[Billionaires in Disguise 01.0] Every Breath You Take Read online

  Every Breath You Take

  Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Xan

  Book 1

  Includes: “Alwaysland (A Xan Valentine Prequel)”

  By: Blair Babylon

  Every Breath You Take

  Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Xan

  Book 1

  Includes: “Alwaysland (A Xan Valentine Prequel)”

  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

  Alwaysland (A Xan Valentine Prequel)

  Two Years Ago. . . .

  Styles

  Can't Find Tryp

  Writer's Block

  Natasha

  Rehearsal

  Performance

  Frosting Shots

  One Last Night

  Closure

  Alwaysland

  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

  Special Offer for Wild Thing

  More Billionaires and Rock Stars in Disguise

  More Rock Stars and Billionaires from Blair Babylon

  Dear Reader

  Frequently Asked Questions

  Copyright and Notices

  “Alwaysland”

  A Prequel to:

  ROCK STARS IN DISGUISE: XAN

  by Blair Babylon

  Two Years Ago. . . .

  Styles

  Xan Valentine, as he had styled himself for the past five years, stared at the square, black jewelry box lying on the bathroom counter in the shoddy hotel room. The chrome lighting fixture above showered light on everything, but the black velvet absorbed it all and gave nothing back.

  He flicked it open. The round emerald, caught in the platinum prongs, sucked the light into itself and glowed with a green fire that felt cold in his chest. Americans preferred diamonds for engagement rings, Xan knew, but the colorless stones seemed so lackluster. The women in his family had always worn sapphires or rubies. While Xan certainly wasn’t one to stand on tradition and even the emerald diverged from the more usual stones a bit, he wasn’t ready to kowtow to American bourgeois attitudes in this most personal gesture.

  Besides, it wasn’t like there were no diamonds on the ring at all. Three carats of excellent diamonds surrounded the center emerald like a starburst. Xan had been working with the jeweler for months, emailing sketches back and forth, before he had arranged for the round, very dark green, crystal-like emerald to be delivered to the man in Paris. The ten-carat stone was very deep, nearly spherical but with the usual faceted top, so the setting had required extraordinary craftsmanship.

  And it was extraordinary. Even Xan, who had little interest in these matters, could see that it was a beautiful piece. Small diamonds encrusted the platinum prongs, designed to look like vines crawling up the sides, that held the center stone. Larger diamonds radiated like flower petals around it. Xan’s younger sister Christine Marie had swooned at when he had emailed pictures to her, but she was nineteen so this was de rigueur. She swooned at internet pictures of kittens, too.

  The diamonds caught the light from the cheap chrome fixture above the sink and threw dazzling sparkles over the warped wallpaper and sour-smelling carpeting like a laser light show.

  Xan was amused at himself. Laser show. Everything reminded him of the stage and concerts. His band, Killer Valentine, was nominally functional now, and they were playing modest clubs, which explained why Xan was staying in a cheap hotel. One had to maintain the charade.

  However, for an engagement ring for the woman he loved, Xan was willing to compromise his facade and his ethics. He would have to tell her everything, eventually.

  Indeed, marrying Natasha was going to cause all sorts of conflicts. She was American, of English descent, and a Protestant.

  Oh, the scandal.

  Xan smiled. No one cared these days except, perhaps, his mother, who probably wouldn’t rouse herself to interfere. His father had died a few years before, unusually young at sixty-five, and so would not have an opinion.

  He caught a glance at himself in the hotel room’s unframed mirror and frowned. He had been growing out his hair for a year now, as befitted a rock musician, and it hung just past his shoulders. The shaggy mess was naturally medium brown with a mild wave, just medium brown, and neither curled nor straight, and altogether less than distinctive. His deep brown eyes seemed too dark for his hair, like he was trying to lighten his hair but had not fully committed.

  He would have to engage a stylist at some point. Currently, however, touring and keeping up his relationship with Natasha consumed all his time.

  Xan picked up his cell phone. “Call Natasha.”

  The phone dialed.

  She answered, and just hearing her say, “Hello? Xan?” in that lilting soprano made his blood rush.

  “Natasha,” he said, savoring her smooth-edged name in his mouth. He didn’t bother to reduce his upper-class British accent when he spoke, though he sang with a California-American inflection. “A few clubs have cancelled this week. I have two glorious days off. We can have a night together. Shall we meet?”

