Page 88 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"Nobody talked me into it. My boxes were down there before dinner."

"I thought that meant it didn't cost you anything."

"I know you did."

Carrington opened the drawer. The contract was in two uneven pieces where she'd left it. Under them sat the envelope with the check in it, the flap still standing open, and under that was her sister's letter, out of its own envelope now.

She lifted the two pieces out, put them on the mat, and shut the drawer on the rest.

"I tore those up in front of you instead of hearing what you said."

"You did."

"You told me that night you'd been paid to go away before." Her hands stayed on the mat. "I've thought about that sentence every day for two weeks and I never thought about it once before."

"I know you didn't."

"I told you to move down that path and I've never said out loud that I told you to. I let you carry it like you'd picked it up yourself."

Lucy didn't help her.

"And then I wrote you a check, because I was frightened."

"Carrington."

"I'm sorry. Not for the letter being late." She made herself finish it. "For every part of it. And for the time you sat in a rented room waiting for somebody in this house to say so."

Lucy put a hand out and turned the wider piece over and read the back of it, which was blank.

"Page nine had a date on it," she said. "I asked you once what the date was now, and you told me it depended on the file."

"It doesn't depend on the file."

"Then what is it?"

"Tonight," Carrington said. "And nothing worked out past it. I've never said a thing like that to anybody without a schedule underneath it, so you'll have to take it the way it is."

Lucy squared the two pieces up against each other on the mat.

"What happens to Grace?"

Carrington waited.

"If I don't go back into town tonight, and in a year you and I have wrecked it, does that girl lose me twice?"

"She keeps you. Whatever happens between you and me," Carrington said and then made herself say the rest of it, which was the part that cost. "Walk out of this house in a year and never speak to me again, and Bettina still drives her in to see you. No Saturdays, no rate, no arrangement. Whenever the two of you want it. It isn't mine to take back, and I'm not going to be able to take it back."

"Put it in writing."

"No."

Lucy looked up.

"You get my word," she said. "You've got no reason to take it, but I hope you do and trust me."

Lucy was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice sounded far away. "That's the first thing you've done all night that you can't undo."

"Yes. I want you to stay," Carrington said.