Paddock Club

Book : Slipstream

by Madge Maril

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy; Sports Romance

Synopsis

A Formula 1 romance set in the Slipstream universe following Cat Cromwell, a fashion influencer on a secret mission to ruin a driver’s reputation, but she may fall for his rival instead.

As a professional heartbreaker, Cat Cromwell knows she’ll never fall in love—but she’ll pretend to, for a price. A former fashion model in New York City with a side hustle charming and then dumping the World’s Worst Men, Cat is offered the chance to pull off her biggest con yet: date and dump F1 driver Bernard Baudelaire…who recently left his very angry ex at the altar.

Raised on Formula 1 by a single father herself, Cat is excited to infiltrate the ivory tower that is the Paddock Club through fashion, and also to get back at another powerful, spoiled man who feels entitled to treat women like playthings, something she has undertaken for women and girls since her early modeling days and her family’s financial struggles. But Cat’s perfect plan hits the brakes when Bernard leaves the racing team—and she’s assigned to work with Faust Ferreira Sanchez instead, a moody F1 driver recovering after an apocalyptically embarrassing year in his career.

Faust is nothing like the men Cat is paid to date and loves to hate. He’s quiet. Honest. And absurdly hot in an all-black suit. Worse, Faust is convinced that Cat isn’t who she claims to be. And he’s particularly interested in why she's flirting with his ex-teammate and biggest racing rival.

As flying between fashion shows and racing circuits wears Cat’s carefully crafted mask thin, she finds herself drawn further into Faust’s steamy game of cat and mouse, and the dangerously real passion they ignite in each other. But with shadows from Cat’s checkered past looming in the pit lane, can she find a way to break her target’s heart without losing the first honest man she’s ever known? Or will staying in the Paddock Club be the first scam she can’t pull off?

Release date: July 14, 2026

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Print pages: 288

Sample

Chapter 1: En Passant

Chapter 1 EN PASSANT
NEW YORK CITY

I’m not a good person. What I am, though, is a good woman.

You know what I mean—the difference. There’s an art to being a woman in this world, those little winks, the pencil skirts, the mauve eyeshadow. Saying sorry when you’re not sorry, styling your hair within an inch of its life, choosing silence so you can be invisible, so you can do whatever you want. I think I was fourteen the first time I realized that this body would require work. My grandma was perched on her restaurant’s fake marble countertop, short legs swinging, the heels of her nonslip shoes banging softly against the purple cabinet doors. I was in front of her, my chin in her hand as she applied eyeliner to my water line.

“This freaking hurts,” I whined.

“I know,” she replied calmly. “If you hand me the makeup remover, I can take it off. Your choice.”

Waterfield High School’s fall dance was that night, and I had a date with a soft-spoken writer in my class who all the guys called Nosferatu. “No. I’m okay,” I promised Grandma, and when she smiled knowingly at me, I felt like I’d made the right choice: getting stabbed in the eyeball by a sharpened pencil so a boy nicknamed Nosferatu wouldn’t look away from me. You don’t often notice those rites of passage in the moment, when life dunks into the darkness of one long tunnel before you’re out on the other side, brand-new. But when Grandma let me borrow her stop-sign-red lipstick—Revlon’s Fire and Ice—I felt like I’d just become myself.

And then, at the dance, I learned the second most important lesson of my life. When I overheard Nosferatu trash-talking my handmade dress to his snobby creative writing club friends, I didn’t tell him that it’d taken approximately five thousand hours to painstakingly sew hot-pink sequins to cotton. Or that girls with red hair can wear pink. Or that it’s really shitty to talk about my lack of strong female role models like I’m Bambi and he’s a guidance counselor.

I kept my Fire-and-Ice lips slammed shut and walked away, silently. All the way home. He’d hurt me, so I hurt him back, and that felt even better than lipstick.

And now, in a strange way, that’s kind of my job.

