Page 84 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

Grace's lamp faintly glowed behind the curtain on the courtyard side, and the kitchen was still lit underneath it.

Bettina leaned across and pushed the passenger door open from the inside. The light came on on the roof.

Lucy put her hand on the top of the door and hooked her fingers over the frame. The rabbit's ears were sticking up out of her pocket. Then she turned around in the gravel and looked back up at the house instead of getting in. She stayed like that, with the door standing open and the little light on over her head. Bettina left the engine running and said nothing to her about it.

29

CARRINGTON

The car should have left by now.

Carrington stood in front of the sink with both hands on the edge of it and listened to the car running but not leaving. Bettina took the driveway slowly, the same as she did with Grace in the back, so the sound ought to have thinned out toward the gate and stopped. But it didn’t. It stayed exactly where it was for two minutes.

She tipped the wine out and put the empty glass down on the marble.

Four minutes ago, she had turned the water on so she wouldn't have to hear Lucy walking away. That had been the plan, as far as she had one. Let the woman go. Go up at eleven, put the light out, and be decent about it in the morning.

She could have gone into the study and watched from the north window instead. That was what she had done from the landing the night before the caseworker came, watching the cottage light behind the curtain until she gave up and went to bed. She shut the water off and went down the hall instead.

The courtyard was cold. The low lights were on along the border of the path, and the outside light came on over the door with them. The whole way from the door to the car was lit. She went anyway.

Lucy was at the open passenger door with her hand hooked over the top of the frame and the dome light on above her head. She turned around while Carrington was still on the stones. Her face didn't change and she didn't take her hand off the door.

Carrington had come out with nothing in her hands and nothing worked out to say. She had practiced the apology to Deborah the whole way down the coast, out loud, in the car, and Deborah had heard the rehearsal in her voice by the fourth word and said so. The cold seeped into her hands before she was off the stones. Now she had thirty feet of gravel in front of her and she hadn't put one sentence together. She wanted to be back inside with the water running, but she kept walking.

"Bettina," Carrington said.

Bettina rolled down the window.

"You're not being let go. Not for anything that happened tonight, and not later on when it's quieter and easier to do."

"All right," Bettina said.

"I'd like you to hear the rest of it. Don't drive off."

Bettina reached down and turned the engine off, silence surrounding them.

"It's a long way back into town for her," Lucy said, "and she's out here again at seven."

"She'll hear this first."

"I said goodbye to you five minutes ago."

"You did."

Lucy's hand stayed where it was on the door. She had one foot turned toward the car and the other one flat, and she was waiting Carrington out the same as she did with Grace. She wasn't going to help.

She could say it to Lucy on her own. Lucy would hear it and believe her. It would be true, and private, and hers to take back if she got scared.

Bettina was a step away with the window down.

"Bettina." Carrington put her eyes on Bettina and kept them off Lucy. "Ms. Harper didn't leave this house because she stopped being good at the job, and she wasn't let go for anything she did wrong. A caseworker sat at my island and asked her whether what was between the two of us was personal, and she said yes. I'd been asked the same question just before, and I said no. I dismissed her that afternoon because she wouldn't take it back. That's all of it. If any other version of it has been said in this house, I'd like it corrected."

Bettina kept both hands on the wheel. "Nobody's said anything," she said.

"Then nobody has to be corrected."

"You could have told me that indoors, Ms. Cole."