Page 45 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

CARRINGTON

The restaurant on the harbor didn't take reservations. A girl of about sixteen stood inside the door with a clipboard, wrote COLE at the bottom of a list of eleven names, and said forty minutes.

"Forty," Carrington said.

"Maybe thirty-five." The girl put the pen behind her ear. "We call them out the door. You'll hear it."

Outside, the sidewalk ran along the top of the seawall. A dozen boats knocked against their fenders in the swell, and the street smelled like diesel and fried batter. Somebody had a radio on in a wheelhouse. Two women in waders hosed down a deck at the end of the pier and argued about something the whole time they worked.

Grace leaned over the rail.

"Not past the sign," Lucy said, and Grace stopped.

Carrington was the only person on that sidewalk in a dress. Grace came back along the rail and planted herself in front of her.

"You're wearing red," Grace said.

"I am."

"But you don't wear red."

"I do tonight."

Grace looked at her a second longer, then came and stood beside her with their arms almost touching. She had started standing that close to her back in February, and Carrington had never once mentioned it, in case mentioning it made her stop.

The night's menu was chalked up in yellow beside the door, and Grace worked her way down it out loud with her chin up and her hands behind her back.

"Dungeness," Grace said. "Razor clams. Halibut cheeks. Steelhead. Chowder, cup or bowl." She stopped. "Gee-oh-duck."

"It’s gooey-duck," Lucy said.

"That's not how it's spelled."

"Nobody down here cares."

"What is it?"

"A clam about the size of your arm."

Grace looked at her. "No."

"Ask them to bring one out and you’ll see."

Then Grace read the board again from the top, faster, to prove she could. Six weeks ago, she had been reading with a finger under the words and stopping at anything longer than five letters. Now she was reading a seafood menu out loud on a windy sidewalk because she wanted to.

Lucy stood with Grace's coat folded over one arm, the sleeves of her cardigan shoved up, and she was watching the two women with the hose. One of them hit the other one in the leg with it. They had a short argument about that, and Lucy laughed. Grace turned around to see why.

"There's a booth up front by the window," Lucy said. "If she's done before you are, I'll take her over and you won't have to stop."

Carrington wanted to tell her they didn't need the booth. She opened her mouth to say it. Then a car came up the street, parked badly, and Ines Duarte got out of it.

Ines ran Duarte Marine Works out of a yard four hundred feet down the pier, and she had driven every piling on this side of the harbor since 1978. She was seventy and would not sit down in an office. She had told Carrington so twice on the phone and had been perfectly nice about it both times, and then she had picked the night and the restaurant herself.

Her daughter walked around the front of the car holding the hand of a girl of about nine.

"My Sofia," Ines said. "And that's Pilar. She says she isn't hungry. We'll see."

Devika arrived on foot from the other direction with Agatha Whitlock, who had been Carrington's outside counsel for nine years and had brought her folio. Then five women were shaking hands on four feet of sidewalk with nobody sure who initiated. Lucy had crouched down and was getting Grace's arm into her coat sleeve. Devika made it as far as introducing Carrington before the girl with the clipboard leaned out and called for Cole, party of eight.