Every reporter spoke at once, but Kat put her arm around her mother and turned her, intending to walk back into the house. No such luck. The reporters formed a circle around them, hurtling questions at lightning speed. Her mother froze. Kat sensed panic seizing her.
“Please, let us through,” she said firmly. The reporters ignored her, slowly closing in on them. Her mother was breathing faster and faster, and Kat knew she was close to losing it. She tightened her grip and spoke more firmly. “Please let us through.” The note of desperation was clear, but it was drowned out by the cacophony of reporters. She barely heard them as her heart drummed in her ears. How were they going to get out of this?
Suddenly, the crowd separated, like the biblical parting of the Red Sea. Kat looked up to see Alex push through. He walked confidently up to them, flanked Emilia’s other side and put his arm around her, laying his hand on top of Kat’s and squeezing it reassuringly. They pushed toward the door.
The reporters stayed close, sidestepping to keep up with them, lobbing questions at Alex, which he calmly ignored. He stopped a few steps from the door and held up his hand. The crowd fell silent. “The senator is on a flight. He’ll comment when he lands. I’m here to make sure these good people aren’t unnecessarily harassed. Mrs. Driscoll will not be seeking child support. In case you hadn’t noticed, Dr. Driscoll is a grown woman. No further comments right now.”
He was smooth as silk, his lies sounding as authentic as the truth. Once they stepped over the threshold, Kat slammed the door and threw the dead bolt.
She let out a long breath, the tightness in her chest easing. “Thank you.”
He gave her a hard stare. “That was not a good move.”
Her mother looked like she was about to collapse, so Kat took her to the bedroom. The doctor had warned her against using sedatives, but she felt her mother needed one now. Or maybe she needed her mother to take one. The situation was getting more out of control by the minute. Kat took a pill from the locked cabinet in the bathroom and gave it to her mother, urging her under the covers to take a nap. Once Emilia was tucked in, Kat went to the living room to find Alex standing in front of the TV.
“They interrupted their regularly scheduled programming to air your statement.”
“It’s time for the truth to come out,” Kat said simply. She didn’t agree with her mother’s impulsive behavior, but Emilia had been remarkably brave and articulate in front of the cameras, showing more strength in the last five minutes than Kat had seen in her for the past several years.
“Well, it’s now an even bigger story than it was before. Congratulations. Until something blows up in the Middle East, the president has an affair or there’s a school shooting, the media will be playing that clip of you and your mother every thirty minutes.”
Where was the guy who came and saved them from the reporters? Kat stepped up to him, her feet planted wide. She put one hand on her hip and shook a finger in his face.
“My mother told the truth, something I know you’re not familiar with in DC. Now that it’s clear we’re not on the same side, why don’t you get out of my house and go back to your lair.”
He carefully placed the remote he was holding on the coffee table and gazed at her with a bland expression. Every cell in Kat’s body was as taut as the strings of a guitar. Breathe, Kat. This was no different than handling a rowdy classroom. Hold your ground. He took a small step in her direction, closing the distance between them so his chest was no more than a hair’s width away from her. Heat emanated from him, and her own temperature rose a few degrees. Normally she’d shrink away from a man standing this close to her, but she lifted her head so she could continue to gaze steadily into his eyes. Let me see the fire beneath your cool exterior.
Their faces were barely an inch apart. Something shifted in his gaze and his expressionless eyes turned into a warm chocolate brown. Her own nerves tingled as she caught a whiff of his spicy aftershave, and she couldn’t help but look at his mouth. His lips quirked in response and she immediately forced her eyes upward. What am I doing?
It wasn’t like she hadn’t dated since Colin. Well-meaning faculty members had a never-ending stream of friends and relatives to set her up with, and she’d been on plenty of first dates where the conversation dried up long before dessert arrived. So, okay, she hadn’t really allowed any of those guys to go beyond a peck on the cheek. And none of them made her toes curl, but whatever she was feeling was a result of adrenaline. Too much was happening all at once.
Alex took a deep breath, and she could feel his controlled exhalation. She should step back. Away from the tempting smell of his aftershave. Away from his comforting warmth. Her legs refused to move.
“I’m not going anywhere. The senator knows about you now, and he wants to talk to you and your mother.”
She stepped back. “You lied to me. I thought you said you didn’t have a way of reaching him, that he was on a plane.”
“He is.” His tone kicked up an octave, almost imperceptibly so. “Planes have Wi-Fi these days, and he has access to his email. I didn’t want to bother him with this, but after your mother made that statement...”
“You had no choice because we aren’t just a minor nuisance anymore.”
“That’s not—”
“You lied to me earlier. You told me—”
“I told you he was on a plane.”
“Right, not a technical lie in DC, but in the real world, we’d call that dishonest.” She balled her hands into fists so he wouldn’t see her shaking. “Now leave, before I call the sheriff to escort you out.”
