Damage Control

A High-Heat Fake-Dating Formula One Romance
by Tessa Valehart

Shop the ebook · Shop the audiobook · Shop the paperback

Damage Control book cover by Tessa Valehart

Available at all major retailers

Pairing: MF
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Series: Standalone
Tropes: Fake Dating, Contract Arrangement, Every Touch Agreed in Advance, Scandal-Hit Driver × Sponsorship Strategist, Celebrity Romance, Workplace Boundaries, Instruction Kink, Praise Kink, Competence Kink, Control Swap (Both Ways), He Falls First, Edging, Blindfold, Rule Ten, Monaco Harbor, Lake Como Getaway, Grovel Done Right, No Cheating, No Love Triangle

Six weeks. Twelve appearances. Every touch agreed in advance.

Max Arden just told forty-one million people not to buy his sponsor’s product.

Eleven seconds. One autocue, pushed away live on stage. One contract fight he can’t win, and six weeks until his team decides whether to keep him.

Priya Desai is the strategist three firms refused to put on his account. She doesn’t do apology tours. She doesn’t do rescue dogs on slide four. She charges for the clip.

Then a photographer catches his hand at her waist on a hotel side step, and by breakfast she’s his mystery woman.

So she writes terms. Six weeks. Twelve appearances. Every public touch agreed in advance: which hand, where, how long. Paid work is called paid work. Either of them can end it, any time.

He adds one more rule, as a joke. If it becomes real, we say so. Out loud. Immediately.

From Monaco to Monza to Silverstone, the most impulsive man on the grid does exactly what he’s told. Half an inch higher. Three seconds, closed. The trouble starts behind locked doors, where nothing is on the page and he finds out how much he likes being told where to put his hands.

Neither of them says it. Not once. Until a leaked page puts her fee in bold, and he does the one thing she asked him not to.

Damage Control is a high-heat MF fake-dating Formula One romance with a sponsorship strategist who writes the rules, a driver who signs them, a watch that runs four minutes fast, a sky jigsaw nobody finishes, a lot of on-page spice, no cheating, and a guaranteed HEA. Dual first-person POV. Standalone.

You’ll love this book if you enjoy:

✅ A scandal-hit driver whose eleven-second meltdown is the most valuable thing he owns
✅ A heroine who writes the fake relationship as a one-page contract before breakfast
✅ “Where do you want my hands?” A man who asks, every single time
✅ “Not lower.” Six weeks of agreed touches, and none of the private ones on the list
✅ A rule ten he dictates as a joke, and both of them break
✅ He lifts. She notices. He keeps a notebook of every session since he was fifteen
✅ A hotel desk in Monaco, a kitchen counter, a boathouse on Lake Como, and a locked driver’s room after the podium
✅ A grovel done in seven drafts, read off a page, with no adjectives
✅ Instruction kink, praise kink, edging, a blindfold, control swapped both ways, no cheating, 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ heat, HEA guaranteed

Buy Now

Get the Bonus Chapter →

⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic MF scenes, including oral sex, a solo scene, instruction and praise play, edging and orgasm denial, a blindfold, power exchange in both directions, sex in a hotel room, an office and a locked driver’s room, and unprotected sex between committed partners; all on-page sex is consensual and every touch is asked for), a public career scandal, a leaked private document and media intrusion, online harassment of the heroine, a former boss who took credit for her work and leaks to the press, a hero who speaks for the heroine in public without her consent, a brief third-act separation, alcohol, and strong language. No sexual violence, no dub-con, no cheating. Intended for readers 18+.

📖 Read Chapter One Free

Not sure yet? Read all of Chapter One right here.

Chapter One: Priya

Six weeks to the deadline.

The clip is eleven seconds long, and Elena Park has now made me watch it four times.

On her tablet, Max Arden stands on a white stage under a logo the size of a bus. AUREX FOCUS. Someone off-camera has just handed him a small gold bottle. The autocue glows at the edge of the frame. He looks at the bottle. He looks at the autocue. Then he puts two fingers on the screen and pushes it away, the way you’d push back a plate you’d finished with.

“I’ve never taken it,” he tells the livestream. “Don’t buy it because of me.”

Elena taps pause. His face freezes mid-blink, which is the only unflattering frame in the entire eleven seconds. I’ve checked.

