Page 28 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

She withstood a lecture about being more careful now that she was pregnant and hung her head, misery choking her.

Just then she didn’t care about anything and she knew she had not hurt her baby, only her ankle and her back.

She deserved the bruises for being so careless, she thought miserably as her brother bandaged her ankle for her, offered to take her to the hospital if she was apprehensive and looked relieved at her refusal.

Parker brought in the tea with an air of satisfaction. ‘Mr Pagonis is on his way home,’ he announced.

‘But he’s not supposed to be back for another couple of days!

’ Bunny gasped in surprise, underlaid with a strong sense of relief.

The sooner she saw him, the sooner she could cross the chasm of the separation she had caused.

And she glanced down at herself, noting her ancient comfy jeans, her shapeless sweater, the kind of clothes she put on when she was in a down mood.

That wasn’t how she wanted to greet Sebastian.

Having shared a cup of tea with her brother before he rushed off, she hobbled awkwardly upstairs to shower and change.

Restricted as she was, everything took longer than usual and it hurt hovering on one leg to dry her hair and put on some make-up.

The results, however, far outweighed the discomfort.

She limped into the dressing room for fresh undies, donning pretty lace pastels in a soft green before rifling in the closet for a dress.

It was a little chilly for a dress but she shouldn’t be thinking of such practicalities, she warned herself, tugging the stretchy dark green designer garment over her head and shimmying her hips while wondering uncertainly whether going barefoot would be sexier than wearing only one shoe.

Sebastian, as he surged upstairs like a man on a mission, however, had far more pressing concerns.

Parker had phoned him while he was in a meeting in Geneva and his brain had gone pretty blank during that brief call, only parts of it staying with him.

An accident…a fall…her brother, the doctor, with her.

It had traumatised him: the prospect of losing Bunny and the baby, the very idea of them being ripped from his world.

Slowly, on the flight back home, he had pulled himself together and another phone conversation with John had reassured him that no great harm had been done, only to Parker, who had panicked.

They were okay, they were okay, Sebastian kept reminding himself, but nothing could dim his urgent need to see Bunny in the flesh. He stopped dead in surprise when he saw her balancing on one leg by gripping one of the posts of the bed, striving to get her foot into one high heel.

‘What are you doing?’ Sebastian demanded, crossing the room so fast that he left her breathless and lifting her off her feet to lay her down on the bed. ‘John said you had to rest it and with the amount of bandaging he’s put on your foot, you couldn’t get it into a shoe.’

‘You’re so practical,’ Bunny muttered in shaken complaint because popular belief would have suggested that Sebastian should have paused to note how groomed she was looking and to express his appreciation.

Unhappily, Sebastian was more interested in probing her ankle and her foot, undoing the bandage, putting it on more tightly and in a different style, his attention wholly directed at her injury.

‘We’ll have to get those stairs carpeted so that they’re less slippery. You’re always running round barefoot,’ he said in his most prosaic comment yet.

Bunny feasted her eyes on his bent dark head, the gleam of the steel hoop in one ear, the line of his hard jaw, the perfection of his classic nose and wide sensual mouth.

Butterflies flew in celebration in her stomach.

The core at the heart of her pulsed and her heartbeat quickened.

‘I missed you so much,’ she said tensely. ‘I’ll marry you tomorrow if you want.’

‘What?’ Sebastian glanced up at her in bewilderment, his brain still visualising the potential damage to her foot. Brilliant dark-as-coal eyes assailed hers. ‘Tomorrow?’

Bunny winced because he wasn’t making climbing down from her high horse any easier. ‘I just meant that I’m happy to marry you whenever you like. I think I was sort of testing you before.’

Sebastian frowned. ‘ Testing me?’

‘I wanted you to love me before we got married but now I realise that that doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did. It’s how you treat me that counts and you treat me like I’m something precious.’

‘Of course I do, because you are !’ Sebastian stressed, pushing up his shirtsleeves one after another, strangely shy, now that it had come to crunch time, to say those words he had always sworn that he would never say.

But she deserved those words because, even after all he’d said, she had been braver than he was and infinitely wiser when it came to such emotions to say them first. ‘ Obviously I love you,’ he framed in a driven undertone.

Bunny’s beautiful green eyes opened very wide in shock but she deemed it words voiced out of kindness rather than truth, possibly even his attempt to ease the tension that had existed between them since his departure.

Sebastian walked away a few steps and then swung back. ‘But how I felt wasn’t obvious to me until Parker phoned and told me that you’d had an accident.’

‘My goodness, why did he do that? It wasn’t a serious fall. He shouldn’t have bothered you.’

‘ Bothered me?’ Sebastian repeated in disbelief. ‘I expect to hear about any accident you have, no matter how minor. You’re my whole world . If anything happened to you and our baby, I’d lose everything that makes life worth living.’

