The Senator's Daughter (2 page)

The man in the business suit deftly stepped back before she could connect with his Adam's apple. He held out his hands. “Miss Driscoll, I'm Alex Santiago. I work for Senator Roberts.”

Her chest heaved, trying to squeeze air into her lungs. He wasn't even out of breath.

Kat put a hand on the car and willed her heart to calm down. She studied him while she struggled to gain control of her breathing. Hair dark as night, styled and tamed. Taller than her five-foot-four frame. Lean, but he looked like he had muscle underneath his well-tailored suit. Big, dark eyes, skin the color of sand. A firm jaw, high cheekbones, the hint of a five o'clock shadow. He didn't look like the typical congressional staffer, but he dressed like one. Dark gray pin-striped suit, light blue French-cuffed shirt, red tie, an American flag pinned to the lapel. He was senior staff. If he was legit.

“It's Dr. Driscoll.” Kat crossed her arms. He stepped back, his lips twitching into something that looked suspiciously like the beginnings of a smirk.

“
Dr.
Driscoll, I'm sorry to scare you, but I need to talk to you. Urgently.”

He pronounced each word carefully, in the precise manner of someone who had had language training.

“And why should I talk to you?”

He put his hand in his breast pocket and removed a plastic-encased identification card. It was a federal ID that listed his name as Alejandro Santiago.

“We're on the same side here.”

Really? I don't even know what side I'm on.
Definitely a Washingtonian. “How did you get here so fast from DC?” The capital was a three-hour drive away.

“CNN gave us a heads-up they were running the story.”

“Then why didn't you give
me
a heads-up?”

“We didn't know if you needed one. But we did try to reach you. No one answered your office phone, and we couldn't find your cell number on such short notice. We even tried you at your home, but it just rang.”

Kat bit her lip. She vaguely remembered the phone ringing when she was trying to calm her mother. Usually only telemarketers called that number, so she'd ignored it.

“So what's going on?”

“That's what I'm here to find out. The story caught us by surprise.” He raised his brows. “I'm hoping you can shed some light on what they're saying.”

“Me? What does Senator Roberts have to say about it?” she countered.

“He's in the air, on an overseas flight. He won't be landing for another few hours.”

“You don't have a way to reach him?”

“We have to wait until he lands.” His gaze shifted a bit and she narrowed her eyes at him. He seemed sincere enough, but no way was she trusting him.

“I'm on my way home to talk to my mother. Give me your card and I'll call you when I have some information.”

“So you didn't leak this story?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you give this story to the media?”

She put her hands on her hips. “Do I look like some crazy woman, desperate for fifteen minutes of fame?” His eyes roamed her body and she reddened. “This story is ruining my life. I want it retracted, and as quickly as possible.”

“Then you and I have the same goal. I'll come with you.”

“That's not wise, Mr. Santiago.”

“Alex. And I don't think you have a choice.”

He pointed behind her. She turned to see no fewer than ten people rushing toward her through the gates that separated faculty parking lot from the street. This time there was no doubt who they were. Cameras were already flashing and outstretched hands held ominous-looking microphones.

“Give me your keys.”

She stared at him. He snatched the keys from her hand. “Get in!”

“Katerina.”

“Professor Driscoll?”

“Kat!” The crowd of reporters was now close enough that she could hear them screaming her name. All doubt erased, she ran to the passenger side and slammed the door shut. Alex already had the car moving before she buckled in. She clicked the seat belt in place just as he floored the accelerator, backing out of the parking lot. Instinctively, she grabbed the handhold on the ceiling. He reversed all the way to the gate. He had a hat on his head now, its bill pulled low.

“What're you doing? This is a campus—there are kids around!” If they ran over someone, her career was over. A vision of the dean physically throwing her off campus like a rag doll filled her mind.

Alex changed gears and pushed the car onto the grassy knoll to avoid a crowd of reporters.

“Dean Gladstone will—” Her head hit the side window as the car lurched. He had hopped onto the sidewalk to avoid more media immediately outside the gates. Several people slapped the car as he pressed the horn and squeezed past them.

Kat turned to make sure no one was lying on the ground bleeding to death. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

“Are you crazy?”

“You've never had to avoid the bloodhounds before. Trust me, this is routine—for me and for them. Tell me how to get to your house.”

She wanted to tell him to get out of her car so she could drive home alone, but who knew what disaster awaited there. He seemed to have some know-how, so she gave him her address and he plugged it into his phone GPS while continuing to drive like a New York City cabbie.
On second thought, maybe I'd better get rid of him now.

“I'm going to go a roundabout way to shake off anyone following us.”

