Page 6 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
CHAPTER THREE
T HEY FOLLOWED THE SHORE , sidestepping rocky outcrops in silence, and nowhere out to sea could she see any sign of other land but there was a misty haze in the distance and it could be blocking a clear view.
Her legs got tired and keeping up with Sebastian was no easy task but she refused to ask him to slow down.
She supposed he was right about the necessity of checking out their surroundings first.
‘What year is it?’ he shot at her abruptly.
Disconcerted, she told him, and he nodded, pausing to filch the water bottle from her and taking a swig, before passing it back to her and fluidly sinking down on the sand.
‘Why did you ask me what year it was? Don’t you know?’
‘Head injury,’ he reminded her calmly. ‘Time is a bit confused for me right now. So…what’s your name?’
‘Bunny…no comments, please. You already made them once before.’ But that fast she was also wondering why he didn’t remember her name. ‘Do you remember the catamaran? Reggie?’
‘Not yet,’ he admitted flatly. ‘No doubt it’ll all come back in good time.’
The last memory Sebastian had was of eating in a little bar at a harbour with his friends, who had drifted out to join him at different times that summer. Andreas had been there, his sister, Ariana, and a couple of others.
‘Reggie’s the skipper of the boat you hired on a private charter for a week. I’m afraid I don’t even know how you got hurt. You were in a daze by the time I reached the deck in the storm,’ she told him, handing him an energy bar.
Sebastian studied the bar and then accepted the inevitable: for now, it was all they had.
He didn’t think he had ever eaten anything that tasted like cardboard with grit before.
Well, there was always a first time, but then survival on what he already suspected was a very small island would be a challenge even for him and he had cut his teeth on wilderness camping from an early age.
Roughing it came surprisingly naturally to him.
The horrors his relatives had heaped on him during his adolescence might actually turn out to be the key to survival. But what about her?
What about Bunny ? Already skinny as a rail, wet clothes, legs trembling with a tiredness she struggled to hide, dark circles below her eyes.
She had neither his strength nor, he believed, his high level of physical fitness on her side.
Keeping Bunny breathing could be his biggest challenge.
And she had given him her life belt! How could anyone be that selfless?
They rounded the cliff and then they were out on the far side of the island and Sebastian released a shout that startled her and started running down the beach.
Bunny was so exhausted she wanted to fold where she stood but she kept on moving slowly in the same direction until she saw what had excited him.
It was a little wooden pier poking out into the sea, an unlikely sign of human involvement in what seemed so far to be a small island wholly abandoned to the jungle and the birds.
He disappeared from view, probably in the forlorn hope of finding a boat or a person, she guessed.
Sebastian was already surprising her on every level.
He was very controlled and action orientated.
He hadn’t unleashed a single moan, the smallest hint of panic or even a word of complaint and yet, physically, he still had to be feeling pretty rough.
Nor as a rich man could he be accustomed to moving out of his comfort zone.
Their situation was hazardous and scary yet, if anything, danger appeared to fuel Sebastian’s energy, lending a sharper edge to those shrewd dark eyes.
And didn’t he just look amazing clad only in a pair of cotton boxers, slung low on his lean hips?
Her face burned and she scolded herself for noticing.
He was as decent as he would’ve been in swimming trunks, which was, to be honest, not very decent.
Huffing a little from fatigue, she reached the pier and saw a small track leading through the dense overhanging trees. ‘Sebastian!’ she shouted, suddenly terrified of him vanishing and her being left alone.
‘Over here!’ he shouted back and then there was a deafening grinding, breaking noise that filled her with dismay and she pushed her woolly, heavy legs to move faster along the overgrown path until she arrived, shell-shocked, in a clearing that contained a house, a very fancy house on her terms, with the look of an architect-designed contemporary building and a deck furnished with an array of outdoor seating littered with branches and leaves.
‘Right…’ Sebastian appeared in front of her and dropped down to scoop her off her feet without the smallest warning. ‘Now you can rest and stop quaking with terror.’
‘I am not quaking with terror! What the heck are you doing?’ Bunny gasped in disbelief as he carried her towards the house.
