Page 21 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

They worked for the rest of the flight. Devika was very good and very fast, and she was openly pleased about both. The seat backs were high, and all Lucy had from where she sat was the top of Carrington's head, one shoulder, and a hand reaching out to take a page.

Lucy sat with a sleeping child against her arm and listened to a woman she had kissed the night before hold a conversation about remediation schedules, and said nothing at all, for ninety minutes.

The rain caught up with them an hour after takeoff, and they sat on the ground at the far end of the airfield for two more hours, waiting out the weather. It was going dark by the time the cars came.

Devika took the second car into town. The driver put the bags in, and Grace half woke and got into the third row and went out again with her forehead against the window, Lucy climbed into the middle row, and Carrington got in on the other side.

The rain on the roof was loud enough to talk under. Lucy watched the wipers for two miles.

"I tried to get a nightlight sent up to the lodge on Saturday," Carrington said. "Nothing gets out to that point in under two days. I checked three times."

"You checked three times?" Lucy asked.

"Yes," Carrington said.

"So instead, she slept holding your sleeve for an hour," Lucy said.

Carrington was still looking out the window. "There'll be two more of them at the house Monday. One goes in her bag and stays there for future trips."

Lucy sat with that for about a mile with her hands flat on her thighs, making herself leave them there. "Can I say something? You don't have to answer it."

"You may," Carrington said.

The driver was no more than eighteen inches in front of her with his eyes on the road. Lucy looked at the rearview mirror, found nobody looking back, and said it anyway.

"Two things," Lucy said. "I'm not doing this while you're paying me. And I'm not doing it where nobody's allowed to know about it."

The wipers swished faster.

"You've thought about this for a while," Carrington said.

"Yes."

Carrington didn't argue with any of it. She sat with her ankles crossed and looked out at the water traveling up the glass in a line and took her time.

"The first one is easy," Carrington said. "You'd stop being my employee."

"And the second one?" Lucy asked.

"The second one is harder," Carrington said. "Ashgrove closes in June. Until it does, I'm in every photograph attached to it." She turned her head. "And there are eleven people on that property who are paid to notice things."

"June," Lucy said.

"That's not a no," Carrington reassured.

Carrington looked at her. "Tell me what you want in the meantime and you'll have it."

The wipers kept swishing. Lucy looked at the side of Carrington’s face, at the dark patch on the shoulder of her coat where the rain had gotten it between the plane and the car, and she could not think of one thing to ask for.

"I don't know," Lucy said.

"Think about it," Carrington said. "Then tell me."

"All right," Lucy said.

The flutter started up under her ribs anyway. She'd had it on the bus with two transfers and a folder on her knees, and on the sidewalk outside those gates in February, and both times she had walked until it went away. There was nowhere to walk here. She wanted her hands on this woman, in a moving car, eighteen inches behind a man paid to keep his eyes on the road, with a month sitting in the air where a yes should have been.

Four years ago, somebody had left a check folded on a kitchen counter, and Lucy had picked it up and put it in her bag. Nobody had made her do it. Money was what people handed you instead of saying what you were to them.