Page 14 of Hired For the Billionaire's Secret Son

She might be leaving the industry but she could leave with her head held high, knowing that she’d done the best she could. She shuffled down the wall and stepped away from Bo. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr Sørenson...’

‘Look, Ollie, we don’t need to be so formal.’

She gave him a tight smile. ‘I really think we do. It might...’ she hesitated, looking for the right word ‘...help.’

Ollie walked away from him, knowing that she did need to keep the formalities, and a considerable amount of personal space, between her and her employer. She didn’t allow herself to have affairs with her employers and Bo would be no different.

Neither would she get attached. She’d look after Mat for two months and move on. Not staying still, not allowing roots to find any soil, was what she did best.

Two nights later, Bo walked Mat up and down the living room, jiggling his sobbing son in his arms. It was Ollie’s night off, he was on Mat duty and he couldn’t get his son to stop crying. He’d changed his nappy, given him a bottle and rocked him incessantly but Mat had yet to stop howling. Bo thought that there was a good possibility that he would cave and start crying soon too. It was three-forty in the morning and he’d had about an hour’s sleep. He had a client meeting in the morning to talk over the changes he’d made to his racing yacht and, thanks to Mat falling into his life, he hadn’t done enough preparation. It was going to be a disaster but, right now, Bo was too tired to care.

He’d heard that having a kid was hard, but this was beyond ridiculous. How did parents do this day in and day out without going off their heads? He missed his life, he missed his sleep, he missed work and he missed making decisions without having to think about how they affected anyone else.

Bo looked down into his little boy’s miserable face and guilt rushed through him, as cold as a melting glacier. His parents had resented him; they’d never admitted it but, even with the help of au pairs and nannies, he’d seriously cramped their style. He’d felt as if he was a burden, a hanger-on, standing outside the circle of their lives.

He’d never make his child feel anything but loved. And if that meant sacrificing some sleep, not being at his best at a client meeting or delegating some responsibility at work, that was what he’d do. He could be a dad. Hewasa dad. This was his life now.

His life had flipped over and inside out, but becoming a single father was as far as he would go. Despite coming close to kissing Ollie the other day, nothing would, or could, happen between them. She wasn’t going to morph from being a nanny to being Mat’s mummy: she was a short-term solution, not a long-term fixture. He’d paid for her help but he couldn’t allow any woman into his life on a long-term basis; he couldn’t trust anyone with that much of himself. He couldn’t allow his feelings to take over, to crack open his hard carapace.

He’d wanted to be loved once and, when that love had never come, he’d vowed he’d never seek it again. Rejection hurt, and not being loved enough, or at all, would rip his soul apart. He’d avoid that, thank you very much.

‘Please stop crying, Mat,’ Bo whispered, his lips on Mat’s blond hair. ‘I beg of you, just please stop.’

Bo moved Mat up onto his shoulder and held him under his butt, his big hand almost covering Mat’s back, which he gently patted. Mat snuffled, yawned and Bo held his breath. Was this it? Was he finally going to go to sleep? He’d do anything...

‘Waah...!’

Bo walked over to the nearest wall and banged his forehead against it.

‘No luck, huh?’

Bo turned to see Ollie standing in the doorway to the hall, her light cotton dressing-gown open over a vest top and a small pair of sleeping shorts. She was barefoot and he caught the shimmer of the fine silver ankle chain she wore around her left ankle. Her hair was all over the place and there was a pillow crease on her left cheek.

‘Sorry, I thought this house was big enough that his crying wouldn’t wake you up,’ Bo said as she walked across the room to where he stood. Bo caught a whiff of citrus, wondered whether it was her soap or shampoo and told himself to concentrate.

Ollie placed the back of her hand on Bo’s forehead and shook her head. ‘He doesn’t have a temperature,’ she observed, her hand on Mat’s back. ‘I don’t think he’s sick.’

‘Then why won’t he stop crying?’ Bo demanded, feeling as though he was hanging onto the last strand of a very frayed rope.

‘He’s teething,’ Ollie told him. She slipped her finger into Mat’s mouth and, surprisingly, Mat let her. When she removed it, she nodded. ‘Yep, his gum is swollen.’

Right.Teething was the last thing he would’ve checked for.

‘We can give him a spoonful of a mild, perfectly harmless painkiller, if you feel comfortable doing that,’ Ollie suggested.

‘You bought him medicine?’ Bo asked, following Ollie as she walked back to Mat’s nursery.

In the shadows of the dark nursery, he saw the flash of white teeth and the gleam in her eye. ‘I bought himeverything. Didn’t you see how much I spent?’ Ollie asked as they moved further into the room.

He had and he didn’t much care. He had money and, right now, if it meant Mat getting some sleep, and him getting some too, he’d pay anything he needed to. Ollie walked into the bathroom attached to Mat’s room and Bo heard the cabinet opening and closing. She returned with a tiny syringe filled with liquid and placed it in Mat’s mouth, depressing the plunger.

‘It should work fairly quickly,’ Ollie told him. Bo felt Mat’s body getting heavier, and he’d sunk a little more into him. Dared he hope?

When Ollie placed her small, warm hand on his bare forearm, he looked down into her lovely, sympathetic face. ‘I didn’t know what to do. What if you weren’t here?’

‘You would’ve figured it out. You would’ve done an Internet check, called a doctor or taken him to an all-night clinic. You would’ve made a plan,’ Ollie reassured him. ‘You’ve got this, Bo. I have faith in you.’

I have faith in you...

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