Page 22 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

She looked at the rain.

"Is Grace at school on Monday?" Lucy asked. "Or does she take the day off?"

Carrington was quiet for a second. "What do you recommend?"

"School," Lucy said. "She'll want to tell Kayla about the crab and fish."

"School, then," Carrington said.

Nobody said anything else for eleven miles. Grace woke up somewhere in the drive and wanted to know if it was still today.

The gates were slow, the way they always were, and the road went up through the hedge and came around into the courtyard. And then, there it all was, the same as it was left. Three lights were on downstairs in the main house and the rest of it was dark. The kitchen wing across the courtyard from it. And at the far corner, the path down to the cottage, sixty feet of gravel with the low lights buried along the edge.

Lucy did her job. She got Grace inside and out of her wet boots, then up the stairs and into dry clothes. Grace was asleep before she finished talking about the fish. Lucy pulled the door almost closed, leaving it open barely an inch, and went back downstairs for the bags.

Carrington was still out on the gravel with her coat over her arm and the rain coming straight down on her.

"You'll be soaked," Lucy said.

"Yes," Carrington said, looking up at the sky. She bent down and picked up the second bag, which she had never once done in all the time Lucy had worked for her, and stood there holding it.

"I'd rather not wait until June," Carrington said.

They were four feet apart on the path. Lucy put her bag down.

She closed the distance, grabbed a handful of the front of Carrington's shirt, and kissed her. Carrington made a sound against her mouth and didn't move for a second, and then her hand came up and closed at the back of Lucy's neck, cold from the rain, and she kissed her back, hard, immediately. Lucy got her other hand flat on Carrington's ribs and felt her breathing change. The rain came down the back of her collar, and she took a fistful of wet shirt and pulled Carrington closer and stopped.

Then she turned her face away and broke off the kiss. She stayed where she was, her lips almost close enough to brush Carrington’s, her hand still closed on the shirt.

"Carrington," Lucy said.

"Yes?"

"June," Lucy said. "Or now, with everyone in that house knowing. Those are the only two options."

Carrington's hand stayed at the back of her neck a second longer, and then she pulled it away.

"I know," Carrington said.

Lucy let go of the shirt, picked up the bag, and pushed the wet hair off her forehead.

"Goodnight, Ms. Cole," Lucy said.

She walked down the path toward the cottage. Carrington didn’t follow her, and she didn't turn around to check. Lucy shut the door and stood in the middle of the room, still wearing her wet coat. She had left the light on over the stove on Friday morning, and it was still burning.

She sat down on the floor with her back against the door, dripping onto the boards, and counted the things in the room that were hers. Two suitcases, one still half packed since February. The clothes in the closet, which would go into the suitcases. Her books, eleven of them, twelve if she counted the fox one on Grace's nightstand in the main house. A comb from the pharmacy in town. A mug she'd bought herself at a gas station outside Cliffside. The mugs in the cupboard had come with the house.

It would take her under an hour to pack up and disappear.

11

CARRINGTON

Nadia had been with her six years, long enough to let herself into any room in the house. But she still knocked at the study door and waited to be told to come in. This morning she waited with the call sheet held flat against her chest, both arms crossed over it, instead of at her side.

"Come in," Carrington said.

Nadia set the pages face up on the corner of the desk and didn't sit down. Three coffee cups stood in a row on the windowsill—two gone cold with the cream skinned over, a third only half drunk. Nadia looked at all three of them and said nothing about any of them.