All That Really Matters, Nicole Deese [best detective novels of all time .TXT] 📗

may as well be a hundred million to a nonprofit that barely managed to scrape by as it was.

Steaming mug in hand, I swiped my phone off the counter once again and tapped on an app I rarely used unless I needed to launch a private investigation on one of our residents or one of their associates. Social media wasn’t entirely useless. While I’d likely never understand the people who felt compelled to air their dirty laundry so freely to a world of perpetual strangers, they were also the easiest types to get a read on.

But this time, I typed Molly McKenzie into the search bar.

Several options came up at once—including one with a blue check mark, indicating the official page of Molly McKenzie of Makeup Matters with Molly.

My finger hovered over her picture, as if debating the real reason behind this unwarranted perusal. Because this had nothing to do with personal safety. Nor was it about scoping out a potential threat.

This was one-hundred-percent about satisfying my own curiosity.

I clicked on the first video that came up—Molly, looking into the camera with her cascade of golden hair and sea glass eyes, talking away about some magical towel that offered a remedy for frizz while drying shower-wet hair in record time. Her animated expressions were as inviting as they were intoxicating. At one point, she tossed the towel and did a slow-mo of shaking her damp hair while she lip-synced to the chorus of “Natural Woman.”

I laughed out loud and clicked on another one titled Yoga Pants or Dress Pants—You Be the Judge!

Again, Molly hammed it up on-screen, strutting down a hotel hallway and interviewing the innocent bystanders about her pants. Were they better suited for the gym or for the office? Or were they interchangeable? Naturally, there was one pair that could work for either, and there happened to be a special deal on them for only the next twelve hours if her viewer clicked on the link below. Not shockingly, there was a comment with more than three hundred sad face emojis stating that the pants had sold out.

I leaned back against the edge of the countertop, navigating my way through post after post—some were replays of past livestreams, some were reviews of products she tested out right then for the first time, opening packages and reading instructions as if they were the next great American novel. Others were time-lapse videos following a sequence of events. But the common denominator was the same—Molly. In her element. Funny, bright, opinionated, classy, smart, and always, always stunning.

I viewed her poll requests, asking her fans to vote on specific products or event outfits. And vote they had. Thousands and thousands of times. She honored the popular vote with a picture every time, these posts securing far more attention than the majority.

I scrolled through her replies. Not surprisingly, Molly was nothing but perfectly polite in all her responses. No matter what the commenter posted, she never failed to thank them for their feedback. Negative or positive.

I didn’t know how long I studied her page, but by the time I switched to the other profile platform she mentioned during her videos, my tea was cold and my lower back had begun to complain.

My finger halted almost immediately as a grid of small squares loaded on my screen. Though almost every picture of her could have stopped traffic, there was one that caught my eye more than the rest. The one with a man sleeping on a sofa behind her sad-face selfie, captioned Jet lag is the thief of romance.

Heat flared in my gut.

I didn’t need to click on the image or read any of the comments to know the answer I’d find waiting there, yet I did anyway. And the revelation put a sharp end to whatever warped reality I’d allowed myself to briefly entertain.

Molly McKenzie had a boyfriend.

16

Molly

Because our flight times hadn’t lined up, Ethan the Boyfriend had promised to meet me at the shoot location in Malibu, while Ethan the Manager had promised he’d taken care of all the details of my contract. My electronic signature had barely spit out a confirmation receipt to my inbox before I was sent a first-class ticket to LAX from The Fit Glam Kit. A rare but welcome perk!

With the poolside photo shoot looming, I’d raced home after finishing up my second official mentor group at The Bridge—which had gone swimmingly after handing out all twelve goodie bags to each girl at the house—and started the detailed process of applying my favorite tan-in-a-can secret potion to my ghostly white self. After living in a winter tundra for five to six months out of any given year, this girl needed some big-time help in the self-tanning department. Thanks to my tried-and-true method, it was a simple fix. I’d even documented my entire tanning process once—showing specific techniques for known problem areas around fingers, heels, knees, and that problematic elbow skin region. The Ten Commandments of Fake Tanning by Makeup Matters was one of my first breakout videos. Something like a hundred thousand views within the first forty-eight hours.

But really, “Thou Shalt Not Apply Tanner Without Proper Exfoliation” is a rule that should never be violated, lest you find yourself looking like you were caught in a rusty rainstorm. There were few things as unattractive as a bad self-tan.

Outside the tinted window of the black Escalade I’d been riding in since the airport, palm trees, rocky cliffs, and glimpses of the Pacific Ocean blurred together. I rolled down my window just a tad, breathing in the salty air and wishing once again for someone I could enjoy the moment with. At least Ethan was on his way soon.

I’d been to California for work-related reasons many times over the past couple years, but never for an on-location photo shoot at a celebrity’s poolside patio simply because “there was no better place to shoot.” Ethan had made sure to copy and paste that sentence from The Fit Glam Kit’s marketing