“Forty-one million views,” she says. “As of the lift.”

“Forty-one point three.” The voice comes from the far end of the table. “I looked in the car.”

The Carrow’s private meeting room seats twelve. He has chosen the chair farthest from me and is using most of it, one ankle on the opposite knee, sweatshirt sleeves shoved to the elbow. Dark-blond hair pushed back by a hand that didn’t care where it landed. A scar cuts his left eyebrow in two. In photographs he looks expensive. In person he looks like a man who has been yelled at for three days and intends to be charming about it until someone bleeds.

He’s looking back. Not rudely. He does it the way I’d guess he walks a circuit on a Thursday, start to finish, noting where the surface changes: the knot in my hair, the open collar of my shirt, my hands, the pen in them. It takes two seconds. I feel both of them somewhere low and inconvenient, and uncap the pen.

“Go on, then,” he says. Norfolk sits in his vowels, flat and unhurried. “Where do I stand and who do I say sorry to?”

“Sorry?”

“The tour. Lockhart had a deck. Eleven slides.” He holds up fingers I don’t count. “Slide four was me with a rescue dog. Slide seven was me crying, I think. Tastefully.”

“I’ve seen Lockhart’s decks. The dog is always slide four.” I open my folder. “I don’t do personality replacement, Mr. Arden.”

“Max.”

“I don’t do it for first names, either.”

Elena, forty, former litigator, the kind of calm you have to earn, pours herself water and says nothing. She found me through a client of mine she once tried to poach. I liked her immediately. She has not once described him to me as misunderstood.

He tips his head. “What do you do, then?”

“Sponsorship. I work out what you can honestly sell, what it’s worth, and what it will cost you to deliver. Then I stop you signing anything that costs more than that.”

“And making people like me?”

“A different department.”

“Is there one?”

“Not at my rates.”

His mouth does something brief and involuntary. He kills it. I notice he kills it, and file that: he can stop himself when he wants to. Useful.

I slide the Aurex contract down the table. It’s ninety-four pages and I have put eleven tabs in it, because I read all ninety-four on the train this morning and all ninety-four again at lunch.

“Blue tab. Schedule two. Tell me how many content days you owe them a season.”

He doesn’t touch it. “Fourteen.”

“That’s what you signed. Yellow tab is the amendment from your second year. ‘Reasonable additional activation as mutually agreed.’ How many additional days did you mutually agree to?”

A pause. The ankle comes off the knee.

“One,” he says. “Then it was three. Then there was a calendar and nobody asked.”

“Forty, this season. I counted them off your own schedule. Forty days of you in a studio holding a bottle, in a year with twenty-four race weekends.” I turn a page I don’t need to turn. “Red tab. Clause eleven. Any claim made in your name requires your written approval. Their campaign line was the edge Max Arden trusts. Elena?”

“There’s no approval,” Elena says. “I’ve been through every email. They never asked.”

“So they nearly tripled your obligations on the back of a vague sentence and then put words in your mouth about a product you’ve never swallowed.” I close the folder. “You were right.”

He goes very still.

It’s interesting, watching it land. For three days every person with a lanyard has called him a liability. I’d guess nobody has said those three words in that order. His shoulders drop half an inch. Something unguarded moves behind the gray eyes, and for a second he isn’t the fastest thing on the grid. He’s just a man who’s been told he isn’t mad.

So I finish the sentence.

“You were also as stupid about it as it’s possible to be.”

Elena makes a small sound into her glass.

“Sorry?” he says.

“You had a clean breach. Documented. Elena was, what, a week from a negotiated exit?”

“Eight days,” she says.

“Eight days from walking away with your fee, your dignity, and a non-disparagement clause pointing in their direction. Your team was mid-conversation about your next contract. And you chose to settle it live, unannounced, with Meridian’s name across your chest, in front of a sponsor’s entire board.” I keep my voice level. It’s more effective level. “You swapped a legal position for a meme.”

“It’s a good meme.”

“It’s an outstanding meme. That’s the second half of this meeting.”

He stares at me. Then he laughs, one short breath through his nose, like it was knocked out of him. He drags his chair four seats closer and sits forward with his forearms on the table.

