Chapter 20 Olivia
OLIVIA
I agreed to be Stefan Safonov’s surrogate.
The fact that we sealed the deal with sex on his desk rather than signatures on paper is just a minor complication. Matter of fact, I’d prefer to ignore that it happened at all.
One time. That’s all it was. One little indiscretion, easily swept under the rug.
No one needs to know. Not my mother. Not Camille. Not whatever nosy reporter keeps printing those pictures of Stefan and me at the gala.
God, the thought of Margaret finding out makes me nauseous. My mother would be horrified if she knew what I’d done. Not the sleeping with Stefan part—she’d probably pull me in for a rare hug if she learned about that.
No, it’s the “offering my services before contracts had been formally signed” that would’ve been the kicker. That would disappoint her.
Didn’t I teach you anything? she’d ask in that shrill, chiding hiss of hers. Didn’t you pay attention for even a second?
But it’s fine. It has to be fine. The chances of conception after a single encounter are slim to none. I would know; I counsel patients on this daily. Conception requires patience.
Yet something feels changed, as if his touch rewired something fundamental inside me. Camille noticed it the moment I walked into the clinic this morning. Her eyes narrowed as she studied me over her coffee cup.
“You look different,” she’d said, her tone suggesting she knew exactly why.
“It’s warm outside.” I was grasping at straws. The morning was mild, at best.
“Hmm” was her only reply, but that single syllable carried volumes of suspicion.
I push thoughts of Stefan aside as I navigate downtown traffic. My mother’s last-minute lunch invitation arrived with her usual impeccable timing—at the exact moment when refusing would require more energy than just going along with what she wanted.
“Just a quick catch-up, darling,” she’d said, as if our interactions are ever casual. Margaret Aster doesn’t do casual. She wouldn’t know casual if it spat in her face.
The restaurant is one of those places where the menu has no prices and the waitstaff judge your outfit the second you walk in the door.
I spot her in the center of the restaurant immediately.
How could I not? She stands out from a mile away.
Perfect posture, meticulous movements, Hermès scarf artfully draped across her shoulders, like a high fashion cyborg with way too many post-graduate degrees.
But it’s what sits in front of her that freezes my blood.
The Boston Business Journal, meticulously folded to showcase the article beneath the fold. A new headline, the latest in this week’s ongoing Safonov series: SAFONOV EMERGES FROM SHADOWS: RECLUSIVE BILLIONAIRE’S RARE PUBLIC APPEARANCE RAISES QUESTIONS.
Below it, Stefan and I captured mid-dance, his hand possessively curved around my waist, my face caught in a moment of unguarded laughter. The caption is burned into my retinas from reading and re-reading it all morning.
Safonov with fertility specialist Dr. Olivia Aster. Sources close to both remain tight-lipped about their connection.
What “sources” could they have spoken to? The woman with pink hair and a nose ring who makes my coffee every morning? My UPS guy?
Still, so much for keeping things under wraps.
Mother’s eyes track me as I drop into my seat and lunge for the waiting mimosa. The first sip burns down my throat. Liquid courage. I’ll need about a gallon more of these before I’m ready for this conversation, though.
“You’re late,” she says.
“Traffic was a bear.” In truth, I spent twenty minutes in my car, rehearsing this conversation, trying to load up a vault of as many distractions and misdirections as I could dream up.
Her manicured finger taps the newspaper photo wordlessly.
So much for distractions.
I shrug like it’s no big deal. “You already know we met at the gala.”
“Yes, but now people are talking. And do you know why, Olivia? It’s because that photo suggests more than a casual introduction. The way he’s looking at you… Well.”
I study the image again. Stefan’s eyes burn into mine with an intensity that translates even in newsprint. My body remembers that look. It remembers even more vividly how it felt when it was followed by his mouth on my skin.
This changes things.
Yes.
I cross my legs and squeeze my thighs together. “It’s a dance, Mother. People tend to look at their dance partners.”