She whipped around, but all she saw were regular cars in normal traffic on the small-town streets. Her head pounded. This had to be a dream. Like the one she'd had last night in which she'd shown up to class without her lecture notes and the students had laughed at her. It had to be. This was not real.

They arrived at her house to find it quiet. No media vans, no horde of reporters. Just the neighbor's yippy dog barking behind the fence like he'd never seen her before.

“Shut up, Rex,” she muttered, stepping onto her front porch. She and her mother lived in a small, brick-front town house with three feet of shared front yard between them and the neighbors. She keyed into the house with Alex right behind her.

“Wait here.” She motioned to the small living room with the flowered couch her mother had owned since Kat was a little girl. The woman refused to give it up. It was perfectly preserved under a plastic cover, Kat's daily reminder of what her life would be if she didn't change something. Once she got the promotion, she could move into her own place again and get more medical assistance for her mother. She could have a life. One that consisted of more than just taking care of her mother and working to get her career back on track.

Right now, she could barely afford to pay the rent on this place, let alone get an apartment for her mother. Emilia Driscoll hadn't been able to hold down a job for over a year now. The move to Hillsdale had been hard on her, and Kat didn't understand why. Her mother was from Virginia; Kat's aunt lived a short distance away. When Kat had accepted the position at Hillsdale College, she'd expected her mother to be thrilled. Instead, she had mumbled something about the past coming back. At the time, Kat had wondered if her father was still around. It was the only thing that explained her mother's reaction.

She went to the bedroom to find her mother still fast asleep. Kat closed the door and sat on the bed. Wisps of blond hair stuck to her mother's forehead, so she pushed them back. Emilia had been a beautiful woman once, with long, flowing hair, bright blue eyes, rosy cheeks and a full body. Now her hair was thin and falling out. Her slim body was all bones. Kat could never get enough calories into her. She couldn't let the media anywhere near her; they would eat her alive.

“Mom, I need you to wake up.”

Her mother moaned and turned away from Kat, but she shook her until Emilia's eyes fluttered. “Katerina, what time is it? How long have I been sleeping?” She rubbed her eyes and blinked at the sunshine streaming through the window.

“Mom, it hasn't been long. I'm here because there's a problem. I need an answer to a very important question, and I need you not to lie to me, okay?”

Her mother sat up in bed and frowned. She was lucid and calm. Good—the drugs had taken effect. “Katerina, what is it?”

Kat swallowed. There was no time to ease into this. “Remember how you told me my father was a politician?” Her mother shrank back, her lips pressed tightly together. It was her normal reaction, but Kat wasn't going to let her shut down this time. For once, she had a different way of asking the rote question. “Mom, is Senator William Roberts my father?”

Her mother paled and she clutched the bedsheet to her chest.

“Oh, no. It's happened, hasn't it? He's come to take you from me.”

CHAPTER TWO

“I'
M
WORKING
ON
IT
.” Alex bit his tongue, literally, to keep his tone polite. The Republican National Committee had been riding him ever since they figured out Roberts was going to be the make-or-break candidate for control of the Senate. The rest of the races were a foregone conclusion. Only a third of the Senate was up for reelection every six years. Virginia had been a predictable race, as Senator Roberts was well liked, but a new challenger had changed all that. Now the race was close. Tight enough to be within the polling margins of error. If Roberts lost, the powerful Senate would go to the Democrats.

“The senator needs to focus on his trip. Convincing the Egyptians to give us the technology is critical for the bill,” he told the RNC chair as calmly as he could. The senator didn't need to deal with a media crisis. The whole point of his trip to Cairo was to get a firm commitment from the Egyptian government, which was not currently a friend of the United States, to turn over the specifications for new robot detectors that could clear IEDs. As an active senator, Roberts was both campaigning and trying to get his bill passed before the election. It was Alex's job to make sure he was successful in both endeavors. IEDs were the biggest killer of American soldiers, so for every minute that soldiers were using old equipment, someone was dying.

“I'll handle it. This isn't my first campaign.” He stabbed the end button on his BlackBerry without saying goodbye. He wouldn't distract the senator. The Egyptians had initially agreed to sell the technology for an exorbitant amount of money but were now reconsidering the deal under significant pressure from other Middle Eastern countries not to sell to the US. The senator was fighting overseas, so it was Alex's job to deal with the battleground that was Washington politics.

This was a big ticket, his first national effort, nothing like the small-time campaigns he had been running. He was almost a Washington insider, not just—
pull yourself up by the bootstraps, young man
—hanging around the elite. No longer the token senior staffer, the one people turned to when immigration was the issue du jour. He wasn't even Mexican. His mother was from El Salvador, a woman who legally immigrated. Yet that fact was often overlooked. All his life, he'd been around men in power. They saw him as the stereotypical son of the cleaning lady, out to work hard and make a name for himself.
Good for you, boy.

