Page 24 of Hired For the Billionaire's Secret Son

‘No,’ Bo told her.

‘Good nannies are hard to come by, Bo, and they often secure their next appointments months in advance.’

‘I got you at the last minute,’ Bo pointed out.

Yes, but she wasn’t staying in the game. ‘As I told you, you are my last nannying job,’ she told him.

He pulled away to look at her, his expression quizzical. ‘Have we been that much of a trial that you are chucking it all in?’ he asked, and Ollie wasn’t sure whether he was being serious or not.

‘No, of course not. My last assignment in Berlin was supposed to be my last one, but then Sabine asked whether I’d be interested in spending the summer in Copenhagen. The city, and the lure of a little more cash, was too difficult to resist.’

Bo’s eyebrows shot up. ‘A little more cash? Damn, woman, your fees are extortionate!’

She shrugged, then grinned. ‘But I am amazing,’ she retorted.

He slung an arm around her shoulders. ‘You are,’ he admitted. ‘You are brilliant with Mat. But why are you giving it up?’

Needing to put some physical as well as emotional distance between them, Ollie threw back the covers and walked over to the window, sitting down in the window seat. She lifted her feet onto the cushion, bent her knees and rested her coffee cup on one of them. She couldn’t think when she was so close to Bo. He turned her brain to soup.

‘I’m going back because I promised my parents I would join their company five years after I graduated from university. I am supposed to walk into my new office and start my new career at the beginning of September.’

Bo walked over to where she was and sat down opposite her in the U-shaped window. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, pushing his hand through his wavy hair. It needed a cut, Ollie noticed, but the longer length made him look young, soft. ‘What are you supposed to start work as?’

‘An accountant.’

‘Right, I remember that you have a degree in accountancy,’ Bo commented. ‘From which university?’

Oh, just a little one called...‘The London School of Economics.’

He released a sound that was part-laughter, part-snort. ‘Of course you did.’ He leaned back and placed his ankle on his knee, amused. ‘So I take it your parents were less than happy when you decided to become a nanny?’

‘If by “less than happy” you mean they went ballistic. They told me that they didn’t fund my studies at one of the most prestigious universities in the world—at a huge cost to them, as I still wasn’t a UK resident at that time—for me to waste it wiping runny noses and ferrying kids around.’

Bo winced.

‘After much screaming and yelling, and me digging my heels in, we negotiated a five-year deal. I could be a nanny for that period but I had to work for the company for five years so that they could realise some return on the investment they made in my education.’

‘Mmm.’ There was a long pause before he spoke again. ‘If you didn’t have to return home, would you stay on as a nanny?’

She couldn’t with him, not now they’d made love. She shook her head. ‘No, I’d buy into Sabine’s nanny agency. She’s offered me a junior partnership and I’d love to do that.’

‘But you can’t take the opportunity because your parents are holding you to this deal you made?’ Bo asked. ‘Have you told them about her offer?’

She hadn’t because it wouldn’t make a difference. They wanted her in London, working for them. That was what had been decided years ago and Coopers didn’t change their minds.

And there was a back story that Bo didn’t understand. ‘My dad didn’t get the opportunity to go to university; it simply wasn’t possible,’ Ollie explained. ‘To him, education is an absolute privilege, not something that should be taken for granted. The fact that I am not using the education they paid for is a slap in the face. They love me, but they don’t understand how I can love this more. Looking after children does not have the same cachet as being an accountant. It’s a blue-collar job and, working in this field when I have a superlative degree offends them.

‘And I feel guilty because my degree cost them so much money, and I haven’t used it, nor have I followed the path they expected me to. I feel like I need to pay them back.’

Bo stared out onto the harbour, his brow furrowed in thought. ‘I can understand that, to an extent, but you are also allowed to change your mind—to do something you love doing.’

It wasn’t that easy. She wished it was.

‘Can you not talk to your parents again, have another conversation?’ Bo asked. ‘Can you not find another solution?’

The issues went so much deeper than the cost of her tuition. It was difficult for people who’d been raised outside of South Africa to understand all the discriminations and humiliations of the apartheid system. As a biracial woman born after the country had become a democracy, Ollie didn’t fully understand all the nuances either. How could she? She hadn’t lived through the trauma of institutionalised racism, ofapartheid, as her mother and her mother’s family had for generations.

Her mum had been part of the first wave of black students who’d joined formerly white-only universities in the eighties when those institutions, reading the signs of change in the country, had opened the doors to start the mammoth task of educational equality—yet to be completed. In her parents’ eyes, education was something that could never be taken from you. Ollie suspected that they thought she’d taken her opportunities for granted—opportunities they’d fought so hard for—and that she wasn’t appreciative of the sacrifices they and her grandparents had made for the generations that had followed—there’d been frequent stints in jail and near-constant harassment.

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