His Test Cost Him a Wife, Not a Negotiation novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Eleven Below

Soren meets Dorinda at the airport in the cold and says he told the department not to bother with her; the video has reached the chair, who calls a conduct review.

The first thing Minnesota did was take my breath away.

I stepped out of the Minneapolis terminal at ten in the morning, and the air was eleven below zero.

My Boston wool coat did nothing.

A tall man was standing at the curb with a sheet of printer paper that said PAULEY in black marker.

He wore a canvas work coat, a knit cap and no gloves.

He did not smile.

"Dorinda Pauley?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Soren Halvorsen. I run recruiting for the statistics department. I wrote you."

He took one of my suitcases without asking.

His hand was broad and red from the cold.

"You were the one who said the seat was held until noon," I said.

"I said it to get an answer out of you." He opened the back of a dented green Subaru and set my bag inside. "Third time's the charm."

I stopped with my hand on the door.

"Third time?"

He looked at me over the roof of the car.

"I wrote you twice before, Ms. Pauley. Three years ago, and again eighteen months ago. You said no both times."

"I know I said no," I said. "I said it because I thought I couldn't leave."

"You said more than no."

He took out his phone, thumbed through it and read from the screen.

"Not interested. Do not contact me again."

"That was the second one. The first was polite. It said the department should stop wasting its time on applicants who were never going to come."

I stood there with the cold biting through my gloves.

"I never wrote that," I said.

"It came from your address."

"I never wrote that."

He studied my face for a second longer than was polite.

Then he shrugged.

"I went to the director after the second one," he said. "I told her not to bother with you again. I said you thought Minnesota was beneath you."

I got into the car.

It was a surprisingly honest thing to say to someone he had just picked up, and I liked him a little for it.

He got in on his side and cranked the heater.

It blew out air that was merely cool.

"Then your yes came in last night," he said, pulling into traffic. "At nine fifty-eight, in the middle of whatever that was."

"Whatever what was?"

He glanced at me, then back at the road.

"Ms. Pauley. There's a video."

I went cold.

"The director's assistant forwarded it to me at seven this morning," he said. "It has four million views. The subject line said, Is this who we hired?"

I looked out at the snowbanks along the highway, gray and packed down.

"You watched it," I said.

"Twice."

"And?"

"And in the first half, I thought, I get why she turned it down."

He drove for a while without speaking.

"In the second half, a woman in pearls told a whole lobby what you were thinking," he said. "And you never answered her."

"I didn't have anything to say to her."

"You had something to say to him."

"Yes."

"The wedding is off," he said, flat, quoting me.

"That's what I said."

"It was a good line."

I turned and looked at him.

His face was serious, and his mouth had not moved at all.

For the first time since the rehearsal dinner, something in my chest let go a little.

"Is that your professional opinion?" I asked.

"It's my honest opinion."

He took the exit for the university.

"Here's the part you won't like," he said.

"There's a part I like?"

"Our department chair has asked for a conduct review. Monday, nine o'clock. A funded seat can be withdrawn for what the university calls conduct unbecoming."

"Unbecoming of what?"

"Of a woman who has four million strangers calling her a gold digger."

I held on to the edge of my seat.

"I turned down two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," I said.

"I know."

"I turned it down in front of everyone."

"I know. That's the part they're ignoring."

He pulled up in front of a brick building with a green door.

The snow in the lot was packed so hard it squeaked.

He killed the engine and turned in his seat.

"I'll be at the review," he said. "I'll say what I can. But I'm going to be honest with you, Ms. Pauley, because I think you'd rather have it."

"I would."

"I don't know yet if you're the woman who wrote those emails."

I thought of Winslow's face in the lobby, still and sure.

"Neither do I," I said. "But I'm going to find out."

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