‘I—I didn’t realise I was that important to you,’ Bunny stammered.

‘And the bad news is that I didn’t realise either until I was told you had had an accident and I was forced to spend some time thinking about that.

’ In front of her, Sebastian shuddered in remembrance.

‘It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me…

The very idea of losing you was unbearable.

I couldn’t handle it. It knocked me flat.

I don’t believe I spoke an intelligible word until I was halfway back here and your brother had calmed me down. ’

‘You spoke to John?’ she gasped.

‘I knew he was with you when it happened, so naturally I contacted him, assuming you’d be in hospital after the way Parker had spoken of the incident.

It was a huge relief to learn that you were relatively unharmed, but I couldn’t be content, I couldn’t settle, until I saw you for myself,’ he confided, approaching the bed to sink down beside her and wrap both arms around her.

‘I’m so grateful that you’re not badly hurt.

I didn’t think I could ever love anyone and then you came along. ’

Conviction that he meant every word he was saying set into Bunny then and she relaxed for the first time in days. ‘And annoyed the hell out of you at first glance.’

‘No, I like your feisty side, the way you stand up to me. Very few people challenge me. You did and if you hadn’t, I’d just have steamrollered over you because that’s the way I’m built to react to challenges, so that’s really positive for us as a couple,’ he concluded.

‘You love me,’ Bunny recounted softly. ‘And you know I love you.’

‘Yes, and I was quite happy for you to love me even while I was telling you that I didn’t believe in this kind of love,’ he groaned. ‘That was very selfish.’

‘I was selfish too. I always wanted you to love me even though you said you couldn’t. I set my heart on the one thing you’d told me you couldn’t offer.’

‘That’s your stubborn backbone, but you were pushing me towards a cliff I needed to fall off…

to find real happiness,’ he breathed tautly.

‘And I fell today the minute I had to face the concept of a life that didn’t include you.

It’s good. Now we both know where we are…

so you’d agree to marry me tomorrow ? How did that timeline come about? ’

Bunny went red, a little embarrassed even in the midst of that happiness to admit that she had felt kind of desperate and had feared that she was putting him through hoops because of the way Tristram had strung her along.

‘I’m glad the little twerp did that if it means I got you instead!

’ Sebastian teased, not remotely concerned about anything she had done, lying back on the pillows to curve her close.

‘Did I tell you that I checked him out and discovered that, far from being in finance as you assumed, Tristram is a podcaster?’

‘A podcaster?’ Bunny echoed in disbelief.

‘Apparently he didn’t do well in finance and he decided to interview minor celebrities instead. He’s got a decent following but he’s basically a paparazzo, which I assume explains why he was chasing after you.’

‘He wanted the shipwreck story,’ Bunny guessed and shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t have told him a word.’

The familiar scent of Sebastian flooded her as she buried her nose in his shirtfront and then he tipped up her face and his mouth closed over hers in an unashamedly hungry kiss.

Her fancy outfit was tossed on the floor.

Sebastian was far too busy telling her how beautiful she was and cupping the very faint swell of her belly with possessive enthusiasm to notice what she had worn.

It wasn’t very long until both of them were stripped and making passionate love.

Bunny cried out his name in release and he groaned in ecstasy, cradling her against him when she was drowsy.

‘It’s a shame tomorrow would’ve been too short notice for your family,’ Sebastian mused.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Our wedding,’ Sebastian told her with immense satisfaction. ‘Do you think in two weeks’ time?’

‘You are so impatient,’ she complained while hugging him with delight that he really couldn’t wait to get that ring on her finger.

‘I was scared of falling in love,’ he admitted with startling abruptness. ‘My father was obsessively jealous and possessive about my mother before she started the divorce and when I first began feeling weird about you I was afraid that his excessiveness might be in my DNA as well.’

‘Weird?’ Bunny queried. ‘Weird about me?’

‘Over-the-top possessive and not liking being without you. That’s why I believed that, after our rescue, we should both spend some time apart,’ he admitted.

‘You spent our time apart organising this house for me,’ she reminded him. ‘How did that fit in?’

‘It made me feel better to be making plans for us. I was miserable without you,’ he confessed grudgingly.

‘I was miserable too,’ she whispered. ‘And you’re not the slightest bit obsessive or possessive. I like being with you too. It’s normal when you’re in love.’

‘You always say the right thing,’ Sebastian murmured, replete in his contentment.

In reality, it took Sebastian a whole month to get Bunny to the altar in her family’s local church.

Her wedding gown, hot off the fashion designer of the year’s runway, made the front of many newspapers and several glossy magazines.

Her dress was silk scattered with what were rumoured to be real diamonds.

The hand-embroidered lace bodice defined her slender curves and then flowed down like some medieval princess gown.

Her family surrounded her with Sebastian and it was the happiest day of her life. And his .