Hi everyone,

It's #romanceweek16 on Goodreads and here's my Tuesday teaser. Like a lot of poeple in the U.S, I have election fever. I live in Washington DC, how could I not? So, this is a draft of the beginning of my new novel-- Love: Politically Incorrect.

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Love: Politically Incorrect

“....Senator Roberts faces some tough questions ahead.”

The TV announcer’s dramatic voice echoed as Kat opened the doors leading to the stairwell. She took the steps two at a time, and burst into the hallway.

“Professor Driscoll!”

Kat turned to see her teaching assistant chasing after her. “Not now Amanda, I’m late.” Kat hurried down the hallway.

She was due to administer a final exam to juniors at Hillsdale college, and didn’t want to come up with an excuse for being late because of her mother. Again. Today was not a day to look bad in front of the Dean.She came through the door of the classroom, walked to the stage, and set her papers on the professor’s table. Her mouth opened automatically to silence the room and she looked up. Her voice stuck.

Fifty students stared at her like she’d grown two heads. “You guys are eager to start the exam,” she said nervously. Something was wrong. She glanced at the clock on the back wall. Only a minute late. Was she wearing her shirt backwards? She looked down at her clothes, then chaos broke loose.

“Is it true?”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“What does this mean for you?”
“Are we still taking the exam today?

Kat blinked as the questions flew at her. What was going on?

Amanda, her out of breath, teaching assistant huffed up the stage.
“The Dean asked me to administer the exam so you can deal with the situation.”
“What situation?"
Amanda stared at her, open mouthed. “You haven’t seen the news?”

A pit formed deep in Kat’s stomach. She shook her head. “What’s going on?”
The cacophony of questions from the students intensified. Several were on their feet, holding out cell phones. Kat turned to see tell-tale flashes.

“Go to your office, don’t talk to anyone, and turn on the news. Go!”
Kat pointed to the sheaf of exam papers, then turned and fled. Two more faculty members tried to stop her but she blew past them.

It can’t be mom, she thought. She’d just come from making sure her mother was medicated and tucked away in bed. Had she done something in the fifteen minutes it took Kat to make it to campus? Kat vividly remember the incident from high school when she was pulled out of class and into the principal’s office. The principal had the TV turned onto the local news and asked Kat if the woman walking around in a bathrobe on Main Street was her mother. Indeed it was and the media had filmed her in all her half naked glory. Not one of them had thought to call for help.
How had her mother pulled off a CNN worthy stunt in the last few minutes?

She ran to her closet sized office and shut the door. She was only an Assistant professor, not tenure track—not yet anyway--so she got an inside office with just enough room for a desk and two guest chairs. She did have a TV, a must for any political science professor.
She pressed the power button and waited for CNN to come up. It was the default channel during election season. The image filled the screen. She dropped the remote.

Her own face stared back at her. It was her faculty picture. The unflattering one where her blonde hair looked lifeless, her blue eyes tired, and her cheeks paler than the white background. It was her post-break up face, the face of a woman who'd been lied to by someone she loved, cheated out of her much deserved faculty position, and forced to start over in a new college. One bad media story had done that to her. Two years had passed, and Kat was not that woman anymore.

The volume was too low so she searched the floor with trembling hands for the remote and turned it up, stabbing at the buttons until she could hear the announcer.
“.....and we’ll come back to this developing story.” Her picture disappeared and they went to commercial.

She let out a scream of frustration.
“Are you okay?” The professor next door called through the thin walls. She forced a breath into her lungs.
“Yes, sorry,” she mustered. While her colleagues seemed nice enough, she wasn't close with any of them. That was a mistake she wasn't going to make again.
“It’s understandable.”

Kat went behind her desk and turned on the ancient computer. She watched the maddeningly slow boot up screens She didn’t have a smart-phone; an expense forgone because of the cost of the data plan on top of the pricey device. Once she got a promotion, she would treat herself to a tablet computer.
She punched in her login and password, keeping an eye on CNN. They were still on commercial.As soon as she was logged in, she opened the internet browser which went straight to the politics page. A yelp escaped her lips as she saw her picture, that same ugly faculty photo, load on the page.

Katerina Driscoll--Senator Roberts secret daughter, the headline screamed.

Her eyes widened as she read through the article as quickly as she could, needing to blink several times as the words blurred before her. She flipped open her dated phone and called home. It just rang. She swore under her breath. The mood stabilizer she gave her mother sometimes knocked her out.
This can’t be true. She read the article again and her mouth soured. She knew Senator Roberts. Correction, she knew him the way a professor knows a subject. She’d spent a whole class lecture on the three-term U.S. Congress Senator from Virginia. He was in a tough re-election battle because he was proposing a bill to spend billions of dollars on IED--Improvised Explosive Device identification technology for overseas troops. The normally boring State election had taken national stage since its outcome would determine the majority party in the closely held Senate. It had been an exciting few weeks for the tiny political science department at her small town Virginia college.

CNN came back and repeated the headline she’d just read online. It seemed the first story appeared a little over an hour ago. Her heart pounded in her ears, deafening the words of the TV announcer. She fingered the pendant on her necklace, and took short breaths to calm the sharp pain in her chest. This couldn't be happening. Not on this day.
Why do they think I’m his daughter? She flipped her phone open and called the house again. Maybe the ringing would wake her mother.

She scanned all the articles again for her mother’s name but all that came up was an obscure reference to a “short-lived previous marriage.”

This had to be some horrible case of mistaken identity She picked up her purse and checked her watch. She had two hours before the committee met about her promotion. She had to go home and rouse her mother to set this straight.

The TV screen caught her eye and she gasped. A new picture appeared, one from just moments ago in the lecture hall. A scrolling twitter feed showed next to it.
VA professor said daddy isn’t the smartest.

#secretdaughter

Prof Driscoll thinks @SenatorRoberts blew it. #secretdaughter

The scrolling text was too fast to read. She went back to the computer and brought up her twitter account. She’d never seen the hashtag before but knew it was being used to tag all the tweets related to the story. She typed in #secretdaughter in the search box. There were over a thousand tweets, including a bunch from her students who were supposed to be writing an exam. There were at least ten pictures of her standing in front of the class looking like a deer caught in the headlights. If possible, the picture was even uglier than the faculty photo. Every crease on the tailored shirt showed, and her pencil skirt looked a size too small against her newly gained five pounds., The sensible flat shoes, good for traversing the campus, made her look short.

She struggled to take a breath but all the oxygen in the room had been sucked out. This wasn’t just some small media story. It was big time news, and she was right in the middle of it. She stood on shaky legs. The only way to put a stop to all this was to talk to her mother. Right now, she couldn’t even call the CNN desk and yell at them for purporting lies. Her birth certificate, and every form she’d ever completed had a blank next to her father’s name. He was a figment of Kat’s imagination, a man she’d created to fill her mother’s silence.

Could the news story be true?
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I'd love to hear what you think. There's plenty of time to improve the story.

--Sophia
Sophia Sasson
My Website