Page 31 of Christmas in Paris
The first person he saw was not anyone that he would have expected. It was Mandy, sitting in the reception area, all hunched over. Everything about her, from her posture to her expression, spoke of her complete lack of desire to be there.
You and me both, kid. He wanted to say but didn’t. Even if he’d wanted to, he probably wouldn’t have had the heart, or the nerve, once he saw the terrified look she turned on him. She knew why she was here, that much was clear as day. Of course she did, given who her mother was.
“Simon, come in.” It was his boss, looking as stern and severe as he had ever seen her. For just a moment, he let himself think how cruelly unfair this was. He and Ray hadn’t hurt anyone, they hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as he could tell, but they were acting like he had killed someone.
Still, he’d known the rules when he broke them. There was no use getting indignant about it.
He entered the office, only to feel his indignation surge anew when he saw who was sitting there waiting for him. Nancy Bradford couldn’t have looked smugger if she’d tried. He had never seen anyone so obviously gloating before, or so very pleased with themselves.
“What’s she doing here?” he snapped, all of his good intentions flying out the window as he glared at her. He was willing to admit that he had made some questionable decisions that he had known might end up with him here, but he hadn’t thought he’d have to deal with her on top of everything else.
“Mrs. Bradford has a very serious accusation, and I thought you should meet with her face-to-face to address it,” his boss said, her tone of voice disapproving. Her gaze met his, and he could tell that she was silently telling him off for potentially upsetting their most valuable parent.
Most valuable parent. Right. Ray was worth ten of her, and he did it all without her piles of money. But it seemed like money was all most people cared about, which was part of why Ray had been so refreshing.
And there he was, back to Ray again. It was like he couldn’t get away from the other man, no matter how he tried. He always thought that he had made progress, only to find himself thinking about him more than ever.
“Fine. Let’s do this,” Simon said, and he sat down in another chair in the office, facing not his boss although technically she was the one who was going to decide on what was going to happen to him, but Nancy. In the end, she was the one pulling the strings here, and everyone in the room knew it.
“You know what I saw,” Nancy said, and she was in fine form. If he hadn’t seen the look of pleasure in her eyes, he would have thought that she regretted what she had to do. “You know what happened. Do you deny it?”
Simon sighed and rubbed at his temples, then shook his head. He had already decided that he wasn’t going to lie about this or fight what he had coming to him. No matter how much he’d like to tell this terrible woman off, he had to do what was right.
“Then I’m afraid I have no choice but to …” the principal started to say, and that was right when the door was flung open hard enough that it flew through the air and slammed into the wall with a crash.
Everyone turned to see who had burst in, and Simon frowned when he saw who it was. Mandy, who was standing there straighter and taller than he had ever seen her before, a look of sheer determination on her face that was quite something to behold from the quiet girl.
“No,” she said, and her mother was on her feet in a shot, going to stand by her daughter. She wrapped a possessive, repressive hand around Mandy’s forearm, but Mandy pulled it away. “I can’t let this happen. Mom, if you won’t tell her what really happened, I will.”
If looks could kill, Mandy would be writhing on the floor. But in front of other people, there were limits to what Nancy could do, so she settled for giving her daughter a sugary-sweet smile.
“Sweetheart, remember what we talked about?”
“I don’t care. Ray Myers is too nice for you to be saying stuff like that about him.”
Everyone was silent now, and the teenaged girl, for what was probably the first time in her life, had the floor. She cast a single, stricken look at her mother, squared her shoulders, and then spoke some of the last words that Simon would have expected to hear, directly facing the principal like she might lose her nerve if she looked at Simon or her mother.
“Ray Myers didn’t kiss me. He didn’t initiate it. I tried to kiss him, and he pushed me away. Mom made it sound like Ray kissed me, and Simon saw it but did nothing, but neither of them did anything wrong.”
Her words hung in the air, and Simon turned murderous eyes toward Nancy, who was looking distressingly calm. She was a hell of an actor, but Simon found that he believed her daughter without question.
It had all been so sneakily worded. Nancy had never outlined the offense for which Simon was being accused. She had just asked him to admit to it. And he had. Like an idiot, he had.
“Nancy, what’s going on?” the principal asked, and Nancy, with another of those too-sweet, false smiles patted her daughter on the head in a patronizing way that had Simon’s teeth standing on edge.
“Oh, I think my daughter just has a little crush. But that doesn’t change anything. Or is this the sort of school that allows that sort of immoral behavior? I would be very disappointed if that were the case.”
“Mom, stop lying,” Mandy said, her voice clear even as her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “It’s not true. She just doesn’t like Mr. Taylor, and when I stupidly told her about my crush on Ray, she jumped right on it.”
The principal was now looking back and forth between Mandy and Nancy, and Simon could see that she was conflicted. But in the end, it would be Nancy who won, if Simon let it happen. Nancy was the adult, and as he had already observed, money could make all the difference.
“Mandy is telling the truth, of course. The idea that I would watch someone assault a student on my watch is ridiculous and insulting,” he said, letting his words come out as blunt as a sledgehammer. “Ray would never do anything of the sort, and Mandy is very brave to tell the truth even when her mother seems to be encouraging her to lie.”
There was an advantage to just telling the truth; no holds barred. People didn’t expect it. Nancy was staring like Simon had grown another head, and he had to wonder when she ever didn’t get her way. Probably not very often, and she didn’t seem to know what to do when she did.
“But Simon and Ray …” she started, and Simon had suddenly had enough. He wasn’t going to sit here and let her twist things around to suit her ends anymore. She had already almost caught him once, gotten him to admit to something that he hadn’t done. She was devious, but bluntness and honestly could counteract that.
“Yes. Ray and I did engage in a sexual relationship in Paris,” Simon interrupted. He wasn’t going to let himself off the hook here, but he would be damned if he would let Nancy tell the story and make it so much worse than it was. “I will accept whatever punishment you decide for that.”
