Page 31 of Hired For the Billionaire's Secret Son

Helen leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. ‘I watched you for a while before joining you. You seem besotted by Mat.’

Ollie’s eyes snapped up to her face and Helen just lifted her eyebrows, as if waiting for an answer. When Ollie didn’t reply, she spoke again. ‘I’ve been quite worried about you since Becca died, Olivia.’

She didn’t want to talk about her parents, and she definitely didn’t want to talk about Becca. But, judging by the stubborn look on Helen’s face, they were going to have this conversation whether she liked it or not. Since Helen had taken many late-night calls and listened to her sob before and after Bec’s death, Ollie couldn’t cut her off at the knees. ‘You’ve become attached to Mat,’ she stated in her no-nonsense way.

And to his father.Ollie wanted to disagree, but she couldn’t. ‘I’ll still be able to leave,’ she told Helen. ‘It’s not a big deal.’

She was simply looking after Mat, and she was simply fiercely attracted to Bo. It was nothing she couldn’t handle.

She hoped.

‘Good grief, Olivia, please tell me that you haven’t fallen for his father?’ Helen demanded, reading the truth in her eyes and on her face.

She couldn’t, so she stared down into her cup and closed her eyes. Helen whispered a curse, a word she wouldn’t have thought that Helen knew, and she opened one eye to see her friend frowning at her. She lifted her hands and shrugged. ‘He’s gorgeous and nice and, as soon as I saw him, the room shrunk and the air disappeared and I got shivery.’

Helen placed her hand on her forehead and groaned. ‘That bad, huh?’

‘That bad,’ Ollie confirmed. ‘Look, please don’t give me the “it’s so unprofessional”lecture. There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t told myself. It is stupid, irrational, crazy but, given the circumstances, I’d do it all over again.’

Helen nodded, pulled in some air and caught the waiter’s eye. She ordered two glasses of wine and an espresso. Ollie pointed to the sleeping Mat. ‘I can’t drink wine, I’m on duty.’

‘Who said they are for you?’ Helen demanded. ‘It’s my day off and I’m drinking your share.’

Fair enough, Ollie conceded.

‘Please tell me that you aren’t thinking of making this a long-term arrangement, Olivia?’

She wouldn’t dare. Partly because Helen would rip her head off but mostly because she knew that she couldn’t stay with Bo, working as his nanny and being his lover. The balance of power was out, and she couldn’t live like that on an ongoing basis. ‘If I stayed with him, I’d expect a commitment, some promises, all the things that Bo can’t give me,’ she told Helen.

Helen released a sigh. ‘At least you aren’t looking at this with stars in your eyes.’

As if! She was smarter than that. ‘No, I’m leaving and he knows it. I think that’s why he’s with me, because there is a finite end to our relationship. But I do need to find Bo another nanny, someone to replace me. I keep shoving CVs in front of Bo’s face but he won’t look at them.’

‘Have you explained that finding a good nanny on short notice is practically impossible?’ Helen asked.

‘I have, but I think he thinks that, because he found me at the last minute, he’ll be able to do that again.’

‘Not going to happen,’ Helen stated. She thanked the waiter, who placed the wine in front of her, and lifted her first glass to toast Ollie. ‘So what are you going to do, Olivia? Are you going back to London and are you going to talk to your parents?’

Nobody seemed to understand that there wasn’t a way out for her, that going back to the UK was what shehadto do. ‘I made my parents a promise, so it’s back to London to accountancy for five years. Maybe after that, I’ll open up an agency.’

‘But by then you’d have been out of the game for a while.’

Ollie rolled her eyes. ‘You are such a ball of optimism, Helen. Thank you.’

‘Mmm,’ Helen replied. Then she slapped her hand on the table and nodded decisively. ‘I have faith that you’ll work something out, that something will change.’

‘At least one of us does,’ Ollie told her, looking longingly at Helen’s glasses of wine.

The island of Bornholm was possibly the most beautiful place she’d ever seen, Ollie decided as Bo pulled into a lookout point on the east side of the island. Below them was a red-roofed town and she could see a harbour blasted into a rocky outcrop. The town, like so many others they’d seen, looked quaint, quirky and utterly lovely.

It was too beautiful a day to spend another minute in Bo’s luxurious SUV, so Ollie left the car and spun round, taking in the green forests and the blue water in front of her.

‘Where are we?’ she asked Bo, who was walking round the bonnet of the car to join her. Mat was fast asleep in his car seat and Ollie sighed when Bo stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

‘That is the town of Gundjem,’ Bo told her. ‘My holiday house is a ten-minute drive from here but I wanted you to see this view.’

On the drive, she’d done a quick Internet search about the island of Bornholm. It was called ‘the sunshine island’ and Ollie could see why. The light was incredible, bright and pure. ‘The island looks laid back.’

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