“Getting out will be unpleasant. But it will help that you warmed up. And I brought blankets.”
“Did you know that I wouldn’t make it?”
“I didn’t stop to think,” he said.
“I thought that I would make it,” she said.
“Yes. I realize that.” He snorted. “I did not think that you were suicidal over the prospect of marrying me.”
“No. I wanted leverage.”
And suddenly, it was as if she became conscious of the friction between their bodies. Of the fact that there was no clothing between them. Her cheeks went pink, and she wiggled slightly.
“What kind of leverage did you want?”
“What I wanted,” she said, “was something. Anything. As long as you’re holding me, you’re holding all the cards, aren’t you?”
“I have not offered you a buffet, Olive. This is not a chance for you to choose what you would like and put back what you do not. This is not an endless array of options for you. You have left yourself little choice here. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
“Now, on that score you’re wrong. The pregnancy was not just me. So don’t be like that.”
“All right. I will give you that. You are not alone in that.”
“Oh. I know. I remember. I remember your...” She wiggled slightly. “Your involvement.”
“A delicate way of putting it,” he said.
“Well. I’m nothing if not delicate.”
“Do not do anything so foolish again,” he said, smoothing his thumb over her cheek. She looked improbably young, and he could remember when she had been a girl. And a wild one at that. He remembered when she had been as vulnerable as she looked now, and he wondered if anyone had ever held her then. He just wondered. He did not think they had.
And he should not feel any sympathy for her. Her choices were hers, and hers alone. As his had been. He had no sympathy for himself either. He had chosen to leave this place, to leave the people who had loved him. He had chosen to go with his father. He had been wrong about his father, and the consequences of that had been his to bear.
As her consequences were hers.
She might have felt some pressure from her father but the man was dead. He could not actually force her to do anything. He could not influence her.
At some point, everyone had to stand on their own feet and own who they were. What they were.
“You are warm,” he said, his voice coming out rougher than he intended.
“Yes,” she said.
“Let us get you back to the house. Do not try anything like this again.”
“Not in the snowstorm.”
“Never,” he said.
“I’m not a kitten, Gunnar. I am not the kind of person who is simply going to lay down and accept what you have decreed. I am a woman. A woman who has been taught how to fight. I’m hardly going to let go of that now.”
“The war is over. Consider yourself pillaged.”
“The war isn’t over until you’re dead. And even then... I’m pretty sure that I would haunt your ass.”
He chuckled. He couldn’t help himself. It was the absurdity of it. Of her spirit. From the moment he had found her crouched behind her desk eating crackers. And she had tried to play it off. She never admitted when she didn’t have the upper hand. But sadly for her. Sadly for her, she was the decisive loser in this battle.
He reached to the banks of the hot springs and laid out one of the blankets, then he lifted her from the water and set her on the blanket. She grabbed one of the folded blankets and wrapped it around her body. The dim light and her quick concealing of her curves made it so he didn’t get a good look at her body. For the best, he supposed.