Chapter 14 #2
“Can’t or won’t? Your sister was his wife, right? How did you end up with the same woman? Does she just really dig drivers?”
“Stop with these questions. That’s an insult to me and to her. She’s not into drivers.”
He walked past them toward the elevators.
“But she was Jose’s mistress, wasn’t she?”
Inigo clenched his jaw to keep from responding and just waited for the elevator doors to open.
Once he got inside, he hit the number for his floor.
When the doors closed, he punched the paneled wall.
He didn’t know what kind of story they were going to run.
He should call Marielle and his sister and let them both know what was going on.
But at the same time, he didn’t want to talk to either of them.
He knew that no matter how he sliced it, he was responsible for this.
He shouldn’t have ever gone on a second date with Marielle.
He should never have slept with her and started to care about her.
He should have left her alone instead of falling in love with her.
And now he’d never have her. There was no way back from this kind of story.
But how had they found out about Jose? He hadn’t told anyone.
.. Was it Dante’s slip of the tongue? He was the only one Inigo had told the whole story to.
He knew it wasn’t Bianca, Derek...or Marielle.
It seemed a far stretch that Siobahn or Scarlet would have let the story out.
The only other person who knew the details was Dante.
He punched in his lead engineer’s number.
“Did you talk to the press?” he asked as soon as Dante answered.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“Marielle and Jose. Did you leak that?” he asked point-blank as he entered his apartment and threw his keys against the wall with enough force to leave a mark.
“I must have. I mentioned I was drunk and I know that’s not an excuse. I’m so sorry. I never intended for any of this to happen.”
“I get that. But I’m going to have to try to fix this.
..damn, my nephew doesn’t know about his father.
I know he’s only four. But someday he’s going to google his name, and this is going to come up.
Bianca’s going to have to read about it again and be humiliated.
And Marielle, who had started to set herself up as a lifestyle influencer, is going to have to start over. How can I fix this?”
“I thought you and Mari were done.”
“Hearing these questions and wanting to protect her has shown me that we’re not,” Inigo admitted, realizing that he’d been running from his feelings since that moment.
He should have known there wasn’t a fast enough speed to get away from this.
He loved Marielle, and he wished there was some way he could fix this for her.
“Have you seen the news?” Marielle’s assistant asked as he walked into her room at 5:00 a.m. He smelled of snow and aftershave, but his hair was standing on end as if he hadn’t brushed it.
She realized he’d probably doused himself with the scent on the way out of the door.
He was usually so well groomed that it was surprising to see him so unkempt.
“What? No. It’s an ungodly hour. What are you even doing here, PJ?”
“You need me,” he said, sitting on the edge of bed and fumbling around in the covers for the remote control. He pointed it at the TV, which was always tuned to E! “I would have brought you something to drink but, girl, I didn’t want to stop on my way over. This is crazy.”
Puzzled, Marielle turned her attention to the broadcast. “Breaking news this morning that upcoming social media influencer Living with Mari is actually Marielle Bisset,” the entertainment news anchor reported breathlessly.
“That’s not too bad. It was bound to come out at some time,” she said. “It’s not like it was going to take a lot of digging to find that out.”
“Keep watching.”
“Though her channel is one that promotes both good deeds and clean living, we have learned that she was the mistress of a married Formula One driver Jose Ruiz for the nine months that his wife, Bianca, was pregnant. Not sure how that meshes with her mission statement but given that she’s a Bisset, not entirely surprising.
Within social circles she is known for being a wild child and is rumored to be her father’s favorite.
I think we all remember that her birth followed his infamous affair nearly thirty years ago. ”
What the hell?
Marielle pulled the covers over her head.
A sick feeling was developing in her stomach.
This was stuff that shouldn’t be coming out now.
She rolled to her side, hugging her pillow to her stomach, and wished she was the type of woman who could cry.
But she never had been. She couldn’t even get too angry, because they hadn’t reported anything that was untrue.
But how had they found out?
“Is my phone blowing up?”
“Yes,” PJ said. “Want me to handle it today?”
“I don’t know. I need to talk to my parents. I don’t know how they’ll want me to handle it,” she admitted.
“Bisset’s current beau, Formula One driver Inigo Velasquez, had no comment,” the announcer was saying.
“Please turn that off.”
PJ did as she asked and then handed over her phone. “It’s your mom. Or do you want me to handle it?”
She took the phone from him. “Mom.”
“Marielle,” her mom said. “How are you?”
She almost cried then. Thank God her mom was always the first to go into crisis mode. “Freaking out. I thought that thing with Jose was buried. I have no idea how it got out. I’m sorry they led with me being a Bisset.”
“That was their mistake. Carlton is on his way to your place, and I will be leaving the Hamptons shortly. We are going to come out swinging. Do you have any idea who could have leaked this?”
“No. I mean, there are only a handful of people alive who know about me and Jose,” she said.
“The wife. Didn’t you say you’d seen her recently?”
“I did,” Marielle admitted. Bianca had been mad and hurt, but she had also been pregnant and had a four-year-old son to think about. For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine Bianca leaking this to the press.
“Would she do this?” her mom asked.
“I don’t think so,” Marielle said. “Would you have done it? Years later, would you bring up the woman Dad did his thing with?”
“No. I hate her. I don’t even want to hear her name mentioned,” her mom said. “I don’t want to rule out the wife, but we’ll put her at the bottom of the list. What about the driver you were seeing?”
Inigo? “He’s her brother. Surely he wouldn’t do that.”
“Would he have had a reason to?”
“I don’t want to believe that he would, Mom. I mean, we stopped seeing each other to avoid hurting anyone else.”
“Okay. But he’s still on the list. Who do you know who might be jealous of your success? You have sort of gone big since Christmas,” her mom said.
Marielle couldn’t think of anyone. But just hearing her mom defending her and helping her to figure this out meant more to her than she could say.
Her mom was still talking about influencers who’d tried to get invited to her event when Marielle started crying.
It didn’t matter who had leaked the negative information.
For the first time in her life, she was being treated as a Bisset, not as a mistake or a consequence of her father’s misdeeds.
And she hadn’t expected it to affect her as deeply as it was.
“Thank you, Mom.”
“You’re very welcome. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but for someone to come after you now is not right.
I’m a very powerful woman, and when I find out who it was, they will be very sorry they messed with me.
Now don’t respond to anything until Carlton gets there.
He’s bringing a PR person who specializes in dealing with this kind of situation. Is your assistant there?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Let him answer the door and go out and get whatever you need. Stay put until we get there. We’ll take care of this,” her mom said.
She hung up a moment later, and Marielle turned to PJ. “Mama is finally protecting her little cub,” he quipped.
“She is. Who do you think would do this?”
She was trying to think of anyone who would want to harm her career, but this felt really mean-spirited—she hoped that it wasn’t anyone she knew well. She wasn’t too sure that she wanted someone in her life who would do that.
“I have no idea, but we will find out,” PJ said.