Page 4 of Hired For the Billionaire's Secret Son

CHAPTER TWO

INBERLIN,OLLIECOOPERremoved a handful of lingerie from her dresser drawer and dumped it on her bed, thinking that, with so much practice, her packing process should be a lot more streamlined than it was.

Ollie was moving on, unexpectedly and two months sooner than she’d thought. After just four weeks of a three-month contract working as a nanny to a ten-and twelve-year-old—the sons of a dotcom millionaire and his ex-model American wife—she was no longer needed. They loved her, she was told, but an unexpected opportunity had arisen in the US, quite close to family, and they wouldn’t require as much help over there as they did here. She’d be paid for the full three months, and they were sorry.

Ollie was sorry too; she now had an empty eight weeks before she had to return to London and she had no idea how to fill them. This was her last nanny assignment, and she felt both sad and glad, anxious and relieved. She didn’t want to work as a nanny any more, but she didn’t want to leave the role entirely.

She loved kids, she really did, but it was hard not to get attached, to keep her emotional distance. Not becoming too involved was why she’d swapped from long-term contracts to short-term assignments. She couldn’t allow herself to become overly entangled in her charges’ lives.

She’d done that with Becca and it’d nearly killed her. Watching the life fade from that bright, magical, stunning little soul had pushed her to the limits of her mental endurance and, after she’d passed, she’d realised that she needed to cultivate distance, to keep a barrier, for her mental health. The easiest way to do that was to limit the time she spent with her charges. The down side of the arrangement was that, just as she started to get to know the children, to understand their quirks and foibles, she left their lives. It was sad, and sometimes there were tears, but she walked away with her heart intact.

Normally she knew exactly where she was going, and would have a dossier on her next family from Sabine’s agency, and familiarise herself with her charges. Not knowing where to go was a strange experience for her. For the first time in five years, she didn’t have a job lined up or a family to help out.

You knew this time was coming, Cooper. It might be two months earlier than you envisioned but it shouldn’t be a shock. You’ve had your five years of freedom and it’s time for you to honour the deal you made.

But, technically, not until the first day of September, which was still a little way off.

The fact was, she was running out of time, and Ollie felt as though she was facing the guillotine. A bit dramatic, but she couldn’t think of anything worse than going back to London and sitting behind a desk every day. She would rather watch paint dry.

But she’d made a deal, and her parents set a lot of store by their children keeping their word—as they should.

Ollie looked around the gorgeous apartment she’d been using for the past few weeks and sighed at the mess she’d made. There were clothes on the bed, make-up scattered on the dresser and books she needed to box. Her family had left for the States yesterday and she needed to be out of here in two days—that was when the estate agents would hand over the keys to the new owner. She needed to make a decision: should she go back to London, take a long holiday that would make a dent in her savings, or should she take another quick assignment if she could find one?

Bored with packing and feeling anxious, Ollie picked up her mobile and walked onto the balcony overlooking the mansion’s tiny garden, and beyond the tall hedge a small park. She’d spent a lot of time in that park, kicking a football around with the boys, or jogging round it before the boys woke up and the craziness of the day had begun. Ollie dialled the number of the agency she worked for and, on request, was immediately put through to Sabine, the agency’s owner.

Switching to French—Ollie spoke four languages fluently—she greeted her boss and spent the next few minutes catching up with the woman, who was not only her boss but her friend and mentor. Sabine had suggested on more than one occasion that she buy into the agency as a junior partner, as Ollie was the only other person she could imagine running her precious business. There was nothing Ollie wanted more—she could see herself in the role of matching nannies and au pairs with families, ironing out issues and expanding the business—but first she had to fulfil her promise to her parents.

She filled Sabine in on her client’s abrupt departure, to find that Sabine had already been informed. ‘They’ve already paid me, and I paid you, for the full three months, although you’ve only worked for them for four weeks.’

‘So what’s your plan for the immediate future?’ Sabine asked with her usual dose of French pragmatism.

‘I’ve got to be back in London at the end of August,’ Ollie told her. ‘I don’t know what I should do between now and then.’

‘You could take a holiday,’ Sabine suggested.

Ollie wrinkled her nose. Doing nothing for a few days would be nice but she’d soon get bored.

While she wasn’t a workaholic, being productive was important to her. She’d seen how hard her father and mother had had to work to build their accountancy practice into the behemoth it was today and, like her brothers, she’d inherited their work ethic. She didn’t like being idle and doing nothing—though sometimes ‘nothing’ was what her family thought she did.

Maybe that wasn’t fair. They loved her; they just wished she did something a little more conventional. Her mum, especially, found it exceptionally difficult to reconcile the idea of her smart,educateddaughter supervising homework, changing nappies or wiping snotty noses. No one in her family realised that she was one of the best rewarded nannies in the business and that she had a list of influential families, ranging from nobility to celebrities to sports icons, who wanted her to look after their little darlings. She had a reputation for excellence and the families who could afford her services wanted her. ‘My daughter, the nanny’ didn’t have the same cachet as ‘my daughter, the accountant’.

‘Maybe I should do another two-month stint,’ Ollie suggested to Sabine, rubbing her fingertips across her forehead.

‘You mean you’d rather find another short-term assignment than return to London early in case your family figures out, from your morbid face and droopy lips, that you would rather pull out your toenails with pliers than work as one of their accountants?’

That was it, in a nutshell.

A natural student, Ollie had won a place to study accountancy, following her parents and brothers into the field. But, two years into her degree, she’d come to realise that she’d made a mistake and that she was wholly unsuited to becoming an accountant. But she was too far in to switch courses, according to her family, and she needed to stick it out. So she’d gritted her teeth and ploughed through; luckily she hadn’t found the work overly onerous and it had made her family happy.

They’d been less happy—as in, furious—when she’d told them that she had no intention of joining the family firm and that she wanted to travel. After many arguments, they’d worked out a deal: she could travel and do her own thing for five years but then she’d have to return to London or Johannesburg and work in one of the Cooper & Co branches for five years so that they could get some benefit, and a return on, the very expensive investment they’d made in her education.

If she didn’t, then they’d all have to accept what she already suspected: that she’d wasted her education. Her parents would find that very hard to forgive.

Her degree was from the London School of Economics and, as a non-UK resident, it had cost them a bundle to send her to one of the most prestigious universities in the UK. In their eyes, she’d been playing at being a nanny for the past five years—it was time for her to settle down into a career and use her degree.

Her parents put the highest possible value on education and she and her brothers had been raised to believe that a university degree was not a right, but a privilege, and never to be taken for granted. She already felt guilty for not using her degree for the past five years and loathed the idea of wasting her time and efforts. But mostly, Ollie couldn’t stand the fact that she might’ve wasted her parent’s money.

No, she had to fulfil the terms of their deal and go back. She would white-knuckle her way through the next five years. Unfortunately, Ollie knew that, within a year of working for them, her family would also start pressurising her to get married and have babies. They wanted it all for her—a stunning career, a successful husband and for her to be a mother.

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