Page 89 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

Lucy got out of the chair. She was standing closer than she'd been all evening and she didn't answer.

"Say it again in the morning," she said. "In front of Grace."

"I will."

"Then I'll be here in the morning."

"One more thing, and I'd rather do it badly than not at all." Carrington stopped trying to keep her voice where she wanted it. "Three weeks ago, I told you I loved how you are with her."

"I remember."

"That wasn't the sentence. That was the closest I could get to it."

Lucy took hold of the chair she'd just got out of.

Carrington had the rest of it in her mouth and it wouldn't come. She had stood out on her own gravel an hour ago and said worse things than this in front of a woman on her payroll. This was three words and she couldn't get her breath underneath them.

"I love you. I said it about Grace that night because saying it about you was the part I couldn't do."

Lucy's hand came off the chair. "Say it again."

"I love you." Carrington reached over and closed her hand around Lucy's wrist.

Lucy didn't move for a second. Then she turned her wrist over inside Carrington's hand and worked her fingers in between Carrington's and held on hard enough to hurt.

The envelope was still in the drawer a foot from her hip, flap standing open the way it had stood open for weeks. She left it where it was and took Lucy up the stairs.

The landing light lay across the carpet outside Grace's door, which stood open an inch, and she went past it without slowing down. The last time, she had left this door off the latch and put her hand over Lucy's mouth and had thought at the time that she was being careful with everybody.

She pushed the door until it latched and turned both lamps on. Nothing in the house needed listening for. Nobody was coming up the path in the dark and nobody had to be gone by a quarter to six, and she had no reason left to be quiet in her own house.

Lucy had carried her coat up with her and was still holding it. Carrington took it out of her hands and draped it over the chair. She didn't do anything else for a moment. She hadn't seen Lucy in sixteen days, and she wasn't going to be hurried out of it.

The bedroom was the same: gray walls, the two lamps on the nightstands throwing warm overlapping circles across the bedspread, nothing on the dresser but a glass of water and a small tray where Carrington set her rings and hairpins every night.

She noticed that she wasn't listening. The habit was still there in her body, the slight tilt of the head, the held breath, but there was nothing to catch. No footsteps on a path, no car on the driveway, no deadline pressing against her ribs. She noticed it and then it was gone, replaced by something she didn't have a word for, something that felt like the room itself had taken a breath and let it out.

Lucy was standing by the foot of the bed, hands at her sides now that the coat was gone. She was wearing a dark green cardigan over a white button-down, the sleeves of the cardigan pushed up past her elbows the way they always were, the cuffs of the shirt underneath bunched and soft. Her hair was down, like always. A few strands caught the lamplight and went the color of warm honey against the rest of it. Carrington wanted to bury her face in it.

It’d been twenty-one days since they were together last. Twenty-one days of nothing but the memory of Lucy's weight against her and the specific way Lucy had said her name, quiet, almost inaudible, like she was testing whether it fit in her mouth.

"Lucy."

Lucy's eyes found hers. Brown eyes, steady, unhurried. She didn't move. She had a way of being still that wasn't frozen; it was deliberate, like she was choosing each second, deciding whether to fill it or leave it empty.

Carrington's hands wanted to move. She made them stay still, but Lucy's fingers were already moving, tugging the hem of her own cardigan, just holding it, just feeling the knit between her fingers like she needed something to do with them.

"Come here," Carrington said.

"You come here."

Carrington crossed the three steps between them. She was taller, several inches even with the heels off. Carrington still wore her stockings, but Lucy was barefoot. She was short and warm-toed and close enough now that Carrington could smell the citrus zest of her conditioner, faint, caught in the hair near her temples.

Lucy reached up. Her hand came up and her fingers touched the first hairpin, the one at the back, the one that held the whole updo in place. She didn't pull it.

"Can I?"

"You don't have to ask."