Every Breath You Take
Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie
and
Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan
Episode 1
By: Blair Babylon
Every Breath You Take
Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie
and
Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan
By: Blair Babylon
What happens when a Rock Star in Disguise meets a Billionaire in hiding?
Georgie doesn’t know who she is dating.
At a high society wedding, Georgie Johnson is introduced to Alexandre de Valentinois, a hereditary duke of nothing who flies around the world on his private planes and describes himself as “one of those despicable, idle rich men.” Yet, when pressed, he sings at the wedding in a gorgeous, clear tenor that tugs at Georgie’s soul, and miraculously, he calms her paralyzing stage fright so she can accompany him on the piano, even though she thought she had left her classical music career behind when she went into hiding.
But Alexandre has a dark side. His name is Xan Valentine, and he’s the rock star front man for Killer Valentine. He’s famous, but his paparazzi-dogged lifestyle might expose Georgie and get her killed.
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Published by Malachite Publishing LLC
Copyright 2015 by Malachite Publishing LLC
Every Breath You Take
Table of Contents
Special Offers - Every Breath You Take
After the Midnight Fight
Cyberstalking
The Devilhouse
To Paris
Georgiana Johnson and Wulfram von Hannover
Hiding in A Hotel Room
Friederike von Hannover and Georgiana Oelrichs
A Hateful Eye
In the Style of Rachmaninoff
Georgie’s First Performance
#GetARoom
Gunshots
Alwaysland
Violin
Sneaking Out
Plane Ride Home
Where's Lizzy?
A Text Like A Lifeline
Drunk Dial
Dorm Invasion
The Ice Princess
Nightclub
Back to The Devilhouse
Play Room 1
Which Of Us Is Alex?
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
A Terra Cotta Birthday Cake
Saturday Morning
Outed
Five
Your Grace
Saying Good-Bye
The New, Improved Devilhouse
Run
On the Gulfstream
Georgie Flying
Xan Valentine
Alwaysland
More Rock Stars and Billionaires from Blair Babylon
Dear Reader
Special Sneak Peek of Someone to Love (Rock Stars in Disguise: Tryp)
AFTER THE MIDNIGHT FIGHT
Xan Valentine
Xan Valentine walked down the steps of the tall tour bus into the early-morning dark, gathering his long hair behind his head and scanning the hotel parking lot. The bleached ends of his hair fluttered in the breeze at the fringes of his eyesight, and he cleared his throat. The clamping pain in his throat staggered him as those muscles flexed.
In the lonely night at the back of the hotel’s parking lot, a black sedan flashed its headlights twice. Fetid diesel exhaust from the growling tour bus stung his nose and throat, leaving a taste like asphalt in his mouth and a jangling tone between D and D-sharp ringing in his head.
The heavy garment bag he carried dragged on his shoulder. The monogram AV glinted in the parking lot’s lights, the white stitching bright against the black leather. He grabbed the handle of a large, abnormally thick guitar case with his other hand. Between his black velvet sleeve and the black guitar case, his pale hand floated in the darkness, ghostly, like a bad horror movie.
Jonas, the band’s manager, had walked down the steps behind Xan and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “It’s only a few small shows.”
Xan swallowed to moisten his throat and rasped out, “No such thing as a small show.”
The hoarseness in his own voice scoured his throat and drowned out his cultivated English accent, and he sounded more American than ever. Appalling.
“Yeah, there is such a thing as a small show, and the next three were small shows.” The sodium parking lot lamps made Jonas’s green eyes glow like a cat when Xan glanced sideways and down at him. Jonas said, “Rest your voice this weekend. Go find a cabin in the woods. Play your guitar, if you want. Read a book. Binge-watch movies. Don’t talk. Don’t shout. Don’t sing. Don’t make a damned sound until you have to warm up your throat for the show in Miami next week.”
“I could have done them all,” Xan grated out, forcing his voice. His throat felt like rocks were grinding his flesh in there. “We shouldn’t have canceled them.”
“You’ll feel better in a few days,” Jonas said. “The whole East Coast leg will go better if you rest.”
Xan walked away, his frock coat costume billowing behind him as he strode over the asphalt and between the cars to the black sedan waiting in the back of the lot. The chrome handle chilled his hand when he grasped the back door’s latch.
He looked back. The tour bus, black and anonymous to confuse the fans who didn’t do their research, hulked under the lights, and the other members of Killer Valentine filed off and staggered into the hotel after the long drive from the last venue and the vicious shouting match on the bus.
Xan Valentine opened the car door, slid into the back seat, and disintegrated into a thousand dark fragments.
CYBERSTALKING
Georgie
Saturday morning, after Georgie had practiced her piano for three hours in the dark, deserted music building and then had run twelve miles in under two hours and showered and was still panting but clean and cold, she lounged on the couch in the study room of her cozy college dorm room, engaging a little harmless cyberstalking.
The laptop resting on her knees showed a video of a beautiful blond woman, her bright green eyes snapping with happiness on her wedding day.
