Gunnar laughed. And laughed.
“I do not negotiate with traitors who have no honor. Clean out your desk.”
Olive was wretched. She had been feeling sick for weeks, and she was in utter denial about why. She simply couldn’t handle the potential truth. And she had avoided thinking about it. Completely. It made her feel like she was shaking apart.
She didn’t think it was a mystery as to why she hadn’t had her period two months in a row. It wasn’t a mystery why she was feeling groggy and tired and sick in the mornings. Not when you considered she had sex for the first time in her life, and it had been decidedly unprotected.
She and Gunnar were two of the greatest minds in technology, and they were also two idiots who’d had sex without a condom.
She blamed him. Really.
She had been a virgin. He ought to know better. And all right, maybe she ought to know better too. But she made a terrible choice. They had made a terrible choice. And now, the consequences were...
Well, the consequences were particularly and potentially dire.
She’d...ruined everything. She was supposed to be the guiding light for this company and she was barely able to sit up straight at her desk. She wasn’t a pillar of leadership. She’d been fuzzy and disorganized for weeks, her brain a total mess.
She’d gotten herself pregnant with the enemy’s baby.
Her father would be...
He wouldn’t be proud. Not of this.
She was slumped behind her desk, but nobody was here. So it didn’t matter.
She took a sleeve of saltines from the top drawer and brought it down, holding it close to her chest. This was really just awful.
She was feeling wretched. And terrified. She had come out on top when it came to the contract, but when it came to everything else...
She had not gotten him out of her system, not if what she suspected was true. If what she suspected was true was, in fact, true then... He was quite a bit more in her system than she had anticipated him ever being.
The idea made her want to throw up then and there.
And suddenly, she heard a commotion outside, a scuffling and then commotion.
And suddenly, the door to her office swung open.
She popped her head up like a meerkat coming up from underground, and then she saw him, and shrank down slightly, so that she was certain only her eyes were visible over the top of her desk.
“Olive,” he said, her name on his lips a warning.
“What’s going on, bestie?” she asked, trying her best to paste a bright and convincing smile on her face.
She had a feeling it looked more like a grimace.
He rounded the desk, and she scrabbled downward, pulling her knees up to her chest, the sleeve of saltines held tightly against them.
“Did you think that you could get away with this?”
Terror streaked through her. How could he know? She didn’t even know.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.
“Your unfortunate foray into corporate espionage.”
She was almost relieved to hear him say that. And how ridiculous was that? Except the company didn’t seem like the important thing, not right now. Not between them.
So she tried her best to look and sound casual, even while she was shaking apart.