father. She’s totally rearranged her life to be with her little girl.” She spoke in a rush. “She loves her own child, and she loves the other kids that she helps care for.”
“She works for you?” That didn’t make sense. Unless the agency had gotten so fed up with their failure to find a nanny for him that the boss had come for the final interview.
“She’s the coordinator and the heart behind the center.”
“The center?”
He heard her take a breath, then she pressed her hands palm down on her knees. “Okay, Mr. Terrel, since we’re stuck here and you’ve asked me to talk, I’m going out on a limb with you. I know that you and Mr. Holden are partners or associates or whatever you want to call it, and you must trust each other completely. You have equal input. You’re both in charge, from what I hear, and even though he’s the one who’s been doing the work on this, I think you can help me. Either by agreeing to what I need, or by talking to him about it and getting his agreement.”
She thought he was Matthew? “I don’t know what you think, but—”
“Oh, I’m sorry if I misunderstood the arrangement. I thought you were co-C.E.O.’s or something like that. I thought you could probably take care of this. Or if you can’t, maybe you could convince Mr. Holden that Just For Kids needs the funding badly. We need more programs, more people to help, so the child-worker ratio comes down. It’s imperative that we have more supplies for the younger children.”
He couldn’t have cut in if he’d wanted to: she was talking quickly, and her hands were moving to emphasize her points. So he just watched, listened and took in the fact that he’d found L. Atherton in a stalled elevator.
“And a van,” she went on. “A better van, for the after-school pickups. That would be great—nothing fancy, but one that keeps running and won’t break down. And the oven in the kitchen, well, it just either burns or doesn’t cook.”
She assumed that he was Matthew, and he’d assumed that she was there as a nanny candidate. They’d both been wrong, dead wrong. “Just For Kids?”
“Mr. Lewis understood that it was the backbone of the company, that an employee who knew his or her child was safe and cared for and within arm’s reach was an employee who could give more to the company than a worried parent.” She spread her hands palms up. “He knew that having the center right here was a win-win situation. And sending back my requests for funding marked “Denied” just isn’t right.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
