Olivia Jerome inserted candlesticks into the candelabra and then placed the heavy centerpiece in the middle of the long dining room table. After her release from the hospital, roughly seven months earlier, she had returned to the Jerome Family Estate in Brethen. Originally, she had been biding her time and feigning amnesia in order to avoid prosecution for her attempted murder of Duke Lavery, her kidnapping of his stepdaughter, and the contract she had taken out on her own half-brother. Then boredom had gotten to her and she had found herself painting on the beach. It was something to do and it helped promote her image of harmlessness.
It was on those banks of the Charles River she had met her husband, disenfranchised marine, Colton Shore. Colton had been reeling from his recent breakup and annulment from the woman he had planned, and pledged, to give over his life to. He had been desperate. Olivia had been more than a little desperate herself.
If desperation was their common ground it was also their biggest difference, at least in the beginning. Olivia had been desperate for just the basic connection to someone, perhaps anyone besides her father's former driver, Emil. She hadn't envisioned forever, or maybe even a long-term future, with Colton. In contrast, Colton hadn't just been looking for a companion, or even a lover, but for a woman who would and could become the next Mrs. Colton Shore. At first Olivia had played along and maintained the ruse to maintain the connection. At some point she had forgotten she was playing a game. Then she had begun to want, no, to need, Colton with the same fervent intensity she had held for Duke Lavery. In contrast to her failed seduction of Duke, Colton came under her spell easily, almost like a moth to a flame. With Duke, even pilfered fertility pills had not given her a baby, yet she and Colton had almost fallen pregnant in every sense of the word. It had practically been kismet.
Olivia hadn't exactly presented it to Colton that way. Instead she had feigned a very dramatic collapse and then, when Colton had rushed her to the hospital, she had feigned more surprise when Dr. Monica Quartermaine revealed that she was pregnant. All of the rest of her tests had been normal but her dramatics, the pregnancy, and her recent rheumatic fever diagnosis had prompted Dr. Quartermaine to go ahead and admit her. Colton had proposed during his weeklong bedside vigil and then arranged a quiet service in the Port Charles General Hospital chapel.
When she had left the hospital, as Mrs. Colton Shore, on October 27, 1989, Olivia had been conflicted. In spite of her seductive schemes she had some remorse about the pregnancy. She wasn't exactly maternal. Was she really suitable to be anyone's mother? Of course, she had figured that similar arguments might have been made for her nemesis, Anna Scorpio and even the flighty Lucy Coe had briefly been a stepmother. Beyond that there was the issue that pregnancy would likely interfere with her battle with her elder half brother, Julian, for the family holdings. In spite of all of that she had realized that she didn't want to lose Colton. For that reason, she had struggled onward in her confliction.
Just over twenty-four hours after she had married Colton, her father's body had washed up on the shore of Spoon Island and was discovered by guests of a Halloween party the Port Charles Historical Society was hosting at the old Wyndemere Mansion. Olivia hated to admit that she was equally upset that the diamonds from her father's recent Manhattan Diamond Heist might be lost forever as that her father had died. Of course, she didn't share that with Colton because he had no idea that the large diamond heist he had followed on television during her hospitalization had anything to do with her family. He never considered that the added bonus of her dramatics had been a solid alibi for the very event he was following so intently on television.
Instead Olivia feigned overwhelming grief. Or perhaps she really had been mired in it. She had gotten so good at hiding her feelings and playing a part sometimes she really wasn't sure she truly had a clue what she really was feeling. Julian had arranged a large funeral in Manhattan at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Colton had gone to the funeral with her and supported her through everything. She had sobbed heavily at appropriate points but truly her heart had felt more empty than heavy.
When they had returned to Port Charles, Colton had vowed that they were their own family. A family of two, soon to be three. He had kissed her still flat abdomen and spoken to his unborn son or daughter. It was sweet but Olivia's mind had been focused much more on gaining control of her father's empire than anything Colton had said.
Colton hadn't noticed any of that. He was far too trusting, or perhaps really just too egotistical, to imagine that any woman could long for more than an opportunity to make and raise babies with him. So, Olivia had pretended to read baby books and consider paint colors for the nursery while she worked with Emil to try to find out what had happened to five million dollars worth of diamonds. Colton just smiled and told her what an amazing mother she would be soon.
It hadn't been a bad arrangement except for the small matter of Colton's mother. Charlene Simpson might have been an unwed mother twice over and with two different men but she seemed to have a moral compass and it pointed her precious son in any direction than Olivia's. Sometimes Olivia wanted to call her on her illegitimate children or wax on about the reality that it wasn't like Colton had done any better with his first wife Ariella Ashton, or his second wife, Felicia Cummings Jones. She wanted to point out that at least she hadn't been legally married before or even when she and Colton had first gotten together. Unfortunately, that would just have upset Colton so that had left Olivia to ignore her new mother in law's anything but subtle barbs and plan an Irish Thanksgiving Feast for their respective families- his mother and her eldest surviving brother.