She had just been so... So desperate. Desperate to get away from him. Desperate to do something about the feelings that rioted through her body whenever she saw him. Desperate to please her father and set herself up as the CEO he’d trained her to be.
It had been the culmination of everything. Putting her one weakness behind her, claiming her future, her fated future.
And now it was all in doubt.
There was a soft knock on the door.
“I’m just resting,” she snapped.
“It’s only me,” said the nurse, opening the door. And she came in, her eyes looking soft.
“Did you already talk to him about the results?”
The nurse shook her head. “No. They’re your results, Olive, not his. I don’t know the nature of your relationship with him...”
“Really? Do you not watch the news?”
“All right,” the nurse said, holding up a conciliatory hand. “I am attempting to not know who either of you are. Because that is part of my job at a place like this. I don’t make any assumptions, and I certainly don’t make any judgments.”
“Go ahead,” said Olive. “Judge away. I judge myself.”
“Too bad about privacy laws. Because there is a very large office pool that concerns whether or not the two of you are actually secretly sleeping together. And I could clearly win.”
“Really?”
The woman looked at her gravely. “They worship you.”
“Do they?”Olive asked. “How weird. I would’ve thought that... Anyway. Never mind. What are the results?”
“You already know, sweetheart,” the woman said.
And immediately, tears began to slide down her cheeks, and she was so grateful that the woman had brought these results to her in confidence, because Olive didn’t think she could have stomached crying like this in front of Gunnar.
And who else did she have?
What a strange, dysfunctional, lonely existence she had. Her father was gone, she’d never known her mother, and now she wanted them both so badly.
Except...
Her father would be so disappointed in her. That feeling was like a crushing weight now. He wouldn’t have been happy to be a grandfather. He would question her suitability. Ask how she’d been so weak, so foolish as to get herself pregnant with the enemy’s baby.
He would ask how he’d managed to fail her so badly that she had exercised no control at all.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Well. The rest is up to you. He doesn’t get to have the results. You can tell him whatever you want.”
But she knew there was no lying to Gunnar Magnusson. He saw everything with those sharp blue eyes, and Olive well knew it.
But she needed to get herself together. She could not go out there looking like this. She could not go out there with tears running down her face. She refused to let him see her weak.
And that’s all he’d seen, all day. She’d been doing her best to brazen it out, to smile through it, to banter and make jokes, but she would not show weakness now.
“Okay. I just need a minute.”
She took a breath, and she steeled herself. She reminded herself of why she had made all the choices she’d made in the last few months. They’d made sense.
And she would find sense at the end of this too. But she was not a coward, and she wouldn’t hide.