“Hmm?” she asked, adding a bit more champagne to her glass.

Naomi’s blue eyes met hers. “You’ve been paying attention to the Internet besides the Scandal Boy thing, right?”

Audrey gave an indelicate grunt. “Not really. I’ve been mostly offline since his shady post. I needed a break from the fake pity and the nosy questions. I figure tomorrow’s soon enough to deal with it all.”

“Yeeeeah, I think you have something new to deal with. Something… bigger.”

She handed Audrey the phone. “Read Deena’s message, then click the link.”

Audrey skimmed the text from Naomi’s assistant.

OMG, is it true?! Squee!

Audrey’s thumb tapped the URL below the message, her gaze only needing to take in the headline to understand Naomi’s concern.

Socialite Audrey Tate engaged to longtime companion Clarke West.

“Oh hell,” Audrey muttered with a sigh, handing the phone back to Naomi. “Not this again.”

Chapter Two

SUNDAY, JANUARY 5

Did you hear? A certain Madison Avenue diva’s got herself a new man, allegedly. How long he’ll stick around is the real question. Rumor has it our favorite girl’s cursed in love—she couldn’t keep a man if he was chained to her Bottega Veneta crocodile handbag.

—@ScandalBoyNYC

Clarke’s apartment was a ten-minute walk from Audrey’s, which wasn’t nearly enough time to walk off her anger. Not that she was mad at Clarke—she could handle him in her sleep.

No, Audrey was still pissed at the imbecilic @ScandalBoyNYC, who, before she and the girls could even finish their mimosas, had taken yet another swing at Audrey on Instagram. The boy, man, woman, whatever, apparently had a well-connected source, which was more than a little annoying. Still, the guy should really be more careful about whom he spoke with. Nobody in Audrey’s acquaintance would have even joked about attaching a chain to a Bottega.

Petty and unfounded as they may be, the accusations still stung. Audrey was no stranger to social media trolling, but it was embarrassing to have her romantic life open to scrutiny. She didn’t even tell her closest friends the innermost workings of her heart—to have strangers on the Internet assessing her single status was downright galling.

But she’d have to deal with that later. First, there was the not so little matter of her fiancé.

Like Audrey, Clarke West lived just off Madison Avenue, though a bit farther downtown. Ironically, Audrey noted with a smile as she turned onto Sixty-Fourth, right next to the Bottega Veneta store. Flipping the mental bird to Scandal Boy as she passed the high-end shop, she hopped up the stairs to Clarke’s townhome.