‘Taking care of you,’ Sebastian responded calmly, elbowing open a door and carrying her indoors, past an inner courtyard crammed with jungle plants and a strange indoor pool set in marble.
Without hesitation he settled her down on leopard-print velvet sectional seating in what had to be the most luxurious reception room she had ever seen. ‘Wh-where’s the owner?’
Sebastian squatted down in front of her, brilliant dark eyes level. ‘How would I know? I broke in.’
‘You… what ?’ she yelped in horror.
‘This isn’t a game, Bunny, this is survival. Here we will…hopefully…have water and shelter.’
Bunny gaped at him with frank incredulity. ‘But you can’t just break into someone else’s house!’
‘If it comes to a choice between living or dying I can.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ Bunny slung back at him in a temper. ‘We’ll be arrested and thrown in a cell!’
Sebastian chuckled. ‘Someone has to rescue us first. I think I’ll take that risk over being stuck here without shelter and the necessities of life.
Now wait here until I can hopefully find you something to change into.
Right now, in those wet pyjamas, you’re asking for pneumonia and there’s not enough flesh on your bones to stave it off. ’
‘We can’t stay here, Sebastian,’ Bunny moaned and with considerable personal regret on her own account. ‘It’s somebody’s home.’
But Sebastian had already disappeared again. She blinked and literally felt herself zone out for a timeless period and it wasn’t until Sebastian reappeared and tossed a man’s shirt on her lap that she returned to the present.
‘Can’t stay here,’ she mumbled afresh like a vinyl record stuck in a groove.
‘Take off the damp clothing and put on the shirt,’ Sebastian instructed impatiently. ‘Because if you don’t, I’m going to do it for you.’
‘Like you would dare!’
‘I would dare,’ Sebastian assured her.
‘Well, go away so as I can change.’
‘Modesty in this situation is ridiculous,’ Sebastian said very drily.
‘Give me a break,’ she muttered, and he strode over to the windows and slowly and rather ostentatiously turned his back on her.
Unconcerned by that display, Bunny ripped off her pyjamas at speed and put on the plaid cotton shirt, shivering as she clumsily did up the buttons to cover her cold, clammy skin.
Until that moment, she hadn’t realised how cold she actually was.
‘Now go for a sleep,’ Sebastian told her.
‘But—’
‘You’re dead on your feet and I don’t want you getting sick.’
Bunny tugged a cushion under her head and curled up, too tired to deal with Sebastian, in truth too tired to deal with anything at all.
The storm, the frightening sleepless night on the raft and the long hours that had followed were just a tangled jumble of shocking imagery inside her head.
Something soft landed on top of her and she snaked her icy toes into the warmth it offered, her eyes sliding shut.
Sebastian was tired too, but he wanted to get the solar power on and the water running before he went to sleep and then had to waken in the dark.
That achieved, he placed a lamp beside Bunny so that she wouldn’t panic when she awoke and then he folded himself down on the opposite leg of the sectional.
The more he looked at her, the more beautiful she seemed to be.
There was just something about her face, that particular arrangement of features, the delicate arch of her brows, the clarity of her big eyes, the smooth line of her nose and the natural pink of her lips, he reasoned absently, lost in a sense of fascination new to him. At least, it felt new.
Why was he so eager to look after her? Was there something crucial that he had forgotten?
Had they been intimate on that boat? And what had he been doing on what sounded like a small boat in any case?
It didn’t make sense…none of it made sense and, on that edge of frustration, Sebastian finally slept.
Bunny opened her eyes and just lay there, listening to the incredibly noisy chatter of birds at dawn and, beyond that, the most glorious quiet, empty of other people’s noises and traffic.
Just about there she remembered that her student days were finished, and her eyes flew wide on an unfamiliar ceiling before lowering to take in the oil paintings of birds on the wall, the antique-looking bronze statues, carved mask faces and other paraphernalia displayed across a sleek, sealed glass display unit.
It was someone’s collection of Indonesian artefacts and a sobering reminder that she had spent the night in someone else’s home without their permission.
She was startled into sitting straight up and standing. There was no sign of Sebastian.