The party leaders were waiting for him to fail. Senator Roberts had hired him when it was going to be a simple race. Still, he'd kept him on even though the party leaders were putting pressure on him to replace Alex.
Those smug men.
Alex knew that if he didn't control this media nightmare, and fast, the RNC leaders would slap him on the back and tell him he'd fought a good fight, then give him a fatherly smile and suggest he go back to the minor leagues.
You've made your mother proud, son.
They'd blame him for the bill not passing, a bill they supported only because the Democrats were against it. Men like that always won. But he wasn't a helpless kid anymore; he was a grown man who was going to fight back and beat them at their own game.

He rubbed his temples. His first thought had been that this had to be a woman looking for her moment in the spotlight, so he'd brought the campaign checkbook and the standard nondisclosure agreement to get the situation resolved quickly. But this was clearly not the usual deal.

First of all, CNN normally gave the RNC more notice for a story like this, hoping to barter for an even bigger scoop. This time it was a call for comment as they were going to air. Second, they refused to even hint at their source. No “senior White House officials” type of disguise to indicate where the story had come from. Third, the woman hadn't given an interview. If this were the familiar get-rich-quick scheme, she would've been in front of the cameras talking about emotional damage. Her photos would be picture-perfect. Instead, they were using a mug shot from the college website, and the Twitter photos were even worse.
Could this be the real deal?
She'd seemed genuinely distressed when he found her.

He clicked on the BlackBerry again and eagerly read the email he'd been waiting for. The plastic squeaked as he sank deeper into the couch.
It can get worse.

The bedroom door opened and Kat emerged, closing it softly behind her. She was even paler than before, and far more beautiful in person than in the pictures on TV. Her blue eyes were clear and expressive, her long blond hair haloing her delicate face. A naturally beautiful woman who would be stunning if she was done up right. Yet he could tell she wasn't the type to make sure her nails were polished, hair blown to perfection and clothes immaculately pressed. She wasn't someone you put in front of the cameras.

“So?”

He already knew what she was going to say, but he needed to hear her version of it.

“Can I get you some coffee?”

He raised an eyebrow then stood.

“I'll help you make it.”

“No, you sit here. I'll be right back.”

He thumbed through the remaining messages on his phone. He'd made a rookie mistake. He should've sent an unknown staffer to deal with this. Yet something about her picture had gotten his spidey senses tingling and he'd decided to deal with it himself. In hindsight, he realized that if the media found him here, in her house, the story would gain even more steam. He'd already taken a chance driving her from the college. Even with his hat, he couldn't be sure someone hadn't recognized him. Kat needed to make a statement, and soon. He didn't have time for coffee.

Thankfully, Kat returned quickly with two mismatched mugs. She handed one to him. “I have cream and sugar if you'd like.”

He shook his head. He'd learned to drink his coffee plain black. Hard to deal with creamers and sugar packets while on the go.

“So?”

She sighed and leaned back into the squeaky couch, wincing at the sound. He expected her to take her time, but she got to the point. “The senator and my mother were married thirty-six years ago. Briefly. She left him then discovered she was pregnant with me. By then the divorce was final.”

His deputy, Crista, had just unearthed all this. The senator was such a public figure, having always put his life and family in front of the media, that Alex hadn't bothered to dig much deeper before Roberts entered the national stage. Like the media, he'd thought the man was already well vetted and that any skeletons would have been dug up a long time ago. Another mistake.

Her face was now ashen, her eyes large and luminous. She wrapped her hands around the coffee mug and he saw waves in the liquid.

His leg jerked. He wanted to tell her it would all be okay. Except it wouldn't. Her eyes shone and she stared into her coffee. Then a sound outside caught his attention.
Great!

He flew to the window and pulled the drapes across it. She looked up, splashing coffee on her hands.

“What's going on?”

“They're here. You need to close all the blinds.” He kicked himself for not asking her to do that first thing.

To her credit, she didn't let the panic clearly visible in her eyes overwhelm her. The cup clattered as she set it down and ran to the bedrooms. He drew the venetian blinds on the skinny window next to the front door, then walked into the tiny kitchen and did the same.

“How did they find my house?” The accusation cut through the air as she emerged from her mother's bedroom.

“Probably the same way my assistant just discovered that Senator Roberts and your mother were married for exactly eight months and it was the first marriage for both of them.”

Eyes widening, she stepped backward, pressing herself against the door frame. They were both standing in the kitchen and he suddenly realized how much of the small space he was taking up. Excusing himself, he walked past her and back to the living room couch. This wasn't the standard situation, but there was an easy answer—one that would get him out of here and back to work on the things that mattered.