Not that she would know. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen my mother dance. I truly think her joints might just crack and crumble into dust if she ever so much as attempted a foxtrot.
“People? Yes. Stefan Safonov? Never.” She leans forward, voice dropping conspiratorially. “Do you know how many society mothers have tried to introduce their daughters to that man? He doesn’t dance with anyone. Except you, apparently.”
I stab my avocado toast hard enough to chip the plate beneath it. “Maybe he felt sorry for me. It was a charity gala, after all.”
Her smile tightens, the warning sign I’ve feared since childhood. “Self-pity doesn’t suit you, Olivia. I raised you better.”
“Did you?” The question slips out before I can catch it.
I almost feel guilty. It doesn’t last long.
“Anyway,” I sigh before she can start in on a lecture, “I thought you wanted to catch up. How is work? You have the cardiac stem cell paper in pre-print, right? Is that—”
“I raised you to recognize opportunity,” she interrupts, tapping the photo again. “And this is the sound of opportunity knocking. Karen Thompson was just telling me yesterday how impressed the board would be to have connections with someone of Safonov’s… influence.”
“So now, you want me to sleep my way into the Mass Gen partnership?”
“Don’t be crude,” she hisses under her breath, with a glance around to make sure no one overheard. “I’m suggesting you leverage every advantage available. Isn’t that what I taught you? What separates successful people from failures is recognizing which doors to walk through.”
“And which people to step on along the way, right?”
Her eyes thin out into slits. So cold, those eyes.
They suck the life right out of me. “I’ve never understood your stance on this.
You want success but reject the very tools that would secure it.
If you’d just listened to me about joining the operating room instead of chasing this silly fertility clinic dream—”
My mother’s familiar tirade fades into a distant hum, lost in the rush of blood in my ears.
I’ve heard it all before, anyway. She likes to claim whatever hope she had for me dried up when I opted out of becoming a surgeon, but really, it happened long before that. I’ve spent countless hours trying to pinpoint the moment that it all went wrong.
But there isn’t one.
As far back as I can remember, I’ve been disappointing her. It’s only now, in the last couple days, that I’ve started to wonder if it’s my fault at all.
Maybe it started before I was born.
It’s not like my parents were deeply in love.
They always seemed too smart for those kinds of powerful emotions.
My childhood was a blur of sameness. Sunday brunches with my father reading medical journals while my mother networked on the phone.
They slept in separate bedrooms by the time I was twelve.
Sure, they attended regularly scheduled appearances at hospital functions, and while they were there, they smiled and touched each other on the waist enough to convince people it was genuine affection.
On some level, I do believe they liked each other.
They worked well together—co-authors on research papers, professional partners in every sense.
But were they passionate? Never. Not once did I witness a lingering touch, a heated glance, a moment of spontaneous desire between them.
Yet here I am, tangled in something with Stefan that takes a lit match to the sterile example they set. You can’t bring what we have into a boardroom or a convention hall—the place would combust.
There’s no logic, no reason, no equal partnership here.
There’s only the feel of his desk grinding into my back as he fucks me into it, harder, harder.
And just like that, I’m off and running. I shouldn’t be, but I am.
I shouldn’t be thinking about his hands on my skin, but I am.
I shouldn’t be replaying the sound of his voice on the phone last night, the purr, the husk, but even though I’m in the middle of a posh brunch restaurant, that’s exactly what I’m thinking of.
That call. God.
It lasted three minutes at most. Yet, after hanging up, I spent hours staring at my ceiling, the sheets twisted around my legs, my body a minefield of need bombs, each exploding one after the next.
Burning me up from the inside out solely because I’d heard his voice, remembered the weight of him above me, the taste of him on my tongue.
Come to think of it, I might be in a lot of trouble.
A sharp nudge jerks me back to reality. “Look up,” my mother whispers, her smile frozen in place. “Look who’s just arrived.”
I blink out of my heated thoughts… just as Rebecca Walsh materializes at our table uninvited.