“I offer protection. I offer fidelity.”
Heat swept over her body, because of course. Of course to be married to him would be to sleep with him. But the idea filled her with a kind of reckless heat that she hadn’t anticipated.
“What about...” Her throat suddenly felt scratchy. “Love? Not for me, obviously. Obviously not me. But the baby. Our baby.”
“I offer protection. That as far as I’m concerned is an expression of something that many people might call love.”
She looked at him, at that icy façade. “You don’t believe in love, do you?”
“Oh, I believe in it. Many people around me have experienced it. Who am I to deny them what they feel. I just am no longer capable of it myself.”
“You said that already but I don’t...”
“Olive, I let you negotiate because there is no point in the two of us being miserable. But you do not get to set the terms here.”
“This is isn’t a business negotiation, actually, Gunnar. For the first time, we are not talking about the terms of a business deal. Were talking about a human child. Our child.”
“In our experience, that is much the same thing.”
“No. It doesn’t matter what our experience was. It doesn’t matter... We cannot do things this way.”
“Our child will have two parents. That is a beginning.”
But it wasn’t a promise of anything fantastic or romantic. Not at all. He condemned their childhood but without love...
Without love how would their child’s life be different?
How would her life be different?
He was cold, and he was remote. He was the very frozen wasteland outside.
You’ll have to do it. You’ll have to create enough love to cover you and the baby.
“I’m going to be putting out an announcement about our upcoming marriage.”
And suddenly, she realized what that would mean.
The world was going to explode. They were the most storied business rivals in modern history, and they were getting married. Having a baby. For all the world to see, merging their companies. Beneath the umbrella of his.
It was a decisive victory for Magnum. At least, that was how it would look to everyone else.
And she decided then, that she had to let it go. That she could no longer live to serve a public performance. Because she had to worry about whether or not something was a victory for her life. For the child.
Nothing else could matter, nothing else could be more important.
And that meant letting go. Stripping away the things that she used to mark success. “Well then,” she said. “I imagine when we go back to the real world there will be quite a show waiting for us.”
“Undoubtedly. I hope you’re ready.”
She looked at him, her greatest boardroom rival, and now her fiancé. The father of her child. “I’m ready if you are.”
He smiled, that wolfish smile. And this time she realized that when he did so, it did not go all the way up to those steely blue eyes.
There was a reason he was like this, she knew it. And she had seen glimpses of a different man. A warmer man.
But he did his best to cover it.
And she had a feeling that she would never be powerful enough to melt all that ice.