When I turned back to Clara, I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. One of my hands came out of my pockets to go up and squeeze the back of my neck. In all honesty, this treading carefully thing was not my speciality.
“Listen, Clara, I’m sorry if you feel like I’m ambushing you,” I said in a soft voice. “I know I scared you the last time we spoke, and I’m sorry about that too.”
Her eyes flickered to my chest and arm, and my mouth quirked up at the side. Little mouse was checking me out again. I cleared my throat, and she startled, looking back down at the pavement between us.
I sighed.
“I really need some help with Ozzie,” I said. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but I also know that teachers aren’t well paid. And that you shouldn’t be living where you’re living.”
Her troubled brown gaze shot to mine and she frowned.
“You know where I live?” she whispered.
I shifted uncomfortably. “I have a lot of resources, Clara.”
Her face shut down at that. She didn’t like hearing that for some reason. “Hmm,” she hummed quietly. “Resources, okay.” She took another step away from me and I huffed out a frustrated breath.
“Listen, we’ve tried everything with Ozzie. He simply won’t read with us. I really need your help. You’re the only person who can connect with him. All I want is to read with my son like any other father.”
“I’m sorry, Lord Sterling,” Clara said, shaking her head.
I’d lost her.
Jesus, this was so frustrating.
For a man who commanded everything and everyone in my work life, to have so little control over a situation and a person crucial for my son’s well-being was foreign to me. I needed to make this woman understand I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“I will pay you extremely well,” I told her. She glanced up at me again, something lighting in her eyes before she shut it down.
“I-I-I don’t think that I would be of any use to you,” she said. “I’m sure that Ozzie would start reading with you if you just…”
“He hasn’t read with me inmonths, Clara,” I was getting really frustrated now, which was counterproductive. The sharpness of my tone caused her to take another small step back, and I gritted my teeth. “I’m sorry, but this is not going to improve on its own. I need your help. I need you to be his tutor, and I need it every night that I have him at home, Sunday through to Wednesday officially. Although, in reality, most weeks I have him every day.”
She looked to the side and then back at me again.
“How much money?” she whispered.
Ah, we’re getting somewhere, I thought. Clearly shedoesn’t really care about Ozzie, but she does care aboutmoney. I swallowed down a snap of anger. So much for the beleaguered teacher just out for the welfare of their students. Well, everyone had a price, and disappointingly, Clara had hers.
“The pay is a hundred pounds an hour,” I told her. “You’d be working from three-thirty until seven every night for at least four nights a week. So that is one thousand, four hundred pounds a week; five thousand, six hundred pounds a month. Does that sound reasonable to you?”
Clara’s mouth fell open, and she gave me some rare, brief eye contact before she dropped her gaze down to my tie again. “Five thousand a month? Are you serious?”
I raised one eyebrow. “It’s five thousand, six hundred, and I’m rarely anything but serious, Clara,” I told her.
What I didn’t tell her is that if she pushed me, I’d offer her five times that amount.
“Look,” I said into the silence, “why don’t you just come with me and Ozzie tonight? We’ll talk about it. I’ll explain the possible terms of your employment while I drive you home, and then you can make a decision. I’d need to know by tomorrow. I want you to start working for me as soon as possible. Is that clear?”
She shook her head in small movements.
“I’m not getting in your car,” she whispered. “I can’t. I?—”
It was then something caught her attention behind me. The little colour in her already pale face drained completely away and, before I knew what was happening, she’d wrenched open the door that Ozzie had gone through into the back seat of my car and jumped in after him, slamming it behind her.
“What the fuck?” I muttered, looking at the door. Icould just about see through the tinted windows that she was chatting to Ozzie now, whose wide smile told me that he was thrilled that I’d managed to talk Clara around.
I turned to look down the road to see an elderly couple across the street and a skinny kid walking along with his hands shoved in his pockets. Nothing untoward or out of place. I frowned, pulled my car door open and slid into the front seat. When I turned to Clara and Ozzie, they were smiling at each other in the back.
