Page 34 of Billionaire and Nanny Secret

“Not other ways that I wanted.”

She ran her fingers through her hair and stared at me as if there was something that she wanted to say but held back, for whatever reason. That was probably for the best anyways.

“Why are you doing this, Ezra?” she asked me, chewing into that bottom lip.

“Because this thing happening between us, can’t happen. I’ve told you that, but it seems like it’ll never be fully platonic if you work for me.”

“That’s not true,” she argued. “I could be platonic, I could do platonic. Ezra, please.”

“It’s out of my hands, now,” I told her. “I have already made a decision, and I can’t change it now.”

Quinn looked absolutely heartbroken at everything that was going on. There were now tears going down her cheeks. “Fine,” she said, in acceptance, realizing that there wasn’t going to be a way out of this. I was sticking my ground, and she was being forced to just accept that. “You don’t have to give me so much money.”

“Consider it a parting gift for your mother.”

She nodded. “Sure, thank you.”

“You’re going to watch Paige today,” I told her, just before disappearing upstairs. How much longer could I look at her face and hate myself for the words that I was saying? I just had to get away from her.

I found Klaus playing with my daughter.

“Klaus,” I grabbed his attention. He looked at me and shook his head. “I think that I can go for that drink.”

He stared at me before nodding. “Then let’s get you a drink.”

14

Quinn

Iwas getting kicked out. Maybe that shouldn’t have been such a surprise to me, but it was. I had never expected this was going to happen when I came back. I thought everything would be all rainbows and sunshine, and now I was wondering if I was the one in the wrong for thinking that.

After all, I had to look at who I was dealing with. Ezra was far from a selfless man unless it was about his daughter. Kayley had told me that he’d been cold and heartless since the day that his wife had died, but how could someone be so cold when he treated his daughter the way that he did, when he treated me the way that he did?

The way that he ‘had treated me’ was the new terminology. I couldn’t believe that he was actually firing me, not after how close Paige and I had become. Didn’t he realize that she was going to be heartbroken when he told her? And what reason was he going to give her? That his relationship with her nanny was too intimate, and he couldn’t handle it anymore?

Because I may have gotten a little bit carried away and kissed him the day that I found out my mother was dying. Or because he was actually starting to live a little since the death of his wife. Because he started to feel something for someone else. And instead of embracing it, he was pushing it away, pushing me away.

And who was the one that got burned, in the end? Me. It was always me.

I’d really thought that the two of us had bonded, that I was more to him than just a nanny. But then again, perhaps that was the problem to begin with? His feelings for me were ones he wanted to escape from, and this was his way of doing that.

I should have said as much when he told me, yet I hadn’t. It was like I was still afraid of him, but hadn’t he fired me anyways? Wasn’t it time for me to be able to tell my feelings too and not just listen to his one side, his biased opinion? I had a voice, too, and maybe it was about time for Ezra to hear it.

He was firing me because he loved me or felt strongly for me, at the least. And Ezra had to be stubborn, just like he always was. I was different from the other nannies, I made him feel different. And now I was going to be punished because of it. How was any of that fair?

And then he’d had the audacity to make himself out to be the good guy and tell me that he’d handled everything without asking me for my opinion. Ezra had justdone, and that was the hardest part about any of this. How long had he been thinking about this and just hadn’t told me? Since when had Ezra known that he was going to fire me? When I left to take care of my mother? Before then? After? And he’d pretended as if everything was okay when he picked me up, just to spring this on me my first day back.

I despised him.

And the worst part about all of this was that I hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell him that I was pregnant with his child, that I was carrying his baby. I’d thought that everything was going to work out, that it would all be okay. To be honest, I was going to keep this baby whether that was what he wanted or not.

Why had I been so idiotic to get this stupid little picture in my head about what our future could look like? I’d thought that perhaps we could be a big family, a dysfunctional one, sure, but what was a good family without a little bit of dysfunction? Ezra would accept the child and love him or her just as much as he loved Paige. He would bond with them and love them, but I couldn’t have been farther off the mark.

He didn’t want anything to do with me, which meant he wouldn’t want anything to do with our little baby. So there was very little point in even telling him, just so that he could reject me, or shut me down or, worse, tell me that it wasn’t his child and I must have been whoring around. Unfortunately, I knew that Ezra was capable of all of those reactions, and I didn’t want to be on the receiving end.

I wasn’t going to force a child on any man. If he didn’t want the trouble, then as far as I was concerned, that was the end of the story. I wasn’t going to throw some huge tantrum and end up on one of those talk shows where they announced that he was in fact the father.

No kid deserved that, especially not mine. They deserved to be raised in an atmosphere with parents that loved them, not one that hated them. I knew, without a doubt that I could provide that kind of home for my child, but I didn’t think that Ezra could do the same, not without thinking of the child as an accident.

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