Page 18 of Nine Months to Love

The engine roars to life and I pull onto the narrow access road. Gravel crunches under the tires. Olivia stares out the window, arms crossed, shoulders hunched. The silence stretches between us like barbed wire.

“What happened?” I finally ask.

“Your mother’s alive.”

“I gathered that.” My hands tighten on the wheel. “What did she do? What did she say to you?”

“She gave me tea. Massaged my feet.” Olivia’s voice is flat, emotionless. “She was kind, like I said. She seemed genuine.”

“She usually does.” I take the turn too fast and the tires squeal in protest. “Did she hurt you? Touch you? Threaten you in any way?”

“No.” Olivia whips toward me, and there’s finally some heat in her eyes. I’ll take it. “She didn’t hurt me, Stefan. She was nothing but gentle and?—”

I bark out a laugh that sounds more like a snarl. “Christ, she really got to you, didn’t she?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means my mother is the fucking devil; that’s what it means. She’s a master manipulator who’s spent her entire life using people and discarding them when they’re no longer useful.” I grip the wheel so hard my knuckles go white. “Whatever she told you, whatever sob story she fed you—it’s poison, Olivia. All of it.”

“You don’t even know what she said.”

“I don’t need to. I know her.”

“Do you?” She shifts in her seat to face me fully. “Because she seems to think you don’t know her at all.”

My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache. “What did she tell you?”

“That you tried to kill her.” Olivia sounds steady enough, but I catch the tremor underneath. “Or are you going to deny that now?”

I wait. I wait. I wait. But in the end…

“No,” I say finally. “I can’t deny that.”

“Then you can’t exactly blame her for running, can you?”

I nearly drive off the road. “She kidnapped you, Olivia! For fuck’s sake! Are you forgetting that little tidbit? How she had you arrested by fake FBI agents and held you against your will in the middle of nowhere? I can certainly blame her. This is all just—fuck, this is unbelievable.” I smack the steering wheel with the heel of my hand. “She had you for what, less than two days? And she’s already convinced you I’m the villain.”

“Maybe you are.”

That’s it. I pull over onto the shoulder hard enough that we both lurch forward against our seatbelts. When I turn to face her, Olivia’s eyes are bright with unshed tears, her chin raised in defiance.

“Is that what you think?” I ask her.

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” She rubs at her eyes and her knuckles come away glistening. “You lied about my clinic. You planned to take it from me from the start. And now, yoursupposedly dead mother tells me you tried to murder her, and you’re basically confirming it?—”

“I had reasons.”

“Oh, I’m sure you did. Just like you had reasons for everything else. That’s you, right? Mr. Cold-Blooded Logic. Stefan Safonovalwayshas his reasons, and God help anyone who gets in the way of them.” She laughs and shakes her head, utterly disgusted. “God, I’m so stupid. Camille warned me. Actually, everyone with eyeballs and a half-functioning sense of morality warned me. But I convinced myself you were different. Thatwewere different.”

“I am,” I insist. I reach for her hand but she jerks away. “What we have?—”

“What wehadwas a business arrangement that I was delusional enough to mistake for something more.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” She digs in her jacket and pulls out her phone. “Tell me something, Stefan. Did you tap my phone?”

“What?”