“This is ridiculous. How can the hotel cancel our Sugar Scrub Couples Massage? Don’t they realize we’re flying twenty hours to get there?” grumbles my date, Winston. This isn’t new. He’s a grumbler. And he’s been grumbling since he checked his email—during this black-tie wedding cocktail hour, notably. In Manhattan, where you really have to overextend yourself to be noticeably rude. “I’ve had this planned for a week, Cat. A week! I need to fucking relax.”

And if I have to listen to another billionaire monologue about how nobody wants to work anymore, I’ll need to dump my pinot noir on their head. “That’s a shame,” I start. Just three words, and that low, fizzly excitement is building in my chest, my toes curling as much as they can in my death-trap heels. “But Winston, what if this is a sign?”

It takes a good five seconds for my words to breach his glazed-over face, knock around that big blond head of his, then compute. His eyes flicker nervously between me, his phone, then back to me again. “Do you not want the sugar scrub? We could do just a massage, once the hotel gets off their lazy—”

“It isn’t really that. You agreed that we weren’t a long-term thing.” I’ve dropped my voice to a low, sympathetic register. It masks most of my giddiness. “Maybe it’s our time to part ways?”

Winston’s face has gone pale. “Are you breaking up with me at my best friend’s wedding?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You—you can’t. That is so.” Winston gulps for air. “Bitchy.”

Against all odds, I stop myself from giggling. “Oh, wow.”

Let the record show that the groom, Bernard Baudelaire, isn’t Winston’s best friend. I don’t even think Winston has friends, period. But Bernard is a Formula 1 driver—which would’ve been exciting to younger me, who grew up glued to the television screen on race weekends, a bowl of cereal in my lap, Dad and the guys from the garage yelling happily around me. But to Winston, this is just a public embarrassment. Like his own mother or an honest job, my date hasn’t seen anyone in this wedding since he and Bernard attended some aristocratic French boarding school together. You know, the good old days.

The person who has seen the happy couple in the last decade is the maid of honor, Prestly, a lovely if not slightly Machiavellian venture capitalist who’d hired me to date and subsequently dump Winston right here. Right now.

Since he’d insisted on coming to this wedding after cheating on her, a member of the bridal party.

I cast Winston a sad look from beneath my heavy black lashes. “I can get my own ride home. Good—”

“But what about the trip?” he says, clearly not ready to call it quits. “It’s over Valentine’s Day, Cat. Who else is going to go with me?”

I drag in a breath. “Winston. Today is Valentine’s Day.”

“It is?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s always on the last day of February.”

“I think you’re thinking about Leap Day.”

“Leap what?”

I give up. “Don’t tell me you’re getting attached.”

Winston’s throat bobs with panic. Don’t tell me you’re getting attached is exactly what he’d texted Prestly after she’d discovered his online dating profile. Sure, a bit on the nose, kind of a giveaway, but Prestly had offered to pay double my usual black-tie-wedding-breakup rate, and I’ve got sisters going to college. And maybe he’s too stupid to remember how he dumped his girlfriend of three years, anyway, since he grumbles, “That’s kind of mean,” as he goes for his ice water.

I watch, biting back a bright red smile. It isn’t that I’m heartless. If Winston were anyone else, I wouldn’t be dumping him at a wedding. But he’s him, and I’m me, and the petulant anger blossoming across his face? Ruining this billionaire’s picture-perfect night on the Upper East Side and upcoming White Lotus vacation? This is my job.

I’m a cat burglar.

And I steal time from horrible men.

“I can see you’re angry. I should go.” As I stand, Winston’s eyes follow my body up, lingering on the black tulle dress fluttering down my waist. It’s from Maria Grazia Chiuri’s first ready-to-wear collection with Dior, where the designer had sent her WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS T-shirt down the runway. Winston might’ve noticed the bad omen if he actually knew fashion history like he’d told me he did—I know, a ridiculous lie, but he brags about knowing every “rich person” niche, from naval history to women’s wear. He’s so misogynistic, he’s looped back around to sartorial hypervigilance.

