There was a long silence, so long that Ray turned around, half convinced that his daughter had slipped quietly out of the room while he’d been talking. But when he looked behind himself, he saw that she was still there, studying him like he was a bug under a microscope that she was trying to understand. In some ways, a lot of ways, Ashley was a lot like him, but there were times when he had no idea what to expect from her, no idea what was going on in her head.
She was like him, but stronger. So much stronger. He saw by the expression on her face that she didn’t expect him to keep his promise and that she wouldn’t get her hopes up. That broke his heart, and even more so because he was pretty sure that he deserved it. He had to get a job, any job, as fast as possible, and hope against hope that he could somehow squeeze a meager paycheck to make sure that she got to go on that trip.
But there were so many variables. Still, looking at this human being that he had somehow had a hand in creating, he knew that he couldn’t quit. If the positions were reversed, he knew for a fact that Ashley would find a way to get him on that plane to Paris. He owed her the same.
“Set the table, Ash,” he reminded her, and she gave him one more searching look before she turned away to do as he had asked. The rest of the evening passed in near silence, both of them lost in their thoughts, which gave plenty of time for Ray to turn over the possibilities in his head over and over again.
None of them were good. None of them offered a whole lot in the way of hope, and there were just too many things that could go wrong. He had so little time, less than a week, until the first of December, which was when Ashley was supposed to leave.
When it came down to it, it was simple. He needed to get her on that plane. He would have to pursue any and all options to make that happen. He hated to have to do it, but if begging were required, he would beg. It wouldn’t be great for his pride, but that was a relatively small price to pay.
Every school notice that Ashley had brought home since she had been a little kid had said, clear as day, that students wouldn’t be excluded from school activities because of finances. He had never taken them up on that before, but it was time to do so. It wouldn’t be fun to approach the school with hat in hand, but if that was what needed to happen, then so be it.
It was worth it—more than worth it. Not only did Ashley want to go, but Ray thought it would be the best thing in the world for her. So he would go, and he would beg. Because no matter how much he worked it in his mind, he couldn’t find any way to make it happen. He could get a job tomorrow, and he would still not be able to pull the funds together. Not since he also had to pay rent.
He knew what he needed to do, so tomorrow, before he got down to job searching, he was going to have to pay Ashley’s French teacher a discreet visit. It was distasteful, but there was just no other option other than failure, and that was no option at all.
Chapter Two
Simon
In a second, Simon was pretty sure he was going to put a dent the size and shape of his forehead directly through his desk. Solid wood or not, it wouldn’t stand a chance against the sheer level of frustration that he was feeling right now.
This trip had been a complete nightmare almost from the beginning. First, he’d had to convince the school that it was worthwhile, and that had taken months of work. Then, he’d been given the go-ahead only to find that, while the students in his Senior year French class were all incredibly excited about the opportunity to go to Paris for a month, their parents were somewhat less enthused about it. It was the chance of a lifetime, the chance that he knew he would have killed to get when he’d been in high school as a student, but it had been an epic undertaking to get them on board.
Most of them still hadn’t paid. They were set to go in five days, and he had paid for the tickets himself, out of his pocket. And so it went, on and on. He was going to have to spend the next five days on the phone with parents, cajoling them to pay what they had all, each and every one of them, agreed to pay.
All of that would have been bad enough, but now this?
“Are you sure you can’t come?” Simon asked, not for the first time, but part of him just had a hard time believing that this could be happening. Even then, though, he knew the answer. He might not want to believe it, but he knew. He was very much up the proverbial creek, and his paddle was floating away on the current. All he could do about it was watch as it went.
“I justcan’t,” the woman on the other end of the phone said, and if Simon didn’t know better, he would have said that her voice was pretty much dripping satisfaction. Maybe he should have known. This particular woman had been one of the most vocal antagonists of this whole trip, and he had been stunned when she’d switched sides and agreed to come with him to help chaperone. Thirty children were coming with him, and he simply couldn’t do it on his own.
“Okay. Thank you for letting me know,” Simon said, barely managing to keep the tone of his voice civil. He was getting the definite sense that she had deliberately screwed him over here.
“I suppose you won’t have time to find someone else to go. That’s too bad,” she replied, and this time, her voice was filled with the most clearly fake sympathy that he had ever heard. From that moment, his suspicions about her were pretty much confirmed. She had never intended to go with him and had only claimed that she would to keep the trip from happening. If you can’t beat them, join them. And then betray them from within. That was clearly what she had been thinking.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, trying to sound more confident than he was. Luckily, he was good at that. And it helped that he still believed in his original vision as much as he always had. Her behavior hadn’t changed anything, and he was still just as determined as ever to make it happen. “I’ll find someone. By the way, since I have you on the phone, I should probably just mention that you haven’t dropped off a check for the trip yet. I can expect that soon, right? Tomorrow would be fine if today is too busy with you. You can send it with Mandy.”
There was a long pause, and the sense of anger coming through the phone was almost palpable. She had expected him to fold, not to demand money from her, and even though he was in just as much trouble as he had been two minutes ago, he couldn’t help but take some grim satisfaction in that.
“Goodbye, Mr. Taylor,” she finally said and broke the connection. He had no idea if he would see that check tomorrow. Or ever. The temporary satisfaction that he had felt melted away like an ice cube with boiling water poured over it. Determination or not, he was just flat out screwed. And should he be surprised? No one had thought that he could do it. He’d had the world against him from the beginning, it seemed.
With a sigh, he rose to his feet and stretched his arms over his head, doing his best to break up some of the knots of tension in his neck and shoulders. He had some thinking to do. He had to find someone to come with him, and he had to do it fast if this was going to happen at all. On top of which, he still had parents to call and gently remind that they had committed money to this. The school was subsidizing the trip a little, and that would help, but Paris was not a cheap city.
“Goddamn it,” Simon sighed, probably too loudly, but it was early enough that there were hardly any students around yet. He was all alone, or so he thought, but as it turned out he probably should have turned around to face the door before he assumed that.
“Is this a bad time?”
The voice wasn’t familiar. He would remember a voice like that anywhere. It was a male voice, effortlessly seductive in a smoky, slightly hoarse sort of way. Slowly, very slowly, Simon turned around. He was at work, he reminded himself, and just because someone with a sexy voice was speaking to him did not mean anything.
The voice was hard enough to ignore, but when he saw the man who owned it, his breath caught in his throat for a moment, and he felt slightly dizzy. It was cliché, but there it was. He wasn’t interested in dating or romance, and he did his best not to be interested in sex, even, but it had been a very long time, and he was suddenly very, achingly aware of every minute of it.
He had got all of that just from the sight of a gorgeous man. Maybe he should find someone, just for one night, to break the tension. But who could he find that could even come close to compete with this gorgeous, tall, slender blond man with the most remarkable green eyes he’d ever seen? His careless hair, his beautifully shaped full lips, high cheekbones?
There were a lot of gorgeous men in the world; he reminded himself. And someone that he met at work was probably not going to be the best person for him to be lusting after. Maybe this was another teacher, newly hired, or a substitute. Or, worse, it could be …
“I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Ray Myers, and I can come back in a few minutes if you want?”
