“Why did Jason tell you what I did?”
“I think he hoped that he might find himself on the receiving end of a promotion. For his honesty. He decided to manipulate you instead of me. And... That is his prerogative. Though, it did not end the way that he had hoped.”
“You didn’t reward him for his loyalty?”
“He was duplicitous. Both to me and to you. There is no honor among thieves, as such. At least you have loyalty, Olive. I find your moral compass to be skewed, but your loyalty is to your company. To the vision that your father laid out. That is a fixed loyalty. It makes sense. It can be tracked. Someone who is continually changing the guard as it were, is not trustworthy in any fashion.”
She sniffed. “I suppose at least there’s that. He’s a bigger rat than I am.”
“So you admit that what you did was wrong?”
“Why is it so important to you that I admit it? I’m not certain that it’s wrong, if there’s a weakness in your system. Again, we have different goals. Mine was to get the contract. Yours is to feel a certain way about how you go about getting the work.”
“And why does it not matter to you?”
“Because I have to... Like I told you. I have nothing. I am nothing apart from this. You have this whole other company that you’ve built. I have this one thing. And I was willing to try and get whatever I could from you at all costs. Because it just seemed... It seemed reasonable. At the time.”
And he could see, unspoken, that nothing much seemed reasonable now. Now that she was pregnant with his child.
You believe her?
He looked at the sad, waifish creature sitting before him. He would never have thought of Olive as waifish before. But yes. He did believe her.
Though this was just another way in which he’d failed to see Olive, when he’d been so convinced before that he had.
That she was a virgin was difficult to wrap his mind around, because she was a beautiful woman, and confident, determined.
But there had been clues. She did not seem to care about her appearance—though he had been certain enough that she would be able to get whatever man she might wish to have.
She clearly did not think so, though. She felt that she needed to stay buried in work, and work alone.
He wondered if that was how her perspective had become so twisted.
As if yours is better?
Yes. It was better. He did not have a more emotional life than she did, but he had honor. He might not believe in things like love, and he himself might not have friends, but he lived by a specific code.
Which was why it disgusted him so when he flared in his midsection when he looked at her.
He should not find her half so compelling. Not now. Not after everything.
And yet he did.
“Are you hungry?”
“Assume that I’m hungry unless stated otherwise,” she said.
“But you don’t seem to feel well.”
“If I’m eating it makes it bearable. Strange, I know, but I didn’t know anything about this sort of thing... And I don’t really know what’s normal and what’s not, but that seems to be the way of things for me.”
He went to the fridge, and took out a large tray of meat and cheese. She looked at him with skepticism. “Why are you being nice to me?”
“Do you consider this nice?”
She blinked, and tilted her head, and she looked rather like a questioning sparrow. “I... Well, I don’t really know. Maybe it isn’t all that nice. I don’t have a lot of interaction with people. I have employees. And I have...” She started laughing. “I have you. I have you, and we spar and fight, and you bring me cupcakes. I guess you like to feed me.”
“It was a game,” he said.