Page 25 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"This is what Clara got," Lucy said. "Instead of having you."

Carrington's chest went cold before she'd had time to choose a response to it. "That's not what this is."

"I'm not saying it to hurt you." Lucy lowered the pages to her side. "I'm telling you what this is."

"I spent two nights on this," Carrington said. "I skipped a dinner I've gone to nine years in a row to finish it."

"I know what it cost you," Lucy said.

"Then tell me what's wrong with it," Carrington said. "Clause by clause. You're more than capable of it."

"Nothing's wrong with it." Lucy's voice didn't rise. "It's the best thing anyone's ever handed me. That's the whole problem."

"Then there's no problem, Ms. Harper," Carrington said.

Lucy heard the name and let it go by without comment. Her jaw worked once and stopped. She turned the addendum around so the last page faced the desk.

"You put her fourth," Lucy said.

"I put her where the risk was lowest," Carrington said. "She's seven. She only just started sleeping through the night again after losing her mother. If she hears this too soon, she'll tell Kayla on a Tuesday on the swings, and there won't be any taking it back for her."

"That's a good answer," Lucy said.

"It's the correct one," Carrington said.

"It's a good answer." Lucy set the addendum down on top of the rest. "She's still fourth, after two lawyers and your assistant, like she's one more thing on the list."

"Every line on that page is there to protect her," Carrington said. "That's the only reason any of it exists."

"I believe you." Lucy pressed both hands flat on the desk, on either side of the pages, and left them there. "Who's seen this?"

"No one," Carrington said.

"Not even Diane?" Lucy said.

"No," Carrington said.

"Not Devika? Not Nadia?" Lucy said. A beat. "Nobody?"

"Nobody," Carrington said.

"Then it's still just us," Lucy said. "Same as it was in the car."

"Until June," Carrington said.

"So nothing's changed," Lucy said. "There's just paperwork attached to it now."

That did what two nights of work hadn't. It made her angry, all at once, and she didn't try to talk herself down from it.

"Do you understand what I have put on paper?" Carrington heard her voice rise. "There is a document on this desk with your name and mine in the same clause. That has never existed before—not once, about anything, in my entire life. I have written, in language a lawyer will read, that I am sleeping with a woman on my property. I put it in your hands. You could walk out of this room tonight and mail it to the Tribune, and there isn't a clause in it that protects me from that."

"I'd never do that," Lucy said.

"I know," Carrington said. "That was never the point of it."

Lucy didn't answer that.

"I asked you what you wanted, and you told me you didn't know. I gave you three days. You haven't been up here once in that time. I am not going to be told, in my own study, that I got this wrong, by the one person who wouldn't tell me what right would have looked like."