Page 48 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

Twice she started to say something and stopped, because Grace was asleep right there and anything worth saying would have woken her.

At the last light before the ridge road, she looked in the mirror longer than she needed to, and the woman behind her leaned on the horn.

Somewhere past the water tower Grace woke up. "Can we go there again?" she asked, most of it into Lucy's sleeve.

"Yes."

Grace was out again before the next turn. It was the only thing anybody said the whole way home. She had answered Grace before the question was finished. Lucy had been sitting two feet behind her the whole way and Carrington hadn't said a word to her.

She let them in through the courtyard door at twenty past ten. Lucy carried Grace up the stairs with the shoes hooked in two fingers of the hand under her knees, and Carrington went ahead of her and opened the bedroom door, pushed the closet door shut until it latched, and turned on the nightlight in the socket beside it.

Then she waited on the landing with a hand on the banister while Lucy got her into bed. She worked out what she was going to say, and cut it to eleven words, and then to six.

Lucy came out and pulled the door to an inch off the frame. She set Grace's shoes against the wall at the top of the stairs.

"Goodnight, Ms. Cole," she said to Carrington and walked away.

Carrington stayed where she was and listened to the courtyard door open and close. Then she followed her down.

Out along the path, the low lights were glowing and the grass had gone wet. Lucy was thirty feet ahead and she didn't turn around, though the gravel was loud enough that she had to have heard it. Carrington caught up to her and walked beside her the rest of the way. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes.

She wanted to turn Lucy around and make her stand there until one of them said something, but she kept her hands where they were, even though nobody would have seen them.

Near the end of the path, Lucy stepped off onto the grass beside the gravel. Carrington stayed on the stones in heels.

At the cottage door Lucy stopped and turned around.

"Lucy, I⁠—"

"It was true." Lucy shrugged and went inside.

Lucy shut the door, and a light went on behind the curtain in the front room. A minute later, it went off.

Carrington stayed on the gravel pathway.

18

LUCY

Lucy read the line about surgery three times.

It said the undersigned adult could approve an examination, anesthesia, and surgery, if the parent or legal guardian couldn't be reached. It had been on the counter when she came into the kitchen at twenty to seven, twenty minutes earlier than she needed to be there. She held the corner of the page down with her thumb and read the rest of it. Grace's date of birth. The pediatrician on Wells Street. Allergies, none. A policy number copied out digit by digit. All of it in Carrington's handwriting, which meant she had sat down and filled it in by hand.

She hadn't gone up to the main house Tuesday night. She hadn't gone up last night either, and Carrington hadn't come down to the cottage.

Behind her, the chef was in the pantry with the door open, running the tap.

"It needs your signature," Carrington said from the hall. "The school wants a copy too."

She had her coat over one arm and her bag on her shoulder already, and she stayed in the doorway. Lucy turned the page over and put it back down. One line was empty. Relationship to minor.

"You left one space blank," she said.

"Which?"

"That one." Lucy pointed at it and slid the form up the counter.

Carrington crossed to the island and read it upside down. She was close enough that Lucy could smell her hair, something with coconut in it, and Carrington kept both hands firmly on her bag as she leaned over the counter, keep a gulf of distance between them.