His Assistant - Alexa Land Page 0,8

so what did it matter?

While he circled my living room examining what little I had sitting out, I hurried to the coffee table and gathered up the notes for some songs I’d been working on. Once they were hidden away in a drawer, I went into the bedroom and packed a bag.

After that, I retrieved my toiletry kit from the adjoining bathroom. By the time I returned, not thirty seconds later, Harper was sitting on my bed and bouncing just enough to be annoying. “I worry about you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because a monk’s bedroom is sexier than this place. Look at this tiny mattress. This is the bed of someone who’s not getting laid enough.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and asked, “Do you want me to quit? Because I’m more than happy to do that, right now. All you have to do is keep talkin’ about my sex life like it’s any of your goddamn business.”

A wide smile spread across his face, and he said, “There it is.”

“There what is?”

“The Tennessee in you. I love it when your drawl slips out. It’s so damn cute.”

“Get out of my apartment.”

He looked worried as he asked, “Are you still coming with me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then.”

I shoved the toiletry kit in my bag and followed him out the door, and as I locked up behind us I muttered, “It’s not a Tennessee accent.”

“But you grew up in Nashville.”

“Actually, I grew up on the coast of South Carolina. My parents moved us to Nashville when we were sixteen for my brother’s and my career, and the accent was already a done deal by that point.”

Harper mused, “It’s interesting that you hide the accent, while your brother lays it on thick. Or is that why you’ve gotten rid of yours, to differentiate yourself from your famous twin?”

“My brother’s accent is an affectation. He plays it up as part of his whole southern charm schtick. No one in our family talks like that. And if my accent’s gotten diluted, that’s just a result of spending the last decade in California.” While all of that was true, he was actually right that I’d made a conscious effort to drop my southern drawl, so Dallas and I would be slightly less identical. I didn’t feel like going into my strained relationship with my twin, though.

Maybe an hour later, we arrived at LAX. As soon as we entered the terminal, Harper drew a crowd. It was all I could do to pry him away from his adoring fans long enough to check in for our flight.

Once we’d gone through security and found our gate, a pair of women in their sixties came up and asked Harper for an autograph. He turned on the charm, chatting with them and offering to pose for a photo. That encouraged a few more fans to approach him, and he greeted everyone he met with unwavering enthusiasm. His need to be liked by absolutely everyone he met was almost pathological.

While he flashed his dimples, shook hands, and posed for photos, I took a seat and pulled out my laptop, with the thought of trying to put a dent in his two thousand emails. But it was tough to focus with so much going on around me, so I ended up watching Harper as he worked the crowd.

He was a quintessential movie star, so it always surprised me he’d ended up in that role by chance. His plan had actually been to follow in his father’s footsteps and play professional football, and he’d gone to college on an athletic scholarship. But at nineteen he was discovered by a talent scout, and a few modeling gigs led almost immediately to his first movie role. Almost ten years later, his career was hotter than ever.

In an industry obsessed with youth and beauty, it was no wonder success had come easily to Harper. He was, without a doubt, the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. He also happened to be a really good actor, but most people assumed his face and body were what landed the roles and sold all those tickets.

There was more to it than that, though. Yes, he was flawlessly beautiful with his expressive pale green eyes and chiseled features. But he wasn’t just a Ken doll, plastic in his perfection. Instead, what helped make him a star was the sparkle of almost constant amusement in his eyes, the hint of a smirk in his smile, and the huge personality and zest for life that shone