Dr. Cheung was elated. “Congratulations, my dear. I’m only sorry that so much of what you’re hearing at the moment is so unpleasant.”
Like everyone else in America, Dr. Cheung had seen the pictures and read the reports. They were hanging the poor girl out to dry.
Lexi, however, seemed unfazed: “Don’t worry about me, Doctor. I can hear again. That’s all that matters.”
And it was. Suddenly Lexi felt invincible. Raising capital against her Kruger-Brent stock-despite the drop in value, Lexi’s stake was still worth over $100 million-she quietly started her own real-estate company, Templeton Estates. She began buying up cheap tracts of land in Africa, following the same business plan she’d intended to adopt as chairman of Kruger-Brent. Within two years, the company was outperforming almost all of its African competitors. This year Lexi had finally had the immense satisfaction of watching Templeton’s market share in Africa overtake Kruger-Brent’s.
Only one company, Gabriel McGregor and Dia Ghali’s Cape Town-based Phoenix Group, consistently outperformed them. But then Phoenix had had a five-year head start on Templeton. No one could deny that for a five-year-old business, Templeton Estates had made one hell of a mark.
As her company flourished, so Lexi’s own self-esteem started to revive. When Max betrayed her, releasing those awful, degrading pictures, part of her wanted to crawl away and die. Now, with both her hearing and her fortune restored, she found herself taking her first baby steps back into public life. On the spur of the moment, she showed up one night at the opening of a friend’s restaurant in her native New York. Wearing a vintage Bill Blass dress, Lexi utterly stole the show, cutting as dazzlingly glamorous and enigmatic a figure as she had in the old days. Soon afterward the floodgates opened. Once again, men flocked to her. And not just any men. Lexi dated musicians, businessmen, movie stars, always moving on within a few weeks, keeping the tabloids guessing. With the dollar at an all-time low and the economy in the doldrums, America craved glamour and excitement like a crack whore craving a fix. What better way to revive the national spirit than to welcome this conquering, beautiful Blackwell daughter back into the collective American fold?
So she had a wild and crazy youth. So what? Who didn’t?
She can hear again and she’s back on her feet.
Lexi was a star, a fighter, a winner. She had reinvented herself once again. Once again, America was glued to the edge of its seat.
Paolo Cozmici needn’t have worried. The party was a terrific success, with just the right amount of scandal to satisfy Hollywood’s gossip fiends:
A famous music producer got locked in the bathroom with a beautiful singer who was not his wife.
The singer’s name was David.
A movie actress was so wasted climbing into the hot tub that she forgot about the hairpiece she wore to hide her bald spot. When her twenty-year-old boy glanced down and saw what he thought was a dead rat floating between his legs, he passed out. The poor kid nearly drowned.
Michael Schett, this year’s “Hollywood’s Hottest Hunk” according to People magazine, arrived with Playboy ’s Miss September, but dumped her like a campaign promise when he laid eyes on Lexi. Unfortunately for Michael Schett, Lexi wasn’t interested.
Michael cornered Robbie Templeton by the bar. “You gotta help me. I’m crashing and burning here. You’re her brother. Tell me how to impress her.”
With his Cary Grant looks, legendary prowess in the sack, and a string of hit movies to his name, Michael Schett was not used to rejection. He hadn’t had a girl dismiss him like this since seventh grade.
Robbie grinned. “Lexi likes a challenge. You could always start making out with me. Maybe she’ll try to ‘turn’ you?”
Michael Schett roared with laughter. He’d known Robbie and Paolo for years.
“Nice try, Liberace. She’s cute, but no girl is that cute.”
“Hey, you know what they say, Michael. You’re not a man till you had a man and didn’t like it.”
In the wee small hours of the morning, once all the guests had gone, Paolo went to bed, leaving Robbie alone with Lexi.
“You know, Michael Schett is really into you.”
Lexi rolled her eyes.
“What? He’s a nice guy. Most women would bite his hand off. Christ, I’d sleep with him.”
“You would not. You and Paolo are fused at the hip and you know it.”
“Actually, we’re fused at the heart. But I know what you mean.”
Robbie was worried about Lexi. On the surface, she seemed to have pulled her life back from the brink. But her continued obsession with Kruger-Brent and their cousin wasn’t normal. As for her working hours, Lexi regularly clocked in days that would put most self-respecting Taiwanese sweatshop workers to shame.
“Work isn’t everything, you know, Lex. Don’t you ever think of settling down?”
Lexi laughed. “With Michael Schett? His movies last longer than his relationships!”
“Okay, fine, forget Michael. But everyone needs love in their life.”
“I have love in my life. I have you.”
“That’s not what I mean. Don’t you want to have children one day? A family of your own?”
“No. I don’t.”
Lexi sighed. How could she explain to Robbie that after Max, she would never love again? He had no idea about her affair with Max-no one did-still less that it was Max who had distributed the pictures that very nearly ruined her. But Lexi knew. She knew love was for fools. Love had blinded her. Because of love, she had lost Kruger-Brent. The only thing that mattered now was destroying Max and taking back her beloved company. As for children, Kruger-Brent was Lexi’s child. She had trusted in Max, and he had torn her child from her arms, ripped it from her breast and carried it off into the wilderness.