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The part where I was about to be engaged to Grace Richford—well, I was sort of looking forward to that, too.

Chapter

Five

GRACE

My head pounds the moment my eyes open in the morning, but I don’t have time to think about how much wine I drank last night.

My buzzing phone says I’m needed.

I grab it off the coffee table, sit up, and then nearly fall off the couch when I see the screen.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, do you see this? Did you see this?”

I hold the phone up right in front of Preston's face. He has to lean back a little to look at it. He’d fallen asleep on the floor next to the couch, where I apparently slept.

“Oh, yeah, that's not good.”

He sits up, rubbing his eyes.

“Oh my god, did we do this? I can't believe we did this. What did we, what did we, oh my god.” Words fail me as I try to put even one sentence together.

I want to scream and yell at him, but no matter how strong those feelings are, I'm an adult, and I'm fully aware that it wasn't just him last night.

I was there.

I was drinking.

I was talking.

I was sharing a night with him that I thought was going to be the beginning of us actually becoming friends, but no, it looks like I decided to skip that completely.

“Fuck.” I flop onto the couch, drop my face into my hands, and rub my temples. The couch dips as he sits next to me. I look up and stare at him. He looks remorseful, and I hate that I love the way his eyes sparkle as they focus on me. I've been obsessed with those blue eyes since the day I met him.

“I don't even know what to do from here,” I say. “I thought the internet was out and the post had an error.”

He nods. “Technically, it just said error loading.”

My eyes widen. “What?”

His hands go up. “Hey, I thought that if you exited out of the app before posting, it wouldn’t post. I don’t control technology.”

“Oh. My. God. What do we do now?” I ask, looking at the photo of the two of us announcing our engagement.

It’s viral.

He nods slowly, looks at his phone again, and then drops his hand to his side before taking the seat next to me.

“Well, we have a couple of options,” he starts, pausing long enough for me to cut in.

“Why are you so calm about this?”

He shrugs, a slight look of defeat covering his face as he blows out a breath.

“It's not the first time something's been posted online about me that I have to fix. The gal who runs the PR for my family's company has been calling and texting me since about an hour after we put that post up so she can release a statement. But I'm not going to make any decisions until you and I decide what we think is best.”

My mouth drops open as I stare at him. He has a whole PR team to cover gossip like this. And we just announced that we are getting married. What the hell were we thinking?