“Happy hour isn’t over yet,” he says. “Don’t you want to stay for the ceremony?”

I arch an ice-blonde brow. Wella T18, the toner that you are. “Win, dear, the couple is two hours late and half the people in here are already smashed off their faces. I don’t think there’s going to be a wedding.”

“What about… saying goodbye in the bathroom? We never did, you know.” He leans forward suggestively, the squeak of his chair loud against the tasteful piano music. “Seal the deal.”

Wordlessly, I stare at Winston, wondering what would happen if I pointed out how entitled he is. Would his head explode? Spontaneously transform into a whale and a bowl of petunias? We haven’t even gotten close to sleeping together—I don’t ever sleep with my marks, ew—and he still booked us a couples massage. But men like Winston don’t realize they have a Madonna-Whore Complex, of course; that would require critical thinking and self-awareness.

“I think I’m okay,” I say, smiling. “Hope you have the life that you deserve, Win.”

“Hey. Seriously? No? You know you’re just an influencer, right? Anyone would want to date me! Hey, I’m talking to—”

Ignoring him, I double-check that I’ve got my clutch and head downstairs, away from the happy hour floor. Once I’m safely at the top of a ridiculously grand marble staircase—and pretty sure Winston isn’t going to airport-run after me—I slip out my phone to text his ex. I don’t expect Prestly to see my message until later, since hello, wedding, but I like confirming when I’ve done the deed. A little present for the maid of honor.

It’s done. He tried to proposition me after I dumped him. Sorry you ever met him. Last quarter of the payment is due by midnight. xC

As soon as I hit send, her typing bubble pops up.

NOOO. EWWW.

Then—

Thank you for everything.

I usually stop replying to a client once I’ve sent their final receipt and/or apologized for their misfortune—ironically, I’m the person who can’t get attached. Nor do I want to. At the end of the day, as much as I love helping womankind, I will not be splitting margaritas and queso with a venture capitalist named Prestly. This is where our lives go in two separate directions. She goes back to funding data-torture software named after Lord of the Rings villains, and I go back to funneling her money into charity, my family, and good clothes.

But I am lucky. To get to do this at all. To be someone who women thank. Stop and think about it long enough, and everyone agrees that the world is weird and nonsensical and, by all philosophical accounts, supremely fucked-up. I get to right a few wrongs while I’m still here. That’s real wealth.

Then another text from Prestly pops up on my phone screen and yes, right, here’s why I don’t stop for sentimentality.

Hey, actually, have you left the venue yet???

My internal alarms ring. There’s something foreboding about those three question marks. Also, the word “actually” in the middle of a sentence. Frowning, I head outside to find a car, as if physically walking away will keep my clutch from vibrating against my hip. I don’t know why Prestly wants to know where I am. But it isn’t like she’s triple-texting me to ditch this disaster wedding to grab a drink with her, either. I need to go.

I slip past the apathetic doormen, into an alleyway tucked around the venue’s sleek marble exterior. It’s wet and cold and safe, and I tap through my apps for a ride home. This week, “home” is a cheap short-term studio in Jersey—convenient.

I’m swiping away yet another notification from Prestly when I notice that I have company.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. My spine tingles with the sudden knowledge that I’m not alone, goose bumps followed by an interior somersault, and I’m glancing over my shoulder before my street smarts can kick in. The alleyway’s dim lighting makes the stranger register in pieces—dark, wavy hair pushed behind his tan ears. A rich black suit, only a few steps darker than his ink-brown eyes. High cheekbones. A strong nose. And his mouth. It’s full, astonishingly pink, and stuck in a frown that either says need more champagne to survive or why did I waste Valentine’s Day on this. Clearly, he’s another wedding attendee hiding from the impending car crash.

Then he looks up from his phone, seemingly noticing me for the first time. I give him a polite smile.

He doesn’t return it.

My smile drops.

