Page 94 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"Partially, it’s the file. Melinda still has an open casefile and a signed note from you saying you lied about what I am to you. What happens when I show up back on the payroll three weeks later?" Lucy shook her head. "But you're right, that's not all of it. I don’t want to take money from you. Or the trust.”

"You took it the whole time you worked here."

"That was before. I took it when I was the nanny. But if I come back, I wouldn’t just be the nanny anymore, and you can’t have me both as a nanny and as a personal relationship. Last time you tried to have both, we had to dance around the rules and I had to stay hidden." Lucy heard her own voice go up and brought it back down. "I'm not doing that to Grace and I'm not doing it to myself. I'd rather be broke in a rented room and know what I am in this house."

Carrington didn't answer. The silence went on long enough that Lucy started counting her heartbeats.

"Then let me call Patricia Voss," Carrington said.

"There it is."

"She's had my name on her paperwork for years and she'd like to keep it there. One call from me and you'd have three families to nanny for by Wednesday."

"And every one of them would take me because Carrington Cole called about me." Lucy pulled the phone out of her coat pocket and put it on the marble between them. "You wrote me a reference letter with the real reason you dismissed me. I'll use that to get another job, not a courtesy call."

"I could make it easier."

"I know you could. That's the trouble with you."

"Where are you sleeping tonight?"

"That isn't yours to figure out or worry about."

"It's a question," Carrington said. "I'm allowed to ask."

"The room in town is paid through the end of the month." Lucy picked her cup back up and found the coffee had since gone cold. "After that, I'll know more than I know now, and you'll hear it from me when I do. If I'm short on funds, I'll tell you. That's more than I ever told Elena, so don't push me on it this morning."

Carrington looked at the phone on the marble for a second. Then she picked her bag up off the chair. "It’s nine o'clock," she said. "I'll be back at six."

"Go to work."

Carrington got as far as the hall and turned back with her hand on the frame. "Deborah's coming Sunday. Grace asked her. I didn't."

"Good."

Lucy waited until the gates had swung shut again. Then she called Ashworth Placements and got Patricia Voss's assistant, and then Voss.

"Lucy Harper,” Patricia said. “I heard what happened at the last house."

"Then you know most of it," Lucy said. "I want to come off the live-in list. Day placements only, hourly, and nothing outside Phoenix Ridge."

Voss paused for a second. "You understand what that’ll do to your availability, right?"

"No, what?"

"It cuts your options to about a third of what you had before, and there would be nothing at all until the schools break." Papers rustled. "You were the top of my book, Lucy. I could have you in a live-in position by the end of the month at your old rate."

"Take me off it, Patricia."

Voss sighed deeply, and then Lucy heard her typing. "Day list. Phoenix Ridge only. I'll call you when there's anything. Don’t expect to hear from me until June."

Lucy laid the phone screen down on the counter. Her hands had started shaking somewhere in the middle of that call, and she stood in the empty kitchen and waited until they stopped.

Saturday was gray, with the fog low on the water and the gulls loud over the courtyard. Grace was up on the counter with her heels knocking the cupboard door before the pan was hot, which was where she sat to help. She had the carton open and four eggs out in a row.

"You do the first one," Lucy said. "What's the rule?"

"If you're not making a mess, you're not trying." Grace said it to the eggs.