&nb
sp; “When?”

  Her rather extreme enthusiasm was uncommon. “Starting tomorrow.”

  He considered how he had said that: Staht-ing too-more-row. Perhaps his British accent was a tad heavy, even for mere conversation. Maybe too posh. Would a more working-class accent be better received?

  Everything about him was a choice, a decision. How would his accent play with the masses if Killer Valentine broke out?

  When Killer Valentine broke out, he corrected himself. It was only a matter of hard work and connections.

  “Starting tomorrow?” Natasha asked. “Seriously? So you’re free Wednesday night?”

  Her desperation was disconcerting, but he couldn’t deny that it was gratifying. “Why, yes. I could be available tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, my God, Xan. You’ve saved my life.”

  “Pleased to be of service. How, exactly, have I committed this act of chivalry?” He knew that she liked it when he was courtly.

  “Kieran has the flu. That idiot didn’t get his flu shot, even though we’re in halls with thousands of people for orchestra performances and in rooms with hundreds or so most other days of the week. Someone coughed, and now he’s deathly ill. I’m not exaggerating. He should be in the damn hospital.”

  He held the ring aloft, feeling the green in his chest. “Quite. Who’s Kieran, again?”

  “Our first violinist for the L.A. Philharmonic, but we have a string quartet recital on Wednesday for a charity thing. Some hospital. Kids with cancer. You still play, right?”

  Xan glanced at his guitar case, which was unusually thick and well-constructed for just a guitar. Luckily, he had replaced his violin strings just a few days ago, and they were nearly played in. They would be in excellent shape for Wednesday. “Of course.”

  “Get your Euro-butt on a plane and get out here. I need you.”

  He smiled. “As you wish, Natasha.”

  “I know what you’re doing there. We watched The Princess Bride together. Cut it out.”

  “The recital is in Los Angeles?”

  “Yeah. I’ll get you a hotel.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll make arrangements.”

  They would end up there afterward, in any case. He wanted that night to be special, too.

  Using one long finger, deeply calloused on the tip from years of pressing on steel guitar strings and two decades of playing the metal and gut strings of a violin, Xan snapped the ring box shut.

  Can't Find Tryp

  Xan rummaged around in the tour bus, a glorified RV with the back bedroom stripped out and built in with curtained bunk beds, searching for his formal garment bag from the longer-term storage under the couches of the banquette.

  From the front of the bus, the band manager Jonas called, “Tryp? Is that you?”

  “No.” Xan stood. “You can’t find Tryp?”

  “Again,” Jonas said. His light brown hair was cut close to his head, far too conservative for a rock band manager. Xan felt an irascible need to roughen him up a little. Perhaps they should convince him to get another tattoo.

  Xan said, “He’ll come back. He’s got three days. Are Rade and Grayson gone, too?”

  “They’re in their rooms, sleeping it off.”

  “They left him out there?”

  “Looks like.” Jonas sighed. “I swear I’m going to put tracking apps on their phones.”

  Xan raised the lid of the other side of the breakfast booth and poked around under the extra drum heads and an enormous box of drum sticks that Tryp must have stowed in there. “He’ll show up. He’s a nineteen-year-old kid with far too much money, a gold album, and access to all the drugs, liquor, and women he could dream of. He’ll be fine.”

  “I hate it when you do that, Xan.” Jonas drummed his fingers on the rail with a staggering stutter that succinctly explained why he was in management and not a musician.

  Xan shrugged. “We’ll just have to find another drummer who’s an ambidextrous freak and has the internal metronome of an atomic clock.”

  “You’re still doing it.”

  He grinned. “I know.”

  The closet? Xan hadn’t tried the closet. He abandoned the banquette to check.

  “What’re you looking for?” Jonas asked.

  “My white tie tuxedo.”

  Jonas’s pale green eyes pinched. “What do you need that for?”

  “I have a recital for my fallback career.”

  “You guys need these couple of days to rehearse. I have a hall all set up.”

  Xan tapped the ring box in his jeans front pocket. “The Terrible Threesome are going to spend the whole time wasted, anyway. I’m going to spend some quality time with Natasha.”