He looks at me for another half second, the glow of his phone screen shading his tanned olive face with sharp contours. I wait for him to look back down, but he doesn’t. And there is something about his eyes—something familiar. He has that same look as the perpetually bedraggled celebrities I had crushes on when I was eighteen and starry-eyed: older, smarter, and rougher despite the tuxedo, just missing a half-burnt cigarette and a dog-eared poetry chapbook.

“Are you all right?” he says, with a voice ripped straight from a Nick Cave album. Exceedingly baritone, very sad, nebulously accented. Yup. Cue the chapbook.

“Who, me?”

The man’s eyes narrow, as if to point out that we’re both willingly standing in a damp New York City alleyway in February and that in itself is a questionable offense. My own frown deepens. I don’t need masculine pity-worry from someone who’d attend this wedding. “I’m okay. Are you?”

This is a kindness unnecessarily wasted on a man in a tuxedo. But he nods, appeased by my answer, and finally goes back to his phone. I pretend to do the same, though I can’t stop peeking. It isn’t that I’m hoping he keeps paying attention to me, or anything like that. Genuinely flirting with a man would require me to temporarily stop being Cat Cromwell, Fun Fashion Girl, a mask I wear like it’s glued to my frame. I’d have to stop running, and you’ve got to keep moving if you want to keep having fun. The second I let my guard down, get domestic with a stranger who’d never be able to handle my true self… that’s slowing down. That’s doom.

It’s just that he really does look familiar. Too familiar. And that isn’t a good thing in my line of work. I know I haven’t broken his heart; I charge triple for men who look like they have opinions about the Socratic method, even before you factor in the elegantly disheveled, tortured-celebrity-crush aesthetic.

My blood goes cold.

Oh my God.

I twist away, turning to face the streetlight at the front of the alleyway. Okay. No, this is—totally fine. So, yes. I do know who’s standing behind me. It doesn’t matter. I’m not eighteen anymore. I haven’t watched Formula 1 in years. I’m not going to talk to him.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

He’s talking to me. Again. And there’s something new in his voice—irritation, maybe—like I’ve annoyed him by possibly being not okay. My face goes red beneath my weapons-grade foundation, but I take a deep breath, smooth my hair into place, and turn back around. “Totally fine. Just had to get some fresh air.” I smile again, like his whole patronizing, I-know-better-than-you gambit is so endearing. And fine, it was. Once upon a time. From afar. But as is, I’m very unendeared by it.

With an equally unimpressed hmm, his gaze dips to my feet. We’re almost the same height, spot-on, and his eyes really are alarmingly brown, so it’s a bit obvious. “You a friend of Bernard’s?”

“Oh, no.” I not-so-subtly lean farther away. “Just here with someone.”

“Someone you’re leaving?” he asks skeptically.

I bite my lip. “Well.”

“Well?” he repeats, waiting for more.

More that he won’t get. “Well! You caught me.”

His head tilts, and his wavy hair tilts with him. Unlike his younger days, he’s mostly clean-shaven, though his hair’s longer—tiltable. Then he hums, unsmiling, unblinking, and a tiny wave of unease rolls down my spine. “Just a phrase,” I find myself adding. “It’s not—I really am fine, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m not, like, hiding. The date just wasn’t that great.”

“Why?”

I blink. Many times, actually. “He’s… I guess I didn’t expect all this.”

“All what?”

“You know, ice sculptures, multiple cocktail hours.”

He exhales out an almost silent, almost emotionless laugh. “Not for you?”

I hesitate. There are all different ways to look at someone: pupils blown with desire, excitement clouding your better judgment, seeing without seeing. Those are the kind of looks I’m used to. But his eyes are stuck on my face, calmly and acutely curious about me and my answers and my sneaking around, and I don’t like it at all. I know who he is. I once spent fifty dollars on a bootleg shirt with his face on it. But why is he looking at me like he knows why I’m here?

Or maybe… well.

Maybe he’s looking because he wants to look at me.

