A Passionate Proposition

‘Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.’ She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows, the only movement in an otherwise poker face. ‘Are you prepared to risk it? The money, the publicity…the implication that your guar

dianship has been negligent? Or are you willing to settle quietly out of court for an undisclosed sum? Tell me, what’s your best offer, Counsellor?’

For a moment she feared he was going to explode, but then the background music paused before the start of Kate’s second ‘Impromptu’ and Scott seemed to use the brief silence to rein himself in and let his astute brain make a lightning reappraisal.

His capitulation, when it came, was calculated and unequivocal.

He folded his arms and raised her another pair of brows.

‘OK. Here’s the deal—a one-time, non-negotiable, yes-or-no offer: forget suing and I’ll use all my personal influence and financial and legal muscle on your behalf to make sure that you emerge from all this with exactly the same reputation, status, job and prospects that you had going in—’

‘You think you can do that?’

‘Let me finish. If I succeed, you get no cash—apart from the extremely generous rate I’m prepared to pay you for privately tutoring Petra while she’s under my roof. This will not only give out the signal that you have my full support and confidence as a teacher, but also help Petra do something about the appalling grades her mother tells me she’s been getting. Lorna thinks she needs more individual attention—of the kind that I doubt she’ll get in her regular classes at the college—and, Lorna having once been an excellent teacher herself, I’m prepared to take her word for it.’

Anya’s head was whirling. ‘Your—Petra’s mother was a teacher?’

‘Oh, haven’t I mentioned it?’ he said smoothly. ‘Her career came to a rather abrupt end when she admitted she’d been having an affair with a senior student who was doing a scholarship year at the private boys’ school where she taught. She was allowed to resign rather than being fired, in order to hush it up…’

Anya felt as if she had swallowed a golf ball. ‘Are you saying—when you and she…that she was your teacher?’

‘Maths with Statistics. The lovemaking was strictly extracurricular. I got ninety-seven per cent in my final exam—to the relief of the school—and she got to have the baby she’d been wanting—which the school never found out about—so I guess you could say it was a mutually beneficial relationship.

‘With a precedent like that you can see why I might have overreacted to the circumstances in which I found you and Sean at the party. Women teachers do sometimes overstep the moral boundaries, Anya.’

‘I—yes, I suppose so…’ she faltered, knowing full well that he had blindsided her with his startling revelation in order to soften her up for the kill, and sure enough he moved ruthlessly in.

‘So, what’s your answer? Do we have a deal?’

‘You only mention what happens if you succeed.’ She-struggled to rise above the turmoil of her emotions. ‘What if you fail?’

‘If you don’t come out of this smelling like a rose, then you can name your own figure.’ Her eyes widened at the rashness of his words but he arrogantly disabused her. ‘But it’s not going to happen. I never fail. Remember that, Anya. When I set out to achieve something, I never give up and I never give in. One way or another I get what I want. So make your choice. Yes or no?’

CHAPTER SIX

‘YOU know, if you can express yourself like this, I don’t understand why you’re getting such low marks in subjects that require essay-writing,’ said Anya, laying the handwritten page she had just read beside her on the dappled grass. She leaned back on her hands and studied the girl sprawled on her stomach in front of her. ‘Your grammar and punctuation are a bit sloppy but you seem to have bags of creativity.’

‘Too much, my teachers say. My ideas are too radical for them, though I don’t see why I shouldn’t liven up the facts when they get too boring,’ Petra replied cheerfully, in between bites at the apple which she had plucked off the tree above them and polished against her ubiquitous black top.

Scott had insisted that the tutoring take place under his own roof, but over the past three days Anya had discovered that the conventional use of table and chairs and structured lessons were not always conducive to Petra’s concentration. Sean had been conspicuous by his avoidance, but Samantha had gaggles of friends coming and going and Scott, too, was a powerfully distracting presence. Anya had found it more productive to find a peaceful spot amongst the orchard trees where the casual surroundings caused Petra to relax and open up rather than regard their discussions as a dismal chore.

Every now and then they would see Scott disappear off in his Jag, presumably for court appearances or meetings with clients, but for the most part he seemed to be working out of his study—or trying to.

‘It’s because of me,’ Petra had brashly confided on the second day. ‘Sam says she hardly used to see him before I came, because he was always at work, but he’s sorta trying to hang out around here for my sake. You know—be there for me. He bought this parenting book, for God’s sake—I saw it in his study: Bringing up a Teenager in the New Millennium or something equally dorky.’ The rolling of her eyes hadn’t quite concealed her sneaking satisfaction.

‘I don’t think I “thrive in a formal classroom setting”,’ said Petra now, rearing up to hurl her core accurately over the fence into the depths of a bank of low-growing shrubs.

Anya smiled wryly at the direct quotation from one of Petra’s report cards. She had said much the same thing to Liz Crawford when she had dropped by the school office to pick up a copy of Petra’s timetable and some texts and syllabus information.

‘She obviously has intelligence, she just doesn’t choose to focus it. Music is the only subject where she appears to score consistently high marks.’

Liz shook her dark curls as she handed over the requested photocopies. ‘You’re a glutton for punishment. First that camp and now this. I thought you were going to be selfish with the rest of your holiday…work on that essay of yours.’

‘I can do that in the mornings—I don’t go over to The Pines until after lunch. Anyway, I am being selfish. I’m doing this to allay people’s fears that I’m persona non grata with the board’s legal eagle and a bad influence on their kids. It’s starting to work, too. You’d be amazed at the number of parents I’ve run into, or acquaintances who ring me up, and happen to mention that they’ve heard I’m teaching Scott’s daughter—’

‘Hah! That’s only because they’re trying to pump you for information,’ was the cynical reply. ‘Scott Tyler turning out to have a fourteen-year-old daughter nobody’s ever heard of is big news around here. I hope she handles attention well, because she’s going to get quite a bit of it on her first few days of school…’

‘Oh, I think she’ll handle it,’ Anya had murmured and, looking at Petra now, she wondered whether ‘craves it’ might have been a more accurate description. The girl was certainly no shrinking violet.