Chapter 3

The morning passed by quickly for Alexa. Generally, she liked to keep herself busy so that the day would seem shorter. For lunch, she closed herself off in her small office and finished the leftovers from Ben’s meeting with the Backstreet Boys that morning.

For some reason, she hadn’t been able to get the group out of her mind. The final member had never arrived, though Alexa didn’t really expect him. Everyone knew the tragic story of what had caused the group to split up a few years earlier. Brian Littrell, one of the Backstreet Boys’ head heartthrobs, had gotten married to his longtime girlfriend only a little over a year prior to September 11. She was pregnant and wanted to leave the tour, so Brian brought her to the airport that morning. Tragically, her airplane had been one of the two that struck the twin towers on that fateful morning.

Brian never spoke about the incident; however, it was always speculated that he blamed himself. The guilt was devastating and had thrown him into a deep depression that he’d never been able to pull himself out of.

Alexa sighed sadly. She didn’t know Brian, but she felt terrible for him and she understood why he hadn’t wanted to attend the meeting that morning. All of the good memories of performing and fans and amazing record sales were tainted by the memory of that final tour and the day that he lost his wife and child. It was such a shame. Though he never got the recognition that he deserved, he had always been amazingly talented.

Alexa continued to pick at her cold breakfast pastry, unable to shake Brian from her mind. Halfway through her lunch break, her cell phone vibrated on her desk. She picked it up and smiled when she saw the picture of Brooke and Wesley flash on the screen.

As she pressed the green button to receive the call, her mood finally lifted. “What’s up, BK!”

“You know I hate it when you call me that. BK is the abbreviation of Burger King, not Brooke.” She laughed softly, then continued. “You sound like you’re in a good mood. How are things?”

Alexa sighed. “Things just are, I guess. I’m in a good mood because you called. I haven’t spoken to you in days.”

“I know. It’s gotten so busy over here. Wes has started crawling; so, now we have to chase him all over the world.” Brooke laughed happily as she spoke about her baby boy. “But what do you mean ‘things just are’? Are you having money problems again?”

“I never stop having money problems!” Alexa replied and couldn’t help but to laugh to herself. “But it’s fine. I’ll manage. I always do.”

“I know that you can take care of yourself, but I really wish that you would at least consider moving over here. I could use your help.”

Alexa sat back in her leather desk chair and rolled her eyes. “Please, you don’t need my help. You’re doing just fine.”

In her Washington, D.C. home, Brooke shrugged to herself and made a face at her baby. “Eh, it was worth a shot. So, what’s going on over there? Anything new and exciting?”

“Not really. Well, the Backstreet Boys came in for a meeting today. That’s was different.” Alexa’s mind turned back to Brian, but she shook it off.

“The Backstreet Boys? That is different. Aren’t they old now?”

Alexa grinned and laughed softly. “No older than you.”

Before Brooke could respond to the slight jab at her age from her younger sister, the conversation was interrupted by the intercom on her desk phone buzzing. In an instant, Ben’s voice filled the room. “Alexa?”

Alexa rolled her eyes. “Yes?”

“I need to see you in my office immediately.” He sounded tense. Alexa knew that this probably had something to do with the way that she had acted that morning.

“I’m on my lunch break right now, can it wait until-“ She was cut off my Ben’s groaning on the other end. “Okay, forget it. I’ll be in your office in just a minute.”

Ben ended the connection without another word. Before Alexa could speak, Brooke jumped in. “God, Alexa. He’s such a jerk. I don’t know why you put up with that.”

“Brooke, I don’t have many choices right now other than uprooting my entire existence, which I’ve told you I’m not going to do. Besides, I think I may have brought this one on myself.” Alexa paused, but before Brooke could say another word, she continued again. “Look, I really have to go. I’ll call you when I get home tonight, okay?”

“Okay, fine, but I really don’t think that you give yourself enough credit, Aly. There are other opportunities for you out there.” Brooke tried to argue, but knew that she wasn’t going to change her sister’s mind. She sighed and conceded, not wanting to cause Alexa any more stress than she already had in her life. “I’ll let you go. I love you, Aly. Be good to yourself, okay?”

“Always. I love you, too.” With that, the sisters hung up. Alexa took a final large bite of her breakfast sandwich and walked down the corridor to Ben’s enormous office. She knocked on the wooden office door and let herself in. As she walked slowly across the office, Ben never looked up from the paperwork on his desk.

“Listen, Ben, about this morning-“ She started nervously, but Ben cut her off. It wasn’t so much about not getting the exact breakfast items that he’d asked for as it was about talking back to him in front of his clients. Though she’d done many things to annoy him in the past, talking back to him as casually as she had that morning, on a morning that seemed to be so important, was a boundary that she’d never crossed.

“Though completely unacceptable, that’s not what I called you in here for this afternoon. Please sit down.” Alexa swallowed hard. She was slightly put off by his very business-like behavior.

She sat down and then started rambling nervously. “You’re really creeping me out here, Ben. If you brought me in here to fire me or something and there’s nothing that I can do to change your mind, that’s fine. I’ve worked really hard and I really like my job here, but if none of that is good enough for you then please just make it quick.”

Ben actually cracked a small smile, which further put Alexa off. She sat back in her chair finally deciding to just let Ben do the talking.

“I’m not going to fire you Alexa.”

Alexa breathed a sigh of relief, but was still weirded out by the fact that Ben was casually grinning at her.

“In fact,” he continued slowly, “I have an assignment for you.”

Alexa’s face lit up as she sat up in her chair quickly. If the assignment was something like making copies or getting coffee, he wouldn’t have sat her down in his office to discuss it. Her mind was reeling with possibilities. “Really? That’s great. Should I take notes or something?”

