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of his aftershave. Away from his comforting warmth. Her legs refused to move.
    â€œI’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.”
    â€œHe 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...”
    â€œYou had no choice because we aren’t just a minor nuisance anymore.”
    â€œThat’s not—”
    â€œYou lied to me earlier. You told me—”
    â€œI told you he was on a plane.”
    â€œRight, 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.”
    â€œKat...”
    â€œDr. Driscoll!”
    â€œFine, let me—”
    The shrill ringing of a phone interrupted him. The APT Committee! She flew to her purse and dug it out.
    â€œKaterina Driscoll,” she answered with as much normalcy as she could muster.
    â€œProfessor 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.
    â€œWe’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.
    â€œProfessor 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.
    â€œYou’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.
    â€œIt’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 standards 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