Georgie smiled at the image, wishing that somehow her own smile could be transmitted through the ether and that Flicka would feel her best wishes. These pictures were almost-real time, taken about an hour before, but Flicka was at her wedding reception at the Louvre in France, and Georgie was sitting on a stiff couch in a college dormitory room in the Southwestern U.S. while the morning desert sun beat through the old windows onto the political science, sociology, and pre-law-type textbooks stacked on her desk.
Six years had passed since Georgie had hugged Flicka good-bye at Boston’s Logan airport, when Flicka had flown back to her Swiss boarding school and Georgie had returned home to Connecticut, where in ten hours, overnight, her whole life had broken apart like a sinkhole had gaped under her and swallowed everything.
Georgiana Oelrichs had been destroyed in those few, terrible days. Georgie Johnson had arisen to take on her responsibilities and debts, and they were legion, in the long months and now years that followed.
Her cup of black coffee steamed beside her. The bitterness of dark-roast
ed brew lingered on her tongue and filled the room with a comfortable scent. She had a different life now, a smaller life, but it was good. Everything she wanted and needed was growing around her. Slowly, it was growing slowly, but she was creating her own salvation.
Someday, she would make amends to everyone.
Georgie—stronger now, harder now—could forgive the baffled teenage girl she had been, but older-wiser Georgie knew that she was the only one who would forgive that brainwashed little twit, so she stayed away, hid in the Southwest under a new name, and cyberstalked people who had been her friends, desperately hoping they were happy.
Flicka’s sparkling grin certainly looked happy as she caught the dark eye of her new husband, Pierre Grimaldi, Prince Pierre, the presumptive heir to the princely throne of Monaco.
Wow, the two of them were gorgeous together. They would probably make beautiful little prince and princess babies.
Flicka had married her prince, and Georgie smiled at her from thousands of miles away. When they had met, Flicka hadn’t mentioned to Georgie for two weeks that she was a princess, Her Serene Highness Friederike, Prinzessin von Hannover und Cumberland, et cetera, probably because they had been hanging out in the dorms and strolling the sun-drenched wildflower fields that smelled like lavender around the Tanglewood Music Center, so busy dishing about Chopin and Rachmaninoff and Bach and reminiscing about the radiant tones of great pianos they had played.
And learning. And playing their pianos. And learning more. And practicing. And studying. And living deep in music.
Music had been Georgie’s whole life back then, and Flicka’s whole life, and just seeing Flicka’s shining face on the laptop screen was enough to make Georgie’s fingers dance on the rough couch upholstery beside her leg.
Her fingers picked out Chopin, of course. They had both worshiped Chopin, though Georgie now tended to prefer Rachmaninoff.
Indeed, Georgie almost closed the laptop to go back to the music department to practice more, which she still did every day out of some deep-buried longing, when another couple behind Flicka and Pierre caught her eye.
Oh, God.
No, no.
In the dim light of the wedding reception, the young woman’s fiery auburn hair flowed around her shoulders, and the camera’s light flashed off the man’s bright blond hair and startling blue eyes.
Oh God, no.
Georgie swallowed down a sour taste on her tongue as her two worlds began to slam into each other like planets colliding.
If her college suitemate Rae Stone and their employer—whose real name she didn’t even know due to the unusual structure of the business—were at Flicka’s wedding, Murphy’s Fucking Law was about to kick Georgie’s ass.
Naive little Georgiana Oelrichs would have scurried away right then and hidden, changed her name again in shame, and cried herself to sleep.
Georgie Johnson swallowed hard and gripped the sides of the laptop, firming her courage, before she opened a text app on her phone.
She knew that Rae was in Paris, and Rae had texted from her phone’s new number so Georgie could get in touch with her if anything went wrong.
This sure as Hell counted as something going terribly, horribly wrong.
Georgie slid her thumb over the screen, texting, Did I just see you on TV at that freaking royal wedding in Paris?!?!?!? W/ The Dom? WTF?!?!?!?!?
A small part of her deeply believed that Rae would text back that she didn’t know what Georgie was talking about, even though that woman in the picture was definitely Rae, and Rae was in Paris at that very moment.
Her phone buzzed in her hand.
Rae: U have passport?
That wasn’t an answer. There was nothing to be panicking about yet.
Georgie swiped through the wedding pictures on the laptop, looking for more.
She found more.
Lots more.
Rae smiled in all of them, sometimes a slightly terrified smile, sometimes a real laugh when she looked at the blond man beside her.
The blond man wore his usual closed expression, somewhat serene, somewhat cold in his dark blue eyes.
Her skin prickled with chill. Georgie set the laptop aside, held her phone more firmly, and walked to the bedroom, shutting the door behind herself so that no one walking on the sidewalk outside could see how pale she was through the windows.
Rae had asked about a passport.
Georgie sat on her twin bed and typed with shaking fingers, Yah.
