“Are you well?”
She shot him her most deadly glare. Her CEO face. “No. I’m not well. I’m pregnant.”
“Silly question, perhaps.”
“Let me ask you this. What are your plans for a child?”
He looked at her. “The child will be my heir.”
“You certainly don’t plan on arranging anything emotionally around the life of the child.”
“Do you?”
“Do you expect me to? Because I’m the woman?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
“What a relic.”
“I also expect you to because your workload will be drastically reduced as acting figurehead of a company that I will now be in charge of. So it has less to do with your gender and more to do with the fact that you will be significantly reduced.”
“How can you... How dare you. It isn’t your company. You’re not the one that built it. You’re not the one that gave up... Childhood. You’re not the one that gave up friendships and parties and sex, to run it.”
“I think you’ll find that I managed to work sex into my schedule.”
“You’re a man,” she said. “You’re a man, and people will expect it of you. People are fine with you sleeping around, but you tell me, who am I supposed to sleep with? Perhaps you’re comfortable giving yourself to some empty-headed model to fill the hours, but I cannot respect a man who isn’t as smart as I am. Who isn’t as driven as I am. And if I can’t respect a man... I don’t want to sleep with him. Also, you men... You’re idiots. I’m sorry. Women are the ones who must risk actual death to sleep with a stranger. Not only that, we are not guaranteed satisfaction. The risk is greater. And therefore, I find myself unwilling to take it.”
“And that is why you were a virgin?”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s why.”
Easier than admitting that he was the only man she had ever wanted, and the only man that she could imagine wanting, because that was just a horror.
“Well. We will see soon enough if that is true.”
“It was true. I mean, I’m flattered that you think that I had a comprehensive enough set of skills to believe that I had a parade of lovers before you, but sadly, no parade. I am the grand marshal of my sexual parade of one. So.”
“Extremely vivid. But then, you always did have a way with words.”
“Indeed.”
“Well, I eagerly await the news from the doctor. We shall see what his report is.”
“Great.”
“And then...”
“Yes. I know. Ruination. Marriage.”
“In the meantime, have another doughnut.”
“You know. I might as well.”
And she realized then that she had been eating as if this were her last meal.
As if she were a prisoner bound for execution. She felt very like she might be.
For Gunnar was her Viking captor, and whatever lay ahead was not in her control.