I look at them. I don’t mean to. They’re a driver’s forearms, corded and brown, built by hauling a car through corners at five times his own body weight. A tendon shifts when he laces his fingers. There’s a pale band at the wrist where a watch should be. Aurex’s partner brand, presumably, returned with the rest.

This is not a professional observation. I file it anyway.

“Right,” he says. “Second half.”

“Three things,” I tell him. “One. Aurex gets settled quietly. No statement, no apology, no dog. They overreached and their lawyers know it. They’re threatening a claim because threatening is cheaper than admitting it. Elena and I make it cheaper still for them to go away.”

“And they just go?”

“Companies selling focus in a bottle don’t enjoy discovery.”

Elena’s eyebrow agrees with me.

“Two. One replacement partner. Not four, not a portfolio. One, with a signature on it before Meridian has to decide on your option.”

“Monday after Silverstone,” Elena says. “Six weeks. Monaco, Monza, Silverstone, back to back to back, because whoever drew up this season’s calendar has never had to pack. No signed partner by then, and the team has a very polite conversation with us about the future.”

“I know when it is,” Max says, quieter.

“Three.” I wait until he looks up. “You stop selling access you can’t deliver. No more forty days. No more yes in the room and no on the stage. If you won’t put it in your mouth, your face doesn’t go on it. We write that in at the start, so nobody ever has to push an autocue again.”

He turns that over. I can see him doing it. It’s the same face from the onboard footage Elena sent me, the half-second before a braking point.

“Fine,” he says. “Lovely. Who’s the one? Because from where I’m sat, I’m the bloke who told forty-one million people not to buy the product. I’d not sign me.”

“You’re thinking about it backwards.”

“Am I.”

“Every driver on that grid will hold up anything for a check. Watches they don’t wear. Crypto they can’t explain. Everybody knows it, which is why none of it means anything. It’s wallpaper.” I tap the dark tablet between us. “You are now the only man in the paddock who has proved, on camera, that he’ll say no. So the next time you say yes…”

I let him get there.

It takes him about a second and a half.

“It’s worth something,” he says slowly.

“It’s worth more than Aurex was paying you. Considerably. The clip isn’t the problem, Max. The clip is the asset. I’m not going to make anyone forget it.” I allow myself the smallest smile of the evening. “I’m going to charge for it.”

Silence.

He’s stopped performing. That’s the thing I notice, more than the forearms. The sprawl is gone, and so is the grin he’s been holding like a shield. What’s left is attention, the whole of it, on me. It has weight. I’ve pitched to rooms of forty people that felt less crowded.

“Nobody’s said that,” he says. “Three days. Not one of them.”

“They were pitching reputation. I’m pitching revenue. It makes me more cheerful about your flaws.”

“You’ve a list, have you?”

“Tabbed.”

That gets the real smile. It’s lopsided and it arrives late and I have the distinct and unwelcome thought that the cameras have been getting the wrong one for years.

“Why’d you take it?” he asks. “Elena says three firms passed. Nobody wants this.”

“That’s why. Nobody else is bidding, so I set the terms. And when it works, there won’t be a soul who can claim they’d have done the same.”

“So I’m your loss leader.”

“You’re my flagship. Try to behave like one.”

“Conditions,” I add, because someone should. “My fee is fixed. Elena has it in writing, and it doesn’t move if you win or crash. For six weeks you don’t post, announce, or push anything off any stage without it going through her first.”

“Through her. Not you?”

“I’m not your publicist. If I’m ever telling you what to say, something has gone badly wrong.”

“And if I say something anyway?”

“Then I’ll invoice you for the cleanup and you’ll hate the number.”

He nods like a man accepting a grid penalty. Then his eyes drop to my wrist and stay there.

“Your watch is wrong.”

I look down. Steel case, scratched crystal, a strap I’ve replaced three times. Then at the clock above the door.

“It’s four minutes fast.”

“I know. I’ve been reading it upside down for half an hour. You said nine twenty when you sat down, and it wasn’t.” He says it with no smugness at all, only the flat certainty of someone who lives by the thousandth of a second. “On purpose?”

“It was my father’s. It’s always run fast. I never had it fixed.”

“So you’re four minutes ahead of everyone in the room.”

“I generally find that’s enough.”

He holds out his hand across the table.

I’ve shaken a great many athletes’ hands. His is dry and warm and rough along the pads, and he closes it around mine with a care I wasn’t expecting, as if he’s been told often that he breaks things.

