11

The young heiress known as Monica Elizabeth Frost looked up through the window of her limousine. She had never been to Los Angeles before and flying on a plane for the first time scared the heck out of her especially when all she had to do was wave her hands and teleport herself to wherever she thought. However, flying First Class more than made up for it. She had champagne and tried sushi for the first time. Mr. Cage had set her up with an accountant to handle and manage her money and funds, and through her, Nikki was suddenly getting asked to donate money to all sorts of charities and institutions. This one near Los Angeles was no different. As the limo pulled through the gates, her brown eyes looked up to a large Mediterranean-style mansion in a residential area of Pasadena. The gathering was in the back ballroom of the house near the pool area and her ride took her around the house to where valets opened the doors and escorted the guests inside. Her hand lifted a compact up to her face to reflect the eyes of Alex Russo back to her. She looked much more attractive in make-up and a new hairstyle.

"Any idea how much you might donate to the university?" Her accountant, Brandy Greenberg, was sitting across from her in a long white evening dress.

"I said, I'd come…" Alex's voice answered. "I didn't say I'd donate." The limo stopped and someone outside. Alex took her purse in her hand, pulled up her wrap up around her bare shoulders and seemed to unconsciously pose in her long red dress. It made her look mature and shapely; maybe a young lady of twenty-two than a girl of eighteen. Her eyes looked up to the walkway to the house leading past meticulously groomed shrubbery and bushes. There were a few roses along the way as she strided forward guided by Brandy. The thirty-something preppie was a lot more anxious to get inside to meet the American version of modern aristocracy. Many of these people were of old money. They were widows with their husband's fortunes, retired captains of industry, known investors from Seattle and Phoenix and even a few celebs from yesteryear whose careers were forgotten by the Eighties. Gliding past the swimming pool area and numerous huddled conversations, a few of them turned to the girl they knew from the scandal rags as the last known living heir to the Frost fortune. Mature women in their seventies were already guessing she might have been illegitimate, but the majority of the older men just looked her over from her long legs and up over her svelte figure and wished they were young again. Seeing Monica Frost in person, they all agreed she was a very attractive young lady. As the steward came around, Alex reached first to take a glass of champagne ahead of Brandy.

"Miss Frost…" The gentleman in the dark suit and blue tie was Professor Charles Seibert, the head administrator for the California Institute of Technology. He took Alex's dainty gloved hand to shake it then wrapped his other hand around it to greet her. "It is such an honor for you to come to out here to our little investors gala."

"Well, actually…" Alex looked to Brandy and then back to Seibert. "I'm only here in the area to say hello to the kids at the South California Children's Hospital…" She looked back to the Professor as he let go of her hand. "So your phone call to my accountant was a little unexpected. No disrespect, but I don't donate to schools. I'm more interested in much more worthy charities."

"I understand, I understand completely…" Seibert escorted her into the game room of the house. Alex looked back to Brandy holding back a bit before heading to the buffet table. "But if you'd just give me just a little bit of your time. After all, it is through the donations of people like yourself that helps the institute make the discoveries that help to cure cancer and develop the equipment that save lives everyday."

"I'm listening…"

"Miss Frost, with a small donation from you to our medical research wing, we can…"

"Mr. Siebert," Another guest came out of nowhere from around three men in conversation. "I was wondering if we could finish our little discussion about…" He suddenly noticed Alex. "Oh, let me guess, your daughter?" He grinned earnestly and reached to take her hand.

"No…" Siebert reacted a bit antagonized. "Miss Frost, this is Howard Wolowitz, one of our engineers; Howard, Miss Monica Frost, and I don't recall us having a discussion recently."

"Really," Howard chuckled as his deception fell apart. "Well, it might have been with someone else. So…" He bounced his eyebrows up and down highly attracted to her. "I hear you're from Boston? Go Red Sox!"

"I don't follow sports." Alex tried to keep from looking amused.

"It's actually the only Boston reference he knows." Seibert rolled his eyes embarrassingly and tried to steer her to meet Dr. Leon Klaubauterman from the microbiology wing. Klaubautermann wanted new equipment to further his research, and Seibert was scared to death the geeks from the physics wing were going to drive her away before he could get her to donate any money for the medical department. "Now, Howard, go play with you erector set or something before Dr. Cooper wanders over here and ruins…"

"Miss Frost…" A tall skinny guest in a garish suit emerged from out of Howard's retinue. "Allow me to introduce myself, Dr. Sheldon Cooper…"

"Oh god…" Siebert looked away embarrassed.

"Before you squander your donation in a least worthwhile science," Cooper seemed to move and posture his head as if he was a bird in a cage looking at himself in the mirror. "May I interest you in contributing to a much more worthy research project in the physics department. We have been needing an argon laser for the longest time."

"I'm so firing my accountant…" Alex mumbled under her breath and tried to pretend she was distracted by something else. She downed the last of her champagne and looked around trying to get another one.

