stayed with him, the harder it would be to leave.

And Sebastian had made it that way quite deliberately whether he saw that or not.

He had put together her dream house and her dream library.

He would give her everything from a four-poster bed to a designer wardrobe but he wouldn’t give her love.

Sebastian, she realised without surprise, was clever enough to also be intensely manipulative.

He made her feel safe but was that safety an illusion?