“Have you spoken to my...the senator today?” Kat asked.
Crista shook her head. “Alex talked to him about the deal you made and the senator sent me an email.” She stopped and Kat almost ran into her. Crista pulled her to the wall as if the extra foot would give them even a modicum of privacy. “The senator has a lot of respect for Alex,” she whispered. “But when he wants something done without a lot of argument, he’ll email me and ask me to take care of it.”
What did that even mean? Kat wanted to ask more, but Alex was storming toward them. He had taken off his suit jacket and loosened his tie. She straightened and felt Crista melting into the background, her ever-present BlackBerry back in her hands.
Alex stopped mere inches away from her, and she resisted the urge to back away. She met his gaze evenly, waiting for whatever it was that had him grinding his teeth.
“Did you talk to anyone on the way here this morning?” he thundered.
Kat straightened. “You know very well I wouldn’t. What’s this about?”
“The story about you writing a book on your father got leaked.”
Kat’s stomach bottomed out. He loomed over her and she sucked in a breath, immediately regretting it. His scent assaulted her senses, a spicy deodorant and the clean smell of soap. For some unfathomable reason, her body seemed to welcome his closeness. After Colin, she’d wanted nothing more than to lash out at every man that got within touching distance, so why wasn’t she pushing Alex away?
“I didn’t even tell my mother about our deal. She thinks I’m here to take care of paperwork.” Her voice was squeakier than she wanted.
His gaze flicked behind her shoulder, and then he lowered his head and whispered, “Kat, if this is about sabotaging the senator’s campaign...”
She stepped back. “Why would I do that?”
He opened his mouth then closed it, obviously rethinking whatever he’d been about to say. She leaned in. “I’m not a seasoned politician—I don’t play games. What you see is what you get from me.”
He stared at her, his brown eyes at once expressive and shuttered, as if he was processing and then denying what he knew to be true.
“Then how did the media get hold of the story?”
“It must have been Dean Gladstone.”
He frowned and muttered something under his breath.
“What is it?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t have time to deal with this today.” For a moment, he looked weary. “I need you to fix this.”
Without thinking, she put a hand on his arm. “How?”
His eyes softened into pools of milk chocolate. They were mesmerizing. When he spoke, his voice was warm. “Give a statement to the media that you want to get to know your father. They’re loving the fact that you’re at campaign headquarters.”
She retracted her hand. It didn’t take him long, did it? “No,” she said simply, her fury threatening to erupt like a volcano. She could sense people surreptitiously watching them while pretending to be on their phones or studying their computer screens.
“What? You wouldn’t be lying—that’s part of the reason you’re here, isn’t it?”
She flinched at his harsh tone. “Alex, I told you, no media jaunts. That was our deal,” she said quietly.
“But...”
“Right now, it’s the book story. In another hour it’ll be something else. Once I step into the limelight, I’ll never get out. If you can’t respect the deal we made just hours ago, then it’s best I leave and we don’t speak again.”
“Why are you so afraid of the media?”
She crossed her arms. She didn’t owe him anything. He tapped on his BlackBerry then turned it toward her. His voice was soft.
“Is it because of this?”
She looked down and recoiled. It was a picture of her from three years ago, talking to the police and paramedics. She was front and center, holding a compress to her cheek; Colin was in the background with a bandage on his head. A freelance photographer had come by after he heard her 911 call on the police scanners. He sold the photo to the newspapers. The story only appeared in the local daily, but it had been enough to get her fired. How had Alex found it? She’d paid a lawyer to get a court order for the newspaper to remove it from their online archives.
She put a hand to her mouth and stepped back, staring at the incriminating caption: Scorned professor lashes out at boyfriend.
“That wasn’t my fault.”
He reached out and touched her hand. “Kat, CNN found this and they’re going to run it. You need to tell me your side of the story.”
Eyes wide, she squeezed his arm. “You have to stop them. Whatever it takes, you have to stop them.” She knew her voice was too loud because the staffers were no longer being discreet about their glances, but she didn’t care. The story couldn’t get out. It had taken her over a year to live it down enough to get her job at Hillsdale College, even after the story was scrubbed from the internet. She suspected that Colin had called around and gotten her blackballed at most of the major universities.
He nodded. “I’ll handle it, but you need to tell me what happened.”
She sighed. Even her mother didn’t know the whole story. “I had a fight with my then fiancé. He basically stole years’ worth of my work. I confronted him and told him that I planned to bring plagiarism charges against him. I had proof that the work was mine, dated emails that showed the research I did, et cetera. He didn’t take the news well and got violent. I fought back hard. He bumped his head and called 911, concocting a story about how I was mentally unstable. He said I attacked him first.”
Alex clenched his fists. “Why would anyone believe him?”
“Earlier that day, I also found out he was having an affair with the dean of the school. I vented to a fellow faculty member, a woman who I thought was my friend. You know how you say things like ‘I’ll kill him’ in anger? Well, later she said I was so angry, she was worried I would actually hurt him. The dean fired me and it took months before another school would even grant me an interview.” She touched the pendant on her neck, rolling it between her fingers. Did Alex believe her? No one else had; the media had portrayed her as the classic woman scorned.
“Where is he now?”
Kat reeled at the murderous look in Alex’s eyes. The warmth was gone, replaced by a smoldering darkness. She shrank back.
“He’s still faculty at Wellingforth University,” she said carefully. “Colin wanted so badly to be promoted, to be able to show his daddy that he had amounted to something. I think he believed I wouldn’t make a fuss about him using my research, but when I threatened him, he lost control. He was desperate not to make a fool of himself. The university said I had to drop all claims to the book if I wanted my severance pay, which I needed at the time. If it hadn’t been for that story...” Her voice cracked and she took a breath. “Every interview I went to, that article came up. With my mother’s history mentioned in there, they just thought I’d come unhinged, too. Even after I had it taken down, it took a year before people stopped asking me about it. My mother, she became so distraught, I don’t think she’s ever recovered. We had to start a whole new medication regimen.”
She blinked back tears and acid burned in her stomach. What was wrong with her? She was over it; the incident was now three years ago. She’d put it behind her. “Those reporters never bothered to get my side. I spent all my savings fighting with the courts to get the story taken off the internet.”
He shook his head. “It’s almost impossible to erase something