Lessons for Lexi (14 page)

“We’re not done talking about this,” JT
informed her as Raj came in the room.

Raj was holding two drinks. “You can’t
eat regular food yet, but they said you can have a milkshake.”

“The
strawberry kind?”

“Yes,” Raj handed the McDonalds cup to Lexi
and she took it happily.

“When can I leave?”

“You’re here for a week.” JT explained,
ignoring her annoyed look. “After that, you’re supposed to be on bed rest for 2
weeks.”

“Seems
excessive.”

“They removed bullet fragments Alex.”
JT reminded her. Lexi rolled her eyes and took a sip of her milkshake.

Lexi noticed her IV. “Does this thing
have wheels?” Raj plopped down on the bed next to her and changed the channel
to the TV.

“You’re not supposed to be moving yet.”
Raj informed her absently.

“I’m a fast healer.”

“No, you’re not.”
 

JT licked his lips and tried to steer
the conversation back to her health, as opposed to how soon she could start
breaking her medical restrictions. “I was wondering if we need to get a nurse
for you when we go back to Althea’s.”

“I don’t need a nurse.”

“You need whatever I tell you that you
need.” JT stood and stretched, the hospital chair obviously starting to make
his back hurt. “Radford is going to help Althea get settled at her new place
while I take care of you at home.”

Lexi’s eyes widened. “Althea is moving
out? Then what’s the point of me being there?”

“I’ve decided that I need a live in
companion. “JT leaned over to kiss her. “Now that you’re awake, I’m going to go
get some coffee. I’ll be right back.”

***

Lexi turned to Raj urgently. “Now that
he knows my real name, it won’t be long before he connects Alexandra Berringer
to Lexi Logan, and he’ll know about that whole mess with Ronnie.” She shook her
head.
 
 
“I can’t do it again Raj.” Her voice was low
and more than a little desperate. “I can’t keep going through the same thing.
If the press gets wind of this,” her chest started to get tight and she tried
to slow down her breathing, “it’s going to be a damn circus. I can’t go through
that again.” She gestured to her stomach. “It nearly killed me the last time.”

“What are you saying Lex?”

Her eyes brightened. “Let’s go to Montana.” She clutched
Raj’s arm. “Like that time we worked on a horse farm! It will be great. We’ll
get to…”

Raj suddenly sprung off the bed. “Stop
it Lexi. Just stop.”

“What?”

“Trying to run,” Raj let out a defeated
sigh. “It’s always your first instinct. You never face anything. Your dad, your
future, Ronnie’s death,” he finished quietly. “We need to face this.”

“Raj, I can’t.” Lexi shook her head. “I
just need time, to clear my head. We can deal with it all later.”

“We can’t keep dealing with things
later, Lex. You’ve been clearing your head for three months.” Raj shook his
head. “I’m starting to think that Andrew was right. You need help Lexi.”

“I could always count on you to be the
voice of reason, Raj.” Lexi and Raj both turned to the door, to where Andrew
Flaxman had appeared, choosing to schedule his appearance right as JT walked
back in the room.

Chapter 11

JT arrived in the doorway right as
Andrew Flaxman was appearing as well. He stared at Andrew in confusion. It had
been so long since he had spoken to him, so long since he’d thought of Lexi
Logan, that he’d almost forgotten about them both entirely.
 
Seeing Andrew Flaxman outside of Alex’s room was
completely unexpected.

“Andrew?” He gave the surprised looking
man a brief handshake. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Nor I you.”
Andrew turned
to Lexi. “What’s JT Hussner doing here, Lexi?”

He turned to Alex, who was managing to
look even smaller and frailer than she had only a few minutes before. He
absently wondered if she’d noticed if they started adding protein powder to her
milkshakes.
“Lexi?”
He focused on the woman on the
bed. Her mismatched eyes that he’d come to love, the stubborn set of her jaw.
He saw past what he’d seen before.
Noticed the perfect shape
of her lips, the impossibly dark eyebrows that perfectly matched the impossibly
dark hair beginning to show in her hairline.
She looked down, seemingly
nervous at the eye contact.

And everything clicked into place.

“You’re Lexi Logan.” He put a hand to
his forehead. “I am an idiot. How the hell did I miss that?” His gaze turned
hard. “What was this?
Some kind of prank?”
He glared
at her. “Was this some kind of joke?”

JT was filled with rage. She’d been
playing him for a fool the entire time. The girl he though he knew was Lexi
Logan, the obnoxious radio host. His rage was spurned by the strange sense of
loss he felt over realizing that impossibly sweet, quirky Alex wasn’t
real.
 
Instead, she was the sharp as a
tack, abrasive radio host who had apparently cooked up some scheme to trick
him. He barely heard Lexi call his name when he turned on his heal and walked
away.

He didn’t know where he was going when
he got into his car. For awhile he sat behind the wheel, wondering what to do.
After ten minutes of staring blankly in front of him, he drove out of the
parking garage on autopilot. He ended up at his office. There were still lights
on in the building, even though it was the Sunday of a holiday weekend. The
doorman let him and JT found himself sitting at his desk, not even entirely
sure how he got there.

He pulled out Lexi Logan’s folder.
There was an 8 by 10 publicity photo of Lexi in the front, looking impossibly
beautiful, as well as completely cold and unapproachable. He flinched. His Alex
hadn’t been beautiful. She’d been adorable. He preferred adorable.

He started flipping through the pages.
Clippings of her, advertising revenue brought in by her, marketing research
done on her. She’d gotten more than one award and the file for the past year
was thick with records on the rise of Lexi. The file for her first year was
significantly thinner. He was surprised to learn that her first show had
actually been a two man show. Lexi had worked with a man named Ronnie Redbagger
for an affiliate station of KPOX called KLV, out of a smaller Miami office. There were a few pages of
market research for the now defunct network, as well as a newspaper clipping
that had surprised him.

