“Jesus, there’s like over fifty tweets—” she gasped.
Breaking: #CafeBae and #CuteCafeGirl went to the bathroom AT THE SAME TIME
“What the hell, we didn’t go to the bathroom together. We definitely didn’t do what this is implying. He went to the bathroom. I went to get some napkins. I was barely gone for a few minutes.”
“This is so creepy.” Rhi took the phone from her and kept scrolling. “Jeez. He’s got a peach to die for.”
Katrina raked her hands through her hair. “Not entirely inaccurate, but irrelevant, since I wasn’t personally moved by the peach.”
Rhiannon shook her head. “They overheard him asking you out, and said you agreed.”
“I didn’t.” Katrina’s words were too loud, but she couldn’t dial back the volume, she was so agitated. “I mean, he did ask me out, but like I told you, I turned him down.”
Rhiannon kept scrolling. Oh God, was it never-ending? “After a bajillion tweets of buildup, she probably had to make up a happy ending to satisfy her followers.”
Katrina scrubbed her face. “This lady doesn’t have a lot of followers, at least, does she?”
Rhiannon was silent for a moment, then she cleared her throat. “As of this morning, she has about two hundred thousand.”
Two hundred thousand.
“Some of those have to be bots, though,” Jia tagged on in a hurry. Like it mattered if even two-thirds of them were bots.
Two hundred thousand people had seen her face on the internet.
“The thread went pretty viral. She probably got a lot of those followers overnight,” Rhiannon said.
“Why? I mean, it was an unusual encounter for me, but it was, like, utterly typical to most people.”
“People love to ship other humans, real or fictional.” Rhiannon slid the phone back to Jia. “This woman spun a story, and the world went with it. They got invested in your happily-ever-after.”
Happily-ever-after? No, this was a disaster. “She took my photo,” Katrina whispered, and picked at her cuticles. Save for the vague pics on her dating profile, no one had taken her photo since she’d disappeared into relative obscurity. She didn’t have any social media. Every photo of her on the internet was from years and years ago, and that was how she preferred it.
Anonymity had been the main thing that had comforted her when she’d gone for that first drive. The assurance that no one would know who she truly was if she had a panic attack in public. The certainty that anyone who wanted to hurt Katrina King would stay far away.
“At least you had that hat on. You’re pretty unidentifiable in it,” Jia reassured her.
It did reassure her, but only for a moment. “You identified me.”
“Only after you told us about the encounter. And honestly, I live with you. I know your face.”
Katrina waited for her heart to start racing, but an odd, icy cold had settled over her. It might not be a huge pool, but other people knew her face too. And the woman—Becca, according to her username—may have given a halfhearted thought to hiding her identity, but she hadn’t pixelated her face out entirely.
She pushed her plate away. “Okay, so odds are no one will recognize me, right?”
“Right.” Jia nodded. “And these things blow over. A cat will learn how to play the tuba in like an hour and you’ll no longer be a viral phenomenon.”
A phenomenon. She tried to smile, but feared it was a baring of teeth. “Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool.” This wasn’t a big deal. It would be fine.
“I’ll put my trip off. I’ll get Lakshmi on it. We’ll figure this out.”
Rhiannon’s assistant was amazing and possibly a warlock, but Katrina feared even Lakshmi wouldn’t be able to do anything about this. “No. You go. Don’t say anything to Lakshmi, or even Samson yet, please? I’ll monitor it and it’ll be fine.” The numbness was nice, a new way to manage her emotions.
“Should we tell Jas?” Rhiannon asked.
“No.” The single word was sharp, but she couldn’t help it. Maybe she should tell Jas, but that would mean bugging him during his time off.
You’re being foolish. He is your core security, and should know about this.
But that was the problem with getting romantically interested in one’s bodyguard, eh? The embarrassment of her crush finding out about this debacle outweighed her need to tell her employee that she’d gone viral, albeit anonymously. For now. “I’ll tell him if it escalates.”
As if she sensed her distress, Zeus came to rub herself against Katrina’s legs. She scooped the cat up, scratching under her chin. Zeus immediately collapsed in a boneless heap against Katrina’s chest. She wished she could relax as easily. “Do you guys mind cleaning up?”
“Of course,” Jia murmured.
“Excellent. Will you excuse me, please?” She didn’t wait for either of them to respond, just got up from the table and made her way to the door.
It’ll blow over. It’ll pass. No one will be able to identify you. The words played in her head as she walked down the hallway to her sunny little office. They had to be true, those words, or the tendrils of panic would grab hold of her and never let go.
No, no, that wasn’t true. The panic always let go. It did. She’d survive.
It’ll pass.
You’re safe.
Chapter Five
“HERE’S MILEY IN her Halloween costume. She’s going to be a Tootsie Roll.”
Jas dutifully perused the photo on the phone shoved under his nose. The baby was about a year and a half old and sported a solemn expression on the chubby face that poked out of the cutout in the candy costume. “Very cute.”
Dean Miller took the phone back, swiped a few times, and then showed it to Jas again, beaming. “Here she is dressed like a peppermint patty.”
Jas expected the photo to be from a previous year, but the girl looked the same, if more resigned, as a foil-wrapped square. “I thought her Halloween costume was the Tootsie Roll.”
“Oh, that’s for trick-or-treating. We’re having a party, too, to celebrate her second Halloween. I can’t pick one look, so I got her a bunch of different outfits and took photos.” Dean flipped through the photos. “Here she is as peas, and a piggy, and a roll of pennies, and a dinosaur, and a—”
“Can I see the dinosaur?” Harris, Dean’s cousin, interrupted from across the table.
“Sure thing.” Dean passed him the phone.
Harris didn’t glance at the device. Instead, he tucked it into the inside of his jacket. “Thanks.”
Jas coughed to hide his sudden laugh.
“Hey!” Dean glared at his cousin.
“No one wants to see your kid dressed up like food and animals, cousin.”
“Jas was interested.”
“No, he wasn’t. He’s new, so you were taking advantage of his politeness to make him suffer through a slideshow of your kid’s every move.”
Jas was grateful neither man seemed to want his input at all. Dean growled at Harris and placed his hands on the table, rising slightly out of his chair. “Give me my phone back.”