Page 33 of Hollywood Undercover
She licked her lips seductively and pulled her bottom lips between her teeth. Alexandra struggled not to roll hereyes.
“That’s my cousin,” she said, trying to backtrack to keep her cover. “Lexxi Rock is mycousin.”
“Okay,” Felicia said slowly, clearlyconfused.
Alexandra shook her head. The woman must have thought they had some weird family triangle going on, where her sister was also her cousin. People preferred to think the worst of celebrities, but Alexandra wasn’t about to add fuel to the fire for LexxiRock.
“Let me clarify. Maxwell Storme is my uncle,” she told Felicia, correcting her cover story. “He’slikea father to me. I look up to him…I guess you could say he raised me. And, Lexxi is my cousin, but she’s not selfish. You have no idea who she is. Don’t you think what you said was a littleinsensitive?”
Alexandra got some satisfaction from the embarrassed blush on Felicia’s face as she looked away. “I justmeant…”
“Yeah, don’t worry aboutit.”
Alexandra wandered out of the dining room, fuming at the awkward situation that had her defending herself to a perfect stranger. She grabbed her coffee and breakfast shake from the kitchen, and stomped upstairs to herbedroom.
Maybe now she’ll stop with herflirting.
Standing in the doorway, she looked around, searching for her to-do list. She had the day all planned out, and had already decided to make herself scarce while Felicia was around. She sat at the edge of her bed and took a few minutes to have breakfast. After that, she got to work. First on the agenda was to get this new set of storage containers to the basement. Okay, dragging it to thebasement.
With the newly found space, she emptied the remainder of her shopping bags, and put her new things in the closet. When that was finished, she stepped outside the bedroom and listened from the top of the stairs. Felicia spoke to Dad as she worked. It sounded like things were undercontrol.
Alexandra went down to her father’s home office to check some new files Rosa had left behind for her to review. It was a contract and paperwork for her father’s firm to acquire a top tier product design company. He had been brokering mergers and acquisitions as an investment banker for thirty years—until falling ill. It was unorthodox for him to leave the work to someone outside of his office to complete, but he knew Alexandra could handle the trade better than anyone else in thefirm.
This was something very few people knew or cared about Alexandra when she became Lexxi Rock. She had more going on upstairs than music and melodies. She had graduated from college—twice—thanks to Dad’s help and encouragement. Her fans weren’t that interested to know that while she was living a starving artist lifestyle early in her music career, she completed college. During the time she was recording her first album, she had also done her father proud by graduating from Berkeley with honors. It was also public knowledge that she went on to complete a Master’s degree in business finance—public knowledge that fell off everyone’s radar, because it didn’t involve drama, jet-setting, excessive shopping trips, cheating boyfriends, raunchy sex, starvation diets or whatever the media was usually after. Getting that far academically took a big sacrifice. There were no summers off during her time at college, no breaks, and she constantly had to juggle work with school demands andschedules.
Her father always wanted her to have a backup plan. He was adamant when it came to her education, in case the music thing didn’t work out for her. As it stood now, she technically never had to work another day in her life if she chose not to, thanks to shrewd investments cultivated by his business acumen. Even her great grandchildren were set for life, if she ever got out of the serial celebrity dating scene. Thanks to her father, she was probably one of the best kept secrets in Hollywood—a responsible, drug-free billionaire. And the funny thing was most of it had nothing to do with her alter ego, LexxiRock.
Other than Dad’s lawyer, who had been with him since the beginning, Alexandra was the only person outside of his firm that he trusted with the delicate work of projects like this. This one she looked at was supposed to have been his last project before retiring. She got down to it. Squaring her shoulders, she reviewed the contracts and got busy with phone calls and faxes to his office, wherever she needed verification or supporting documentation to tie up the looseends.
Before she got too far into it, the oh-so-friendly nurse eventually yelled out to get her downstairs. Felicia gave her a detailed accounting of what she had done so far, and flirted some more. The button-down top portion of her scrubs was opened one button more than it had been when she had walked in through the frontdoor.
Does this woman have noshame?
Alexandra listened, nodded, and made a few remarks. She may have been abrupt with her, but Felicia had officially gotten on her bad side. After Felicia’s report, Alexandra checked up on her father and headed back upstairs to finish what shestarted.
Hours later, with her head still swimming with figures and an excessive number of details about this transaction, she had completed her assessment, rolled up all of her recommended financial checks, and listed out the next steps for Dad’s lawyer. Putting the file away, she stretched and she stood up. She rubbed her tired eyes and checked the clock. She had worked right through lunch, stopping only to check on Dad periodically while simultaneously avoidingFelicia.
It was now after one in the afternoon. If her housekeeper Lilly were here, there would be a meal waiting for her and a lecture that Alexandra didn’t eat enough. She smiled at the thought and grabbed her phone before going down to the kitchen to prepare lunch. Alexandra rifled through the pantry and fridge for something to eat. She settled on a reasonably healthy meal, throwing it in the microwave before she darted into the dining room to check on Dad again while itcooked.
She talked to him about the acquisition. He would have probably been worried about his work even in his hospital bed under a drug-induced sleep. She teased him about his notoriously bad handwriting that she had found in some of his notes, most of which were near impossible to decipher. It almost felt like they were having a regular conversation. His fingers were cool and dry in her hand, and although he was still asleep, she was grateful to have him still here withher.
After a while, she dragged herself away to the empty, quiet kitchen. Sitting at the small side table, she ate the less-than-appetizing meal. She started thinking about Bash, who hadn’t come over in days. She was beginning to miss having himaround.
Maybe I should dropby.
With a shake of her head, she laughed off the idea of taking the initiative. She wanted to see him, but didn’t want to send him mixedsignals.
After she ate lunch, it was Felicia’s turn to leave for the day. She was replaced by Joanne, the mid-thirties nurse who appeared to be the most professional of the three. Alexandra fired off a text message to Evangeline. She gave her an update on how things were, and headed back to her father’s office. Rosa had asked Alexandra to give her a call when she was finished reviewing the documents. There was a lot to do to distract her from her preoccupation with Sebastian Sullivan. She needed to keepaway.
The man is offlimits.
Now wasn’t the time to get caught up in another doomed-to-fail relationship. She had her father to consider. Not that she could have had a relationship with Bash, anyway. He was gay, with somewhere around eighty percentcertainty.
He’s gay and I’m not really aguy.
Dammit, this was all sofrustrating.
Rosa answered her cell phone. “Hello?”