“Six weeks, Ms. Desai.”

“Priya,” I say. I’m not sure why.

Elena stays behind to shout at someone in a different time zone.

“Side entrance,” she says, phone already at her ear. “There’ve been two of them camped in the lobby since Tuesday. Max knows the way. Separate cars.”

He does know the way. Through a service door, down a corridor that smells of hot linen, past a trolley stacked with somebody’s room-service silver. He walks half a step ahead and holds every door without making a production of it. Neither of us talks. My heels are loud on the tile.

“You read it twice,” he says eventually. “The contract.”

“How do you know?”

“Two colors of pen in the margin.”

“Do you notice everything?”

“Only what’s moving.” He shoulders the fire door open and the night comes in, cold and wet. “Mind out. The steps are a bit—”

Three stone steps down to a cobbled mews. I take the first. The second is two inches lower than any reasonable person would build it.

My heel finds nothing.

I don’t fall. I don’t get the chance. A hand closes at my waist, another catches under my elbow, and the next thing I know I’m upright against the front of him with my palm flat on his chest and my folder crushed between us.

“Got you.”

It’s said low, just above my ear. He smells of soap and cold air. Under the sweatshirt he’s solid in a way photographs don’t prepare you for. His heartbeat is slow and even against my hand. Mine isn’t.

“All right?”

“Fine.”

I should step back. He should let go. I can list four professional reasons, in order of liability.

Neither of us moves.

His hand is spread at the dip above my hip, wide enough that his fingertips reach the small of my back. The silk of my shirt is thin. I can feel the heat of his palm straight through it, and each separate finger, and the rough pads I shook ten minutes ago. Then his thumb shifts. Once. Half an inch, along the bottom of my ribs. I don’t think he knows he’s done it.

My body knows. My nipples tighten against my bra so fast it almost hurts. Heat drops through my stomach and settles between my legs, a slow, heavy pulse, and I have the clear, complete, wildly unbillable thought of that hand sliding lower. Of that thumb doing exactly the same thing somewhere else.

It has been eleven months since anyone touched me. I count things. It’s a habit.

“Priya.” It’s the first time he’s used it, and his voice has dropped to match. “You’ll have to tell me if you want me to let go.”

I open my mouth. I’m not looking at his forearms now. I’m looking at his lips, which are close, and parted, and I have no idea which answer is about to come out of me.

The flash turns the whole lane white.

Then again. Twice more, fast.

Across the mews a man in a dark anorak lowers a long lens, checks its screen, and walks away without hurrying.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Max says, softly and with feeling. His hands are gone. The cold arrives where they were. “Sorry. I’m sorry. That’s on me, I should’ve checked the lane.”

“It’s nothing.” I smooth my shirt. My voice is perfectly even. I’m rather proud of it. “It’s a blurred photograph of a man stopping a woman going down a step. There’s no story in that.”

“You’ve not met the internet.”

“I bill the internet by the hour.”

He huffs. A car noses around the corner with its lights dipped, and he opens the rear door for me and steps well back, both hands visible, like a man demonstrating he’s unarmed.

“Four minutes fast,” he says through the gap as I get in. “Get home early, then.”

I do not look back through the rear window.

I check the time instead. It’s wrong, obviously.

My phone goes at 6:40 a.m. I’m already awake. I have been since five, lying very still and not thinking about a thumb.

My mother. No greeting. A screenshot, and beneath it: Priya who is this boy and why is he HOLDING you. Call me before your father sees.

I open the image.

It isn’t blurred. It’s pin-sharp. And it doesn’t look anything like a man stopping a woman going down a step. It looks like a man with his hand low on a woman’s waist and her fingers spread on his chest, the two of them alone at a side door at ten at night, a second from kissing.

MAX ARDEN’S MYSTERY WOMAN.

The second message is from Elena.

Deny nothing. Call me.

Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.

Buy Damage Control

🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?

Launch Night — A scene TOO HOT for the bookstore

The night of the Desai Bell launch. Forty-one guests, one dog, warm white wine, and Simone on a chair reading footnotes. Max skips his own gala to stand at the back wall for four hours and eleven minutes. Then the last guest leaves, the glass door is locked, and he asks Priya for one instruction. Just one.

Get the Bonus Chapter →