Lexi Logan had been engaged to her
co-host. JT wondered if Lexi had gotten rid of excess baggage to make her climb
to fame. She wasn’t married and she was running a one man show. The woman who
lied to him was easily capable of ditching the dead weight. There was nothing
that would appease his curiosity in Lexi’s file. He powered up his computer and
typed Ronnie’s name into the search engine.

“I figured I’d find you here.”

JT looked up to find Radford standing
in his doorway.

“The cleaning lady let me in,” he explained
as he took a seat across from JT. “And before we get started, you should know
my name isn’t Radford.”

“No, it’s Raj. You look different, but
I remember you.” JT sighed. “So you were in on it too?”

“There was nothing to be in on JT.
Lexi’s lies had nothing to do with you.”

JT snorted. “Then why was she lying?”

Raj nodded at the computer. “Why don’t
you look at the search results for the name you just Googled? Then you can tell
me.”

JT rolled his eyes, expecting to pull
up a poor little rich girl story about a broken engagement. He focused on the
screen and for a second, couldn’t make sense of the words he was reading.

The press had called it the “KLV
Massacre.” It was a bit of a stretch. Only two had died, while one was critically
injured. He read through the story. A mentally ill man, who had a habit of
calling the show, to go off on long disjointed rants, had shown up at the start
of a workday. He had shot two radio hosts before turning the gun on himself.
Police searched his residence and found a cache of news stories and tapes of
Lexi and Ronnie, along with a long manifesto indicating he believed they were
in league with the terrorists to take over the country. As he’d put it in his
letter, he thought he had no choice but to ‘neutralize the threat’.

Lexi had survived. JT rubbed his eyes
as he thought of Lexi lying in a hospital bed, the bullets from the shooting
only recently being removed. A sting of guilt hit him for leaving her there
alone and scared. Her behavior made a lot more sense to him. If the same thing
had happened to him, he doubted he would have reacted half as well.

“The girl you met,” Raj informed him,
“that’s Lexi. The Lexi on the radio, that Lexi was fueled with bitterness over
what happened to Ronnie. She lost a lot that day. It took her a while to come
to terms with it.” Raj shook his head. “By the time she did, it was too late to
go back.”

“How can she stand to go there
everyday?”

Raj sighed. “After the shooting, KPOX
offered Lexi a full time spot in her old time slot. I thought she’d say no, but
she accepted. I think she felt like she owed it to Ronnie.” Raj shook his head.
“Problem is
,
she was supposed to avoid stress. In the
beginning, I think the show was cathartic for her. Towards the end, it was
making her sick and depressed. She was throwing up before and after every show.
I even had to shut her down once when she had a panic attack on the air.”

“Why the hell is she doing this to
herself? Why doesn’t she just quit and give up the show?”

“I don’t think she can.” Raj responded
simply. “That’s why she’s been such a pain in the ass. She wants someone to
take it from her so leaving won’t be her fault.”

JT nodded.
“Done.
She’s fired.”

Raj sat up straight. “What?”

“She’s not going on the air anymore.
She’s going to kill herself.” JT stood. “She had a damn ulcer at the age of 28
for god’s sake. She’s so stressed out, she’s making herself sick.”

“What about your advertising campaign?”

“I’ll think of something else,” he
walked towards the door. “
You coming
with me?”

Raj stood. “Where are we going?”

JT opened the door.
“To
the hospital to fire Lexi.”
    

***

Lexi sighed as she slid into her jeans.
After Raj had left, she’d gotten a long winded lecture from Andrew, along with
a promise that he would be back the following day to go over some ‘legal
things.’

She didn’t really want to know what
those legal things were. Not that she had any intention of staying around to
find out. The second Andrew had turned the
corner,
Lexi had maneuvered her way out of bed, yanked out her IV and found some
clothes folded in a neat pile in the closet. JT must have brought them for her.
Her jeans slid up easily and she was a little surprised to learn that she had
lost weight in her short stay. She buttoned her jeans carefully, trying to
avoid her stitches.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Lexi spun around, mouth dropping open
as JT appeared in her hospital room door.
  
She looked down at the jeans she was zipping under her hospital gown,
realizing she was caught red handed. “I was cold?”

JT was standing in front of her in a
couple of quick strides. Lexi let out a little squeak as his hands traveled to
her waistband. She stood in front of him as he unbuttoned and unzipped her
jeans, then yanked them down to her knees.

 
“Take
those the rest of the way off.” Heat flooded Lexi’s face but she bent down to
do what he said anyway. He didn’t sound like he was in the mood to be argued
with. She clumsily kicked them off, at least relieved that she’d been wearing
panties when he’d pantsed her. “Get back in bed.”
 

Lexi trudged back to the hospital bed
she’d abandoned, clutching the gown shut behind her. Right as she was walking
past JT, he surprised her by gripping her elbow. She dropped her arms in
surprise and JT took advantage of it long enough to give her a hard smack on
her backside.

“You owe me about twenty minutes of
that as soon as your healed.”

If possible, Lexi’s face burned even
brighter and she silently prayed for a case of diabetes that would keep her
stitches from heeling until she was 90. She silently got back into bed,
watching as JT pressed the call button to tell the nurse she’d ‘accidentally’
knocked her IV out.

He sat in his chair and continued to
study her. “I understand why you lied to me.”

“Raj talked to you?” She questioned
without looking up.
 

JT nodded.

“I wasn’t about you, JT. I actually
wasn’t even thinking I’d run into you. Then, you showed up on the street that
day. I didn’t recognize you, but Raj did. As soon as I recognized you, I took
off, with plans to just avoid you.”