"Miss Frost, I am so sorry…" Siebert tried to help her. "Please understand, I only wanted you to meet and possibly donate to our medical research department…."

"Well, I'm getting a mixed message here." Cooper looked around feigning a form of confusion. "Dr. Seibert, did you not ask us to come here and try to encourage investors to donate money to our departments? You now seem to be acting as if you don't want us asking for money. Well, which is it and why else are we here?"

Dr. Seibert exhaled a long exasperated sigh.

"Miss Frost," Seibert tried sending things in the right directions. "I would really like you to meet the head of our medical department." He gestured to the buffet table. "His name is Dr. Leon Klaubautermann, and he is right over there; if you could excuse me…" He grabbed suddenly surprised Dr. Cooper hard by the arm and pulled him sharply out of the way to talk to him as verbosely as he could without yelling. Gestured to a bald man in a dark gray suit analyzing and picking over the cheese cubes and small entrees around a bowl of fruit punch on a long table, she stepped lightly trying to make the best of things. Her eyes danced briefly around the game room looking for Brandy and instead landed on the young Hindu male standing by the side and eating shrimp from a small plate. His eyes briefly noticed her looking at him and his eyes turned to nervous fear.

"Hello…" She poured herself a drink and took some cheese and sliced ham on toothpicks with a few crackers on a plate. Her ears waited for a response, but the young professor didn't respond. Struck mute by her good looks, he gazed away looking for help to speak then nervously became distracted by his drink. Not getting a response, Alex rolled her eyes and turned round to meet Klaubautermann if but to run into Howard once more.

"He doesn't speak unless he's got alcohol in him." Howard grinned and explained. "Miss Frost, this is my friend, Dr. Leonard Wolowitz…" He gestured to another young professor wearing glasses.

"Honor to meet you…" Leonard shook her hand, but Alex reacted distracted. Klaubautermann was moving away again to join his wife outside on the patio. She wanted to meet him, but she could not bear to be rude. "I don't think I've ever met a young heiress."

"Well, I'm one…" Alex passed a piece of Swiss cheese through her lips.

"If you don't mind me asking…" Leonard felt a bit charmed by her. He found this girl calling herself Monica Frost to be very attractive with a very magnetic presence. He couldn't stop looking at her. "How does someone so young become so wealthy?"

"I'm psychic…" Alex humorously responded and cleared her throat of her drink before responding in her effort to be charming and appealing. Leonard chuckled at what he thought was a little joke without realizing there was some truth in the modest claim.

"That's funny…" Leonard lightly chortled. "Of course, there's no such think as psychics…"

"Really…" Alex had a brief piece of shrimp. "Well, how do I know that your friend here got the Mars Rover stuck in a ditch…"

Howard looked up shocked and surprised from pouring himself punch.

"Or that you accidentally blew up the elevator in your building…" She noticed Leonard suddenly looking very confused. "Or that your friend is named Rajesh Koothrapalli and that he accidentally burned down part of his high school in India with a defective switch on a homemade volcano…"

Leonard's confusion turned to stunned bewilderment. Raj and Howard were trying to speak but nothing was coming from their moving lips. Alex refilled her drink and turned to Howard.

"By the way…" She leaned in close to him. "We were never going to have sex tonight, and unless you really want to be slapped, I'd forget that pick-up line you were debating on using tonight." She stepped away sipping her drink and heading across the room to meet Dr. Klaubautermann out on the patio.

"How'd she do that?" Ironically, Raj was the first one to speak.

"Did you tell her all that?" Howard asked Raj.

"Me?" Raj was stunned. "I was too busy spelling her perfume!"

"You blew up your high school?" Leonard looked to Rajesh.

"Only a little bit…"

A few feet away, Alex had stopped to meet a few of the other investors and graciously introduce herself. Brandy finally became useful in those efforts, but Alex kept looking toward Klabautermann through the curtains on the windows. He was outside smoking cigars with Dr. Eric Gablehauser. Once more trying to gently tear herself away, she started toward the other set of doors in her path to meeting him, but out of her peripheral vision, she saw Dr. Cooper coming toward her again. An open pointing gesture from her wrist and one of the stewards accidentally tumbled and spilled several drinks from a tray over Sheldon. Taken aback, the eccentric physics expert flailed backward trying to catch himself and caught himself stumbling backward… backward… and backward again as another steward opened a closet to clean up the first mess, but as fast as he opened the closet, Sheldon landed into it and the door slammed shut on its own accord on him. It might have been a faked pratfall, a display of slapstick behavior, but the look of stunned disbelief on Cooper's face made it look like as if he was not doing it himself. Everyone looked over to the closet as a loud crash came from inside it.

"Ouch…." Alex mumbled under breath, sampled an olive taken from the table and finished her drink in time to meet Dr. Klaubautermann under the huge oak tree growing up alongside the outside patio.