“Kat...”
“Dr. Driscoll!”
“Fine, let me—”
The shrill ringing of a phone interrupted him. The APT Committee! She flew to her purse and dug it out.
“Katerina Driscoll,” she answered with as much normalcy as she could muster.
“Professor Driscoll, it’s Dean Gladstone.”
He was the only dean at Hillsdale; he didn’t really need to specify, but he always insisted on formality in a school where everyone referred to each other by their first name. Kat suspected he did it to remind people that he alone had the power to change the course of their lives.
She checked her watch. The APT Committee wasn’t scheduled to meet for another ten minutes. As usual, the dean got right to the point.
“We’ve decided to postpone the APT meeting. Yours was the only application we were considering, and I didn’t think it was in your best interest to have the meeting today.”
Her heart stopped. “So what does that mean for me?” She managed to control the tremor in her voice.
“Professor Driscoll, I’ve personally reviewed your application and I have concerns.”
She swallowed. It was happening all over again, just like it had with Colin. The media were blowing up a story, and she was paying the price. It had taken all of her savings and months of effort with a lawyer to get a small-town newspaper article retracted and deleted from the internet. No amount of money and lawyers could do that with a story this big; this would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“You’ve obviously worked very hard, but I’m trying to raise the caliber of faculty in this school.” Kat’s heart sank. He’d canceled the meeting because they weren’t going to give her the promotion.
“It’s hard for our little college to compete in Virginia when we have big-name universities that attract both students and faculty. We must ensure that our professors are of the highest standing.” He spoke with the kind of fake British accent that ivory-tower professors often put on. She felt like Maria in The Sound of Music getting a lecture from Mother Superior.
She sat on the bench next to the entryway and let her head rest on the wall behind her. The dean had obviously made up his mind.
While he droned on about his standard
s for faculty members, Kat’s mind wandered to thoughts of the senator. After all these years of wondering which shadowy politician was her father, she finally had the truth. What was he like as a man? Would he have stood by her mother if he’d known she was pregnant? Would her mother be the same woman if he’d been in their lives? Would Kat’s life have been different? Would she have picked a better man than Colin if she’d had a male role model growing up? These were all questions she’d asked herself a thousand times before, and she never came up with any answers. But maybe now...
She sat up straight. When the dean paused to take a breath, she jumped in. “Dean Gladstone, I know you don’t like my newfound notoriety, but it could be a real opportunity for the school to gain a national reputation.”
That was what Colin had done, hadn’t he? Turned the media attention to his benefit. So why couldn’t she do the same? Though he was silent, she knew the dean was still on the line because she heard his breathing. So she continued.
“What if I do a few interviews with Senator Roberts and write some articles on this race and the impact of his defense policy?”
“That’s an interesting idea,” the dean allowed. “One significant deficit in your tenure application is that you haven’t written a book.”
Kat bit her lip. She hadn’t written a book because her ex-fiancé had stolen years’ worth of analyses and sold them as his own.
“A book would make your application more competitive, particularly one analyzing your father’s policies and tracking this campaign through the election.”
That was a lot more than what Kat had in mind. Maybe she should’ve thought through this half-baked idea before blurting it out. She couldn’t commit to being away from her mother for an extended period of time. “A book would be hard to write based on a few interviews.”
The dean wasn’t listening. He talked over her. “I have a very dear friend at Harvard University Press, and if you can deliver a book in the next three months, I’ll twist his arm to publish it before the election.”
She closed her mouth. A book? Published by Harvard University Press? In the academic world, that was like hitting the New York Times bestseller list. She might have a chance at living down this story. Other career opportunities would open up; maybe she could even return to a big-time university. But that meant spending two to three months researching with her father...and with Alex.
“Dean Gladstone, covering my father through the election is a longer proposition than what I was thinking.”
“Professor Driscoll, perhaps I haven’t made myself clear, so let me be blunt. Your current application will not get you a promotion. And your newfound notoriety gives me cause to consider whether to continue your contract for next year. I’m giving you a solution—I suggest you take it.”
Kat couldn’t bring herself to hit the end button despite the insistent beeps in her ear telling her the dean had hung up. She closed her eyes. What have I done? If he didn’t renew her contract, it was too late for her to find another position. Her savings account barely held enough money to cover next month’s rent. She couldn’t afford to lose her position. More important, her mother needed the health insurance that came as a benefit.
“I couldn’t help but overhear.”
Kat opened her eyes to see Alex kneeling in front of her. She closed her phone.
“This is none of your business.”
“Actually, it is.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose, then looked up at her. “I’m going to put my cards on the table. No bull. I have a win-win solution for both of us.”
She leaned forward, searching his eyes. He was a charmer, just like Colin. But she wasn’t going to be fooled. Not again.
