Page 10 of Hired For the Billionaire's Secret Son

‘We need supplies, and we need them fast.’

He gestured to a closed laptop sitting on the dining table. ‘You can use that. It runs everything in the house. You can order whatever you need and they’ll deliver.’

Ollie shook her head. ‘I think I need to go myself. I saw a speciality baby shop not far from here. It will have everything I need.’ She saw the confusion in his eyes and knew that he’d never noticed the impressive-looking baby shop just a few blocks away. Why should he? Babies hadn’t been his thing up until the day before yesterday.

The man was going to have a big wake-up call.

‘If you can stay here and look after Mat, I’ll drive down to the store and get everything I need. Also, walking around the store will jolt my memory—there will be things we’ll need that I’ve forgotten. It’s been a while since I looked after a baby.’

Bo ran a hand through his hair in frustration. ‘I’ve just got him and you want to leave me alone with him?’ he demanded, fear jumping into his eyes.

‘He’s probably going to sleep for a couple of hours and I should be back by then,’ Ollie told him.

Bo shook his head, dug into his back pocket and pulled out a slim-line wallet. He flipped it open, removed a black credit card, handed it over and told her the pin. ‘Buy whatever you need but be quick about it. I’ll go to work when you get back.’

Seriously? Again, no.

Ollie felt another spurt of annoyance but it died when she saw the confusion and fear in his eyes. He was very out of his depth and floundering. He needed to feel in control and he could do that at work, the place where everything made complete sense and there were few surprises. But running off would just delay the inevitable and, the sooner he and Matheo settled into their new reality, the better they’d all be.

‘I’m going to have to order a load of stuff to be delivered here. When I get back, I will need help assembling it—Mat’s cot, putting his feeding chair together and maybe even assembling his changing station. I cannot do all of that and look after a baby. And I thought you wanted to learn how to look after him?’

‘I do, but—’

‘But?’

He glanced away. ‘But I also need to work.’

The quicker he learned that he had to fit into Matheo’s timetable, and not the demands of the company, the easier this process would be. At least until they established some routine and found some long-term help.

‘I think you should consider putting work onto the back burner for the next little while—or, if you must work, do it when Mat goes down for the night. He needs to get used to you and to start recognising you as his primary care-giver, the one stable person in his life. He’s not going to be able to do that if you keep flitting off to work.’

Bo opened his mouth to argue and Ollie lifted her eyebrows, waiting for his response. He was looking for an out clause, a way to make this work for him, but in the end couldn’t come up with one. This was his new reality and it was smacking him in the face.

Ollie picked up the list and tucked it in the back pocket of her trousers with his credit card. ‘I need a car.’

Bo nodded to a lovely pottery bowl on the dining table, in swirls of rich blues and green, within which lay a keyless fob. ‘I suppose you’ll have to take my car. Can you drive a manual? Are you used to power? Maybe I should go grab what’s needed and you should stay here.’

He was grabbing at the last straw, still trying to run, but she wouldn’t let him. She shook her head. ‘Bo, I have driven a variety of expensive cars and, yes, I can drive a manual car. What is it?’

‘It’s a two-seater Mercedes GLS,’ Bo told her. Right, it was only a rare, pricey car—she’d better not ding it. It was also hugely impractical for a man with a baby.

‘Where are you going to put a baby seat in that?’ Ollie asked him. ‘On the roof? Maybe, while I’m gone, you could consider doing some car shopping, unless you never intend to take Mat anywhere.’

Ollie scooped up the fob and walked out of the kitchen and down the passage. Matheo hadn’t moved from his position within the pillows. She returned to the kitchen where Bo still stood, looking a little shell-shocked. She placed her hand on his muscled, warm forearm and looked up into his hunky face. ‘Bo, you need to keep checking on Mat—like, every ten minutes. You do not want him falling off the bed.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll take my laptop into the bedroom and work from there.’

Right, he hadn’t got the message. He rolled his eyes at her disbelief. ‘I was going to research which cars are the safest children-carriers and then I was going to call my car guy.’

Ah. Right.She’d made an assumption and it was way off the mark. It wouldn’t pay to underestimate Bo Sørenson. He might not say a lot but he heard a great deal.

It was past nine when Bo finally sat down with a glass of wine. He slumped down onto his white couch and propped his bare feet up onto the coffee table. He was categorically exhausted. His first Mat-centric day had wiped him out. For a guy who regularly ran half-marathons, who spent hours in the gym and who was known for being able to work sixteen-hour days without breaking a sweat, he could not believe that a twenty-pound child had made him want to sleep for a week.

And it wasn’t as if he’d had to do that much. A few minutes after Ollie had swung back into his driveway and parked his precious car, a delivery van had pulled up and started unloading what looked to be half a house. The men were dressed in smart overalls bearing the logo of the shop where she’d spent the equivalent of a small country’s health budget—he’d got a notification from the bank when she’d swiped his card, convinced the comma was in the wrong place. The men hauled the furniture out of the van and carried it into the room they’d designated should be Mat’s. They’d then hauled out screwdrivers and Allen keys and had swiftly built the furniture she’d bought, including a wooden feeding chair and a cabinet for the pile of clothes she’d purchased.

A cot with sides that dropped down was pushed into the corner of the room and a colourful mobile was attached to the side. Toiletries were placed in theen suitebathroom and Ollie, who’d turned into a whirling dervish of activity, tossed his new clothes into the washer/dryer. She had also purchased a range of organic baby food, telling him that it would do for now, but she’d teach him how to make Mat’s food herself.

He didn’t even cook for himself and she expected him to cook for his son?

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