That would still be too fucking soon.
But that comment about his marriage bothered him. It lingered on his mind in the hours after he deleted the app. His brain kept chewing on it, and he woke up early the next morning, which deeply irritated him because he preferred to sleep in until the last possible second now, until he had something to do or somewhere to be.
How had that person known about the marriage, if it was scrubbed from the record?
* * *
It was too earlyin the morning for Monica Fischer’s phone to vibrate once, let alone basically non-stop for five minutes. And because she was asleep when it started going off, she accidentally shoved it between her mattress and her headboard. Now it was wedged out of reach, resting against the base of the headboard on the floor. Right in the middle.
She was going to have to move the whole bed. Or find a tool. Where did her housekeeper put the broom?
“Stop. Calling. Me,” she snapped at the phone.
Then her iPad starting ringing from across the room.
Great. Whoever it was—probably her mother—had decided to switch to FaceTime, and that went to every device she owned. Well, rescuing the phone could wait now. She rolled out of bed, snatched the iPad, and carried it with her into her dressing room.
“Mom, it’s too early for whatever your latest—”
“Not your mother, darling,” an elegant, lightly accented voice interrupted her. “Oh, you look terrible.”
“I look asleep, Amira.” Monica set the tablet on a shelf and propped her hands on her hips, giving her best friend from boarding school an exasperated look. The woman was the closest thing she had to a sister. “And fuck you.”
“Damn it, did I get the time difference wrong again?” Amira Saleh managed a smile that was both bright and sympathetic at the same time. “Have you checked your Google alerts yet?”
“I wasasleep. It isfive thirtyin themorning.”
“Yikes.” Amira grimaced. “Okay, well...This could have waited a few hours.”
“What could have…?” Monica abandoned her plan to get dressed. She swiped over to her inbox, where she got a routine digest email of Google alerts on her name every morning. It was a rare day she clicked in to read the summary of mentions of her name around the internet, because she wasn’t super high profile. Not like Sylvie or Cathryn, their other friends from school.
Even Amira had more of an online presence than Monica did.
She preferred to nurture other people to their best brand potential. That was fun.
Her name being in the press? Never fun.
And because Fischer Racing had the best lawyers and PR people in the world, her name was never in the press.
“I’m not seeing anything,” she murmured as she skimmed the links. She snapped her gaze back to where Amira was sipping what looked like lemonade at a cafe. “Where are you? It looks warm.”
“Beirut, visiting my grandmother before leaving for Italy.”
“Nice.”
“Mmm. The countdown is on, but…you may have to fix your little…problem?”
“Just tell me. Did my mother join TikTok? I told her she shouldn’t, but she’s in a fifty-is-the-new-twenty phase. Oh God, is my father getting married again?”
“It’s not your parents. But TikTok…” Amira sighed and leaned in, tapping on the screen. “None of those people got the media training we did, babe. And it shows. I’m sending you a link to a not-so-blind item on a gossip website. Your name is all over the comments, so if you don’t get the alert today, you will tomorrow.”
A violently queasy feeling took up residence in Monica’s belly as she read the brief item.
A reality TV star in the car world, who amassed millions of followers on TikTok and recently broken up with her fiancé, is now linked to a certain racing heiress’s secret husband. Talk about a love quadrangle guaranteed to finish last.
She knew exactly what this was about.
Josh’s brief flirtation with Wynona Wheels hadn’t bothered Monica. They lived in different countries, for goodness’ sake. And anyone with eyes could tell that he wasn’t an instigator. She would bet money he hadn’t slid into Wynona’s DMs. He was simply responding to fan chatter. Which was a rookie mistake anyone with experience could have seen coming, but Josh didn’t have that social media experience.