“The senator’s going to take a hit in the polls with your mother’s announcement. No matter what she said, our conservative state will see him as having abandoned you. The only way to manage the story now is to invite you into the fold. Come on the campaign trail. Take some pictures with the senator so he can show that he’s getting to know his newfound daughter. Your mother said she wants him to claim you, and he’s willing to do that. In return, you can spend time learning about him for your book.”
She stared at him. His eyes were pleading and she could feel herself melting. Alex was a trained liar. This whole situation was his fault. If he hadn’t put pressure on them to lie, maybe her mother wouldn’t have made that impulsive statement. But... She had a chance to find out once and for all why her father had left, and to get some answers to questions that had haunted her life. Maybe it was time she learned to use her situation to her advantage rather than curl up and wait for others to determine her fate.
“I can’t leave my mother.”
“Our campaign headquarters are in Richmond, just an hour from here. The senator uses it as a base to travel through the state. I can situate you there.”
“Is that where you work out of?”
“I split my time between Richmond and DC.”
An unwelcome pulse of disappointment went through her. She ignored it. His not being around was a good thing.
“I have two conditions.”
He lifted a brow, his lips pressing together. “I’m not sure I can meet them.”
“Then I am sure I’ll be slamming the door in your face in a few minutes.”
A vein bulged in his neck and she felt her nerves spark as she took in the curve of his neck and jawline.
“Let me hear it.”
She focused her attention back on the matter at hand. “First, no media. You can take some posed pictures of me and circulate them, with my approval, but I don’t want to be in front of the cameras like I was just now.”
He steepled his fingers and tapped them against each other. Kat found herself getting distracted by the way his fingers moved. “It’ll be faster to take the attention off you if you give a statement to the media. They hound people who avoid them.”
She shook her head. “I won’t do it. That’s nonnegotiable. Posed photos only.”
He looked down before meeting her gaze, and Kat had the distinct impression she was making a deal with the devil. “I think I can manage that. What’s the other condition?”
“I want full access to the senator and to campaign decisions.”
He opened his mouth to protest but she held up her hand.
“I will sign a limited confidentiality clause and allow you to review my final manuscript before it goes to the publisher. Review it for factual accuracy, not to change my analysis.”
His eyes locked onto hers. She didn’t blink.
“That’s the only way I’ll do it.”
“I guess there’s no way the book can be published before the November elections.”
She bit her lip. Under normal circumstances, he’d be right. It took at least nine to twelve months to bring a book to publication, but she wasn’t writing a commercial book. She should tell him about the inside track Dean Gladstone had.
“You’ve got yourself a deal.” He held out his hand.
She hesitated before taking it. Was she doing the right thing? Reluctantly, she grasped his hand, surprised at the roughness in his firm grip. He smiled, and she found herself staring at the way his lips moved, the way they curved, the contrast of their pinkness against his golden skin. Her body warmed from her hair to her toes.
This is going to be disastrous.
CHAPTER FOUR
KAT KNEW WHAT to expect from campaign headquarters, but no intellectual knowledge could have prepared her for the in-your-face chaos that greeted her. Flashbulbs exploded in her face as she stepped from her car onto the sidewalk. Alex was there in a flash, shielding her and passing reporters with a firm “Wait for the press briefing.”
Alex thought it best to come to headquarters right from the house to draw the media away from her mo
ther. They walked through a set of glass doors and staffers from every corner of the warehouse-like space came rushing toward her. She instinctively stepped back...and bumped right into the solid mass that was Alex. His hands went around her shoulders, steadying her. He lifted one arm and extended it, palm out. The rush of people stopped barely a foot from her. Questions and introductions were hurled at breakneck speed. Alex shooed them away and steered her over to a glass-walled office in one corner. She sank into a guest chair as Alex waved to someone.
Kat turned to see a petite redhead with black-framed glasses walk in.
“Kat, this is Crista Jordyn. She’s—”
Crista held out her hand. “I do all the real work around here while Alex runs around looking good.”
Alex rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Crista will introduce you around the office and find you a computer station. I have to go to DC.”
Kat stomped on the flare of disappointment. It was a good thing he wouldn’t be around, as she had enough to worry about between meeting her father and researching a book. The last thing she needed was to get distracted by Alex.
“When is the senator expected back?”
Alex tapped on his BlackBerry. “He’s on the ground in Cairo. He’ll video call with you at eight tonight. Crista will get you set up.”
Kat glanced at her watch. “I can only stay for two hours. I need to get home to take care of something.”
Alex looked up. “Kat, most everyone here works well into the evening. You want full access, you can’t expect to work nine-to-five...let alone just popping in when it suits you.” He began to study a sheaf of papers.
Crista took her elbow. “Let’s leave Mr. Crankypants to deal with his work.”
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