And she waited, hoping that Rae wouldn’t say that she was at Flicka’s wedding but afraid to ask again. She stared at the framed prints on the walls, not really seeing the pastels, wanting to crawl under the bed and stay there.
On the other side of the door, in the study room area, a door-slam echoed, and a woman’s voice rang out, “Georgie!”
That raspy little shout sounded like Lizzy, her roommate.
Georgie prayed that Lizzy’s return meant something good, because otherwise she was going to shake the shit out of her. Lizzy had gotten herself involved with a creepy, creepy, creepy-ass Creepster McCreepakuddy, and that did not begin to convey the revulsion that Georgie had built up over the many years for Mannix fucking Bonfils. No matter what Georgie had told Lizzy, she wouldn’t even try to escape his creepy clutches.
Her phone buzzed her palm again.
Rae had texted, Throw some clothes in overnight bag. Get a cocktail dress or 2 from the DH. NOT SLUTTY. Plane tix will be at Lufthansa counter for 8PM flight tonight.
No way. No fucking way was she going to Paris and risk seeing Flicka and all those people.
She had to get out of this somehow.
In the back of her mind, Georgiana Oelrichs whispered, Run.
Georgie thumbed the phone. Have class next week.
Rae texted back, Will be home Monday morning.
Fuck.
“Georgie! Georgie!” the woman outside the door yelled.
Georgie stood and went to the study room. Dealing with Lizzy would give her some time to think. She opened the door. “Just a sec!”
She stole a glance at Lizzy, barely looking away from Rae’s texts on her phone. Thank God, Lizzy was wearing normal khaki pants and a blouse instead of that indecent, half-naked lingerie crap that Bonfils insisted that she wear everywhere to break her down yet some more, the creep.
Georgie said to her, “Tell me that you finally left Mannix fucking Bonfils.”
Lizzy ran across the tiny dorm room and flung herself onto Georgie, pushing her back against the door frame even though blond little Lizzy was an elf of a person and might weigh eighty pounds if her backpack was stuffed full of books. She would never get used to how demonstrative Lizzy was at the slightest provocation.
“Whoa, there,” Georgie said, blanking her screen and tucking it in her pocket. “Did you leave him?”
Lizzy nodded and burst into tears.
Georgie grabbed her more tightly. “Good God, Lizzy! What the fuck happened? Do we need to call the police?”
Lizzy shook her head while she slobbered on Georgie’s shirt, soaking the fabric and chilling her skin underneath. She kept repeating, “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay. What the hell happened?” Georgie wrapped her other arm around Lizzy’s shoulders and guided them both backward to the couch. She hoped Lizzy wouldn’t feel how she was quivering.
“I’m okay, but I fucked everything up,” Lizzy said.
This, Georgie could deal with. This was just another thing. “We’ll figure it out. The most important thing is that you’re back, now. We can get tutors to catch you up in your classes. I have some essays that we can edit for you to turn in if you need to. We’ll get you through this semester somehow.”
“That’s not it,” Lizzy sobbed on her front, her blond hair bobbing just below Georgie’s chin. Her hair smelled like her usual strawberry shampoo that filled their bathroom when she showered because she used handfuls of it on her short hair.
“Then what th
e hell is wrong? Your parents? I have all the phone numbers of the reporters who called. Most of them want you to tell your side of the story.” There was a lot going on in Lizzy’s life, and they would deal with all of it later, just as soon as Georgie stopped freaking and could figure it all out.
Lizzy ran her hand through her short hair and ended up pulling it straight up in tiny platinum spikes. “I’ve just fucked everything up.”
“If your version of fucking everything up involves getting away from Bonfils, then you didn’t fuck up. You finally got it right.”
“That’s not it. That’s partly it, but just because I did it stupidly and now he’s after me. Crap.”
“He’s after you?” Georgie glanced at her phone, but Rae hadn’t texted back yet. She dreaded it and was dying to know. “Yeah, I can see that happening.”
“And I screwed everything up with Theo and it feels like I ripped my own heart out.”
“At least you aren’t denying it. That’s a refreshing change.” Georgie typed Lizzy is here at dorm. Can’t leave her. on her phone to Rae.
There. Now she couldn’t go to fucking Paris.
Lizzy said, “And men were shooting at me. I’ve been shot at twice in the last week, and Theo thinks it’s this Santiago drug dealer guy but Mannix said that they were Russians, and shit! I forgot to tell Theo that I think it’s Russians, not his drug dealer.”
Russians?
Georgie looked up from her phone. “Why would Russians be shooting at you?”
“My dad was in the Russian mob, and I think they’re trying to force me to go back to Pajari Gym, and I don’t know!”
Oh, crap. Georgie was found. She was so found. Everything was crashing and burning around her.
She raised one eyebrow, trying to look unruffled and like she wasn’t panicking-stupid inside. “Do you really think your parents would put a contract out on you to scare you back to work for them? That seems illogical. If they kill you, you can’t work for them.”
Every Breath You Take (Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan #1) Page 1
