Page 77 of Hollywood Undercover
Chapter 33
ALEXANDRA stoodnear the door ready to swing the baseball bat and inflict some damage if the needarose.
“Alex, is that you up there?” Bash calledout.
The baseball bat dropped from her anxious fingers at the sound of Sebastian’s voice. Her heart skipped a beat, and she now stared in horror at thegirlin themirror.
“Holy fuck!” she mouthed inalarm.
She quickly tried to pull the dress up over her head and it snagged on the silver chain she was wearing. She managed to tear it free with some more colorful expletives as Bash got closer. He was walking up to the third floor now, and sheer panic setin.
What in hell am I going to tell himnow?
She shouted out, “Hang on a sec, Bash! I had a bean burrito for lunch, and I’ve got killer gas, dude! You donotwant to come in here justyet.”
Alexandra bought herself some time with the shameless lie. Her shirt and pants had been flung around thoughtlessly, and now sat somewhere in the pile of clothes from the closet. She dug through the pile, coughing as she searched high and low to find them. Once found, it seemed to take an eternity to put them backon.
Bash was laughing so hard, standing right outside her bedroomdoor.
Crap. The door isn’t fully closed?Shit.
Silently cursing at herself for being so careless, she could only hope he didn’t look through the open crack to see her jumping around in her underwear, trying to yank the damned pants up herlegs.
“I promise I won’t judge you,” he chuckled. “Are you all right inthere?”
He tapped on the door, and it gently swayed wide open. Alexandra stood there, chest heaving, trying to catch her breath. That had to be some record, getting dressed in twenty secondsflat.
Bash stepped into the bedroom, looking around. “I’m sure there’s something in my medicine cabinet that can take care of that stomach foryou.”
She flashed him a nervous, embarrassed smile. “No thanks. I’ll befine.”
“What are you doing here? I drove up as Rosa was leaving, and noticed you going inside. I got a bit worried when you didn’t come backout.”
“I’m just, just, um…” she stammered, feeling guilty and distracted by how everything the man wore made him so damned sexy, including this simple pair of khaki slacks and the poloshirt.
I can’t even talk around him now.Christ.
“Are you packing up those things on thebed?”
“Yes. That’sit.”
“I can help you with that, if you want. There’s something about physio that makes me appreciate the shit I can still do, now that there are so many other things that I can’t.” He sighed. “This damn knee is a realheadache.”
“You look like you’re getting around a lot better than you were this morning,” she pointedout.
“Yes. It’s not as sore as this morning. All that stretching on those machines warmed it up abit.”
Alexandra turned slightly and noticed the dress she had tried on was now tossed across the pile of clothes on her bed. Wincing at the carelessly left clue, she took a slow step to the right to put her body between the dress and Sebastian’sview.
“Good. Well, I dropped in to see how much progress the cleaning crew made today. I plan to take care of all the renovation details until my uncle gets released. While I was here, I figured I would check to see what clothes I could still use if I need to meet with construction companies or contractors. I got this, man. I don’t need much. You can go on next door. I’ll be over in asecond.”
“Are yousure?”
“Yes,” she waved him off. “I’ll be right behindyou.”
“Okay, cool. Holler if you needanything.”
The second she heard Bash descending the second floor stairs to the main floor, Alexandra rubbed her temple and collapsed dramatically into her bed. She stretched her body out like a chalk outline, arms raised in surrender and legs at awkward angles. The laughter that bubbled up wasinevitable.