“Listen, obviously you don't want the publicity any more than we do.”

“You've got that right,” she muttered, sitting across from him and crossing her arms.

He leaned forward and gave her the smile he usually reserved for female heavyweight donors. Using his classic move, he reached out to take her hand. As soon as their fingers touched, she pulled back like she'd been burned and gave him a look that implied he had cooties. A nerve in his left eye twitched.
Okay, then. We aren't going to be friends.

“Then it's simple. Have your mother make a statement that you're not Senator Roberts's daughter and we're done.”

Her head snapped up. “You want her to lie.”

“Versus...what?”

“Versus telling them it's our private matter and they need to stop harassing us.”

He stared at her. Was she really that naive? Then again, she was a college professor. His deputy, Crista, had briefed him on the articles she'd written. Kat was an idealistic academic who had no idea how things worked in the real world.

“You say that, and the story continues. They start interviewing your neighbors, students, Facebook friends, Twitter followers...everyone you've ever spoken to.”

“Why would they—”

“People you hardly know will come out of the woodwork with a charming—or nasty—story about you and your mother. Think about how many people want to get on national TV. This is their chance. Have you ever cut someone off in line? Left a bad tip at a restaurant? True or not, people will have all kinds of stories about you. Just look at how many Tweets your students sent.”

If possible, her face went even whiter, the color completely draining out of it.

“I'm not worth that kind of attention, surely...”

He stood and lifted the edge of the curtain. She gasped. There were no less than ten trucks blocking the street and a bunch of reporters crowding onto her front lawn.

“Any second, they're going to come banging on the door. The only reason they haven't yet is they need to get their cameras ready and the uplinks to their networks established.”

This time he went and sat next to her on the love seat. She moved slightly but didn't get up. “They're not going away. You're the story of the day, and the only way to get them off your back is to tell them there is no story. Discredit it, and they'll slink away.”

“I don't want to lie.”

“Your birth certificate doesn't have a father listed. There is no record of when your mother separated from the senator. Our spin would be that they were separated when you were conceived, so he's not your father. There's no way, without a DNA test, for them to prove you're his daughter.”

Her eyes were big and wet. He wanted to look away, but he couldn't. Something pricked his heart. Risking another rebuke, he put his hand on hers, and this time she didn't move.

“Listen, I know this is hard, and I don't agree with the tactics, but they won't stop harassing you. Your mother is sick...”

She snatched her hand away with such force that the coffee cup sitting on the table teetered, threatening to fall. “How do you know about my mother?” She inched away from him on the couch. He was handling this all wrong.

The job necessitated being able to put on a number of faces, so he furrowed his brows and leaned in, his eyes conveying sympathy and understanding. He couldn't show his impatience with this woman now.
Why is she being so stubborn?
She obviously didn't want the media attention, and he was giving her an easy way out.

He felt a familiar anger bubble deep inside, and he took a breath, modulating his voice, softening it, the way he'd been taught. “I'm sorry—I didn't mean to intrude. Unfortunately, the internet has more information on all of us than we'd like to disclose. When the story first came out, I had my staff research you.”

“You thought I did this for attention. Fame.”

Her sharp tone cut through him. “We didn't know you. The story came out of nowhere...”

“I want nothing to do with Senator Roberts, nor do I want any part of that circus.” She jerked her head toward the window. There was raw pain in her voice and fear in her eyes. He didn't doubt for a second that this wasn't a publicity stunt for her. Kat genuinely didn't want the attention. There was a backstory there, and he made a mental note to have the campaign's private investigator do some deeper digging. They hadn't had much time to search smaller, local newspapers for archived articles.

“Then make this story go away. If your mother is up to it, have her make a statement that it's not true.”

“I most certainly will not do that.”

An older version of Kat walked into the room. Emilia Driscoll looked frail, far thinner than Kat but with the same blue eyes and blond hair, identical cheekbones. The PI had sent Alex Kat's birth certificate, which showed that Kat was thirty-five and her mother had been twenty-two when she had her. Emilia was fifty-eight years old, yet she looked closer to seventy.

His own mother was about Mrs. Driscoll's age, having had him when she was only seventeen, but she was vivacious, still working as a housekeeper despite his protests. Whenever he insisted she stop working, she'd tell him there was no shame in hard work, even if her occupation embarrassed him. There was no point in having
that
argument with his mother anymore.

He stood. “Ms. Driscoll, I'm Alex Santiago. I work for Senator Roberts.”

Taking her hand, he controlled his grip. She seemed so fragile; he didn't want to break her fingers.

“Call me Emilia.” She took a seat next to her daughter on the love seat, forcing him to go back to sitting across from them. “How is Bill?”