I entertain this thought for one nanosecond. His curious eyes. How his shoulders fill out that suit. This is younger me’s ultimate fantasy: a Wattpad of an evening with Fausto Ferreira Sanchez. Also known as Faust, the Pride of Portugal, Stark-Benzin Racing’s favorite, and one of the best Formula 1 drivers of all time.

Then the nanosecond is over, and I push the thought away so easily that I give myself chills. “You know what, I’m being so rude.” I suck in a breath through my fake smile. “I should go make sure I’ve said bye to him.”

I wait a moment. Here’s when my former hero hits me with the classic man-getting-left-at-a-party response: Oh no, don’t go, you’re so (insert adjective here). Only, he doesn’t. Faust just looks at me, quiet and unreadable. And I guess I read him… slightly wrong. Or I’ve been dismissed? Noted as unattainable? I peek over my shoulder one more time as I head back inside—where I fully intend to hide until my car’s here, away from him and his twenty questions.

Faust has returned to his phone. Thumbs tapping, brow furrowed.

I don’t wait for him to notice me again.

I breeze back inside, heading to the nearest ladies’ room, through the little powder room with its vanity seating area and fire-hazard scented candles, toward the actual sinks. God, I’m good. Who else could shut down a man they used to watch on TV? And yeah, I don’t love how he looked at me, fascinated and foreboding and scary-hot, but I highly doubt that Faust’s heard of me, and really, my problem is having such an oddly specific type of—

I push open the actual bathroom door with a metal-handle-on-wallpaper thwack, and four startled heads snap up to stare at me, the harbinger of loud sounds.

“Oh,” I whisper. “Sorry.”

The ivory-gowned bridesmaids are gathered around what looks to be a woman crumpled on the tile. No… a bride. The bride. Imogen Baldwin, I can assume, from her flower-studded blonde updo, white-knuckled bouquet, and long pearl-colored gown, a vision of Carolyn Bessette. I’d seen her name on the hand-calligraphed wedding invitation Winston had texted me—Together with their families, Bernard Baudelaire and Imogen Baldwin joyfully request you to celebrate their marriage with a night of divine company and artful mingling—but this is the first I’m seeing her.

Since the cocktail hour had gone excruciatingly long. And it had seemed like the wedding wasn’t happening.

And…

“Oh no,” I say, too surprised to formulate a smarter sentence.

The bride takes one look at my startled face, then bursts into tears.

“He—didn’t—come,” Imogen Baldwin sobs into an embroidered hand towel, chest hitching between words. “He said he only left those other women at the altar because he realized they were going to leave him first, but I told him I wouldn’t and I thought he believed me, and he promised me he would come. He promised.”

Well, I would hope so, I think. Or that’s what I would think, if my heart wasn’t breaking for her and this specific, horrible lie she’d believed enough to look so beautiful. When someone shows you who they are…. Grandma always said, never fully finishing the thought. She didn’t have to. “Imogen, you can’t blame yourself. We all believed him!” one bridesmaid says, waving her hands around Imogen’s glitter-dusted shoulders, as if she could stop her from ruining her perfect makeup by Jedi-mindtricking her problems away. “And it’s going to be okay. That’s the woman I was telling you about—Cat Cromwell. The woman who helped me! She can fix this.”

That’s when I register the person waving her hands around is Prestly. She’s wearing so much more blush than when we video called, and it’s honestly really cute, but also oh. Oh no. “I really can’t,” I start to explain, “Because I was just here and, God, I’m so sorry, but that Winston guy knows Bernard, so it’s a bit too—”

There’s a knock on the door, then an unmistakably male voice. Vaguely French, as a Baudelaire would be, and just a touch remorseful. “Imogen? Are you in there? Please, can you come out? I know you’re mad at me, and I should’ve been here sooner, but—it doesn’t feel right. Imogen… I can’t do this.”

The women grow quiet. A cold sweat slides down the back of my neck as they turn, one by one, to look at me. The bride is last. Her eyes are wide and glassy, expectant and furious and hopeful and in need of something from me. And that’s a look I can read very, very well.