Ben shook his head, stood up and walked around his desk to stand in front of where Alexa was sitting. He propped himself up on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms. “No, I think that you’ll be able to manage this without pen and paper.” He paused for what seemed like minutes. Instead of filling the awkward silence, Alexa waited for Ben to continue. “Here’s the thing, Alexa. I did a little digging today.”

“Digging? What kind of digging?” Alexa was starting to get a headache. Suddenly, she wasn’t as excited for the assignment.

“I’m a powerful man, Alexa. I have any kind of information that I want at my fingertips. Do you understand that?”

Alexa shrugged casually. “Um, I guess so. Yeah.”

“Well, I understand that you’re having some financial troubles and I want to help you with that.” Ben continued to grin. Alexa looked back at him wearily. There was something troubling in his eyes. Something that wasn’t quite right.

She shook her head and started to stand up. “Listen, I’m doing fine. Whatever this ‘assignment’ is, I don’t want it. I don’t want to be involved in any kind of shady business.”

“Alexa, sit down. I just sent a check to your landlord, so your rent is paid and you aren’t going to get evicted; the least that you can do is sit down and hear me out.” Ben’s grin quickly turned into a hardened grimace. Nervously, Alexa sat back down.

“You should really cancel that check, Ben.” Not wanting to let him intimidate her, she stared right back at him coldly.

“This doesn’t have to be a big deal unless you make it a big deal. It’s just a little assignment involving you and a Backstreet Boy. That’s it.”

Alexa’s mind was suddenly reeling. Me and a Backstreet Boy, she thought to herself. What kind of assignment could Ben possibly be sending me on? If one of them wanted a date or something, couldn’t they just ask me themselves? Paying my rent is kind of creepy and stalker-ish, isn’t it? “Ben, I don’t understand.”

“If you would be quiet and let me explain, maybe you would understand.”

 Alexa nodded and waited for him to finally get to the point.

“There’s a certain Backstreet Boy who has been a little heartsick for a while. Brian. Everyone in the world knows what happened to Brian and his family. Well, Brian has decided to shut himself off from the world and I just need someone, you, to go down to Atlanta and give Brian something worth coming out for his house for again.”

Alexa wasn’t sure that she was hearing him properly. Ben wanted her to seduce Brian? “Can you run that by me again, Ben. I’m not quite sure that I heard you correctly. You want me to be a prostitute?”

“No, not a prostitute. I’m not going to pay you to sleep with him, although whether you do or not is completely up to you. I just need a beautiful woman-“ He paused to gesture to Alexa. “Who is a real, hometown kind of girl to go give him something to smile about. We’re doing Brian a favor here.”

“By betraying him? No way. I am NOT going to be the one to break that man’s heart again. His suicide is NOT going to be on my account.” Alexa stood up and attempted to make her way to the door. “I can NOT believe that you just asked me to do that. You have to be breaking some kind of law or something.”

Fire radiated from Ben’s eyes as he marched across the room to where Alexa was standing. He slammed his hand into the door behind her. “And I dare you to find someone that will charge me with anything.”

Inside, Alexa was trembling. This was a side of Ben that she had never seen before. To get to the top, maybe you really did have to be cold and calculating, but was that really something that she was willing to do?

“Listen, you need money and I’m offering it to you for something simple. You get to leave Brooklyn and live in a nice, upscale neighborhood in Georgia for a few months. You might get to hang out with a nice guy for a little while and you see what happens. That’s it. The Backstreet Boys need Brian whether they believe it right now or not and Jive needs the Backstreet Boys. You either do as I ask of you or you don’t come back and I find someone who will.”

“Ben,” Alexa started softly. “What’s to say that Brian would want anything to do with me? No one, not his friends or his family or anyone close to him, has been able to pull him out of this. What makes you think that I could do it?”

“Maybe he won’t. And if he doesn’t, fine. You did want you had to do and it’s over. You come back and we go on with our lives.” Ben stepped back from Alexa and regained her complete composure. “On the other hand, you’re someone new. Someone that didn’t know him before, someone that makes it okay to start over.”

“Why me? There are thousands of girls who would have no problem doing this. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“Well, for one, I trust you. I know that you want to move up into the A&R department. If you want that to happen, I have to know that I can count on you for anything. As far as Brian’s concerned, right now, he doesn’t think that he was anyone to relate to. He lost his wife in a tragic way. You lost your father in a tragic way. It’s a match.” Alexa sighed, suddenly realizing that taking this assignment was really what it was going to take to move her career forward. He wanted her to use both the death of Brian’s wife and the death of her father against Brian in some sick ploy to seduce him and make him want to sing again? No way. She shook her head and turned to leave once more. She couldn’t play with a broken man’s emotions. It wasn’t right.

Ben called out to her as her hand reached the door. “Alexa?” She turned around slowly and locked eyes with this never-before-seen side of her boss. “We’re not hurting anyone. You’d basically be getting paid to meet Brian, say hello and see what happens. Maybe it’ll work and maybe it won’t but it’s worth a try. You may just be the woman that Brian’s been waiting for.”

Alexa stood in place turning it all over in her head. Maybe it wasn’t really as bad as she originally thought. She moves to Georgia for a few months, knocks on her neighbor’s door, starts a conversation. Either it goes from there or he shuts her out, right?

Ben’s voice broke into her thoughts. “This is a big decision, Alexa. This quite possibly could be where your career takes off simply because I asked you to go make friends with a Backstreet Boy. The moving truck is already on its way to your new, completely furnished home. What do you say?”

Alexa coolly lifted her head to meet Ben’s intense glare.

“Are you in?”