  Jonas rolled his eyes. “You visited her in April. She never meets the tour to visit you.”

  “Her career is very demanding, but I intend to change all that. I plan to never have to take time away to meet her again.” Xan found a garment bag that had fallen to the floor of the closet, monogrammed AV. He dragged open the zipper and found, indeed, his white tie and tails tuxedo. The smell of stale fabric wafted from the bag, the violet-yellow scent dragging down the back of his neck like sandpaper. He could find a one-hour dry cleaner in Los Angeles.

  “Are you breaking up with her?” Jonas asked.

  “Not at all.”

  “This band is too green to be taking women on the bus, Xan. We don’t have the space for stuff like that. And this isn’t even a proper tour bus.”

  “She’s a musician. She’ll be an asset, not a hindrance.”

  Writer's Block

  On the plane, while he flew high above the crumpled Rocky Mountains that made him homesick for good skiing, Xan pulled out his notebook and wrote.

  The notebook had far too many blank pages in it. The band had recorded Killer Valentine’s first album, self-titled, about six months ago, and they had been touring in support of it ever since. Xan had written all the lyrics for the dozen tracks on that first endeavor, but he had written most of them in his four years at Juilliard.

  Last week, Jonas had dropped the bomb that they needed eighteen songs to pick a dozen from for their next album, and they needed them in six months.

  Xan’s notebook was far too empty. He had one song, perhaps, and some random ideas for hooks. Nothing felt remotely like a hit.

  Six months.

  No use letting all that paper go to waste.

  He wrote: Natasha, we survived Juilliard together and in each other’s arms—

  He drew lines through that drivel.

  Natasha, even though you’re a cellist and I’m a violinist, we can make beautiful mus—

  Xan scratched out that so hard that he tore the paper.

  It was just like when he was trying to write lyrics. He was so caught up in the effort that the right words seemed inadequate and the only thing left was smarmy nonsense.

  Natasha, there are some things that I haven’t told you about myself.

  Wrong tack. She wouldn’t be delighted by his revelations, like some shallow women would be. She would demand to know why, after the two years of practically living together at Juilliard and a year of long-distance heart-to-heart talks, he had never mentioned that his name wasn’t actually Xan or Valentine. Not precisely.

  Yes, all that would certainly keep until later.

  Maybe until the ceremony.

  The marriage ceremony would all be in French, anyway, whether they married in France or Monaco. Natasha spoke Italian and Mandarin, not French. He might not have to divulge it for years.

  Then he could just slip it in on their fifth wedding anniversary, after a child or two.

  Some of the wedding guests might provoke questions, however.

  Xan was getting ahead of himself. He returned to writing the proposal. A moment of nerves scuttled through him, but he shook it off.

  His pen moved on the paper, almost of its own volition.

  Natasha, I love you. I love you like my heart will break if you say no, and I will b
e broken forever.

  What utter rubbish. He might as well throw that emerald ring out the window beside his first class seat on this jet and let it tumble, forever lost, into the snow on the Rocky Mountains below. Natasha would not be amused by such platitudes. Xan obliterated that with black ink.

  The chemical solvents in the black ink irritated his nose with their bright brown fumes and a pitch like a quarter-tone below an E-flat.

  Natasha, I will give up ephemeral, contemporary music and return to the ironclad beauty of classical. I will take up my violin again and lay down my guitar and my ambition to create verse and music of my own that could live on in people’s hearts. We will play Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert together forever.

  He drew one precise black line through all that, because as he wrote it, he felt his heart skip beats like he was dying.

  Natasha

  Xan and Natasha had perfected this.

  At the airport, as Xan exited past the security checkpoint with his guitar case and garment bag slung over his shoulders, he texted Natasha to tell her he had arrived.

  As arranged, she met him at the far end of the pick-up lane, and her lithe body bent as she opened the trunk of her black car, as black as a musician’s formal performance wear. Xan set his guitar case and garment bag inside the Lexus and slammed it, and she pressed her entire body, toes and knees all the way up to her breasts and shoulders, against him for a hard, deep kiss. Her long, black dress swirled around them. She always wore full skirts, so she could reach for her cello to settle it between her legs and play at a moment’s notice, and most of her wardrobe seemed to be casual imitations of concert formals.