Page 36 of Hired For the Billionaire's Secret Son

And at that moment she did. Oh, she’d been happy being a nanny, but Ollie knew that it wasn’t something she could do for the next five or ten years. While she didn’t want to be an accountant, she did want to go into business. And, on the plus side, her accountancy degree would come in handy when it came to tax season.

Bo shoved the fingers of both hands into his hair. ‘What’s wrong with what we are doing now?’

How could he even ask her that? ‘What’s wrong with it is that it’s all about me working for you, Bo! I can’t spend the next few months or years looking after your kid during the day and warming your bed at night! Do you not see that?’

‘You love being with Mat and me!’

She did, of course she did, but it wasn’t enough, not long term. Even if Bo told her he loved her, she still didn’t think being his partner and Mat’s mum would be enough. She had a good brain, and she wanted to do more and be more. She wanted to be able to test her wings and try to fly.

She couldn’t sacrifice her goals and ambitions because Bo wasn’t a fan of change and because having her around made life easy for him. She loved him...but she loved herself too.

‘I need to be more, do more, have more.’

His eyes sharpened and he slid his hands into the pockets of his shorts. ‘I suppose you are going to tell me that you want more from me, fromus. That you aren’t going to stay here without a ring on your finger and without me telling you that I love you and that I can’t live without you?’

His words were so scathing, and his eyes were so cold that Ollie felt her bottom lip wobble. She would not cry, damn it! She lifted her chin and pushed steel into her spine. She was a Cooper, and they did not buckle.

‘My contract is ending,’ she told him, trying to hold onto her temper. ‘You need a nanny. I have found someone brilliant for you. I hope you employ her because, if you don’t, you’ll regret it.

‘I am doing what I always said I would and that’s moving on,’ Ollie continued. ‘You might not like it—’

‘And you do? Like it?’ he interrupted. ‘Then why do you look like you are about to cry?’

He knew why—he knew that she loved him, that she wanted more—but she refused to utter any words she couldn’t take back. She wouldn’t admit that she’d allowed herself to become attached to Mat and him. Telling him that she loved him and not hearing the words back would emotionally eviscerate her.

She was hurting enough as it was. Before today, she’d harboured a small hope that he might love her, that he might come out and admit there might be a future for them, but his cold speech had destroyed any lingering dreams she still had.

He didn’t love her, was never going to love her, and probablycouldn’tlove her.

And damn him for noticing the tears she refused to let fall.

She wasn’t going to explain herself and it was time to walk away. She still had several days left in his company, and she needed to be professional, so saying anything else that would raise the temperature between them wasn’t an option. As it was, they were surface-of-the-sun hot.

Ollie stomped back over to the table, picked up the thin stack of papers and slapped the pile against his chest. Because he was stubborn, the CVs fluttered to the deck and Ollie was damned if she was going to pick them up. ‘Hire a nanny, Sørenson.’

Spinning round, she walked away from Bo, her tears creating pools of acid in her eyes and her throat.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BOLOOKEDATOllie’s straight, taut back and silently cursed. He’d suspected for a while now that Ollie had feelings for him that went beyond the bedroom, and that he meant more to her than a quick fling with her boss.

It was in her warm eyes, in the way she looked at him and sighed. He could see it when her face softened and in her many, sometimes subconscious, gestures of affection: a head on his shoulder here, a hand on his knee there. Despite her vow not to become attached again, she had—with Mat and with him.

She loved Mat, of that he had no doubt. She might even be in love with him...

And he was halfway to being in love with her...but it wasn’t enough. Love never was.

Honestly, it would be easy to tell her that he had feelings for her—it was the truth—and to ask her to stay. He could see them living together, being together, raising Mat and any other kids they had together. Her staying in Copenhagen with him would be an elegant solution to some of his current problems.

But...

But she wanted more than to be a wife and mother, she wanted her own business, to make her mark on the world. Deep down inside, he knew she wasn’t being unreasonable, and could admit he was being ridiculously unfair by asking her to make Mat and him her entire focus, but he felt the need to push the envelope. He wanted to test whether she’d make the sacrifices for him his parents never had. He wanted her to prove that she wasn’t anything like his mother, to show him over and over again that his heart, and Mat’s, would be in super-safe hands.

But, in doing that, wasn’t he emulating his father, placing what he needed and wanted above what his wife and son needed? He was a product of two dysfunctional people and today he was showing Ollie exactly how messed up he truly was.

But he couldn’t stop. If he did, he would have to slice himself open emotionally and allow her to take full possession of his heart, to trust that she wouldn’t hurt him.

He couldn’t do it. It was too much of a risk, and he knew that any hope and optimism—love—were being obliterated by fear, old hurts and the reopening of ancient wounds.

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